I know that Al Goreans get really irritated by this kind of anecdotal logic*, but I have to say that this:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama's new "green dream team" is committed to battling climate change and ready to push for big policy reforms, in stark contrast with the Bush administration, environmental advocates said on Monday.
"If this team can't advance strong national policy on global warming, then no one can," said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, referring to Obama's picks for the top energy and environment jobs in his administration, which takes office on January 20.
is just asinine.
Take it from me: I was at Mile High Stadium (Invesco edition) yesterday, freezing my “dream team” off in wind chill temperatures of well below zero. Furthermore, the state of Colorado has been breaking its “record low” temperatures so often we’ve changed the weather report to “How Much Frostbite You Should Expect On Your Outdoor Pets”.
The world ain't warming because of human activity, folks. It hasn't even warmed at all since 1998.
Peep this article, to see my point proven quite nicely:
"It's so cold, it feels like needles are pricking my eyes," grumbled 19-year-old Ashley Sarpong of Chicago, a fur-lined hood pulled around her face Sunday. "This is the coldest I've felt all year."
(Needles Are Pricking My Eyes is an emo-band title just waiting to be picked up, btw.)
Most of this grouchiness could probably be placed on my $*(!@#% Broncos choking themselves out of the playoffs but still: grumble, grumble.
_______ *Of course, never let it be said that the environmental Left never capitalizes on environmental events. Relatedly, I think this footnote is a good place to say that, even though I might not like Bush, I’m quite glad that JohnKerryWhoServedInVietnam never controlled the White House. Yeesh, what a doofus.
The light-hearted nature over the past few days (as well as lighter posting) is intentional. There's lots to be thankful for this year, and all apologies to Christopher Hitchens (PBUH), this doesn't feel like the time of year to rant and rave about the problems of society.
So in that spirit, here's a nice hot mug of Christmas fun to warm you this holiday night, wherever you may be:
Who says that globalization is all bad? I particularly enjoyed the bouncing and the "four something birds". A hearty slap on the back to you, sirrahs, and you're welcome to come over to my house to celebrate and come a wassailin' with us. I think the rum would only improve your performances.
Cheyenne Mountain High School, my alma mater (’03) made the news. Black tar heroin?!! Either I missed out on the cool parties back in the day or things have taken a sudden turn towards a Darren Aronofsky film (or both, really).
Ehh, it’s been a light day of blogging material in these parts. I’m going to try and watch a Clay Shirky speech, and if he inspires any thoughts, I’ll post ‘em.
I have seen the sulfurous, obsidian demon-heart of web commerce, and its name is Swoopo. It’s simple enough: you buy an amount of bids for the products on their site. Each time you bid, the auction price goes up $0.15 and the auction is extended 15 seconds. Some times, few enough people bid, that you can find 8 GB iPod touches for $34.65 (!!!).
It’s at this point that the Voldemorts at Swoopo, recognizing the avarice and addictive greed within 97.2% of all consumers, stand back and allow the customers to devour themselves and their remaining savings. As Jeff Atwood from Coding Horrorput it:
In short, swoopo is about as close to pure, distilled evil in a business plan as I've ever seen. They get paid for everything up front, and as they drop ship everything there's no inventory or overhead to worry about. It is almost brilliantly evil, in a sort of evil genius way.
Don’t go. You’ll get sucked in, and soon you’ll be pulling a Gollum-dive into the molten hell of Mt. Doom known as a credit score of 230.
Today he links to a 25 year-old article which points out that inflexible companies are what the UAW wanted:
Rigid work rules are not a mere by-product of unionism. They are central to the collective bargaining system and in fact have been praised by labor scholars as one of its great strengths. During the postwar era of prosperity, they were thought to dovetail nicely with the form of business organization that seemed destined to rule the world, the large corporate bureaucracy.
He’s got the whole thing wrapped up quite well (RTWT), but let me reiterate that a key point from this whole ordeal: command-and-control economies seem very appealing if you presume an entirely commanded-and-controlled society. It’s a simple fact, however, that when there are multiple arrangements of power and regulation, capital will nearly always flow towards the more flexible, less taxed, and overall freer arrangement.
The migration of capital happens, people. Ya might not like it, but to believe that a heavily regulated company can compete with an unregulated company, whether domestically or internationally, is ostrich-like in its ignorance. Every time you feel a little doubt in the efficacy of the “less regulation” crowd, simply look at unionized labor-heavy industries, where union heads have, through legalized thuggery, been able to browbeat corporations into stiff, inefficient pay structures with asinine work laws and schedules. And what happens? Non-unionized forces end up outperforming their more burdened competitors.
Now, imagine yourself a Barack Obama supporter: for 8 long years, you’ve ground your teeth to Chiclet-esque nubs at every crime committed by the Bush Administration. You realize*, however, that the only way for progressive values to grow in popularity is through reaching out to new voters, moderate voters, and disillusioned Republicans. You also realize^ that the stereotype of the Left by others is a whiny, narrow people who at once are incredibly sensitive to the “patriotic” question and are prone to hyperbole, sanctimony, historical amnesia, and vilifying your political opponents.
Now, knowing all that, what kind of website would you want to avoid creating? One that that makes a historically myopic claim? One that is over-the-top gooey about one electoral cycle success? Perhaps one that unintentionally fulfilled the stereotypes of your political movement? Sounds good to me.
“That's why I'm hanging my flag. I hate that conservatives have owned the symbol. It's my country and my flag, too.”
Riiiight. I remember the Liberals Can’t Have Flags pamphlet I received under my door in 2003, instructing me to compare my neighbors voting record against their lawn decorations, and then encouraged me to "act accordingly". How could I forget?
The site also raises the question: if now it’s okay for Americans to proudly fly the flag, what’s changed? Obama has been an exemplary model of third-term-Bush so far. Furthermore, isn’t “hiding behindthe flag” wrong, not just once, but for all time? Of course, we know the answer: the only thing that’s changed is the president’s party affiliation and the ineffable fuzzies-n-tingles his followers have gotten from his speeches. And, may I say, if that’s all it takes to make the national emblem a palatable sight again, I’m pretty sure I know which group’s really politicizing the flag.
------------------------------- *In theory. Most progressives delude themselves into thinking people are already progressive and that disenfranchisement , social inequalities, and American Idol re-runs (that are all part of the Jewish-Catholic-Bible Belt-Mormon-Gordon Gekko-Amerikkka cabal/bookclub) are put in place to thwart the collective will. Little did they know that their conspiracy is, in fact, itself a conspiracy propagated by the lizard-people who have ruled the world posing as the British royal family. I wish I was making this up. My, how I do love the internets.
^In theory (again). Lots of progressives think other people think they are merely optimistic dreamers who, goshdarnit, just have great hearts and simply care too much. They also think that they are cool by proxy since they share George Clooney and Woody Harrelson’s views on gay marriage.
Mary Anastasia O'Grady wrote a heartbreaking article in yesterday's WSJ. In it she detailed the current efforts by Rep. Pete Hoekstra (Michigan Dutch Fever, Catch It!) to get to the bottom of the murders of a Christian missionary and her infant daughter. O'Grady unflinchingly writes:
On that day the Bowers family was flying in a single-engine plane over the Amazon toward their home in Iquitos. Mrs. Bowers was holding the infant on her lap when a bullet fired by the Peruvian Air Force, under direction of the CIA, hit the aircraft, traveled through her back and into Charity's skull. The plane crash-landed on the Amazon River. Mr. Bowers, his young son and the pilot survived. Neither the plane nor its passengers were found to be involved in any way in the drug business and initial reports said that the mistaken attack was a tragic one-time error.
One-time my ass. (Sorry, this topic gets me really heated. But you couldn't tell, right?)
Hopefully, this will put a little dent into the government's biggest mistake in its history, the drug war. A large amount of the wrong-headed support for the war on drugs comes from evangelical Christian households, people who supported Mike Huckabee for president (Huckabites?). I'll be the first to admit I don't have numbers to back that up, but my extensive anecdotal experience with the community supports the statement. Just trust me, that, for a myriad number of reasons, many evangelicals have no problem voting in a fashion that conforms state law to match their personal morality.
For those type of voters, stories like this just need to be dropped into the evangelical-chain-email loop and hopefully they'll metastasize to gargantuan "conventional wisdom" status.
Y'know, sorta like the "[Insert Democratic Presidential Candidate Name Here]: The Antichrist???" emails that fill my inbox every 4 years.
Hitch keeps rolling on. Really, the man is amazing. Taking onChristmas? Christmas? The word cojones fails to capture 10% of this man's gumption. All credit to him.
With word that Alan Colmes, Punching Bag Extraordinaire, will be leaving Fox News at the end of the year, it's time to find a new home for the man who you almost feel bad for, he's losing so badly. Almost. Some places he might find familiar:
To my fellow Americans who can't accept a black man as President, as the great grandson of former slaves, I want you to know that I am empathetic, sympathetic and commiserate with your predicament. I understand very well that after more than three centuries of being taught, conditioned and indoctrinated to see the black man as your inferior, it is unrealistic to think that now you can just change to respect him. That's easier said than done.
I wracked my brain for an hour this morning, trying to add my own twist to this man's post. Nothing. What's a guy supposed to do when he faces this?
We are living in a time when custom and tradition has grown to a new level of elevation and progress. Let freedom ring, Barack Obama, from every hill, every dell, every nook and cranny of America, let freedom ring throughout every state, every city and every ghetto of this great land. Innovative and imaginative thinking is an idea whose time has come.
The man uses my mother tongue like he's Franz Kline on a 6 day patchouli bender. (Hah, I knew I could do it!)
Mr. King also ends up channeling an LRH-eqsue patter, then swerves across the median into a head-on with a St. John the Apostle reference. Watch how quickly it hits you:
We are caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality. What effects one directly, effects all indirectly. We must eradicate the slave master mentality or capitalism without rights. It is unjust. We must believe there is something in the universe that evolves for justice. Martin Luther King Jr. called it "cosmic companionship."
The world is watching American history in the making, live and in living color. We've taken an important step in the right direction by electing Barack Obama as the President of the United States. America and the world will never be the same again. I believe our country will be transformed into that New Jerusalem John saw on the island of Patmos. A New America transformed from a land of hypocrisy, bigotry, discrimination and divisiveness to an oasis of unity, liberty and freedom. We will enjoy a new respect for the human personality and a divine love for humanity.
Don King's writing is like an out-of-control skiier who manages to barely pass through each gate: a bizarre, near-disastrous, and ultimately victorious effort that leaves all witnesses wondering what-in-God's-name did they just see.
RTWT, but only if you want to be inspired to write your own rambling-yet-strangely-coherent magnum opus.
From an older post at Yeah Right, I found this Daily Beastcolumn:
Why Barack Should Grow A Beard by James Malanowski
Abe Lincoln used his transition to grow his famous whiskers. Just what Obama needs to project gravitas in these troubled times. . .
The Beast includes some photoshopped options, but their almost all terrible. (Vincent Van Obama? If that's the best y'all got down there, Tina Brown, gimme a holla. I work on the cheap.)
I'm hip-but-crazy, and I STILL can't believe I'm a professor at Princeton!!
As a believer of the Edwardian-sex-appeal of facial hair (for men, that is) I love the prospect of the "coolest" man in America brangin' back the 'stache/beard.
President Obama, you have an enormous mandate for change. The world is with you. There's so much you can do. You have been given Excalibur.
Wield it for good, Mr. President, wield it for good.
In what's an otherwise really weepy piece for The Guardian, Terry Mancour gives himself away. Amidst "woe is I this holiday season and I'm planning on home-made gifting" platitudes is this bit of fool's gold:
Christmas in the south has its own regional character. Folks in the south are used to being poor, but everyone does it up right for the holidays. One of my neighbors has again put his prized camouflaged 4x4 hunting truck up on ramps, decorated it with lights, and put Santa behind the wheel so it looks like it's taking off into the night. Two weeks early, too. Across town some joker has advertised a shoot your own Christmas tree farm, where one can both buy and harvest your own tree and also participate in a holiday turkey shoot (an ancient southern tradition combining our obsession with firearms and holiday cheer – it's a competitive shoot where the winners take home frozen turkeys and hams. I am not making this up. I could not make this up.)
In the absence of regular snow, the holidays are filled with tractor-pulled hay rides, Moravian candle-teas, hyper-tacky drive-through living nativity scenes and a seasonal menu that belies south's reputation for chic poverty cuisine. Due to our long cultural tradition of relative poverty, the Christmas season has always been a special time of excess and celebration for southerners, and it shows during the seasonal parties. The old southern church ladies have Christmas recipes that they jealously guard and only prepare (in the strictest secrecy) to be savoured but once a year. Bourbon balls and pecan confections are as much a part of our holiday as Christmas pudding and crackers are to y'all.
Any mention of the South that fails to include the premium-grade trash like gifts of college football garters and coffins and Santa-on-ATV ornaments and Biker Santas is a fraud! I call shenanigans! Terry Mancour, if that is your real name, you failed to capture the spirit of a Southern Christmas. Might I point you in the right direction?
He'd offer two "Ho's", but he's still not over the SEC Championship game.
For making me snort my morning beverage through my nose, I award the author of this piece: a bottle of Martinelli's sparkling cider (the drank of champs, that one), the DVDs of a "One Tree Hill" season of his/her choice, and a 5 minute backrub by Neel "Don't You Call Me Mr. Clean" Kashkari.
In the first post of this blog I wrote my first "heresy", based on this section:
Where has the scorn for politics gone? How can one guy, on his own, purify the industry that employed Jesse Helms, Ted Kennedy, Strom Thurmond, Robert Byrd, James Traficant, Kwame Kilpatrick, William Jefferson, and Larry Tapdancin' Craig? Especially since he himself (Obama) has Rezko's in the closet? As it must be reiterated, it seems, daily: Obama is a politician from Chicago. CHICAGO!!!
It might be one of the most lasting thoughts this blog will ever hold. Obama might be great going forward, but for one to believe that he went through the Illinois system lily-white and untouched is just...just...I don't have a word to describe how ignorant or stupid that would be. Stignorpid. It'd be stignorpid.
Peep this story from the Tribune about Blagojevich. For those keeping score at home, I found mentions of:
- Gov. Blaggy offering important jobs to union's choice candidates in exchange for an important union job for himself. (Gettelfinger says there's nothing to see here, nothing to see at all, so move along, citizen. MOVE IT!)
- Blaggs offering to help the Tribune Co. sell the Chicago Cubs if the Tribune will just, you know, fire a few Chicago Tribune editorial board members who were critical of the governor. Nothin' much.
- I'll let U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (of Scooter Libby fame) spell out the next one:
"[The federal charges] allege that Blagojevich put a 'for sale' sign on the naming of a United States senator; involved himself personally in pay-to-play schemes with the urgency of a salesman meeting his annual sales target; and corruptly used his office in an effort to trample editorial voices of criticism."
Nice.
- In an interview with the Tribune, Blaggy said, "whether you tape me privately or publicly, I can tell you that whatever I say is always lawful and the things I'm interested in are always lawful." That sounds so innocent. Because we all know someone who is 100% above the board all the time.
Read the whole thing, and ask yourself "Could a state that had this kind of Governor and this kind of state political machine, could a state that has a long history of vast and deep-seated corruption produce a truly clean politician?" Don't be stignorpid.
...that only 61% of 2007 murders have been solved? It's down nearly 30% from the highest "clearance rate" of 91% in 1963.
The AP ledes the story in typical fashion*:
Despite the rise of DNA fingerprinting and other "CSI"-style crime-fighting wizardry, more and more people in this country are getting away with murder.
Who wants to bet that the reason more people are "getting away" with murder is because of the DNA fingerprinting and CSI-skills rather than in spite of them? In the middle of the 20th century, police could more easily plant evidence on suspects. In the past, prejudiced cops could berate/intimidate beleaguered immigrants and minorities into corroborating state's evidence much more easily.
The 34% decline in "cleared" homicides could easily be attibutable to the unrelenting nature of modern law-enforcement technology. No matter how many officers of the Chicago Police Department testify to the fact that they saw a black teen sexually assaulting some suburban girl, the DNA can override them all. It hasn't always been that way.
I don't think that the above is entirely true myself (I think some of this can be blamed on the increasingly anarchic and neglected nature of most American urban environs), but it's waaaay more convincing than simply marveling aloud "How can more murderers be getting away with it? WE HAVE BLACK LIGHTS?!"
-----
*I don't know why I still expect the news wires to have cogent or thoughtful prose in the reports. I suppose that it's not even fair to the AP or Reuters staff writers to demand New Yorker argumentation. I've written several pieces under pressure, and I know how it feels to have your boss standing over your shoulder, either metaphorically or literally: at that point you don't really care if what you've written makes clean sense, just as long as it appears to have been written by at least a high-school student you'll let it slide.
If you had doubts on the quality of union-led manufacturing, doubt no more. They're even inept at shameless agitprop!
This isn't quite what the UAW envisioned: they were hoping to have some American flags waving, a weeping Indian, and a mournful John Williams score. That and a picture of Uncle Sam commanding us to support unions and buy victory bonds. And, if they could find one, a grubby faced boy staring at an empty bowl.
But you get the gist of the message: "Feel sorry for us and feel guilty that you make money working at a job with computers, and if that doesn't work we'll threaten economic armageddon if demands aren't met."
This is the kind of tactic that a delusional or corrupt leadership would think would work. And thaaat's why the Detroit 3 are going to declare bankruptcy.
This is more of a question/musing than a prediction, but here it goes.
Todd Gitlin wrote a piece on Obama as a techno-community-organizer-par-excellence. Writing in a tonethat could be conservatively described as fawning and sycophantic, Gitlin clearly has visions of web 2.0-backed Democratic supermajorities dancing in his head. He writes:
Now, thanks to his deft use of the social-network applications of the Web, Obama retains the means for netroots operations, high-octane fund-raising, smear-fighting and get-out-the-vote operations. His more than 3 million names—disproportionately young and energetic—remain a political force as long as he satisfies them that, once in office, he can deliver.
Gitlin isn't alone, apparently.
Democrats believe (and many Republicans fear) that Obama allowed his party and its allies to take an enormous leap forward in both technological sophistication and grass-roots activism. Preserving those gains and building on them is a priority for a man who sees organizing not only as instrumental but also as a way of transforming democracy itself.
That's from E.J. Dionne's column last month about the debate on who gets to keep the Obama campaign's 3 million contacts, the DNC or Obama's people.
Now, I know this spits in the face of all the hope we've been brewin' over these past few months, but can I ask: Can anyone prove to me that the entire Obama-netroots organism is different from other Web 2.0 phenomenons?
Show me one sustained web-event. Nearly all of them have a brief tizzy of wild popularity followed by a dramatic dowsing. Even cult terror-squads like the Colbert Nation have drawn down dramatically from their highs. Just browsing the "Causes" on Facebook, if you take 3 or 4 of the most popular and least controversial topics (stuff like Curing Cancer, Animal Rights, and Child Abuse) and add their supporters together, here's the numbers I crunched: 7.9 million supporters (assuming no overlap between causes), $133,000 donated. That's $.0168 per person.
There's a cruelly funny quality to this situation, where all these D.C./political types are giddy over the prospects of politics being permanently cool. I don't buy it. There's just gotta be a decline in political awareness. At some point a lot of the people who are on the Obama lists will move away from it, bored by the inanity of "Help President Obama Secure Card Check For American Unions, Use This Webvideo Form As A Guide For Your Own YouTube Plea to Congress!!!" emails and "Fight the Emoulments Clause!!!" Facebook groups.
We millenials are a proud people, lazy and slack. We practically invented the digital poseur. Why should that change now?
I know it's the big deal at the moment, this Detroit automaker business, but there's a more transcendent lesson to be learned in this clime. When I see this:
I see a group of men and women who are economically ignorant. They seem to be a wonderful family, close-knit and proud of their lives' work. Between all of them they've given 300 years to GM plants. I know that I would love to spend time with their family because I've spent weekends away from Ann Arbor with many families just like theirs. They say things differently than I do (when referring to their entry into the GM workplace they say they were "hired in" to the company. Until Michigan I had never heard the preposition "in" paired with hired. "By" or "on", but never "in"), and they have fundamentally different worldviews, but they are generally warm, decent Americans.
Those wonderful qualities, though, don't stop UAW members from being the chief problem at the Big 3. Confront them with the simple comparison of non-union companies vs. unionized companies, and UAW members will give convoluted responses wandering from "subsidies" from Asia to "unfair labor practices". It's not that complicated. When you have inflexibility in an employment arrangement, you lose the ability to adapt and change. The unfortunate fact is that manufacturing is becoming less human-centric. More products can be made with less people. If a company can't pare down its workforce when it becomes more efficient, they become bloated and wasteful. They lose their ability to compete for profits. They turn into GM.
President GWB has his new digs back in his old haunt, Dallas. I have to correct something, though. It's rare that my life lines up with public figures, so I'll chip in here. Here's a blurb from the article:
The President and Laura Bush are going home - to the leafy, affluent neighborhood of Dallas where they lived before scoring public housing.
White House officials confirmed today that the Bushes had purchased a house in Dallas' Preston Hollow neighborhood, home to such out-sized Texas millionaires as T. Boone Pickens and Ross Perot.
The Bushes paid about $3 million for the sprawling 8,501-sq. ft. home, a source close to the deal told the Daily News.
I grew up in Preston Hollow. In fact, I remember driving past George W. Bush's house before he was governor. It would get pointed out that there lived the son of President Bush and did you know he owns the Texas Rangers? His house was no more than 5 streets over from mine.
Here's the thing: my family was nowhere near the wealthiest family in Dallas, let alone the state. Don't get me wrong, I grew up quite comfortably, but I'll be darned if it was upper-class. We were a standard upper-middle class family in a standard upper-middle class neighborhood. These are rough numbers in my memory, but our house was about 3200 sq feet, and it was about $400k-500k (I think). We also had a pool. Again, it was a nice house in a good neighborhood, but it wasn't opulent.
There were houses in our neighborhood that were big, and if you went a half-mile one way or another you could find a block that had large houses all in a row, but it was hardly the norm. Now, as we moved out to Colorado in 1999 we could already see a change as developers razed single-levels from the 1950's (like ours) and built multi-story houses, so maybe things are way different than I remember. This seems like such an over-reach on the part of the Daily News to fit the story into the Bush-is-an-out-of-touch-millionaire-sending-our-boys-to-die-all-while-ignoring-an-economic-armageddon-on-the-horizon meme.
And the moment's gone: my wonderfully humdrum life moves one way, one of the most powerful men in the world goes another.
UPDATE: I looked around for a few minutes, found the location of GWB's house, I was right: he's all of a .8 miles from my childhood house.
Jim Manzi at NRO has a fine display of number-crunching the GM restructuring proposal. For those of you who've managed to avoid math for the last decade, I'll reduce the post to a Gerber-baby-dose of easy words (hooray poli-sci and sociology majors!):
- General Motors, it must be said, is already scheduled to receive $8 billion+ in government money. They're asking for $18-20 large on top of that.
- Manzi gathers (and I agree, btw) that GM's own assessment of its spending is wishful at best, and Michael-Jackson-in-Neverland delusional at worst. Even if every assumption GM makes about the restructuring were to come true, that the downsizing will happen at or under budget, they'll still blow through $10 billion by March. If demand drops 10% from current levels (and who doesn't think that will happen in our economy?), they're through $16-18 billion by June.
- GM claims they'll be able to reduce costs and improve competitiveness (mmm, business speak!), but provide no explanation for how they'll become more efficient. They've cut employment by 70,000 in the last 4 years, but the cost per manufacturing employee has remained the same. So they now promise that they'll cut more employees out, but then they claim that it'll cut costs by $700m above and beyond the mere removal of employees.
In other words, if I was firing 5 workers who each made $50k and I claimed that I was saving $333k in the move, you'd say, "Dude, wtf? Where's that other $83k coming from?" (5 x 50k = 250k. 333k - 250k = 83k. Stay with me psych majors!) And if I were GM I'd reply "Just trust me. It's your patriotic duty to support Detroit car companies. It'll all work out. Besides, I've been doing great so far!" This is where you should punch me in the face, tear up my business card, and say "Good day, sir!"
- GM, apropos of nothing, claims that they'll improve their market share by 10% of current holdings in 2009. Last year they projected that in 2009 their cars would account for 20.6% of the cars in the U.S. Now they claim it's going to be 22.5% for the year. Why/where they see this improvement in their performance, they don't say.
It could be anything: they project that the majority of Americans put money down on a Cavs-Lakers NBA Final next year at 17:1 odds and GM analysts like the addition of Mo Williams to the Cleveland squad? Sure! GM's managed to lock down the countless hordes of monkeys who've managed to get learner's permits? Sounds good! Any reason you can think of to suggest that GM will sell a greater of proportions next year, now's your chance!
This is me reading the GM proposal.
In a related move, I would like to announce that my previous projections for going on no dates with Christina Hendricks in 2009 has been revised. I now project that we'll hook up at at least 45 houseparties next year and eventually move in together around Thanksgiving. Why? DON'T YOU QUESTION MY NUMBERS, SIR!
Snowden's Blog Statute #12: No Joan Holloway Pics Left Behind
- I'll leave it to Manzi to wrap it up:
Now, the most obvious response to all of this is to say that I’m the fish at this table, because this is not a real business plan, but simply a political document. It exists to provide political cover to members of Congress. But if that’s the case, it’s an unintentionally beautiful illustration of why industrial policy fails. It’s both economically crucial and very hard to allocate capital well; that’s why people who are good at it make so much money. Businesses struggle to do this well, and they’re really trying. What do you think the odds are that this is a wise use of money, when the people involved are barely pretending to try?
So Harvard's down $8 billion in the past 4 months, now cruising at about 28 bills...
...It's cast a funereal pallor over the planning of the Winter Seasonal Nonreligious Blah-liday Gala of Harvard, taking place at the Harvard Sailing Club. They've already made drastic changes to the Harvard menu, plummeting from Beluga 1 to a Sevruga 2 in the first course creme-fraiche-and-caviar blinis.
"We are aware that the sevruga caviar has a stronger sea taste and smaller egg," said Eleanor Worthe, 5th-generation Harvard student and Blah-liday Gala director, "but I've received assurances from our Harvard purchasing staff, our Harvard kitchen, and the Harvard somelliers that they'll manage to incorporate it into our revised "recession" influenced celebration. After all, we are all Harvard people, not some etiquette-less rubes from somewhere like Cornell," Worthe finished with a shudder, "or Brown." When asked whether the traditional Nobel-laureate-professor "date auction and naked olympics" were still in the plans, Worthe refused comment.
It's not just down at the piers that the Crimson are feeling the pinch. Ellerby Whittimore IV, Harvard '11, was hoping to spend his year abroad posing for the camera with crowds of blighted African schoolchildren and Vietnamese sweatshop women. His father, Ellerby Whittimore III, Harvard '73, has been struggling to maintain the family's $500 million inheritance, however, in these difficult times.
Said Whittimore, "Father just didn't think it prudent for me to travel to these war-torn, I'm sorry, I mean "less-fortunate" countries without a full complement of support. I've been forced to reapply to more developed countries with greater infrastructure and Harvard connections."
According to the Whittimore spokesperson, it is standard family protocol to have a "full complement" of a personal chef, a personal assistant, a personal bodyguard, and a personal advance person and aquisition expert whenever a Whittimore left the Martha's Vineyard-Georgetown corridor.
Mr. Whittimore IV now hopes to spend his year exploring the, as he puts it, "grimier elements" of Geneva and Zurich.
I think Jack Black is the only actual A-lister there. But Allison Janney, Doogie Howser, Margaret Cho, John C. Reilly, and Craig Robinson (black dude from The Office, Knocked Up, and Zach and Miri) are worth something, right?
I usually refrain from you-just-don't-get-me-you-old-person-you rhetoric. I hate what it usually represents. I hate that the culture of Mad Men was effectively obliterated by a bunch of smelly boomers whining about how their parents just didn't get it, man, Mom 'n Dad will never understand "Hair" and what makes me me, man.
That being said, this article titled "Scientists ask: is technology re-wiring our brains?" highlights this something of a generational divide in relation to the internet. The lede betrays a brain so ill-at-ease with technology that I had to check to see if it was written by Ted Stevens.
What does a teenage brain on Google look like? Do all those hours spent online rewire the circuitry? Could these kids even relate better to emoticons than to real people?
These sound like concerns from worried parents. But they're coming from brain scientists.
Firstly: BRAIN scientists?!?! That sounds like a second-grader's description of his father's job. "My mommy's a cake maker and my daddy's a brain scientist."
Secondly, am I alone in detecting a mild confusion and panic at the changing times? I mean, couldn't we just replace the words "Google", "online", and "emoticons" with "jazz", "dancing", and "records" and have a Concerned Parents of Milwaukee pamphlet from 1922?
And then there's this:
When the brain spends more time on technology-related tasks and less time exposed to other people, it drifts away from fundamental social skills like reading facial expressions during conversation, Small asserts.
So brain circuits involved in face-to-face contact can become weaker, he suggests. That may lead to social awkwardness, an inability to interpret nonverbal messages, isolation and less interest in traditional classroom learning.
Because we all know that teenagers free from the taint of technology are never socially awkward, they never fail to accurately catch the unspoken message, and goldurnit, they are plum giddy about all that skool lernin!
Gordon Brown has insisted ministers were not aware of the arrest of Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green.
The MP was arrested, held for nine hours, and his homes and House of Commons office searched by police probing alleged Home Office leaks
Thomas Paine wrote once (paraphrasing) that the state often moves from being a necessary evil to an intolerable one. When a counter-terrorism squad raids a man's house, detains him for hours, and confiscates his papers from home and office, and that man is a member of Parliament, what kind of protections can an average citizen hope to have from a force like the UK government? This nation, the one we call the United Kingdom, long moved from being a necessary state to an intolerable state.
The shame, however, lies with her enfeebled citizenry. As a nation, they have given their liberties to a coterie of blindered do-gooders in exchange for unfulfilled promises of health and security. They're getting what they deserve. The complaints, perhaps well-meaning, are wasteful: if you don't like it, get out while you can. Everything else is mere quibbles over the type of makeup to put on the corpse.
I don't need England to stand with us in liberty. Give me Australia, give me Singapore, give me India. Huh, look at that -- Queen Victoria's children left her years ago. All that's left at her side is a few wrinkled butlers and groundskeepers who only have memories.
Well, the week off was great, full of good food, loud guns, and thought-provoking conversations. But enough dithering, sirrahs! The world awaits!
In Florida, city officials are caught trying to create a garden-police-state:
In what was estimated to be the largest crowd to ever attend a Kenneth City Council meeting, an outraged group of residents railed at the proposal that would regulate the upkeep of both the exterior and interior of all property in the town.
The proposal basically sets standards for upkeep and appearance and gives town officials the right to enter homes. If the owner refuses to allow the official to enter, the town can go to a judge for an "administrative search warrant" to allow access to the interior of buildings. Violations would cost up to $250 a day.
Apparently these Shadbush-staffel would be prepared to make judgments on beauty "violations" on the spot. And if you haven't had enough o f the totalitarian nanny-state, here's the UK edition:
Drunk women who stagger about in high heels are to be protected - at public expense - from twisting their ankles.
They will be handed flip-flops to wear by police outside nightclubs as they wend their way home.
The scheme is part of a £30,000 drive by police and councillors to prevent 'alcohol-related harm'.
It has been prompted by fears that women wearing stilettos or similar footwear could tumble over.
Officials also claim that female revellers are at risk of cutting the soles of their feet by walking barefoot.
The flip-flops will be given to anyone whose footwear is 'uncomfortable, inappropriate or soiled' and will be paid for with a Home Office grant.
Of course. The next logical step is for the heels-n-stilettos industry to get a bailout from the UK government. I'm sorry, did I say bailout? I meant a bridge loan.
It's rare that I ever echo quotes from the LaRouche-iean/Naderite camp, but if you're not outraged you're not paying attention.
I'm back at home for a few days for the Thanksgiving break. I don't know how much time will be available for posting, so don't expect a bevy of info and insight. I am going to the Whistling Pines Gun Club today (President Obama's on the way, boys. Shoot 'em while you got 'em. Gunz W000!), so if there's some quality video or photos, I'll post.
In case I don't post this week, I think it would be appropriate to leave this becoming-viral video at the top. This is a soldier returning home from 14 months in Iraq. Witness true thanksgiving:
I wish every one of the men and women who've served could receive such a welcome.
There's so much happening in the world, so many things to comment on and report, but I reject all such worldly distractions. I come to you today singing a single note:
"In War: Resolution.
In Defeat: Defiance." -- W. Churchill
"I always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: "O Lord, make our enemies quite ridiculous!" God granted it." -- Voltaire
Boys, win this one for the long suffering fans everywhere, like this brave young man from the belly of the beast:
Rest easy, my son. You've got a whole life of gainful employment awaiting you, unlike your classmates.
There is truly nothing redeeming about these people:
They are a blight upon my planet. Every tear they shed is a drop of joy in my cup.
I leave you with Capt. Picard addressing the faithful:
I couldn't find a way to describe it until now. In the past week, as the Big 3 subsidy has risen as the first post-election news of import, I've had a familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I couldn't place my finger on why it was familiar.
It's the feeling of Michiganomics.
Not the school, peace be upon it, the state. The panic over possible closings, insistent hands thrust in the face of government cheese dispensers, discussion of union reform, all of these kinds of events have been par for the course for The Wolverine State over the past 30 years. When you are a political/economics nerd in the state, you grow used to the culture. I did.
But I've moved out, moved back to Colorado. I'll have been gone from Michigan for 1 year this December, and already I've forgotten the feelings: the malaise (to quote a terrible president), the shallow seeds of hope that are perpetually being uprooted by a world racing over and past its ancestor. If I were to describe the feeling in a 1,000 words:
This week has been revelatory. I see Nardelli, Waggoner, Mullaly, Gettelfinger, and Stabenow in front of Congress, first pleading for assistance, then demanding help in a voice that betrayed the fear behind the words. I've seen this before, I tell myself. On Facebook I see the status update: "If President Bush bailed out New Orleans, why doesn't he bail out Detroit? He's turning his back on Michigan." This kind of statement, patently naive as it is, still echoes the man's real emotions, his confusion and disillusionment with the treadmill of pain he knows as "life in Michigan."
I see all this stuff, and it reminds me of Michigan. It reminds me of the pains and pleasures I observed every day over 3 years. But I'm the rarity out here in the West. I guarantee that most people in my neighborhood have no emotional connection with the Rust Belt area, and as far as they are concerned, American automakers were dead years ago. Besides, they'll ask, Toyota's are made in Kentucky, aren't they? Screw Detroit. They'd be right, of course. You couldn't walk them down the streets of the Midwest and point out the dilapidated 1950's grandeur in every building. You couldn't describe to them the smell of a holiday dinner put on the table by a man who's entire essence was tied to two letters on a blue rectangle. I'm not sure that it would make a difference any way.
Out here in the West, life is an entirely different species of beast. It's as if we've evolved from the cities and lives of the Midwest into a world that's more...alive, I guess. I don't think my 15 year old brother is even familiar with the idea of a union, or with high unemployment. Hell, I don't think my 22 year old brother has any actual experience with that blight. It's one thing to see Wolf Blitzer show a picture of a desolate street or corrupt city, it's another to see friends, with tears in their eyes, move away from the land of their childhood in the search of a better job and better life.
Now the rest of the country's learning about that world, and I'm not sure that's good. This is one kind of problem that 'awareness' rarely helps. Michigan needs to break free, start afresh, rather than try to rescue itself.
What I saw during the hearings this week was 4 men and a woman who are trying to convince their countrymates that their industry (and region) were worthy of saving. Perhaps this time they convinced enough bureaucrats to get the money to stave off death for another year, but I know they haven't convinced their fellow citizens. Don't fight the end, Detroit. We can start again.
No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. -Samuel Beckett
Kathleen Parker thinks the conservative evangelical Christian influence in the Republican party is to blame for the failings of the GOP and conservatism. Well, she doesn’t actually call them that. In her Post column, she chooses to describe the “gorilla in the pulpit”, Christians, as “right-wing oogedy-boogedy” types, a phrase deemed too childish and reductive by Air America Radio.
It’s unfortunate that she wrote such a juvenile column (all content aside), because Parker’s column deserves a look for a few reasons, and not simply so people can see a prime example of pandering and self-loathing. Let's turn it around, shall we...
...How do I know this? How can I be so sure that she’s desperately trying to fit in to the Beltway culture of lukewarm Episcopalianism? Because I knowWashington elites. I’ve worked with some in D.C., I’ve been raised amongst grandparents of the same cloth as William F Buckley, these are the waters I swim in, man. I know these people. I mean, if the name “Snowden” doesn’t say “see you at the fox hunt on Saturday?” nothing does.
I know that so few D.C.-Republicans are asking “Why are Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, et al. so popular yet the GOP lost?”, but let me clue them in to the answer: it’s because many of us in the rest of America are convinced that those hosts are sympathetic to “Joe the Plumber” types and not merely using us as a political flock which is directed and instructed by a few elegant shepherds.
There’s not a sneaking suspicion that Rush Limbaugh is tired of hearing playful barbs about the “snake-handlin’ rubes” in conservatism by fellow journalists while having drinks at the Mayflower Hotel. No one worries that Dennis Prager is okay with “religious” people but gets creeped out by the passionate ones who believe that the Bible says more than just “make sure you have a white wedding and everyone is well-dressed at your child’s christening.”…
Even after writing those last three ill-conceived paragraphs, even after making massive generalizations about a nuanced people group, even after all the poorly-hidden scorn, even then I wrote with more equanimity for Beltway residents than Parker wrote for evangelicals. But that’s doesn’t matter as much as the fact that I knew I was being unfair. There is nothing in Parker’s writing to signal that she’s even aware of her insularity. At least when reading Christopher Hitchens one is left with the feeling that the man is at least familiar with the positions he chooses to eviscerate.
Pundits often have to answer the charge of “being out-of-touch” from disgruntled readers. My complaint, however, isn’t based on a personal grievance, that an author is unfamiliar with my specific life details. I’m no apologist for Dr. Dobson. In the past few years I’ve taken several large steps away from the evangelical Religious Right, the culture of my childhood and teens (let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t vote Mike Huckabee for Dogcatcher). I don’t listen to “Christian” music. I don’t care much for the “culture” of safe movies and chastity rings beloved by many church parents. But I don’t consider conservative evangelicals, as Parker puts it, “the lowest brows” of the party. There might be some evangelicals who lack intellectual curiosity, but I can think of several GOP constituencies that have fewer crayons in their boxes (“The South Was Right” crowd comes to mind). The evangelical community is vast to the point of defying most descriptions. Good grief, Obama is an evangelical.
Parker knows this. Her complaint isn’t with the Obama-style evangelicals, yet she never quantifies the types of Christians she dislikes beyond playground rhetoric. “Low brows” is one jab in the litany of thinly insinuated complaints Parker has with the ill-defined “oogedy-boogedy” party. She writes sentence after sentence of what the GOP is not, attackin evangelicals by proxy. According to Parker, the GOP suffers because it is white, married, and Christian, while the country is becoming less of each.
Is there a memo I missed? Did Dr. Dobson mail out a missive saying “round up the single Jews and the Blacks!!”? Look, I have big, repeat BIG, problems with Focus on the Family, but only a stultifying idiot like Bill Maher would claim that the man is anti-minority or anti-single. One of the most amusing moments of this past campaign was the media’s initial attempt to smear Palin with revelations of her first pregnancy coming before marriage, both for herself and her daughter's, and the press's following confusion that the Palins’ reputation wasn’t injured but instead burnished by the story. It was as if they said: “Why aren’t evangelicals disappointed? Don’t they hate single mothers and sex outside of marriage?” Sorry to disappoint, MSNBC.
Evangelicals, by and large, are some of the most tolerant people around. They want to practice their personal faith as they interpret it. It's the secular types and "moderate" Christians who want to rein in the evangelicals. I'm convinced that 90% of the people who are uncomfortable with evangelicals have rarely or never met one. All they ever hear is their peers deploring the Christian Right which makes the Christians even more deplorable, &c. This recursive crap-flinging soon creates a boogie monster (an oogedy-boogedy monster, perhaps?) that has no basis in experience.
As a personal example, let's talk about the dreaded gay issue. I’m again outside the evangelical camp on the idea of marriage, libertarian-ish as I am, but I don’t know a single evangelical (dreaded anti-gays that they are) who thinks homosexuality should be banned. They vote against gay marriage because they view marriage as a fundamentally religious institution, and if the state makes it acceptable for gay marriage the state is imposing a secular worldview upon their faiths. Yet most evangelicals I meet are for civil unions (And, if you’ll notice, Ms. Parker, part of the fab-riots happening in California is gays outraged at evangelical Black votes for Prop 8.).
I’ll close this out by quoting from the column:
“Meanwhile, it isn't necessary to evict the Creator from the public square, surrender Judeo-Christian values or diminish the value of faith in America. Belief in something greater than oneself has much to recommend it, including most of the world's architectural treasures, our universities and even our founding documents.”
I think that statement, besides being nauseatingly patronizing, show just how much religion Parker can stand: a cross on top of a pretty building, a nice quote from the Bible atop a college library (in Latin, please!), and historical context for those famous dead people, the Founding Fathers. I mean, they were Christians, but what did they ever do?
What happened to Detroit? How could it go from entrenched industry leader to wheezy little brother in less than half a century? There are numerous reasons for the decline, but it's correct to state that it was not based on the credit collapse, on the rise of a Prius, or on any other singular moment. Neither Rome nor Detroit were built or destroyed in a day. The decline was comprised of hundreds of poorly conceived plans, weak-willed compromises, and short-sighted policies.
U.S. News's Chief Business Correspondent, Rick Newman, has a list titled "10 Cars That Sank Detroit" on his blog. It's a great quick read. Besides taking the reader down Memory-of-My-Crappy-Car-Lane, Newman's list also is useful as a collection of cars that were the product of multiple mistakes. A "Who's Who" of Corporate Fail, if you will. Follow me as we pick over the bones...
(quotes in italics)
- Ford Pinto - This ill-fated subcompact came to epitomize the arrogance of Big Auto. Ford hurried the Pinto to market in the early 1970s to battle cheap imports like the Volkswagen Beetle that were selling for less than $2,000.
So, first stop on the list is a car that first came off the line in 1970. "Wait!" you're exclaiming, "I thought that "fuel efficiency" was what caused the collapse of Detroit!" Not so fast, my friend. The Pinto, now recognized to be a disaster, was a lazy and bloated corporation's response to foreign competition*. Up to this point in America, the only real competition for "average" consumers was other American manufacturers. Foreign cars at this point (like Jaguar, BMW, Mercedes) were luxury vehicles.
So when Toyota and Volkswagen began importing cars, what happened? Detroit arrogantly put out a p.o.s. that's message was, "Screw it. We know this is poorer quality than our competitors, but we don't care. Heck, we'll even throw in an exploding fuel tank, and then refuse to acknowledge its a problem! Why? Because you'll still buy it, Joe America. You'll buy it because it's American. You'll buy it because it's your patriotic duty." This appeal to loyalty has sway with many Americans at first, but even for many patriots, this was too much:
Unfortunately for Detroit, exploding-rear-fuel-tanks stop at the water's edge, and the first 'loyal-to-imports' consumer was born.
- Chevrolet Astro - While Chrysler, Toyota, and Honda were refining their minivans in the 1990s and coming up with innovations like hideaway seats and electric sliding doors, GM was offering an old, truck-based van gussied up with carpeting and cupholders. . . Before long, GM was effectively out of the minivan segment. No biggie—those were just mainstream American families the automaker decided to ignore.*
Rick Newman has already beaten me to much of the snark with this most-excellent summary, but fear not. There's more to mock, and I'll press on until every wisecrack has a home.
- Jaguar X-Type - Ford bought the British luxury brand Jaguar in 1990, when all three Detroit automakers were seeking ways to expand their global reach. Eventually, Ford decided to build an entry-level Jaguar starting at around $30,000 for people looking to move up from, say, a Mercury Marquis. The down-market move "represented everything that Jaguar is not," says Libby of J. D. Power.
See, here's the thing: Jaguar was always a luxury brand, and Ford was always a "consumer" brand. They aren't writing books titled "Henry Ford: The Genius Behind the Luxury Car." He was the father of the "Affordable Car". So when Ford, drunk with profits from trucks and several sedans, could've spent the money reinvesting into improving their already popular products, they instead chose to buy up a brand that had zero-overlap with their current base.* Ford always was "everything that the Jaguar was not", and they were idiots for thinking so.
Ford then followed one foot into the cow-patty with the other, and built a Jaguar that was simply the Jag label on a Ford body. Really. The leaders in Dearborn, in an attempt to create a "middle-class luxury car", simply put some metal on the Ford Mondeo body (better known as the Ford Contour in the U.S.), dusted off their hands, and asked "Who wants one?" You can predict the results from this half-cocked development plan*.
- Chrysler Sebring - Did Chrysler engineers set out to build the world's most boring car? Of course not. Yet Chrysler still produces this blandmobile to keep assembly lines running*(emphasis mine --S.) and maintain a presence, however weak, in the sedan market. . .
. . . and . . .
- Jeep Compass - Quick, what's the difference between the Jeep Compass, the Jeep Liberty, and the Jeep Patriot? The bosses at Chrysler, which owns Jeep, could explain, but the real answer is that Chrysler has oversaturated its strongest brand lineup in a desperate attempt to boost sales... "The Compass is not needed," says James Bell of Intellichoice.com. "Just the Liberty, please." The Compass has the same mechanical underpinnings as the Dodge Caliber, which helps illustrate one of Detroit's favorite tricks: Create multiple versions of every product under a bunch of different brand names, hoping that if buyers shun one, they'll take a more favorable view of another.* Message to Detroit: Consumers aren't that stupid. Give them a bit more credit, and you might have a future.
Rick Newman, FTW. Few industries are as besieged by overreaching unions than Detroit automakers. For years the unions have managed to hoist plans and policies on the Big 3 leadership that most Americans would find egregiously onerous. That doesn't absolve corporate leadership from this fisking, but it is an added burden on the companies to be in constant fear of employee uprising.
Example? Example.
The job bank plan. Never heard of it? You're not alone, as I'm sure all but UAW and automotive observers are unfamiliar with it. Allow me to explain the policy and its creation in a short story:
Long long ago, machines called computers and robots were being invented. They could do many things, like weld steel, turn screwdrivers, and install stereos. The men of the villages of Flint and Dearborn, men who had welded steel, turned screwdrivers, and installed stereos for decades, didn't much care for these newfangled job-stealers. Since these men all belonged to the same gang, they told their warlord: "Sir, our jobs are threatened. Help us, you're our only hope!" The warlord heard the pleas and was moved. He donned his fiercest strike-threatening armor and rode his trusty team of Teamster warhorses to the headquarters of the companies. Threatening the leaders with chaos, pickets, and empty assembly lines, the warlord commanded that the companies, if they were to install these robots, were not allowed to release the men who's jobs had been replaced. No, the leaders were required to keep paying the welders, screwdriver-turners, and stereo-installers their full wage even if they weren't working. This way, the warlord said, the leaders would be forced to find new jobs for the sad old workers. The leaders, ever desirous of peace, foolishly agreed to the bargain.
Yup. The Jobs Bank is a repository of fully-paid but not-working UAW employees. Ain't America great? Now, this puts pressure on the Big 3 leadership to "find things for the workers to do". The best idea they could think of? Duplicate!
Instead of just having the Chrysler Town & Voyager, we can also have the Dodge Caravan! Why just have the Chevy Tahoe when you could also have the GMC Yukon! Ford Explorer or Mercury Mariner or Lincoln Aviator? See, we named them all for adventuresome pioneers! But they are different, we promise!
-------
So to summarize: I've asterisked several overarching statements that, when combined, better show us just why the Big 3 have declined:
1. They arrogantly believed that a half-hearted response would prove successful enough to foreign competition, simply because the response would come from "America" instead of "foreigner lands".
2. GM was absolutely trend-deaf to the minivan craze of the 90's. They thought that their painters-van-with-upholstered-bench-seats would suffice. They were wrong.
3. & 4. Detroit mishandled expansion. GM chose to acquire crappy brands, Ford chose to aquire luxury brands. Both were bad ideas, but were made even worse by bone-headed arrogance and market ignorance. The X-Type, Ford? Really?
5. Because of obligations to their employees (due in no small part to anti-free-market unions), the Big 3 have had unbelievable labor costs and eye-bleedingly redundant hiring-n-firing policies.
6. The inability to fire a redundant worker, combined with clueless leadership, created a climate of repetitive brands and excess production. This lead to oversaturation of the brand and devaluation of the product. When you see 8,000 Tauruses (Tauri?) on a Enterprise Rental Car parking lot, you don't think much of the car.
Note that none of the reasons on this non-comprehensive list involve "fuel efficiency" or "green" alternatives. While a lack of high-mileage cars is in part a reason for the decline of the Big 3, it's at best 7th or 8th on the list of Thuddingly Stupid Decisions made over the past half-century.
In the 12 Steps Program, before an addict can ask "the Power greater than himself" to help restore him, the man must first recognize he his powerless to his addictions. Before the Power Known As The U.S. Government steps in to help Detroit, I want to see those leaders address this addiction, and admit that it's untenable, now both in the short and long term:
(H/T: Professor Perry, who's doing yeoman's work keeping track of all the b.s. surrounding the automotive industry.)
I know that I have whatever's-way-smaller-than-zero say in this whole debacle (even though it is a certainty that my generation will have to pay for it), but I say that if Pres. Obama is has already decided to subsidize Detroit, at least make Gettelfinger and Waggoner come crawling on broken glass to get their alms.
Man, I thought this would be a once-or-twice-a-month special, but looks like I was wrong:
From Congressional Quarterly:
Here’s some change that supporters of President-elect Obama may not want to see: all of the policy commitments on specific issues have been removed from his transition Web site.
On Nov. 7, global health advocates noticed that some of the details of Obama’s “fight global poverty” statement had been removed. Specifically, the site no longer promised to fully fund debt cancellation for the world’s poorest countries or provide the full U.S. contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
These posters are going to be a great collection someday.
You know, I wish all politicians had these make-your-own posters on their websites. It's really not a partisan thing with Obama, it's just that he's made it so easy to do.
I know that I'm going to be excited when President-elect Obama will get rid of those sleazy Washington lobbyists. You know, the ones that plagued the McCain campaign leadership? The insidious fat-cats that made sure Big Oil and the like received tax breaks? President Obama won't tolera--
-- WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama, who vowed during his campaign that lobbyists "won't find a job in my White House," said through a spokesman yesterday that he would allow lobbyists on his transition team as long as they work on issues unrelated to their earlier jobs.
Awww, man!
Remember,
Back to work, citizens, nothing to see here.*
*Please note that I don't really have a problem with lobbyists, as I think they are exercising what our First Amendment likes to call the "right to petition". Just pointin' out some good old-fashioned Beltway-hypocrisy.
"It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret."
"The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies." --Freeman Dyson.
Here are some my own, updated from time to time: 1. Japan is crazy. Craaaazy.
2. The U.S. didn't fund Osama bin Laden in the 80's in Afghanistan. Again: the U.S. didn't fund Osama bin Laden in the 80's in Afghanistan. Stop staying it. It's not true.
3. Most allergies are a crock of crap. Even more broadly, many diseases we fear are: rarely contracted, pyscho-somatically produced, or easily cured. We live in America, one of the healthiest nations in human history. We as a nation (but mainly upper-class white people) need to get over ourselves.
4. We are committing a grievous wrong against our troops. GWB's "go to the mall" policy is wrong-minded and crippling. The troops feel isolated and unappreciated, and the pressure we place upon them is unnecessary and cruel. As a general says: "Their families are tired. The country is not at war. The Armed Forces and CIA are at war. We are at the point of breaking faith with our troops."
5. In order to extract all emotional dross and sharpen our focus on the issue of efficiency in the health care debate, we shall all replace the words "health care" with "automotive care". Largely similar in mechanics, refreshingly non-hysterical in dialogue.
6. Barack Obama cut his political teeth in Chicago. Let me reiterate: Obama is a politician from Chicago. Not saying anything else but that. Chicago, the city synonymous with dead voters, Al Capone, and corruption. Chicago. (Note: I made this comment back in July 08, waaay before the Blagojevich fiasco. Just sayin'...)
7. Michelle Obama isn't an angry woman, despite the Right's characterizations. She might be a woman too smitten with her husband, and she definitely overstates her beliefs from time to time, but all references to her anger are either deceitful or delusional.
8. If you were like me, and thought that England (United Kingdom, whatever) was a land that remembers it's Burkes, Gladstones, and Churchills, you're mistaken.
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