I ride the DC metro everyday. Yesterday's accident was incredibly disturbing and my heart goes out to all of those who were affected. I wanted to make a few notes:
1) The news reports that these cars are automated through a computer system. Whether or not such a system exists, I can tell you that operators have the ability to override the governor and probably 70-80% of them do on a daily basis. If you've been on the metro, you've probably heard the operator describe the next movement of the train before he/she moves it forward, etc. This is going to come out and I assume it will be at the heart of the crash.
2) The DC metro is a government run business. Many will point to the long history of safety, but will ignore the fact that it should be impossible to crash two metro cars on the same line that are supposed to be going no faster than 40 mph.
Links
Stratfor has a tremendous analysis of the Iranian uprising, discussing how the Western Press has got it wrong. I will restate my own personal belief that the reformist movement is building in Iran, but the above linked article does a great job of explaining why this cannot be considered a revolution and is almost sure to fail (unfortunately).
I noted in an earlier post that under Maryland case law, it is practically impossible to find a legislator guilty of accepting a bribe in a quid pro quo context as a judge will not accept their votes as evidence. However, as also noted therein, you can surely bring a case against the one offering the bribe. City Developer Ronald Lipscomb pled guilty to "violating campaign finance laws" and agreed to cooperate with state prosecutors in their case against Mayor Dixon. The bribery charges against Mr. Lipscomb were dropped. State Prosecutor Rohrbaugh is taking a huge risk here. He is discarding "bird in hand is better than two in the bush" for the maxim "I want Big Bird."
Another Doctor joins the ranks of the medical community that think government run health care is a bad idea. Good thing Obama isn't listening to any critics on this one or he'd be in a real bad mood.
A lot has been made of Obama's popularity ratings recently, but it's all fluff. Obama's popularity has staying pretty constant at around 60% since coming to office. Also, we shouldn't be happy that a President is not popular. Two things normally happen: 1) Drastic discordant policy changes that hurt regular Americans; 2) Opposing party takes pot shots.
It would be even more interesting to see popularity if the press would start acting like they have any regard for truth. In this interview, the interviewer was corrected by Obama for characterizing someone's statements as 'treacherous' because they could have been interpreted to be critical of Obama. No matter how much people like Obama, that's just plain dangersous.
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