Now that Nickels has joined the anti-monorail crowd he’s stumbling into the same anti-logic loop that has long defined the rhetoric of the obstructionists.

At his Friday press conference, when he denounced the monorail, he said: “Cost cuts have significantly compromised the system. It’s no longer the Green Line promised to voters.”

However, today, Nickels trashed the SMP board for refusing to propose a shorter line. He said: ” I wanted the Seattle Monorail Project to face up to the fundamental problem that has plagued the agency for more than two years. There is simply not enough money to build the [Green Line.]”

So, let me get this straight: Voters should be pissed because the SMP scaled back the project to cut costs, but voters should also be pissed because the board refuses to scale back the project to cut costs. ???

Nickels sounds exactly like a typical naysayer hack (or more accurately, like longtime anti-monorail mouthpiece Henry Aronson), issuing “Damned if they do, damned if they Don’t” Catch-22 statements that are nothing more than contradictory excuses to kill the project.