With the State of the Union Address and President Obama’s chat with the Republicans there is an ocean of … well, call it stuff to sort through. In the mix is the idea of building a high speed rail system to both create jobs and strengthen the country’s infrastructure. The pundits who have been feasting on Obama’s pronouncements have largely come up short on this subject. In my view, high speed rail is (1) a wondrous thing, (b) expensive, © best suited to densely populated countries, and (d) perhaps impossible to implement here. If it can be done at all, jobs would probably be a decade away.