Austin, TX - Governor Rick Perry today held a press conference to announce a bold new plan he was made privy to by President Obama last month--to link Austin, Texas to South America via high-speed rail.
Said the governor, "It's not that much of a stretch really, if you think about it. We already have the Pan-American Highway. Plus, he said, we are on great speaking terms with Mexico, unlike Arizona, so there will be no problem getting Mexico to help pay for some of the building of the high-speed rail system."
Perry claimed that the train would begin in Austin and follow a line down through Texas into Mexico, across the Central American Countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, and cross over into South America at Medellin in Colombia.
About five minutes into the press conference, Governor Perry was pulled aside to confer with his aides. He came back to the microphone and appeared quite embarrassed. "Uh, I'm sorry folks. I guess I had this all wrong. I misunderstood Mr. Obama when he indicated to me that he was willing to put up some of the $8 billion in stimulus funding to develop high-speed rail service in the corridor between Austin and S.A. Evidently, he meant San Antonio, not South America, and I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. I was wondering actually how that train was gonna be built for so little money."
Perry was asked by one reporter how he knew so much about what countries the Pan-American Highway ran through but didn't even know that S.A. meant San Antonio. Perry concluded, "As soon as I heard the news, I hit the books--the old ones that still show Mexico on the Texas border, not the new ones that show Texas ending at the Gulf of Mexico."
