The problem with "High speed rail" (and this coming from a BIG proponant of rail - funny story at end) is that MOST of the country does NOT have the population density to support it. Pick a country in the world thta HAS High speed rail

Japan has approx 340 people per square KM of land area
France has approx 112 people per sq KM of land area (Metropolitan France)
The US? Approx 33 people per sq KM of land area

Basically, once you get outside the East/West coast "megalopolises" of the East/West coast, there just isn't enough population density within a distance to support High speed rail (Remember "BoWash" - or the NE Corridor as it's usually called by demographers in the USA has 55 Million people in it, and California is 36 Million - 91 Million out of 300 - almost a 1/3)

Read about "the depopulation of the Mid West" and the like, they don't have the population to support many towns anymore (towns are folding regularly).

A LOT of this has lead to the old political/demograpic insult of "Fly Over country" - Thing is, it's a HUGELY important part of the country (Folks, your food comes from there, and a LOT of your natural resources). Part (a large part) of what is driving the depopulation of the planes is pure agricultural effeciency - if you increase crop yields by say 20% (which has happened over say the last 100 years - and probably greater than that), if you don't grow the population by 20%, you need less acres under cultivation - you need less farmers. On top of "Yield/Acre", with the huge increase in mechinization and the like, the mean farm size has gotten huge - to quote a farmer I know via a friend, "If you don't have 300 acres, your a hobbiest". Farms used to be 20-100 acres. Now they are 1000 acres, and are run by just a couple more people than that old 20 acre farm. What happened to those people who ran the other 50 farms? Simple - they moved away, to the suburbs of the cities (which also helped the small farms in the suburbs die)

It's really simple demographics...

And is you look, places with density have "commuter rail" and High speed corridor rail already

The Funny Story:
One of my wife's relatives was a high end consultant to one of the major railroads (won't say which one) - Back circa Mid 80s, he was saying "The railroads are dead" (we were talking freight) - I had pointed out 2-3 law changes and I said "You have not factored this in, business is going to BOOM - do NOT pull the ROW along X (they were single tracking some stuff)" - 10 or so years later, he told me "Boy were you right" (The railroad as busy double tracking where I told them they should never have removed the track)

As I said - there are laws that if changed could make it a bit better, but when you thing "High speed rail" in the USA, just remember all those "empty' (of passengers) miles you have to build across and maintain

Our only prior cruise was in '05, hopefully this one will go as well as that one did. This one will be 19 days, hope we don't get sick and tired of water after the first week or so...

This is just getting silly... Just increase the ticket price $15 already then instead of playing this game. I, for one, don't want to wind up searching for a place to put my carry on.

How about the times when the airline forces you to check a bag because there isn't enough room? Should you have to pay for that?

Mike brings up a good point. You have paid for your ticket and now they say you cannot take all of that on board and must check at least one bag. Your price will be re-adjusted after your trip?

Just another reason I never fly on my own nickel. If my employers want to send me somewhere I'll gladly check all my bags and not care a bit about the extra $15 or $30. If I'm paying, I'll take my truck. . . Hint taken. . .

I never use the PAN and cable bits (no iPod) and all that. I put the whole thing through xray, no loss of speed through the gates.

Americans consume 25 percent of the world's petroleum but possess only two percent of the world's supply. If you started - today - to try to find oil in the AWNR it will take several years to get it online.
A USGS study estimated that only 3.2 billion to 6.3 billion barrels would be ''economically recoverable'' from the refuge over the 50-year life of the oil field (USGS Fact Sheet 1998).
At current consumption levels, 3.2 to 6.3 billion barrels represents is a six- to eight-month national supply. Proponents of drilling claim that the ANWR recoverable amount is in the 10 to 16 billion barrels range, which means that we're looking at a supply of less than 2 years (actually it would last longer than that, because you simply can't physically pump that fast).

Quite honestly, if you're looking for an economic argument for ANWR, it's just not there. On the other had, Texas and Arizona are shaping up to be MAJOR sources of Wind and Solar power, so the money probobly will be better spent (and invested!) there for better economic returns. There's already been some serious investment in this area, there will be more.

Hint taken.

I don't really think this is the place to debate our energy policy.... (strong hint mode)

I always get a kick out of this one. Flying out of Denver, I dismiss the East Coast as "flyover country" on my way to Europe - gets me some chuckles and the occasional hard look...