I don’t know how I forgot to get in a bit of GRAR about this the last time I posted about car bullshit: the “Check Engine” light. Could there be a less useful way to warn people that something in their car needs attention? I realize that most of us, myself included, do not know nor do we care to know the in-depth specifics, but I think even the most clueless driver could be entrusted with just a little more information about what’s going wrong BEFORE he has to take the vehicle to the dealer, who, frankly, could tell him ANYTHING HE WANTS.

The linked article also has a link to an online petition asking to get rid of the “idiot light” and replace it with a more meaningful readout that would provide more specific information as to the nature of the problem. Online petitions don’t go very far, I know, but at least this one is right on the White House’s own website, so maybe someone might notice it.

Relatedly, I was pleased to learn that the “Right-to-Repair” referendum question here in Massachusetts got enough petition signatures to be included on the ballot this year. The bill has also been submitted to the legislature, and it could be enacted through the ordinary legislative process, but if not, it turns up on the ballot in November. The idea, if it’s not obvious to you, is that diagnostic systems and information should not be limited to dealer service departments but available to any mechanic so that consumers have the option to have required repairs performed by the mechanic of their choice, potentially saving the consumer hundreds of dollars. Getting rid of the “Check Engine” light is just as important a step in this process.

Vanity Fair has a profile of Elizabeth Warren in its November issue that is more about the machinations behind the CFPB nomination brouhaha than it is about her individually or about the landscape here in Massachusetts as she gets her campaign underway. If you haven’t heard much about that particular battle, it is definitely worth reading, because it’s a good exploration of power politics in Washington.

Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith has publicly opined that the whole Senate campaign is a bit of a payoff from the Obama Administration to keep Warren from turning against them and that it’s a mistake on her part to run — even if she wins, says Smith, she is all but powerless as a freshman Senator.

This Daily Beast article is frank about the difficulties female candidates have had making in-roads into the old-boy network of Democratic elected officials in Massachusetts. There are plenty of women in Massachusetts politics, but because this state has a high profile for candidates with national ambitions, the old guard plays hardball — only four women have ever represented Massachusetts in Congress.

It’s very encouraging to see that she came out of the gate already tied in polls with Scott Brown. Even the primary election isn’t until next September, and though her primary opponents are already considered DOA, that was the same position Martha Coakley was in at the same point. Coakley sailed through the primary and then got blind-sided by Brown. Brown doesn’t have the same stealth element he had last year, but time is definitely on his side.

Brooklyn Nuked!! Nation Cheers As Millions Of Hipsters Are Annihilated!!

It’s almost like something from The Onion, but it’s a mock newspaper from Civil Defense propaganda from the early 1960s promoting fallout shelters. I found it via John Ptak’s collection of ephemera, but he found it at this long and detailed post about the history of the fallout shelter at a blog called CONELRAD Adjacent, which focuses on that era. That post also has this excellent photo of officials putting up a fallout shelter sign in front of the Massachusetts State House:

Next time I’m over by the State House, I’ll look to see if it’s still there. I’ll bet it is. Of course, Brooklyn is still there, too. For now.

Via BoingBoing, check out this satellite image that shows the track of one of the several EF-3 tornadoes that hit Western Massachusetts last week. That’s debris, not a highway, you see running like a seam in the middle. The image was taken on Sunday (June 5), a few days after the devastating storm. Here’s the NASA website with a larger image and links to download full-size versions in case you want something even bigger.

Ed at ginandtacos.com offers this helpful pie chart to illustrate just how deep and substantive all those Republican budget cuts are. Yeppers, they’ve managed to come up with a whopping 0.4% of the Federal Budget, and if you scroll down a bit in that post, he’s got a bar graph that itemizes where the cuts are going to come from, namely scrapping funding for the usual GOP bugaboos like Head Start, the EPA, and job training programs. You can read more about that graph in this CNN article, where he got it.

This second one is also about governmental budgets, but is all about details and drill-downs. It’s too big to reproduce in its original size here, so here’s a small screenshot:

It’s an infographic that shows the FY 2011 budget for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as designed for the “non-partisan” (but nevertheless rampantly conservative) Pioneer Institute by information designer Jess Bachman. Here’s its webpage, where you can use the built-in tools to zoom in and move around to see the details. You may recall that I have previously linked to Bachman’s similar Federal Budget infographic, which he updates every year. Despite the “Death-Before-Taxes” bias of the group who commissioned the work, the infographic is free of ideological bent and is an excellent illustration of how complex even state government budgets are.

The Sonic is being built right next door to the McDonald’s, which cannot have the McDonald’s franchisee too happy. Previously, the space housed a car dealer. When the car showroom building was torn down a couple of weeks ago, everybody was abuzz wondering what would take the space, but now that the frame of the building is up, so is the large banner on the front of the site. No doubt the cognoscenti of our little suburb knew exactly what was going on well in advance, but for us hoi polloi it came down to a six-foot strip of vinyl tied to a temporary fence to bring the news.

It’s kind of a big deal, not just because our town lags behind all of its neighbors in sheer density of fast food chains that aren’t Dunkin’ Donuts, but because it’s only the second Sonic location in the entire state of Massachusetts. Indeed, it is only the second Sonic in ALL SIX New England states. The first Sonic opened last summer to much attention from cherry-limeade-starved souls, who were willing to endure two-hour lines, valet parking, and unholy traffic congestion on a major thruway (the infamous Route One strip). Needless to say, there is much tut-tutting and clucking by the villagers, who are worried that the already-busy section of Main Street will turn into a parking lot from all the looky-loos who will descend on us like a plague of french-fry-devouring locusts.

Having grown up in Maine in the 1970s, I have been down this road before. When we first moved to Lewiston-Auburn in the summer of 1971, there was only one McDonald’s for a “metro” area of about 70,000, and it was way on the outskirts of Lewiston, close to the Maine Turnpike exit. It was a huge deal when, several years later, a second McDonald’s was built on the Auburn side of the river, and then equally big deals ensued when Burger King arrived a few years after that, and finally, when I was in high school, Wendy’s. Maine, however, is always late to the party for the expansion of national retail chains; there are still only a small handful of Starbucks in the whole state (our town in Massachusetts got its Starbucks two years ago, but they are numerous in the Boston area).

In a bit of serendipity, this infographic is making the rounds online. It shows the distribution of the major fast-food burger chains in the United States. Here’s the Fast Company article that brought the map to the attention of the Internet, and here’s the original blog post from a site called WeatherSealed.com. The Fast Company version changed the background color to make the McDonald’s locations (which were plotted in black against a black background in the original) stand out better. It’s interesting to see that McDonald’s base is so tightly concentrated in the Northeast, but even more interesting to see the predominance of other chains in other regions: Dairy Queen, which is a rarity here in the Northeast and operates almost exclusively in its form as an ice cream stand, OWNS the South Central region in a way that McDonald’s can only dream of.

For the sake of the franchisee, I hope the arrival of Sonic goes better than the arrival of Krispy Kreme donuts a few years ago. The anticipation behind the opening of the Krispy Kreme in Medford was nothing short of insane, and the initial customer response was enormous, but after about a year the whole thing died right off and the Kripsy Kreme chain itself went into bankruptcy. The retail location sat empty for a long time before finally being picked up by the beloved local chain of roast beef sandwich shops, Kelly’s. Meanwhile, the Ghost Town Plaza across the street sure could use half a dozen tenants.

I’ll also share a quote I saw elsewhere today. An unnamed Massachusetts Democratic Party figure is quoted as saying:

Better Scott Brown for two years than Martha Coakley for a lifetime

That’s probably more indicative of the reality here in Massachusetts than anything anyone in the media (except Jon, of course) has to offer.

Back in December, as we wound up the primaries, I said that I thought Coakley would turn out to be a weak candidate, easily targeted by the Republicans, except I was looking down the road at the seat’s general election. Who would have believed she wouldn’t even be able to seal the deal on this? She ran a stealth campaign in the primary, but was lucky that her opposition was so divided among three candidates. Not so lucky when it was whittled down to one guy who had nothing to lose by blowing all his cash early on TV spots. Whether it’s a case of her campaign thinking they didn’t have to do any work, or a case of the candidate herself not really being up to the challenge, they’ve blown this fair and square.

A win by Brown tomorrow won’t really change much here in Massachusetts. Don’t expect to see a surge of Republican candidates sweeping the well-entrenched Democrats of the House delegation or the state legislature. The Democratic governor is toast anyway, and Massachusetts does have a tendency to elect Republican governors despite the Democratic legislature. Brown himself is not terribly substantial; I wouldn’t expect him to hold up well against a better Democratic candidate when the seat comes up, even if the GOP gave him all the money in the world, and you can be damn well sure that the Democrats won’t let someone like Martha Coakley on the ticket again.

If Coakley does manage to pull a rabbit out of a hat tomorrow and win, she goes into the Senate already wounded at home. No doubt she stands ready to be a good soldier for Harry Reid, but with such a stunning lack of support among the most liberal constituency in the country, she won’t hold the line on anything tough. And she won’t survive into a full term if she doesn’t radically alter her style as a candidate. If she has come this close to defeat at the hands of a total nobody, imagine the drubbing she would get if the Republicans came up with a serious contender.

I’ll hold my nose and vote for Coakley tomorrow, but frankly I am disappointed by the entire turn of events of this process. Obviously, a lot of other Massachusetts voters are, too, which is why nobody should be surprised to learn on Wednesday morning that Scott Brown is the new junior senator.

The four Democrats are not entirely the ones that might have been anticipated during the last year of Ted’s life, as the end became more and more plainly imminent. At least one missing candidate chose to sit it out because of the last-minute waffling of the most likely candidate — Joe Kennedy — who ultimately decided to sit out too. So the two traditional politicians who did declare went from being likely also-rans to serious contenders. That left wiggle room for the other two candidates, who would have been laughed right out of the race otherwise, to make some noise. The noisiest has certainly been Steve Pagliuca, one of the owners of the Boston Celtics, who, if nothing else, managed to raise his name-recognition with his constant barrage of ads. He is, however, completely unqualified to hold one of the most important seats in the United States Senate; I realize that there is a long tradition of buying one’s way into the Millionaire’s Club of Washington D.C., but this really isn’t the time to be giving some complete novice a turn to play senator. The other non-politician, Alan Khazei, is another rich guy, but with the pedigree of being a civic do-gooder. He’d probably make a very good governor, and I hope he takes this opportunity to turn his campaign into a starter for a gubnatorial campaign next fall — our current governor is a complete waste of time and doesn’t deserve a second term, and rather than give it up to some wackjob Republican, Khazei would be a good replacement.

Of the two traditional politicians, it’s great to be able to say that either would be okay as a senator if they win. However, I think that it’s very important this time around to take the long view and think about whomever is chosen as potentially being someone who will become nationally significant and politically prominent for a very long time to come. It’s my concern, frankly, that the front runner, state Attorney General Martha Coakley, is not likely to become that person. Her political ambitions have pushed her very quickly into a state-wide office without much time to develop beyond her roots as a prosecuting attorney. So again, it’s just a little too much on-the-job training required, and I also suspect that she would be vulnerable to targeting from the Republican Party when the natural election for the seat rolls around.

The other traditional politician is Representative Mike Capuano, who did, in fact, replace Joe Kennedy when he quit his Congressional seat. Capuano has been a member of Congress for a dozen years, sitting on unglamorous-but-important committees like Transportation & Infrastructure and Financial Services. Before going to Congress, he was the mayor of the inner-ring suburb of Somerville. To my thinking, that’s exactly the sort of resume one hopes to see from a Senatorial candidate, not dilettantism or ladder-climbing over-ambition. If elected, it is easy to imagine Capuano as being able to step immediately into the political realm of the Senate without a learning curve and grow into a leadership role despite being the junior senator, much as John Kerry was able to emerge in his own right despite the overpowering importance of Ted Kennedy.

For most of my adult life, I have been registered as an independent voter, eschewing the opportunity to vote in party primary elections, but I’ve decided that this particular primary is worth voting in to try to have whatever sway a single voter can have in an election that is likely to have as much significance locally as voting in a presidential election does nationally. The passing of Ted Kennedy marked a genuine turning point in American politics and likely in American history as well, and the choice of his replacement is too important to waive for the sake of maintaining non-affiliation with a party I mostly vote for anyway. Tomorrow I will cast my vote for Mike Capuano for Senate.

To my readers who are not fellow Massholes and neither know nor care about our local electoral politics, I apologize for monopolizing your attention, but believe me when I tell you this choice will ultimately matter to you, too.