I. Cannot. Believe. This. Shit.

From the Houston Chronicle (via Intermodality):

Houston Metro is due to receive as much as $180 million over the next 12 months from a huge economic stimulus bill to help jump-start construction of two light rail lines, a House committee chairman said Wednesday.

The long-delayed rail lines on the city's north and southeast sides are a "very high-rated project," said Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., who heads the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The project, he said, is ready to go and has cleared all but one step of a federal review.

Kit Bond (R-Missouri), who has previously discouraged Congressional attempts to address climate change on the grounds that doing so would be bad for business, will propose an amendment that would redirect the $5.5 billion of competitive grants (which are currently available to both highways and transit, at the discretion of Ray LaHood) so that those funds would apply only to highways and bridges; Barbara Boxer plans to endorse this amendment. Kit Bond may also propose another amendment that would redirect $2 billion high-speed rail allocation to -- you guessed it -- highways.

By redirecting the $5.5 billion to the highway program, it becomes nearly impossible to secure funding for new transit projects (New Starts program) or modernizing old rail systems.

Didn't Democrats win this election? Why are Republicans being allowed to dictate the terms of infrastructure development in this stimulus? And this has nothing to do with any conservative fiscal opposition to stimulus - he isn't proposing the funds be stripped.  He's just redirecting it from mass transit and rail to highways. 

Bipartisanship does not mean letting the minority party walk all over your face.  It means that you allow them to participate in the process. The voters have rejected Republicans, their ideas, and their philosophy, but Democrats are still so fucking whipped that they are letting them run roughshod over legislation.

Hello? Obama? I was believing in change here? If this amendment passes, I won't have to go to the bathroom anymore, because I will permanently lose my shit.