I’ll be alone on Valentine’s Day. Watching everyone outside enjoying these balmy last few days had me humming some Marshall Crenshaw:

Girls! girls! girls!
When I’m walking downtown on a summer’s day, yeah
Girls! girls! girls!
All my troubles seem ten thousand miles away
I fall in love from my head to my feet
When I’m watchin’ all those girls walkin’ down the street
The feelin’ goes to my head like red wine
You know I feel fine ‘cause all I ever have in mind is
Girls! girls! girls!
You girls are driving me wiiiiiiiiiild (yeah-eah)
And I said wiiiiiiiiiild (yeah-eah)

But How the Crash Will Reshape America has me looking for a Cynical Girl to help us through the tough times:

Well I’m goin out
I’m goin out lookin’ for a cynical girl
Who’s got no use for the real world
I’m lookin’ for a cynical girl

Well I’ll know right away by the look in her eye
She harbors no illusions and she’s worldly-wise
And I’ll know when I give her a listen that she
She’s what Ive been missin’
What I’ve been missin’

Far from cynical, DOT Commish Janette Sadik-Khan shows her cyclist’s gams and describes how the DOT has made room for more than just auto traffic on the streets of New York:

So ‘round and ‘round and ‘round we go
Through seventeen lights in a row
Take a hold of my hand and come with me
We’ll go rockin’ around in NYC

Someone should slip a box of Godiva into her pannier. NYC won a sustainable transport award, beating out Beijing, Milan, Istanbul and Mexico City.

New Yawk has transit and foot traffic to sustain urban zones, but rerouting auto traffic can kill off businesses in smaller towns. Allen Hancock thinks Demand-Responsive Transit (DRT) can combine cell phones, ordinary vans and existing roads into a reliable first world jitney service without the need for expensive infrastructure. DRT doesn’t sound too different than private taxis to me, though. Taxis around here charge $1.80 + 20 cents per each eleventh of a mile. Can Hancock beat that?

Anyway, I’m still stuck in town this weekend:

Whisky, wine and cheap perfume; all those crowded bars
and hotel rooms
Exotic rhythms to embrace
but everywhere is a lonely place
so down and down and down I go
but where I’m going, well I sure don’t know
But I can feel my restless mind
calling out for love at crying time

Our Republican congressmen aren’t likely to do anything about layoffs until it affects them, so it is time to lay off some Republican congressmen. Here are the Bureau of Labor Statistics on who has been laid off by age, sex and ethnicity.

7.6% - All workers
7.6% - Adult men
6.2% - Adult women
20.8% - Teenagers
6.9% - White
12.6% - Black
9.7% - Hispanic

I figure 7.6% means 8 (not 15) Senators and 33 Representatives will be getting pink slips. I’ve already promised Orlando the job of deciding who goes and who stays, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind some input.

Adult women seem relatively safe at 6.2%, but Michele Bachmann comes to mind. Adult men might be hard to find in the Senate, although David Vitter could certainly qualify as adult-oriented and John Boehner has a name that is perfect for the adult film industry. House members preen and posture like teenagers, which tempts me to lay them off at the 20.8% rate. Newly-minted Sen. Roland Burris is going to have to shoulder the burden of 12.6% Black layoffs by himself, but with Orlando picking, that was a foregone conclusion. Robert Menendez is also a goner.

Complicating matters are the stats for the underemployed.

Norm Coleman is already a job loser, he just won’t admit it and go home. Based on the latest polls, I’m guessing Joe Lieberman must qualify as a discouraged worker. I’ve always thought McCain was marginally attached - to his first wife anyway.

Menzie Chinn at Econbrowser offers a bar chart of three figures.

What do they represent?

Answers after the jump:

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