THIS PLAN WILL NEVER SURVIVE THE INEVITABLE WINGNUT FREAKOUT

Saw this story at Drudge this morning and immediately thought, "Don't even bother trying":

U.S. and Mexican officials held a high level meeting on Thursday to discuss a plan to build the first-ever high speed passenger railroad line connecting both countries by 2018.

The proposed high-speed train would take passengers from San Antonio, Texas, to Monterrey, Mexico through the U.S. border city of Laredo in less than two hours....

U.S. Congressman Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, and Texas Department of Transportation Commissioner Jeff Austin, as well as Mexican officials, presented the plan to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx on Thursday in Washington D.C..

"Secretary Foxx and his team are interested," Cuellar said. "A high-speed rail between San Antonio and Monterrey through Laredo would revolutionize trade and travel between the United States and Mexico."

... while Mexico is primed and ready to build, the U.S. is still in a study phase of the project....

Forget it. High-speed rail? Across the U.S.-Mexico border? Backed by a Latino Democrat? Piquing the interest of the Obama Transportation Department? Hard to imagine a project like that could survive once right-wingers across Texas and the rest of Fox/Alex Jones America get wind of it, even if a Rick Perry-appointed state transportation commissioner is on board, and even if (as the story notes) the project would be funded privately on this side of the border.

Remember the Trans-Texas Corridor? It was a series of so-called supercorridors meant "to carry parallel links of tollways, rails, and utility lines... to include separate lanes for passenger and truck traffic, freight and high-speed commuter railways, and infrastructure for utilities, including water, oil, and gas pipelines; electricity; along with broadband and other telecommunications services" High-speed rail was part of the plan. Proposed in 2001, the Corridor began to be scaled back in 2009 and was eventually canceled altogether in 2011 -- in part, I'm sure, because folks like Alex Jones said that it was part of a so-called NAFTA Superhighway that was going to destroy America's sovereignty. As Chris Hayes pointed out in a Nation article back in 2007, the NAFTA Superhighway was a myth. But crazy rumors have real-world consequences in America. I can't believe there won't be any surrounding a high-speed rail project across the U.S.-Mexico border. So really, folks, it's probably not worth the effort.