All aboard! Reid scores for Nevada

  The high-pitched Republican whining has begun now that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s fingerprints are being lifted from an $8 billion component of the $787 billion federal stimulus package to be used for unspecified high-speed and intercity passenger rail projects. It’s about three times what was included in earlier drafts of the 1,000-page bill, and it is clearly connected to the Anaheim-to-Las Vegas high-speed rail project that has to date been a mere dream for the valley’s casino and tourism industrial complex.

  This isn’t just pork, people. This isn’t merely bringing home the bacon.

  This is lassoing the whole damn pig farm.

  Republicans and their print and Web supplicants are squealing like stuck oinkers. Reid, the second most powerful Democrat in Washington but considered vulnerable by Washington insiders, has engendered in the opposition the kind of blind rage usually seen only in hydrophobic farm animals and professional wrestlers. Now they’re just flat out weeping into their “Rush Limbaugh Rules” crying towels.

  “Oh, the waste,” they mewl.

  “Oh, the deception,” they groan.

  “Oh, the p-p-p-p-p-p-p-politics,” they stammer.

  Yeah, guess what, Petunia?

  Pass the pork to Nevada, Harry. It’s not only the other white meat. In a recession, with gas prices scaring tourists into staying home by the tens of thousands, the creation of a high-speed rail linking Las Vegas to its biggest feeder market is a great idea. And it can only happen through the use of major clout in Washington.

  This high-speed pork is 100 percent kosher in my book.