2010 archive

More here. A nugget:

Is it already too late for America? I’m starting to think that the anti-tax, anti-government conservative movement that started in the mid-70s, elected Reagan and led to the terrible Bush Presidency may have effectively destroyed the country, leaving it bankrupt, corrupt,ungovernable, ruled by a wealthy elite — and we’re only now just starting to realize it. To cover tax cuts we stopped maintaining the infrastructure and started borrowing. To satisfy their hatred of government we increasingly stripped away rule of law, regulation, and belief in one-person-one-vote. We are seeing the consequences of all of that . . . .

Video also via Seeing the Forest.

I missed the excitement this week, being distracted by the panic up the road a piece where, apparently, the world came to an end under a blanket of snow.

But I didn’t miss much. The FDIC seems to be running out of banks to shut down; they caught only one this week:

1st American State Bank of Minnesota, Hancock, Minnesota

Dick Polman, on the teabaggers:

Some of those groups, as well as hundreds of local groups, are genuinely bottom up. But some of those groups are top down – in other words, they’re fake grassroots. They’re “AstroTurf” groups fronting for big business and the Republican Party. FreedomWorks is a Washington operation run by ex-GOP House insider Dick Armey, who is bankrolled by his corporate clients. Tea Party Express is run by a pair of veteran Republican strategists, who reportedly have steered tea-party donations into their consulting firm – thus prompting some Tea Party Patriots to assail Tea Party Express as “the AstroTurf Express.”

There is no percentage in just being agin’. Until they have something to be for, they will continue to be grist for the corporatist mill.

Rereading the Hound of the Baskervilles in William S. Baring-Gould’s The Annotated Sherlock Holmes.

‘Tis a shame Baring-Gould is out of print. Young pups will not know the joy of the footnotes.

The game is afoot.

I haven’t followed this closely, though I have read the newspaper stories and I listened to this (which, although titled “U. S. Auto Industry,” turned into a discussion of Toyota’s Pintos), but, frankly, it is easy to wonder there might be more to this than floormats and friction:

Toyota first blamed loose floor mats for instances of unintended acceleration that one analysis has linked to more than 800 crashes and 19 deaths since 1999. Last month, the company added that some of its vehicles also could speed out of control because of sticky gas pedals.

But Tuesday, U.S. officials joined outside experts in suggesting that a third factor may be to blame in some cases: a so-far-unidentified failure in the vehicles’ electronic throttle systems.

Toyota Motor Corp. and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) say they have explored that possibility and come up dry.

“We have investigated every type of possible interference with the electronic throttle controls and have found nothing – nothing with the electronics or the computers – that could lead to unintended acceleration,” said Toyota spokeswoman Cindy Knight. . . .

But outside experts on automobiles, computers, and electronics welcomed a renewed focus on the possibility that something other than errant floor mats and sticky pedals could be at work.