Last Call

I wouldn't call the shift of six electoral college seats from Obama to McCain in the new census a "dramatic shift" towards GOP dominance, but at the state level it's going to make things harder for Democrats for the next decade.

The biggest gainer will be Texas, a GOP-dominated state expected to gain up to four new House seats, for a total of 36. The chief losers — New York and Ohio, each projected by nongovernment analysts to lose two seats — were carried by Obama in 2008 and are typical of states in the Northeast and Midwest that are declining in political influence.

Democrats' problems don't end there.

November's elections put Republicans in control of dozens of state legislatures and governorships, just as states prepare to redraw their congressional and legislative district maps. It's often a brutally partisan process, and Republicans' control in those states will enable them to create new districts to their liking.

The combination of population shifts and the recent election results could make Obama's re-election campaign more difficult. Each House seat represents an electoral vote in the presidential election process, giving more weight to states Obama probably will lose in 2012. The states he carried in 2008 are projected to lose, on balance, six electoral votes to states that his GOP challenger, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, won. That sets a higher bar for Obama before his re-election campaign even starts.

"The way the maps have shifted have made Obama's route to success much more difficult," said Republican Party spokesman Doug Heye. He said the GOP takeover of several state governments on the eve of redistricting efforts was "a dramatic shift."

Republicans now control the governor's offices and both legislative chambers in competitive presidential states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Indiana, Maine and Wisconsin. They hold the governors' chairs in other crucial states, including Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and Iowa.

When Obama carried those states in 2008, most had Democratic governors happy to lend their political operations to his cause. Now he will run where governors can bend their powers against his administration's policies and his campaign's strategies.

Democratic Party spokesman Brad Woodhouse said his colleagues are aware of the challenges they face, "but we are putting a plan in place to maximize our opportunities, minimize potential setbacks and ensure that the process in each state is fair and done in accordance with the law."

In other words, expect Democrats to put up some resistance to the redistricting plans in blood red states.  The bad news?  In states like Texas and Florida, the GOP has a supermajority in the state legislature, meaning that Democrats may not be able to do a damn thing about it.

It's going to be a hard road.  We're going to see some crazy legislation come out of Florida, Texas, and other Southern and Southwestern states.  Something tells me not everyone there is going to be particularly happy with one-party rule and it's very possible that the Republicans will go way over the line.

But they will push the political debate further to the right in America as they do it, and will continue to do so.  And it's going to be extremely difficult to push back.

I Fight For The Users

Got to see Tron Legacy today.



Good times if you're a Tron fan. Maybe a bit too much effort to rope in all the references possible to the original film, but its heart is in the right place, and it's a beautiful movie visually.

The original film, well back in 1982 Zandardad was five years younger than I am now when he saw it. Made a geek out of him, and when I saw it (and nearly wore out the new VHS recorder and the tape of it as a result) he noticed how my eyes lit up and knew I was going to be a geek too.

Pop was a pretty fair lightcycle driver back in the day too. Never passed up an opportunity to play the Tron arcade game when he could. I was a Marble Madness and Mappy man myself at the tender age of 7, but Pop? Tron was his game, and he was good. We'd go with my younger brother and hit the arcade at the mall on weekends. Pop's specialties were Hat Trick and Tron.

Didn't take long for the family to end up with a C64 and me with a Basic For Kids workbook and a subscription to Compute's Gazette in 1984, and the rest was history.

"I fight for the users" pretty much sums up Zandardad. More than a little Kevin Flynn in him, always wanting to help the little guy. The older Kevin Flynn, still played by Jeff Bridges in the movie, is a somewhat more of a Zen hippie than my practical father, but Flynn's gray beard is identical to the one my father sports. The older Flynn's motto, "Remove your self from the equation" is more than a bit of my father as well.

Flynn's son Sam (Garrett Hedlund), well there are more than a couple similarities. Painfully intelligent but a slacker more worried about the idea than the execution, not quite ready to be in his father's impressive shadow, Sam and Kevin Flynn along with program Quorra (Olivia Wilde) are searching for a way to take back the digital world from Flynn's creation, Clu (a younger, digitized Bridges) whose quest for perfection has of course turned him into the very tyrant he and Flynn set out to stop.

Will the film create a new generation of computer geeks? Maybe. It's a good film, but tries too hard, the Windows Vista to Tron's dependable, legendary Windows 2000. It doesn't quite get it right, but it's still pretty nice and worth giving it a look.

Your inner 7 year old geek kid will enjoy it. The older you? Well, let the kid enjoy themselves and you'll be okay.

A Gay Old Time At The White House

MoDo The Red sobers up enough to ask Rep. Barney Frank if America's ready for a gay President.  The running joke is we've already had at least one.  As far as an openly gay President?  Let's just say I agree with Frank that I wouldn't count on that happening as a Republican.

I called Barney Frank, assuming the gay pioneer would be optimistic. He wasn’t. “It’s one thing to have a gay person in the abstract,” he said. “It’s another to see that person as part of a living, breathing couple. How would a gay presidential candidate have a celebratory kiss with his partner after winning the New Hampshire primary? The sight of two women kissing has not been as distressful to people as the sight of two men kissing.”

Because of the Defense of Marriage Act, he added, “it’s not clear that a gay president could use federal funds to buy his husband dinner. Would his partner have to pay rent in the White House? There would be no Secret Service protection for the paramour.”

Frank noted that we’ve “clearly had one gay president already, James Buchanan. If I had to pick one, it wouldn’t be him.” (The Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan aims higher, citing Abe Lincoln, who sometimes bundled with his military bodyguard in bed when his wife was away.)

Frank said that although most Republicans now acknowledge that sexual orientation is not a choice, they still can’t handle their pols’ coming out. “There are Republicans here who are gay,” he said of Congress, “but as long as they don’t acknowledge it, it’s O.K. Republicans only tolerate you being gay as long as you don’t seem proud of it. You’ve got to be apologetic.” 

The four openly gay members of Congress are all Democratic House members (Jared Polis will be sworn in in January as #4).  Rumor has it there are at least that many closeted members on the GOP side (I leave that speculation to Howie Klein) but Frank has a point:  no gay President would be tolerated by today's Republicans.

I don't think it's a matter of if America's ready, but if Republicans are...and the answer to that is "not for at least another generation."  Having said that...we did just elect the nation's first non-white President.

I don't think it will happen in my lifetime, unfortunately.

Ebony And Ivory Coast

Meanwhile in other world news, the country of Ivory Coast is just the latest in a long string of African nations embroiled in conflict and misery.  The UN is reporting thousands are fleeing the country ahead of a looming larger war.

The disputed presidential election outcome between opposition leader Alassane Ouattara and incumbent Laurent Gbagbo has threatened to derail a fragile peace process in the west African nation.

The renewed refugee flow has also put neighboring Liberia and Guinea on high alert.

"In my village the majority voted massively for President Laurent Gbagbo, and [the New Forces soldiers] threatened us because of that. They came to our houses and started to harass us, to mistreat us," said Jean-Jacques Issignate, 19, from Nyale, an Ivorian village along the Guinea border. "We fled to the forest ... I spent one week in the forest."

Provisional results from a November presidential runoff intended to end more than 10 years of civil war showed Ouattara as the winner with a nearly eight-point margin.

Earlier this month, the nation's highest court, headed by an ally of Gbagbo, canceled thousands of votes from the north -- Ouattara's stronghold -- and declared Gbagbo the winner with 51 percent of the vote.

Oldest story in the book it seems:  the not-so-peaceful transition of power.   The international community is backing Ouattara's bid for the country's presidency, but Gbagbo isn't going to give up without a fight, and that's why everyone's getting out of the way before the inevitable UN action puts yet another fire zone on the map.  No doubt the conflict will draw the usual mercs and warlords looking to make a name for themselves, and these days who knows what private military companies may get involved here as we head into 2011.

What I do know is that most likely, things are going to get a lot bloodier here and soon.

Korean-ing Off The Rails, Part 3

The UN Security Council is finally getting around to talking about the scary prospect of the resumption of hostilities between the two Koreas, and what the rest of the international community can do (IE, the US and China) to stop that from happening.  The problem is South Korea's live fire exercise drills this weekend, with North Korea promising retaliation if the South goes through with them.

As the U.N. Security Council prepared to convene Sunday morning to hold an emergency session concerning tensions on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea reiterated that it will go forward with live-fire military drills this week.

The drills will take place Monday or Tuesday in the Yellow Sea off Yeonpyeong Island, the state-run Yonhap news agency reported, citing a military official. Tensions between the two Koreas have been high since the North fired upon the island last month, killing two marines and two civilians.

"The planned firing drill is part of the usual exercises conducted by our troops based on Yeonpyeong Island. The drill can be justifiable, as it will occur within our territorial waters," the official said.

The military said Thursday that the exercises would take place in the seas southwest of the island between December 18 and 21, but adverse weather forced a delay Saturday.

North Korea has warned of serious consequences if the drill goes on as planned, but it won't deter the South Koreans, the official said. China and Russia have asked South Korea to reconsider.

"We won't take into consideration North Korean threats and diplomatic situations before holding the live-fire drill. If weather permits, it will be held as scheduled," the military official said.

In response to the South's decision, Russia called for the emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, set for Sunday morning. The meeting was slated to begin at 11 a.m. ET.

South Korea is definitely the aggrieved party here in this mess, and asking them to play nice isn't going to work unless they can show some sort of game face.  It's clear there's a real problem here, and North Korea isn't exactly the most stable of nations.  South Korea will go ahead, hence the meeting about what will be next.

If anyone is interested in keeping this mess from blowing up, it's China.  You'd figure they'd be taking the lead on this, but it looks like Russia and the US are the most active nations on the Korean front right now.  We'll see how it goes.

The Business Of The Roberts Court Is Business

No Supreme Court in history it seems has been as beholden to the business community as the Roberts Court.  The NY Times' Adam Liptak takes a look at the relationship between the court and the most influential filer of amicus briefs as of late:  the US Chamber of Commerce.  Indeed, more and more corporate law is ending up before SCOTUS, and that means more and more corporate legal teams are including veteran litigants who have gone before the court before and know how to play the game.  It's a game they are winning.

The chamber now files briefs in most major business cases. The side it supported in the last term won 13 of 16 cases. Six of those were decided with a majority vote of five justices, and five of those decisions favored the chamber’s side. One of the them was Citizens United, in which the chamber successfully urged the court to guarantee what it called “free corporate speech” by lifting restrictions on campaign spending.

The chamber’s success rate is but one indication of the Roberts court’s leanings on business issues. A new study, prepared for The New York Times by scholars at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, analyzed some 1,450 decisions since 1953. It showed that the percentage of business cases on the Supreme Court docket has grown in the Roberts years, as has the percentage of cases won by business interests.

The Roberts court, which has completed five terms, ruled for business interests 61 percent of the time, compared with 46 percent in the last five years of the court led by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died in 2005, and 42 percent by all courts since 1953.

Those differences are statistically significant, the study found. It was prepared by Lee Epstein, a political scientist at Northwestern’s law school; William M. Landes, an economist at the University of Chicago; and Judge Richard A. Posner, who serves on the federal appeals court in Chicago and teaches law at the University of Chicago.

The Roberts court’s engagement with business issues has risen along with the emergence of a breed of lawyers specializing in Supreme Court advocacy, many of them veterans of the United States solicitor general’s office, which represents the federal government in the court.

These specialists have been extraordinarily successful, both in persuading the court to hear business cases and to rule in favor of their clients. The Supreme Court’s business docket has stayed active in the current term, which began in October. In a single week this month, the court heard arguments in a case brought by the chamber challenging an Arizona law that imposes penalties on companies that hire illegal workers, and it agreed to hear two cases that could reshape class-action and environmental law.

This relationship, business law through the Supreme Court, has been the core of Roberts Court precedent.  Never before has the corporate community been given such a powerful voice in the judicial.  It's one of the main reasons I actually think the insurance mandate will pass constitutional muster:  the health insurance companies and the Chamber want it.  At the same time, we've already seen the price that the country s paying for decisions like Citizens United.

This court has repeatedly come down in favor of business over people, and it will continue to reshape America in that image for decades to come.

Overreaction Attraction Action

Here's what opponents of DADT repeal say will happen as a result of today's vote.  Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association predicts the end of America:

Character-driven officers and chaplains will eventually be forced out of the military en masse, potential recruits will stay away in droves, and re-enlistments will eventually drop like a rock.

The draft will return with a vengeance and out of necessity. What young man wants to voluntarily join an outfit that will force him to shower naked with males who have a sexual interest in him and just might molest him while he sleeps in his bunk?

This isn’t a game, and the military should never be used, as is now being done, for massive social re-engineering. The new Marine motto: “The Few, the Proud, the Sexually Twisted.” Good luck selling that to strong young males who would otherwise love to defend their country. What virile young man wants to serve in a military like that?

If the president and the Democrats wanted to purposely weaken and eventually destroy the United States of America, they could not have picked a more efficient strategy to make it happen.

Rarely can you point to a moment in time when a nation consigned itself to the scrap heap of history. Today, when the Senate normalized sexual perversion in the military, was that moment for the United States. If historians want a fixed marker pointing to the instant the United States sealed its own demise, they just found it.

Quite interesting.  Well, by that "logic" anyone who doesn't immediately signal their intent to quit the military must be a closet case lurking with the intent to destroy America with gay sex.  I wonder how long it will take before the Right Wing declares war on the Pentagon?  Will they defund the Defense Department to stop men showing either other their rifles?  Will the Republicans introduce legislation to stop women hiding in the bush?  Will our now eternally tainted military become Pubic Enemy #1.

How long before Republicans sing the praises of conscientious objectors who are bravely refusing to serve in war because of gay cooties?  Surely if the draft is inevitable, these manly patriots will join the military in order to save the civilian population, right?

I mean it's not like these guys are a bunch of chickenhawks who are trying to score lame political points by demonizing our LGBT loved ones, yes?

Perish the thought.

Bull Market, Bear Market, Carbon Market

Once again California leads the way with the first statewide carbon emissions cap-and-trade market.

The rules adopted by the Air Resources Board, the state's climate change regulator, limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and let power plants, factories and eventually refiners and others to trade permits to pollute in a program generally known as cap-and-trade.

California will become the second-largest carbon market in the world, following a European system. Point Carbon, a Thomson Reuters company, forecasts the market will grow from $1.7 billion in 2012 to nearby $10 billion in 2016, with prices rising from $10 a metric ton in 2012 to $18 per ton in 2016.

Environmentally, California's move could rank with U.S. efforts decades ago to clean up air and water, said Gary Gero, President of the Climate Action Reserve. "We will say this was when the United States started seriously building a program for climate change," he said.

Calls to force companies to buy permits at auctions have largely been rebuffed due to the weak economy. Most permits will be given away, especially in the first three-year period.

Factories and power producers will be able to bear some of the burden for cutting emissions with credits for projects that soak up carbon, known as offsets. There is already a market in such offsets, and prices have jumped in the last several weeks to about $8 a ton, traders said.

So as the carbon market generates billions in needed income and reduces emissions, how long will it take before the other 6/7ths of America follows suit?  This should go a long way towards getting both sides of the aisle in gear, and the EPA should take a long hard look at California's requirements here.

A Bank With "Principles"

Just so you know how scared of the WikiLeaks threat the financial sector is right now, Bank of America will no longer process donations for Julian Assange's group of agitators.

Bank of America Corp. has joined several other financial institutions in refusing to handle payments for WikiLeaks.

With its announcement, the Charlotte-based bank joins a fray that has ratcheted financial pressure on the website that released thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables, but has also prompted cyber attacks on businesses that cut ties with the activist site. The move comes as WikiLeaks says it's preparing a release of information on banks, which could include documents it says it has on Bank of America.

The Charlotte-based bank released a statement Saturday saying it will no longer process any transactions that it believes are intended for the site.

"This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments," the bank said.

Translation:  "We control the money, Julian.  And we're shutting you down.  Try getting help when we lock out your accounts and refuse to process your payments.  Leaking information takes money, and we're going to starve you to death."

This war is well and truly joined.  No matter how you feel about WikiLeaks, the fact that major world banks are uniting to wipe it off the planet should terrify any citizen with a bank account or credit card.

They see WikiLeaks as such as existential threat they are scrambling to cut it off all income and donations and starve it out.  That speaks volumes...the same banks that continue engaging in possibly trillions in mortgage fraud have declared war on WikiLeaks.

Be afraid.

[UPDATE] WikiLeaks is fighting back.

In classic form, WikiLeaks has sent out a message on Twitter related to Bank of America.

Does your business do business with Bank of America? Our advise is to place your funds somewhere safer.

Touche', gentlemen.

Half A Loaf Is Better Than None

Republicans killed the DREAM Act 45-55...

A procedural vote in the Senate for the DREAM Act has failed. 55 Senators voted for the measure, with 41 voting against, falling short of the necessary votes to overcome a filibuster.

...but for once a handful of them decided that with three-quarters of the coutry wanting it repealed, DADT will get a final up or down vote.

In a landmark vote for gay rights, the Senate on Saturday voted to advance legislation that would overturn the military ban on openly gay troops known as "don't ask, don't tell."


The 63-33 test vote all but guarantees the legislation will pass the Senate, possibly by day's end, and reach the president's desk before the new year.

The House had passed an identical version of the bill, 250-174, earlier this week.

Repeal would mean that, for the first time in American history, gays would be openly accepted by the military and could acknowledge their sexual orientation without fear of being kicked out.

We'll see.  This is a huge victory here, but not for everyone.  Republicans still showed they care more about demonizing Latinos than they do giving people a path to earn their citizenship by serving our country in the military.  And no, the DREAM Act was far from perfect.  It wouldn't have helped a lot of people get citizenship, only a small section would have been eligible for it:  High school graduates heading to college who were brought here as children, or graduates heading to the military for two years.  The number of possible candidates for that numbered in the thousands, not millions.  It wasn't "back-door amnesty".

But that was of course too much for the Republicans.  Even one immigrant who could have become a US citizen due to this and possibly been grateful to a Democratic administration was too much to countenance.

But the vote to allow DADT repeal to go forward is a good, good thing.  Straight ally, and all that...and just in the name of basic civil rights, this is something I'm glad to see happened.

One out of two isn't bad, but it's a harsh reminder that the largest blockade to getting things done in the last two years has been the filibuster.

Oh, and according to my calculations, the only Republican who voted yes on both DREAM and DADT repeal?

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.  Thanks, Joe Miller and Sarah Palin!  The final DADT repeal vote will be this afternoon, and it should pass easily.

Should.  Here's hoping.

[UPDATE]  The Senate indeed repealed DADT 65-31.  Several Republicans decided they didn't want to be on the "wrong side of history" here only at the last moment.

No Juice In The Moose

Three out of five Americans say "thanks but no thanks" to Sarah Palin as President.

The 2012 presidential election is still a long way away, and Sarah Palin hasn't even decided if she will make a run for the White House, but a second straight poll brings troubling results for the former Alaska governor if she does launch a bid.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll indicates that nearly six in ten Americans say they wouldn't even consider voting for Palin if she runs. Eight percent of the people questioned in the survey, which was released Friday, say they would definitely back Palin in 2012 if she runs and 31 percent say they would consider supporting her.

The 59 percent who flatly rule out Palin is 16 points higher than the 43 percent in the survey who say they wouldn't consider voting to re-elect President Barack Obama in 2012. It's also 17 points higher than the 42 percent of the public who said they wouldn't vote for then Sen. Hillary Clinton in the last presidential election.

The poll also indicates that 27 percent of people voted for the John McCain-Palin ticket in the 2008 election, as well as nearly three in ten Republicans and four in ten conservatives, and four in ten evangelical white Protestants say they wouldn't consider Palin for president.

And that's pretty much the kiss of death right there for a Palin 2012 campaign.  Thirty percent of Republicans and 40% of Conservatives/white evangelicals wouldn't even consider Palin in the White House?

Sorry folks, she's got no chance in 2012.  None.  This is a pretty solid measure of the people who would outright never vote for her.

I of course want her to run even more now and split and damage the Republicans in 2012.  I think her own narcissism will demand it.  The 25% or so of Republicans that are hard core Palin fans certainly will demand it.  And the more the "lamestream media" tries to warn her off, the more chance of her running.  She has to at this point, because if she doesn't, the most rabid Republicans will sit out in 2012 in protest.

Of course, there's a very good chance that those same Republicans will sit out in protest when she loses the nomination.

She's the gift that keeps on giving...to Barack Obama.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• The Senate has passed a three-day temporary continuing resolution to keep the government running until Tuesday.
• Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt is giving $50,000 to WikiLeaks.
• The Obama administration has finally released guidelines designed to take politics out of scientific research.
• Bad weather may delay South Korea's artillery drills this weekend as the US seeks talks between both Koreas.
• Google's Ngram Viewer shows people how and when words are used and how they evolve over the years.

Last Call

And here's President Obama's reward for working with the Republicans on that tax cut deal.

The $858 billion tax deal approved by Congress Thursday is "all candy and no spinach," but at least it shows that President Barack Obama and Republicans can cooperate on fiscal issues.

But their new detente will be tested early next year when the budget deficit looms larger on the political landscape.

Analysts are skeptical this week's pact can be leveraged into a broad deficit-cutting program, and fear the deficit issue could be kicked forward to the 2012 election.

The tax deal makes the deficit bigger — just the opposite of what bond markets want — and it threatens to move taxes off the bargaining table in next year's struggles over federal spending and raising the government debt ceiling.

At the same time, it was expected to give the economy a boost, and if that gets more Americans working, meaningful deficit reduction could be a little easier.

A presidential commission's aggressive plan to slash the $1.3 trillion deficit earlier this month won more bipartisan support than expected.

"It's very likely that parts of the commission's plan end up in the president's budget... Otherwise, he sends some very disturbing signals," said Maya MacGuineas, fiscal policy director at the New America Foundation think tank.

For the record, now Obama has to go along with massive spending cuts as outlined by the Catfood Commission, or he's not a serious President.  The ink isn't even dry on the tax cut deal.  And now he's already taking the blame for not cutting the deficit.

Not even a "thank you" from the rich.  Nope, it's right into "we expect to see the Catfood Commission's economic plans in the President's budget or else."  Not even 24 hours before we're back to HE MUST CUT SPENDING NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW.

Good work on that, big guy.

Unintended Consequences Of Complete Collapse

So the first casualty of the Dems folding on the omnibus spending bill?  Food safety legislation.

Earlier this month, Congress managed to pass the bill with strong bipartisan support—and over the objections of both tea partiers afraid the bill would send the government after their seeds and leftie foodie types who feared the bill would squash small farms and artisanal cheese makers. The bill was a decade in the making, despite record numbers of food borne illness outbreaks, from E. coli in spinach to salmonella in peanut butter that killed nine people. A day after the bill passed, however, news broke that language in the bill had been screwed up, rendering it unconstitutional.

Supporters had hoped that a repaired bill would still land on the president's desk this year if it could pass along with a big omnibus spending bill slated for a vote this week. But after Republicans defected in the face of pressure from tea party activists opposed to $8 billion in earmarks buried in the bill, Democrats were forced to withdraw the spending measure, taking the food safety bill along with it. Democrats also tried attaching the food safety bill to a continuing resolution that would have funded the federal government until September. But Republicans have also opposed that measure, leaving Democrats with a scaled-down resolution that would merely keep the government open until February, when the new Congress can deal with the rest of the issues.

So right now the landmark legislation to modernize the FDA for the first time in several decades is dead, because Republicans are a bunch of lying assholes who will stab anyone and everyone in the back in order to "win".

Remember that next time you read about the next time millions of pounds of meat or produce are recalled or a bacteria outbreak in our food supply is killing people.  Remember that the Republicans scrapped this because they aim to make sure government can never do anything good.

Funny how that works, huh.

Derailing That Train Of Thoughtlessness, Part 2

Add Florida's Rick Scott to the growing list of GOP Governors looking to kill thousands of rail jobs in a state suffering from high unemployment.

Florida's $2.6 billion high-speed project would be paid for almost entirely by the feds. Washington has agreed to send Florida all but $280 million of its cost. And some companies vying to run the trains indicate they'd cover the state's share. They're willing to do that because they believe running the Orlando-Tampa route would give them a leg up on operating a second high-speed rail line from Orlando to Miami — and other fast trains outside Florida.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he feared his state would have to pay for costly rail-project overruns. But meetings last month between Florida transportation officials and companies wanting to operate the trains reportedly revealed the companies' willingness to cover any construction overages.

Wisconsin Gov.-elect Scott Walker said his state would have had to pay too much to operate and maintain its rail line. But the company that runs high-speed trains in Florida would have to operate and maintain them for 30 years. The state, Florida DOT's Kevin Thibault told us, wouldn't have to pick up the cost.

Florida would need 23,000 people to build the rail line, and to find as many as 1,000 workers to operate it. The train would stimulate businesses along the line and help turn Orlando and Tampa into a single market that attracts entrepreneurs eager to reap the benefits of the nation's most advanced transit system.

And it would offer commuters and tourists an alternative to an increasingly gridlocked I-4. It also would prove cheaper than the alternative: Building another lane of Interstate 4 — just from Tampa to Lakeland — would cost $3 billion.

Why would Rick Scott oppose such a system? Because President Obama's stimulus program, which he savages, underwrites so much of it? Because it has become a badge of honor among conservative governors to reject federally funded rail projects? Because, even though it would better connect Floridians and deliver all those jobs, Mr. Scott thinks opposition would somehow help him among his conservative constituency?

Because it's all about making sure that a Democrat in the White House can never get credit for doing anything good.  After all, if this was a Bush initiative, battleground state Republican governors in places like Ohio and Florida would be lining up for "job creating business expanding technology of the future".  Instead it's turn the projects down and blame Obama for not creating jobs.