Earlier this past week, press reports were buzzing with news that a San Diego, California man had lost control of the Prius he was driving and needed the help of the California Highway Patrol to  safely slow the alleged runaway vehicle to a stop.

Now comes word via the Associated Press that Toyota investigators and the federal government have not been able to make the car, in tests, repeat the claimed unexpected performance, casting doubt, says the A.P. on the driver’s story.

The news agency bases its story on a draft memo it says it has obtained.

There was always something fishy about this particular San Diego story: Even the most critical government investigators have said the problem, whatever the cause, with the Toyota cars (Prius, of course, is the hybrid built by the company) is extremely rare. And yet, on the very same day Toyota was holding a news conference to announce how its planned fixes were going, along came this “new” episode that seemingly showed that the auto company was simply not on top of the situation.

Judging from the massive coverage this story got throughout all media platforms, apparently few news organizations bothered to, at least, cast a skeptical eye on this one story. Rather, most news accounts I saw, heard and read, seemed to accept what allegedly happened with this particular Prius as if it were an established fact.

It may, in the end, turn out that the driver was, indeed, telling the truth and his Prius did, without his input, reach speeds of 94 mph or greater. But there now also seems to be at least some evidence the entire experience may have been made up for reasons as yet unknown.

The next time there is a story about a runaway Prius or other Toyota, it would be nice if the news media were a bit more liberal with the use of the word—alleged!

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Tags: toyota,, prius,, san, diego, prius, out, of, control,, runaway, prius,, n

The postal service is saying that it is hurting so much from loss of revenue because of such things as email and private deliver companies, that it may need to cut Saturday mail delivery as well as overtime pay for employees.

Joseph Corbett, the chief financial officers for the post office, tells Reuters that the service is also planning what he called a “moderate” increase in the price of stamps.

I think people can probably live with paying a few more pennies for postage–though that might not be the case for businesses that rely on mass mailings.

But stopping mail delivery on Saturdays is another matter. I don’t think that will go over well with the public . And, since people will still want their mail delivered, my guess is stopping weekend deliveries would only force more people–if they can afford it–to give their business to the private delivery services resulting in even a larger loss of revenue for the U.S. Postal Service.

In February, says Reuters, USPS posted a loss of $297 million for the first quarter.

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Director Kevin Smith apparently was, as far as Southwest Airlines was concerned.

On a flight from Oakland to Burbank, the pilot apparently kicked him off the plane because he didn’t neatly fit into the confines of his seat.

Smith usually purchases two seats for his comfort, but got stuck with only one after he ended up flying stand-by to catch a different flight.

Smith tweeted up a storm knocking the airline and the airline apologized and also gave him a $100 voucher.

A lot of people don’t realize that many airlines have long had policies about very fat people flying, though they enforce these policies in different ways at different times.

While the initial impulse is to come to Smith’s defense-one has to recognize that the airline has a legitimate concern: the safety and comfort of its other passengers.

Airline seats are small enough, especially on the types of aircraft flown by airlines such as Southwest; sitting next to a jumbo human who is overhanging onto your space does not a comfortable flight make.

But it is actually potentially more serious than that: Someone who has trouble fitting into one seat on an airliner can pose a serious safety risk to all on board in the event of an incident that requires the fast evacuation of the plane.

For sure, Southwest probably should have handled this one with more diplomacy. But it is wrong to laugh at its basic policy (that a very large person must purchase two seats) which is a valid one.

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The New York Times reporting that Google has joined forces with the National Security Agency in an effort to track down who was behind the attacks on its cybersecurity last year.

As the paper correctly puts it, ” The collaboration between Google , the world’s largest search engine company, and the federal agency in charge of global electronic surveillance raises both civil liberties issues and new questions about how much Google knew about the electronic thefts it experienced when it stated last month that it might end its business operation in China, where it said the attacks originated.”

Google’s ability to track and keep track of our most personal doings on the Internet is scary enough. But when you add to the mix the cooperation between Google and a giant U.S. spy agency, the possibilities are truly mind blowing!

Google apparently was the one reaching out to the NSA. Of course, the NSA was reportedly more than happy to agree.

As might be expected, the paper says a Google spokeswoman would not further comment on the matter, while an NSA spookswoman reportedly said the agency is also not able to comment “on specific relationships we may or may not have with U.S. companies.”

That alone is a statement worthy of further exploration: What exactly does she mean by relationships they “may or may not have” with other U.S. companies? Phone companies, perhaps?  Media companies, maybe?

We are, as a society, already well passed the danger point of becoming a police state. The blending of Google with the National Security Agency is just the latest, but, perhaps, most troubling example.

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Tags: new, york, times,, google,, national, security, agency,, china,, cyberspace, attacks,

He did have some typical fighting words indicating that he wanted the reform measures to pass Congress and end up on his desk sooner rather than later.

But he didn’t much sound like someone who believes his own message anymore. A number of side remarks the President made during the speech seemed to indicate that , while he would like to see health care reform this year, he is resigned to the fact that that may not happen..especially in the form that he had hoped.

He didn’t, as some argued he should have, stand up there and basically say–this is the plan I think is good for the country and ,therefore, what I want you to pass.

Rather, he put  the emphasis , as he often does, on trying to get bi-partisan support by saying he would entertain any proposal that offers an alternative to his, whether from his own party or from the Republicans, that accomplishes his basic goals.

But considering that the Republicans haven’t yet made known an alternative plan to the President’s, I think it likely Obama knows that is not going to happen anytime soon.

My guess is,  comprehensive health insurance reform is pretty much dead for 2010. Hope I am wrong, though.

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How else can you explain how badly he and his administration screwed up health care reform by not paying attention to what was going down in Massachusetts until it was too late to make a difference?

A more experienced politician (say LBJ) would have realized how vital the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Ted Kennedy was and would have made frequent trips to that state prior to Tuesday’s special election to drum up support for the Democratic candidate.

Instead, Obama was on his Hawaii vacation (he didn’t even bother to return to Washington after the Christmas day attempt to blow up an airliner landing in Detroit) when he should have been bundled up against the northeast cold helping to sell his party’s nominee for the senate seat to the voting public.

Instead, the President and those below him were asleep at the switch.

And now, the Democrats have lost their all important 60th vote, the one needed to prevent a Republican fillibuster…not only against health reform, but any other piece of legislation as well.

Obama was probably a damn good college law school professor. And, from most accounts, a pretty good Chicago political street organizor.

But none of that prepared him to wage wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and God knows where else in the months to come.

None of that prepared him to deal with Wall Street so that Main Street doesn’t get screwed, as it has, by the worst economic climate since the Great Depression.

And, obviously, none of that prepared him to effectivly butt heads in Congress to get the health care reform bill he said he wanted when he was campaigning for the Oval Office.

The nation needs health care reform. Badly. But the one person who should have been spearheading its victory through the Congress turns out to be the same person whose spectacular political incompetence has probably led to its premature demise. And, that person is non other than one Barack Obama, President of the United States.

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Of course, should Republican Scott Brown win, it could derail the Democratic Party’s (and President Obama’s) health reform legislation by denying the Democrats the 60 votes needed in the Senate. They would have to resort to either trying to push the House to accept the Senate plan as is so there would be a a quick vote, or else, they’d have to use parliamentary tricks to try and push the legislation through. Either way, not a pretty thing!

Should Democrat Martha Coakley come from behind (where polls show her to be as of this writing) and win the vacated seat, while that would mean almost sure passage of the President’s health reform measures…a sure win for him…the fact that this even became a close race ,in and of itself ,has politically damaged the President and the Democratic Party.

The White House bungled this one badly.  The administration clearly confident initially that a Democrat would, of course, win in a state often referred to as a “Democratic state.”

But, as news reports have pointed out, this is only part of the story. Sure, the state legislature is controlled by Democrats, but Massachusetts voters, more and more considering themselves Independents, elected a Republican governor not all that long ago…so a Republican senator would not really be such a big leap.

Also, Massachusetts already enjoys a unique state run health care system providing universal coverage at a reasonable cost…so why would voters there want to risk losing that in favor of an untested federal version?

No matter what, the months forward will be interesting,indeed.

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While there are, of course, exceptions, many U.S. airlines have some of the oldest fleets on the planet. I think even Vietnam’s commercial air fleet tends to be newer.

After years of cutbacks and slim downs and dips in and out of bankruptcy courts, pilots and flight attendants alike tend to be in really foul moods nowadays.

And, while they like to complain often that passengers have become unruly, I beg to differ. From what I have observed in recent months, flight crews are getting away with murder!

They no longer have to serve food on most domestic flights. They’ve often even cut back beverage service. I one time even caught three flight attendants in the back of the plane chatting and even filling out the New York Times crossword puzzle while passengers up front were waiting to be delivered precious plastic bottles of water.

In recent weeks, there have been a number of incidents where passengers deemed “unruly” by flight crew standards have practically been arrested on suspicion of terrorism.

Since when does a paying customer complaining about horrible service constitute a crime against national security?

I fear that flight attendants, many of whom are not exactly the brightest stars in the known universe, will increasingly use the fear of terrorism as an excuse to , in effect, “punish” passengers who complain about their flight experience.

Frankly, I think it is time for some of the so-called legacy airlines (United, American, Delta, to name a few) to give up the ghost and finally go out of business!

They no longer do a good job and are not likely , given the economics of modern air travel, to ever recovery anything that approaches their former glory. Newer airlines, such as Jet Blue and Virgin America, do a much better job and have employees who actually still enjoy being there. Either that, or they are just better actors!

Whatever.

The fact is, no matter what the nonsense the airlines and federal government like to spoon feed us through the media, you have a far greater chance getting hit by a comet falling through your roof and killing you than you have being the victim of a terrorist attack on a U.S. airliner.

People like the former Homeland Security Secretary who go around telling anyone who will listen that the skies are so unsafe that full body scanners need to be placed at every airport in the world, conviently forget to tell people that their private security companies represent some of the largest manufacturers of these machines.

Can you say–PROFIT MOTIVE!

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But maybe the prez is over thinking this–the way he tends to do about issues large and small. Maybe there is a real simple answer. Maybe, the so-called intelligence experts were just stupid!

I mean, when you review all the missteps made in the days leading up to the Detroit incident, you sought of have to conclude that the U.S. has no shortage of stupid people working at various intelligence agencies.

I know we are looking for far more complicated explanations. Maybe it makes us feel better if we believe that the events that Christmas Day were almost impossible to  head off because of the complexities of the alleged plot.

However, if we accept the notion that there was nothing complicated about this at all…that we just are employing a lot of really stupid people in intelligence, then we start to collectively feel really bad.

Of course, maybe we should!

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We are still at war in Afghanistan and bent on escalating it with the addition of a lot more troops. We have expanded our “secret” war in Pakistan while also now taking  more than a closer look at Yemen and even Somalia. And, of course, we still are in Iraq!

The unemployment rate is still really ,really high–even if the pace of actual job loss has slackened somewhat in recent months.

More and more people face foreclosure of their homes.

More and more people are now on food stamps.

Commercial flying has become an even bigger pain ( I know…who’d have thought that possible?).

And, the government has, once again, proven itself incapable of actually doing anything in a smart fashion–witness the debacle of the botched terrorist attack on that Delta/Northwest jet over Detroit Christmas Day. Various government agencies, including the CIA, had enough information they could have–should have–connected the dots which is, after all, what they get paid to do! Instead , they did what they always seem to do…drop the ball.

The government is apparently even going after some bloggers who managed to break some news—with leaked information on government plans to beef up security on commercial planes as well as in and around the nation’s airports. Wouldn’t the government spend its time more effectively going after the actual would-be terrorists?

In a few, short hours, it will be 2010 and we have another full year ahead to watch in amazement as more officials screw up and as President Obama continues to party and play in Hawaii!

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