Saturday, March 7th, 2009...10:24 am
Truth Is Out of Style
I’m sure you’ve all heard it: the Democrats want to build one of them magnetic levitation trains from Hollyweird up to a Las Vegas brothel. Specifics change: could be a brothel, could be a casino. It might be Hollywood, it might be Disneyland. But it has those elements that you need to rile up your typical talk radio listener: a mention of Los Angeles, the titilating possibility that someone may be having illicit sex and some sort of fancy science or technology you’ve never heard of. Never mind, of course, that there are no brothels in Las Vegas, and never mind that the pie in the sky science of Maglev is in use in several places in the world already.
These changing and overly alarming details should give folks a clue about the one basic truth of this claim: it’s complete claptrap.
Oh yes, there are trains in the bill, but not the one they are talking about.
Here’s one congresswoman, Mary Bono Mack, getting called out repeating this dubious assertion:
Met with Republican Rep. Mary Bono Mack from Riverside County’s Coachella Valley. While a social moderate, Sonny Bono’s widow is a solid conservative. Talked to her about Obama’s $780 billion stimulus legislation. She’s outraged that the plan has “$1 billion wasted on a magnetic-levitation train from L.A. to Sin City” – all at Nevada Sen. Harry Reid’s doing.
After expressing my doubt that the Las Vegas line was actually in the bill’s language, Bono Mack directs her staff to “get him the bill, it’s right there, show him.” A few minutes later, a staffer emerges with a copy and quietly says “it’s not in the bill.”
Funny how even though she obviously had never seen this provision in the bill, she knew exactly how much money was being spent on it and who slipped it in the bill.
It would be naïve to think that every congressman would personally read and be familiar with every paragraph and subsection of a budget bill, but I think it is fair to expect that if you assert something is in there, you’ve seen it first.
And don’t think that our homegrown congressmen are immune to this “Red Light Express” fervor. Our own Trent Franks stepped in it in a recent interview on Fox News (from the Nevada Appeal):
A U.S. congressman acknowledges he was wrong when he told Fox News that Sen. Harry Reid wanted to build a railroad from Disneyland to a brothel in Mound House, the congressman’s spokeswoman said.
Interestingly, not only did Franks repeat this silly story about the train, but added in an extra detail that not only was Reid committed to the project, but that the prostitutes were supporting it as well (check it out). It is obvious that this was a made up embelishment added for shock value. This is also called a lie.
Franks’s office hasn’t said whether he will appologize.
4 Comments
March 7th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
I think that we should tell Kyl that we want a magLev train to the Bunny ranch too!!!
March 8th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Thanks. Now that’s three for three of his specific examples of spending excesses in the where Bobby Jindahl has struck out.
His first was when he complained about the goverment spending $300 million to buy cars, without bothering to disclose critical details like how many cars the government racks up how many miles on every year, or how many years that was spread over.
His third was when he complained about spending money on “something called volcano monitoring,” apparently he’s never spent much time in the Pacific Northwest, where for example an explosion of Mount Hood (which will happen someday) could incinerate or bury up to a million people. Wonder if as Governor of Louisiana he considers spending on the National Hurricane Center as a waste of money.
So now you’ve nailed it on the second of the three. All made up.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:03 am
Lets get to the important question: can anyone name a single thing that Trent Franks has accomplished as a member of Congress?
March 9th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
And, you know, given the air and auto travel that goes on between the two, a frakkin’ maglev train between Vegas and LA would actually make sense economically.
Look, it’s porn and gambling that finally put the internet into everyone’s hands…maybe it’s hookers and gambling that can get the US into the 21st century of rail travel so we can join the rest of the civilized world.