THINGS I THINK I THINK - THE GROUNDHOG DAY EDITION

-I think I think that depending on oversized, bucktoothed, hole-digging rodents to tell the weather is a uniquely American pastime. Today Punxatawny Phil of Pennsylvania saw his shadow and went back in his hole, foretelling 6 more weeks of wintry weather. But, snowbirds, the story doesn't end there. Staten Island Chuck (I am not making this up) apparently crawled out of the Fresh Kills Landfill long enough to not see his shadow, foretelling a mild February and early spring. Of course I could never really see the significance of all this as Winter ends on the same day every year.

-I think I think that the NY Subway System is becoming completely fucked. Imagine, last week a fire set by a homeless man in a tunnel (to keep warm) destroyed a signal system that knocked out service on 3 lines affecting 1.3 million daily riders. Then Larry Reuter (head of the MTA) says, the next day, that it will take 3-5 years to fix. After howls for his head from riders and the press, the MTA quickly said that it would take 3-9 months. It begs the question how they went from 3-5 years to 3-9 months in two days and what was behind the original estimate.

This whole sorry episode brings to light some scary things for NYC.

-Our subway system is completely vulnerable to ANYONE wishing to do it and NY harm.
-Building infrastructure in NY has become too expensive to make real urban development a pipe dream here and I expect much of the city to rot away with little improvement over the next century. We could learn a lot from Tokyo, Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong.

-I think I think that tonight's State of the Union address is going to be one huge self-congratulatory neocon slap on the back and a complete distortion of the Social Security issue to push it into the grave. I expect 24 "Freedoms" 8 "Liberties" 12 "Iraqi Elections" and 4 "mandates" as well.