To Zack and Alana

Maybe it was the weather.  It was rainy and cold in Manhattan,  I almost didn’t go.  Like many people in the NY-NJ area, I’m tired of the chill.   It’s been a very cold spring so far.  The last thing I wanted to do was pile on layers and go to a protest.  From Central NJ, there is no straight route.  As the crow flies, it is really no great distance.  About 36 miles straight east from my house.  But practically, I might as well be living in central PA.  I have to take multiple trains and once I get to Manhattan, there is always at least *one* line that’s undergoing maintenance.  In other words, it’s a pain in the ass.

But go I did.  I was late.  (See trains above)  I hoped I wasn’t too late for the speeches, the burning efigies, the crowds “marching and shouting slogans”, as they say in NPR speak. I hurried to Union Square from the subway station looking for the throng.  Alas, I didn’t find a throng.  I found a little crowd.  Well, crowd wasn’t exactly the word.  Group is more like it.  A small group.  My heart sank.  Here was one of the most important issues of the day, the debate over whether the banks should be nationalized, and it was going largely unprotested.

Then, a girl came up to me and handed me a small white flyer.  She asked me what I thought of the bank situation.  She was energetic and assertive but not pushy.  She knew her facts about the banks and even though she confessed to having voted for Obama, she was no Kool-ade drinker.  I liked her immediately.  In a few minutes, she was joined by her cousin Zack.  He too was articulate and passionate and knew by observation that Obama won the presidency by having the slickest, best paid PR firm around.

I asked them where their group was.  Apparently, they were it.  A group of two.  They didn’t really know the other protestors hanging around the subway exit.  I thought we might adopt them, Conflucians.  Our unParty could use two people like them who would make themselves cold and uncomfortable on a day like today and face complete strangers with courage and conviction.

Zack and Alana

Saturday Open Thread: What’s Happening?

Captain Richard Phillips

I’m not usually the bloodthirsty type, but I’ve been feeling pretty angry lately about the Somali pirates who have been holding an American ship captain hostage. Yesterday, when I heard he had tried to escape and then been recaptured, my head just about exploded.

The captain of the Maersk Alabama, Richard Phillips, tried to escape from the lifeboat he’s sharing with four pirates in the Indian Ocean and was quickly recaptured, a pirate said yesterday. Two U.S. warships in the waters off East Africa are monitoring the pirates.

“Negotiations are under way to free the American captain and the discussions are continuing,” a man calling himself Da’ud, who identified himself as one of the pirates, said yesterday in a telephone interview from the area of Eyl, Somalia. “The captain is unharmed and at this stage we aren’t going to hurt anyone.”

WTF?! Where is “President” Obama? Why doesn’t he want to answer questions about this situation? Yesterday, reporters asked him about it, and Obama gave a typically snotty response: “Guys, we’re talking about housing right now.”

You know, I would like an explanation. I understand there are U.S. Navy ships near the scene of these events. Why don’t they have sharp shooters to pick off the pirates in the lifeboat? Or Navy Seal types swimming under water to aid Phillips’s escape? How must Phillips feel knowing that even if he courageously tries to escape again, no one will come to help? Isn’t that what happened in Somalia during the “Black Hawk Down” incident–no one came to the rescue? Exactly how are we going to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan if our military can’t deal with some pirates? Is it too bloodthirsty for me to want to bomb the hell out of Mogadishu after this pirate incident is resolved? I don’t get it. And I’m willing to be educated. I heard on a radio last night that the fear is the pirates could kill Phillips if any attempt is made to rescue him through firepower. That’s probably true, but why can’t I hear an explanation from the U.S. President?

In line with the pirate standoff, how come Dear Leader isn’t doing anything about North Korea? They shoot off a rocket and what does the O-man have to offer in response? “Just words,” as far as I can tell. I found this hilarious commentary by a British Conservative in the comments from last night’s cocktail post. He refers to Obama as “President Pantywaist.”

Then came the dramatic bit, the authentic West Wing script, with the President wakened in the middle of the night in Prague to be told that Kim Jong-il had just launched a Taepodong-2 missile. America had Aegis destroyers tracking the missile and could have shot it down. But Uncle Sam had a sterner reprisal in store for l’il ole Kim (as Dame Edna might call him): a multi-megaton strike of Obama hot air.

“Rules must be binding,” declared Obama, referring to the fact that Kim had just breached UN Resolutions 1695 and 1718. “Violations must be punished.” (Sounds ominous.) “Words must mean something.” (Why, Barack? They never did before, for you – as a cursory glance at your many speeches will show.)

Is it wrong that I somewhat agree with this guy?

In other news, there are rallies around the country this afternoon, organized by A New Way Forward. William Greider and other former koolaid sippers are all thrilled about these actions. I still love Greider, but I’d feel a whole lot better about his judgment if he hadn’t fallen for Obama’s lies the first time.

Apparently the leaders of ANWF are Joe Trippi and Mike Lux, who as far as I know are still on the koolaid. Am I wrong to be a little bit suspicious? Another Conflucian suggested to me that this could be an “Obot army” effort to take the focus off the Obama administration’s complicity in the financial crisis and put it all on the bankers. Is that too tinfoil hat? After reading this article last week, I really don’t think so. Obama and his Axelrodian puppetmasters are some very manipulative M-Fers. Paging Cinie! If anyone could scope this out, she could!

So what are you reading/hearing/watching today? Please share your links. Our commenters are the best researchers evah!!

Conflucian Cocktail Party: Pre-Protest Happy Hour!

I’m schlepping my butt up to Manhattan tomorrow for the big protest in Union Square Park.  The protest is being organized by A New Way Forward and you can find local protests all over the country.  I have my trusty Metrocard all ready. I only wish I had a nifty PUMA T-shirt.  I should have swiped one from Murphy when we were in Denver.

The purpose of the protest is to bring attention to the fact that a bank that is too big to fail is too big to exist.  I just hope we don’t focus so much of our ire on the bankers that we let Congress and the Obama administration off the hook.  Bankers can’t help it if they’re greedy bastards.  It’s they’re nature.  But if banks are too big it’s because our elected officials won’t step up to the plate and make them smaller.  All our Reps need to do is decide they are on the side of their constituents, the taxpayers, who have lost their life savings and retirements.  That should be a fairly easy decision to make.  The problem is they aren’t afraid of us yet.  But they shouldn’t get comfortable because 2010 is just around the corner and we can organize to primary the ones who do not think they have to be accountable to us.

As to the polls, I don’t believe them.  Nope.  Everyday, I overhear people all around me who are steaming mad about what is happening in the financial sector.  In fact, it’s practically the only thing I overhear anymore.  And attention is starting to turn towards Obama himself.  Now, it could be that I just hang around a lot of geeks who are in danger of losing their jobs because big money investors just can’t get enough of mergers to boost their stocks.  But I suspect there is just as much dissatisfaction with the fact that Obama rode to the White House on a horse called Change!™ and so far, there is precious little change type activity going on.  So, my intention when I go to Manhattan tomorrow is to hang out with the people holding Congress and Obama accountable for the mess we’re in.  Care to join me?

In the meantime, let’s have a cocktail.

Welcome to the Conflucian Cocktail Party!  This is the time of the week when we mingle, mingle, mingle.  You will find the bar to the left of the door.  Our bartender with flair, Rico, is back for a permanent engagement.  He’s lucky.  A bartender’s job is recession proof.  Someone is always in need of a drink.  His special of the day is a Manhattan.  Simple, classic, I couldn’t have made a better choice myself.  We are also offering Causmos today at $10.  Today’s Causmo is dedicated to paying off Hillary’s debt.  I know, I know, I thought Obama was going to take care of it but, hey, that would me her term of indentured servitude would be over and where would be the fun of that?  Let’s put this baby to bed.  Purchase your Causmo here. Of course, you can order anything you like.

Tonight’s entertainment is one of the BFF’s favorites.  Sing along with Dizzy Gillespie to Salt Peanuts:

Ladies and gents, our saloon is real genteel like.  You can keep your grudges to yourself or hand them off to Florence, our lovely checkroom attendant.  The waiters will be circulating shortly with some samosas, soup dumplings and knish’s.  Please drink responsibly and tip your wait staff generously.

Friday: Cassandras and Luddites

Cassandra harshes the Trojan's mellow

PUMAs are the latest incarnation of Cassandra.  We have been since May 31, 2008 when the way in which the Democratic party achieved “unity” was to not count more than half of their own party members who did not vote for their pre-chosen candidate.  It was done in such a blatantly obvious way that there was no other way to interpret it other than that a giant fraud had been perpetrated on the primary voters.  Only in America in 2008 was it possible for a voter in Idaho to completely invalidate the voter in NJ.

We said nothing good ever grows from a bad seed.  It hasn’t even been 100 days since  Obama took office that he has proven himself to be the most inexperienced, Republican asskissing, shmoozer who ever found something uniquely charming about the unitary executive theory.  And now he is taking the economy to the brink of disaster and gently pushing it over with the help of the well-heeled shoes of Tim Geithner and Larry Summers because, heaven forbid we impose any limits on the finance industry or cause their shareholders to lose sleep over their investments.

Indeed, it is possible that their actions are making matters worse.  I just have to say here that it’s one thing if you have never seen anything like the situation you face before.  You can perhaps be forgiven for initially trying stupid things and making iterative corrections.  That’s the nature of scientific inquiry and it’s perfectly acceptable to make mistakes in a lab as long as you wear your goggles against blinding shards of glass that result when your experiment blows up.  It’s quite another thing to have witnessed other people make similar mistakes and then decide that repeating their actions makes sense.  “Oooo, Robert Mugabe brought Zimbawbwe to its knees with rampant corruption and idiotic policies in just a decade.  Cool!  Let ME try it!  How does this oligarchy thingy work?”

Simon Johnson at Baseline Scenario tells us how propping up insolvent banks is making failure more likely and avoiding the glass spewing explosion more difficult:

The latest credit default spreads data for the largest banks show a speculative run underway.  As the system stabilizes, it becomes more plausible that a single big bank will fail or be rescued in a way that involves large losses for creditors.  This would like trigger further speculative attacks on other banks, much as the shorting of countries’ obligations spread from Thailand to Indonesia/Malaysia and then to Korea in fall 1997.

The government’s own policies are facilitating these attacks, because as the Fed and Treasury make progress towards easing credit conditions, this makes it easier and cheaper for large hedge funds and others to take large short positions.  And keep in mind the underlying loss of confidence is self-fulfilling: as you lose confidence, you want to go short, and selling the credit causes further loss of confidence – and banks are forced out of business.

The government’s entirely reasonable and long overdue request for a resolution authority will set up runs on that authority.  If the authority is not granted, the runs will be on the government’s low and failing ability to save banks – given that the trust of Congress has been lost and no more cash for bailouts is likely forthcoming (presumably until there are large further shock waves or until Goldman Sachs itself is on the line.)

The continuing pressure on banks has nothing to do with populism and everything to do with the internal contradictions of the house of cards they built.  Now they will scramble to limit short selling or find other emergency measures that will protect their credit.  Such partial fixes would do nothing to stop the underlying deterioration of their credit; think about how countries facing currency attacks throw up futile defenses, try to change the rules, and squander their reserves on the way down.

Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it?  Not really surprising though when you think about who helped Obama get elected in the first place.  But if you object, if you predict catastrophe based on research and try to persuade people to avoid it, you are a Luddite, or merely a woman, like Brooksley Born, whose opinions are intrinsically less worthy than a man’s.   I swear there is a book to be written about women who were dismissed or ignored by the likes of Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan.  Sexism may have cost this country a decade or more in growth and millions of people their retirements.   Think about all the women who tried to prevent catastrophe in the past but were roundly ignored: “Ummm, I wouldn’t let that big wooden horse in the gates if I were you.”  “There’s a suspicious character hanging around a flight school in Minnesota.”  “If I were president, I might get out in front of the mortgage foreclosures so that the money keeps flowing to the banks.”  (God, what a loss)  “Unregulated derivatives and ‘swaps’ are a really bad idea that will allow out of control gambling with our nation’s finances.”

Ahhhh, what does *she* know?  But I digress.

The problem remains that the people who have the power to fix the problem are the ones who do not listen to the ones who see the future.  They stand in the way and guard the establishment’s old machinery that exists because they profit from it.

They have a lot of nerve calling us Luddites.

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Podcast of the Day: Wisconsin Public Radio has a new podcast called To The Best of Our Knowledge.  Very progressive.  The latest episode is on Depression Stories.  It’s not as grim as you think.  The first segment is a conversation with a Quaker author Parker Palmer, who has a unique take on depression.  He says it’s nature’s way of telling you that you’ve hit bottom and there’s nowhere to go but up.  The other segments feature, Depression stories, thrift and a brief biography Frances Perkins, who along with Harold Ickes Sr. was one of the visionaries of The New Deal.  They finish up with a Woodie Guthrie song called Madonna on the Curb.  Highly recommended.  You won’t feel alone in this Depression.

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Thursday: Elizabeth Warren Reports

Knowledge is power.  Pass it around.

Other videos in this series can be found at oversightpanel

I picked up on a few things that Warren is too polite to say.  First, Geithner’s plan doesn’t get her full support.  Now, Warren is not a politician, so she doesn’t know how to speak out of both sides of her mouth with ease.  To me, it looks like conflict all over her face and body.  She’s trying really hard not to say what she really thinks.  Second, there are elements on her panel who do not even want to discuss alternatives to the Geithner plan.  Now, *that’s* weird.  The plan doesn’t get Warren’s full support and there are plenty of unanswered questions but you’re not allowed to discuss alternatives?  OK, this suggests that the terms of the plan as written are so favorable to some parties that anything else would be very detrimental to their outcome.

John Sununu wrote an objection to the current Warren Report in which he complains that the panel is overstepping its boundaries and criticizes it for trying to make predictions as to the success or failure of the plan.

In reviewing the drafting of the April Oversight Report, however, it became clear that
much of the content pursued topics which strayed far from the Panel’s core mission.  Moreover,
the April Report engages in a premature discussion of dramatic changes in Treasury’s chosen
approach to supporting stabilization in the US financial markets.  These and other concerns are
more fully discussed in the joint additional views which I have submitted with Richard
Neiman.373
Given the magnitude of these differences, I am unable to support the full April
Oversight Report.

Oh, I don’t know, John.  With graphs like this:

World Stock Market Performance, now vs The Great Depression

And this:

World Industrial Output, now vs The Great Depression

it looks like it might be good to get out ahead of the curve, so to speak, wouldn’t you say?  However, it appears that Sununu would like to reduce the panel’s scope to that of a mere observer that reports what it sees and not as an oversight committee that monitors the plan, asks timely questions or issues warnings to the Congress that has the power to intervene where intervention is necessary.

Why is it that when smelly girls try to gain power or use power or even just report to power there is always a guy like Sununu sitting in the wings ready and willing to smite her?  We know that Tim Geithner and Larry Summers have no fondness for Sheila Bair at the FDIC.  And Obama treats Hillary like his personal servant.  Can I just say for the record that I am thoroughly sick of this?  It is undermining the credibility of all of these guys.  I distrust *everything* they say and my feelings are rapidly turning towards active hate of all of the male power elite who continue to stand in the way of women and good judgment.

Come to think of it, why *are* there so many women on the other side of the financial meltdown?  Elizabeth Warren, Sheila Bair, Hillary Clinton, Gretchen Morgenson (NYTimes reporter, Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism.  Many of the those who have objected to, reported on or have been pushed out of the way are women.

Go figure.

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OT: It looks like WordPress has been nominated for a CNet WebWare Award.  Congrats to WordPress.  I have to give them a lot of credit for making it easy and safe to post a blog here.  Granted, we don’t have a lot of bells and whistles on our site but we do almost have 6 million hits and we couldn’t have done it without them.  They even have an app for the iPhone that I’ve been able to post from on occasion, when I’m desperate enough to type a whole post on the iPhone keyboard.  So, if you want to send a little appreciation their way, go vote for WordPress by clicking the pic below.

To the Manor Born

My dearest reader,

This letter hopes to find you and your family well and that the fortunes of employment bestowed upon you are sufficient so as to alleviate your most strenuous anxiety that frequently attends the lack of an income.  The news daily importunes a great degree of future distress and depression on that front but I beg you leave off such ruminations.  For it is a truth universally acknowledged that bailout recipients of great fortune are surely in want of retainers.

Gentle reader, take heart.  We shall all be wanted to serve our masters most diligently.  There shall be need of cooks, chaffeurs and gardeners and we will simplify the need of our betters to have to remember our names.  So shall we be called “Cook”, “Foote” and “my own Gardener”.  We shall see the world too as we will be required to set up the many houses upon which our masters will depend for their amusement.  Verily, our cares will be few as we will be relieved of even the details of our costume with the new livery we shall be required to wear.  Musicians and cookery artists may gain full employment now by attaching themselves to one houshold or another, thereby ensuring a modest steady income that will make tolerable the lack of taste that is the failure of good understanding in the ruthlessly fittest.  Is there a felicity in the world superior to this?

Indeed, such a change is already taking place and it will not be long before we entertain ourselves with the arrangements of the nuptials of the gentility.  How much merry  we will make over the sport of alliances between houses of many billions and poor connexions indeed will the girl have who will settle for less than $5 million a year.  Of those of us who cannot go into service but will be left among the professional class, it is true that we cannot all benefit half so well,  But those among us with a natural inclination for the sciences will by necessity attach ourselves to the billionaire biologists who live on their interest and can dabble at leisure on the cure for cancer.  Meanwhile, there will be no further need of scientific inquiry that does not directly benefit our betters and what financial interest they have in the area of innovation will find it thought of by those few remaining who can afford it and carried out in the Indies by those whose lives depend upon it.

Be of good cheer.  Your degrees will not be for naught as diligence in improving ones mind must always find employment in entertaining the spirit during a lifetime of artless routine.  There will always be an opportunity to move up in the world for your daughters, so take care to educate them as well as you can and guard their excesses lest they be thought below the station of the company they intend to keep. As for your sons, the militia is an honorable profession.

I beg to take leave of you now but I hope this missive has had the effect of good persuasion and that you will in every way endeavor to exert yourself to optimism and hope.  It can not be long now before we shall be required to adjust to our reduced circumstances, which will affect in us a discipline to such an extent that will in time reduce the surplus population.   To be sure,  pliancy and resiliance of spirit will serve ourselves and our future masters well.

Your most humble and obediant servant, etc.,

Riverdaughter

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World in Chaos Open Thread

Brain fog

My brain isn’t working too well this morning, thanks to a nasty head cold. Still I got up as usual and surfed around to see what’s going on in the world. Is it just me, or are things even more chaotic out there than usual? Let’s see…

Robert M. Morgenthau, district attorney of Manhattan has indicted Li Fang Wei, a Chinese businessman, for selling nuclear raw materials to Iran and using U.S. banks such as Bank of America, Citibank and J.P. Morgan Chase to launder the financial transactions. Supposedly the banks were unwitting accessories. Hmmm… why don’t I buy that excuse?

Chinese and Russian “cyberspies” have infiltrated the U.S. electric grid.

Authorities investigating the intrusions have found software tools left behind that could be used to destroy infrastructure components, the senior intelligence official said. He added, “If we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on.”

Officials said water, sewage and other infrastructure systems also were at risk.

Now isn’t that special?

Pirates have captured a U.S. flagged ship and taken 20 American crewmembers hostage off the coast of Somalia.

The container ship, the Maersk Alabama, was carrying thousands of tons of relief aid to the Kenyan port of Mombasa, the company that owns the ship said.

The ship was taken by pirates at about 7:30 a.m. local time, 280 miles southeast of the Somali city of Eyl, a known haven for pirates, a spokesman for the United States Navy said. It is owned and operated by Maersk Line Limited, a United States subsidiary of A.P. Moller – Maersk Group, the Danish shipping giant.

The Maersk Alabama was at least the sixth commercial ship commandeered by pirates this week off the Horn of Africa, one of the most notoriously lawless zones on the high seas, where pirates have been operating with near impunity despite efforts by many nations, including the United States, to intimidate them with naval warship patrols.

The death toll continues to rise after the earthquake in Italy.

At least seven strong shocks hit the region during the night, killing one person and waking people from their sleep in the tent shelters.

The tremors brought down masonry from already damaged buildings and one tremor was felt as far away as Rome.

President Obama has finally returned to Washington, D.C. after his triumphant global tour. Will that help or hurt our economic situation? Will he finally wake up and realize that Geithner and Summers are wrecking our economic system in order to save their rich friends? Or does he already know that and think it’s a good idea? Will Obama’s wooing of Muslims in Turkey make a difference or is it “just words?”

A “turning point,” a “fresh breeze” — even a “light in the darkness.” Arabs and Muslims have been charmed by President Barack Obama’s first venture into the Islamic world.

Obama’s visit to Turkey this week was full of gestures calculated at showing he is a friend to Muslims, like his headliner sound bite that the U.S will never be “at war with Islam” and his mention of the Muslims in his family. Even throwaway lines like a comment that he had to wrap up a town-hall meeting with Turkish students “before the call to prayer” showed he was no stranger to Muslims’ way of life.

To many, the town-hall format for a meeting with students in Istanbul on Tuesday sent a significant message. The sight of a U.S. president being questioned by Muslims was dramatically different from the perception many had of Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush.

What do you think? And what are you reading/hearing/watching this morning?

Disturbed and Pathetic

The PUMA-obsessed blogstalkers are burning me in effigy (again) because I hurt their tender feelings (again.)  There is something seriously wrong with those people.  I don’t understand their motives or intentions, and their actions and rhetoric indicate mental or emotional imbalance.  In other words, they “have issues”

As I have frequently stated and the blogstalkers themselves have noted I was previously a welcome commentor at Balloon Juice for nearly two years – from 2006 until several months after the Kool-aid epidemic of 2008 began.  When the Democratic primaries started I became the target of unrelenting attacks because I supported and defended Hillary Clinton and refused to support Barack Obama.  I also had endure constant lies and recycled right-wing memes attacking Hillary Clinton.  I finally left Balloon Juice and after a brief stop at Corrente I eventually found my way here where  Riverdaughter was kind enough to grant me posting privileges.

I freely admit that I am a semi-civilized guy with a raunchy and politically incorrect sense of humor and that I’ve said things from time to time that were inappropriate.  I’ve also made comments that were rude, sarcastic, offensive and/or insulting.  With Google and the obsessive focus of a blogstalker you can find some of them.  Although I’m not proud of every individual thing I have said over the past 3+ years when taken as a whole I am not ashamed.

There is a good reason I am called a “very petulant clown” and I wear that title with pride.  I hate it when I accidentally offend someone’s tender feelings because it’s much more fun to do it intentionally.But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m a flaming liberal and that when it really matters my heart’s in the right place.  It also doesn’t disprove anything I have ever said or will say about Obama or any of his cult followers.

The blogstalkers have once again dug up a few old comments of mine, and even though I honestly don’t recollect making some of them I accept responsibility.  If you read them in the context of the threads in which they appeared it is obvious that they were meant and taken as jokes.

I will point out that my humor was aimed at a less genteel and refined audience than we have here.   It’s kind of like the difference between a comedian appearing on network television and in a nightclub.

If anyone thinks that makes me a hypocrite or a non-feminist then they can go ahead and think that but I’m not going to apologize or stop blogging because of it.  I’m not sure what the blogstalkers hoped to accomplish, my sense of humor has never been a secret and anyone likely to get offended by it left this place a long time ago.

It didn’t workwhen they tried it before  so they keep trying and hope for a different result, thus demonstrating the definition of insanity.  Every time they try to “expose” me it just boosts traffic here and adds to my reputation.  They really should dig harder, I’m sure I’ve said worse things than the stuff they found.

Now PUMA’s Sort Of A Car

That’s the new GM/Segway prototype vehicle, the PUMA or, Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility…thingy.  Whatever this hybrid vehicle eventually grows up to be, if anything, it’s battery operated and zips along at 35 mph.  Obviously, this is part of almost-bankrupt General Motor’s attempt to “green up” and be part of Team Obama’s overarching and presently over-reaching program to drag reluctant Americans kicking and screaming away from our love of gas guzzling mini-tanks capable of doing righteous battle with buses and trucks on city streets in comfort.  For those loath to sacrifice safety for ecology, the PUMA, a sort of windshield covered Hoveround, is supposed to be able to sense danger, Will Robinson, and…magically disappear, or something.  Popular Mechanics explains it this way:

The collision avoidance tech is probably the most speculative aspect of the P.U.M.A. project. GM has long been working on vehicle-to-vehicle communications technology that should allow vehicles to communicate with each other using short-to-medium-range wireless transponders that use GPS and vehicle on-board telemetry data to avoid collisions. The idea is that if two vehicles can exchange speed, direction and position data, then one of them could make a decision to brake in an emergency situation to avoid an accident—even if that meant overriding the driver.

Tuesday: Springtime for the NYTimes and Big Lies

It’s been really cold in NJ this spring.  Yep, I know it’s still early but I wore the liner of my trenchcoat yesterday and could see my breath in the chilly rain.  I’m thoroughly sick of it.  If you in the midwest are holding onto the zephyrs, please let them go already.  I feel like I’ll never be warm again.

In the meantime, the NYTimes have two interesting articles up today.  Surprise!  We feel good about the economy since Obama took office. Well, no one *I* know feels good about it but they probably didn’t get polled.  But for the rest of the country who live on some mythical Disneyesque Main Street, it is the triumph of hope over inexperience.

Americans have grown more optimistic about the economy and the direction of the country in the 11 weeks since President Obama was inaugurated, suggesting that he is enjoying some success in his critical task of rebuilding the nation’s confidence, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

These sometimes turbulent weeks — marked by new initiatives by Mr. Obama, attacks by Republicans and more than a few missteps by the White House — do not appear to have hurt the president. Americans said they approved of Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy, foreign policy, Iraq and Afghanistan; fully two-thirds said they approved of his overall job performance.

I find his job performance clearly lacking in tangible results, especially when it comes to the economy.  But the propaganda campaign is in full swing and many of my colleagues and friends feel absolutely powerless against the wealthy elite who run our companies and steal our money. (Wait a second. Wasn’t it the NYTimes that helped get us into the Iraq War in the first place? Hmmm…) I suppose the public is feeling that Obama will make them use plenty of lube and make it less painful than it was under the GOP.  Actually, I still sense a great deal of anger over this perceived powerlessness but the anger is directed at the finance industry than the administration right now.  That will change and we will do our best to speed things along.

The other article is all about the newly unemployed who are persisting in their old routines.  It’s a matter of pride, which psychologists suggest could be a good thing.  People who are laid off have lost some of their sense of identity when they lose their jobs.  So, they refuse to give in:

The Wall Street type in suspenders, with his bulging briefcase; the woman in pearls, thumbing her BlackBerry; the builder in his work boots and tool belt — they could all be headed for the same coffee shop, or bar, for the day.

“I have a new client, a laid-off lawyer, who’s commuting in every day — to his Starbucks,” said Robert C. Chope, a professor of counseling at San Francisco State University and president of the employment division of the American Counseling Association. “He gets dressed up, meets with colleagues, networks; he calls it his Western White House. I have encouraged him to keep his routine.”

No doubt, they are equally confident in Obama’s ability to revive the economy.

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