Give Us 'Fat Product,' Please: The real long-term damage to Toyota from the unintended acceleration mess? Now the public will learn about the company's decades-long "decontenting" binge (designed to eliminate "fat products" that were 'overbuilt' in terms of quality). As Truth About Cars notes,

Toyota’s reputation was built on those "fat" products of the mid-80s to early-90s ...

They aren't coming back, even after Toyota weathers the current crisis. ... P.S.: Has Honda avoided decontenting, or has it just wisely not written so much about it? ...  P.P.S.: Toyota customers should demand the Denso pedal ! ( via Ellisblog ). ... Was the superior Denso device deemed too "fat"? .... 1:49 P.M.

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All of a Sudden They Had an Election in Massachusetts! Who Knew? President Obama in Nashua, New Hampshire on Tuesday :

What I have said is that both the House bill and the Senate bill were 90 percent there. Ten percent of each bill, people had some problems with, and legitimately so. So we were just about to clean those up, and then Massachusetts' election happened. Suddenly everybody says, oh, oh, it's over.

Some would call this a stunning admission of incompetence . They couldn't have cleaned up the bill before the Massachuetts election? They didn't know there was an election coming up? ... I'm not saying Obama's screw-up was of that order of simplicity (i.e., forgetting to look at the calendar). I'm saying he's making it look like a screw-up of that order of simplicity. ... P.S.: The more complicated and, I assume, accurate explanation is that Congress moved too slowly to pass the bill because in their now-conscious subconscious lawmakers didn't want to pass the bill, because it wasn't popular enough . That's Obama's fault too--but it's a less simple failing. ...

P.P.S.: You can never start the orgy of recrimination too early! Sometimes it avoids the need for a later orgy--as with the tax reform of 1986, when anticipatory condemnation of Senator Packwood spurred him to change course and save the bill . ...  11:56 A.M.

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