Speed — and You’re Welcome May 15, 2013May 14, 2013 SLOW THE WORLD, I’M NOT AS QUICK AS I ONCE WAS Richard Feinberg: “You can adjust the speed of the playback [on that 30-year time-lapse aerial view of anywhere you posted Monday]. The question mark at lower right has instructions. Just mouse over the year button on the left and you get a drop-down that lets you choose between fast and slow. Also, you can left-click on any of the hash marks and just hold. That will freeze the animation and you can move around that way at your own pace.” BUT WITH 10 HOURS’ EXERCISE, I COULD BE Rafael Diaz-Granados: “It is not often that you agree with the editors of The Wall Street Journal, but on the front page of yesterday’s Personal Journal section [at the same time you had your ‘Get Smart‘ item] they ran ‘When Computer Games May Keep the Brain Nimble‘ that highlights Posit’s Double Decision game.” HISPANIC OUTREACH You know your party has a problem when your director of Hispanic outreach quits and changes his registration. Listen, my Log Cabin Republican friends: it’s okay to stand down until you get your party back (your party now thinks Eisenhower and Nixon were Socialists). Listen, my billionaire entrepreneur Republican friends: it’s okay to stand with Warren Buffett and Nick Hanauer (who makes the indispensable, irrefutable case that it’s the middle class, not the rich, who are the job creators). Listen, my Hispanic Republican friends, to what decorated Iraq vet and just-quit Republican National Committee director of Hispanic outreach for Florida Pablo Pantoja has to say: Yes, I have changed my political affiliation to the Democratic Party. It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today. . . . The first DNC Chair I worked with, Joe Andrew, had a stump speech that got better and better with each new delivery from its initial 1998 ad lib under a tent in the back yard of the home of the (then-Republican) Mayor of Los Angeles, which was vying to be the site of the 2000 Democratic Convention. By the time Joe actually delivered it at that Convention, it ended like this: We don’t care whether you’re white or black or brown or purple – you are welcome in the Democratic Party. We don’t care what religion you are or how big your bank account is – you are welcome in the Democratic Party. We don’t care whether you walked in here or rolled in here, whether you’re first generation American or a Mayflower descendant – you are welcome in the Democratic Party. And we don’t care what gender you are or what gender you like to hold hands with. So long as you like to hold hands, you are welcome in the Democratic Party. To which I would add, since I know you all come here as investors, not politicos: the stock market and the economy do significantly better under Democrats than Republicans. Welcome!