The Amtrak accident which occurred Tuesday, May 12th in Philadelphia was preventable via the Positive Train Control system (TPC), if Congressional Republicans had not continuously and relentlessly ideologically and politically undermined the funding of our national railway system, which includes funding its high-tech accident prevention system.

In yesterday’s coverage by NBC’s anchor broadcast journalist, Lester Hold, Kelly O’Donnell reported on the political ramifications of the Republicans steadfast determination to slash funds for Amtrak.

This tragedy further underscores that there is a monumental gap and contradiction in the right-wing extremist ideologically driven political agenda of Republicans who on the one hand are determined to ignore and even undermine the fundamental needs of America as regards to the development and maintenance of its public transportation infrastructure and thereby provide extremist hurdles in the appropriation for any funding of improvements which are badly needed, and yet on the other hand, do not miss an opportunity to mislead us into trillion-dollar invasion wars on Iraq and Afghanistan’s based on fabricated claims which even after being exposed as disastrous, are not deterred from  further agitating  for more wars, such as a potential one on Iran, by sabotaging the White House’s diplomacy attempts to avoid one.

To add insult to injury, the prospective Republican candidates for the 2016 seem to all live in what Gore Vidal characterized as “the United States of Amnesia”, but that would be a benign designation were it not for the fact that their ignorance of history is part of a strategy which clearly reflect their deference to money and power in detriment to the best interests of all Americans, liberal as well as genuinely and sincerely conservative, as opposed to the Neocons and their pseudo-liberal Neoliberal politicians who do not represent  what “we the people” expect and demand, which is a an authentic, representative, populist, democracy which focuses on inequality, health, education, infrastructure, and most importantly and end to all militarized power projection abroad, which in collusion with the military industrial complex, has resulted in monstrous so-called “defense” budget which is higher than that of the all of the nations of the word combined.

The specter of a Jeb Bush declaring that George W. Bush will be his Israel advisor and, in response to an interviewer’s question as to whether, knowing what we now know, (and BTW, we even knew then and documentably on the basis of NIE reports Bush and co-conspirators ignored), if he still would invade Iraq, stating   “Yes”,  would seem at first blush so hilarious that it would fit a Saturday Night Live script, were it not something which reflects the intellectual and ethical bankruptcy of most if not all of the contenders for the 2016 election.   This includes the specter of a Hillary Clinton presidency, a candidate which during a debate with Obama said ” have you no shame, Mr. Obama” in response to his declared intention to engage diplomatically with Iran on the nuclear issue and other issues.

The synergy of the emergence of a populist progressive liberal renovated Democratic party, with Harvard law professor, Senator Elizabeth Warren, as the 2016 candidate has the potential to once for all bring this nation back to becoming all it can be in the best humanistically imaginable way.