So, according to all the cable and network news sources, the United States is now "officially" in a recession, and has been for about a year now. Absolutely fucking fascinating. Yeah, making it "official," that was the key...now everybody is going to figure it out. We've known this for months, as the housing market was bottoming out, as every arrogant banking group was lining up to get a bailout so they could keep their big-time salaries, bonuses, and stadium naming rights. Yeah, things might have been rough, but now it's "official," so NOW we can say comfortably that the economy is spiraling down the porcelain? You may now facepalm thusly.
In somewhat related news, Ford CEO Alan Mulally, Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli, and GM CEO Rick Wagoner all announced they would work for $1 a year as they approach Congress with their new plan to beg for a $25 billion bailout. How droll. Maybe they should have taken this dramatic bullshit gesture well before the car went off the cliff, pun intended. Even now, a buck a year is overpriced for these three men, and the bottom line is any bailout, in addition to actual honest-to-god oversight (like any of us expect THAT to happen), the bailout needs to include the resignation of all three men, with replacement scouting to take place somewhere in the incorporated city limits of competence.
Meanwhile, it was reported by British news that President-elect Obama is buying his wife a $30,000 diamond ring. Puppy be damned, pal...how bad did you fuck up to warrant that?
It was announced today that even more material was being made public from the Nixon administration, shedding more light on Watergate and Vietnam, among other things. The release consists of 200 hours of audiotape and more than 90,000 pages of documents from 1972-74. Holy cow, this guy releases more posthumous material than Jimi Hendrix. At the rate this is going, we should have a better picture of the scope of Dubya's dry fisting of this country sometime in 2071...
Meanwhile, a trio of enterprising people in Ohio found themselves in hot water after a raffle went bust. Christopher S. Johnson, 33, an academic adviser at OSU's School of Nursing, Rusty Blades, 42, a real estate agent, and Vanise Dunn, 31, an employee of Franklin County Children Services and apparent part-time prostitute, were all nabbed after putting together the raffle, at $10 a ticket, on Craigslist, to spend an evening with a prostitute. Even sadder is the fact that Dunn has been employed as a child sex-abuse caseworker with Franklin County Children Services since 2000. Fuck, man, doesn't that job pay anything? Johnson was charged with promoting prostitution and given $25,000 bail. Blades, who was providing the house where the "prize" was to be collected, with also charged with promoting prostitution and given $50,000 bail. Dunn, who was named as the prize, was charged November 12 with allegedly soliciting a vice detective in a presumably different incident. Not that I'm against entrepreneurship or anything like that, but the most outrageous part of this is the idea that Dunn is on paid leave since her arrest, while the agency looks into whether Dunn violated any of its policies. What in the name of holy damn is there to figure out? You got someone charged with at least one sex crime, albeit the lowest level possible, realistically, and you're still letting her draw a paycheck as a sex abuse caseworker, for children?
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Now the questions begin
Well, I guess I put it off long enough. Then again, with scores of other writers and journalists weighing in on Tuesday's historic elections in today's Sunday newspapers, it's not like I'm waiting until February to really get started on dissecting Sen. Barack Obama's rise to become the President-elect of the United States.
It's fairly obvious to see how Obama won this election. Organization, fund-raising, staying on message, and avoiding the destructive attack tone of campaigning were points of order the Obama team clearly understood better than the slipshod McCain team. From the selection of an utterly unqualified and borderline incompetent running mate, to a stubborn insistence on attacking personal associations that McCain himself was just as close to, the Republicans could not have done a better job of laying down in the road as rush hour was beginning. The party's collapse into chaos has been striking, and more than a little fun to watch, as I haven't seen this much feeding upon itself than the time the four cannibals got caught at a REALLY long red light. If Sarah Palin is really being touted as the new face of the GOP, expect a lot more of the same four years from now. Whackjob, which is closer than most people understand, was more generous than I would have been, and is a lot more generous than I have, in fact been.
As for our new President-elect, the critics, bloggers, and journalists have been quick to start questioning whether or not change is really coming. Come on, people...it took a grand total of three days for me to see a commercial touting a Barack Obama commemorative coin. Made me wonder how many John McCain coins that company had to melt down on Wednesday morning, and how appropriate a term is melt down, considering how the last five or six weeks of the McCain-Palin, or Palin-Voices in her head campaigns went.
Granted, I can admit to a little skepticism. Some of the financial all-star team advising Obama throughout the campaign were already more than a little suspect, given their past roles in the deregulation of the financial industries that played a large part in getting us to the state we're in now. Paul Volcker? Robert Rubin? Larry freakin' Summers? I cannot argue against bringing in people with experience, but sometimes you simply need to hire new guards to work the room, not the guys who helped case the joint in the first place.
Much was made of President-elect Obama's first press conference last week, in which there was some fluff material about the selection of the new dog (or dogs, possibly) for the Obama children, and a humorous moment when Obama made an offhand joke about the reputed fondness for seances by former first lady Nancy Reagan, which Obama later said he called and apologized for. Me personally, I would not have done that. Not that I am entirely an unapologetic person, but let's get serious people, seances? I notice none of them included getting in touch with her husband's mind, after it went off to the great unknown during his second term.
As the first full week of the Obama-elect era winds down, I do find it promising that his transition advisers have compiled a substantial list of Bush administration moves that could be reversed, overturned, or simply tossed on the leaf fire out back. Key on this list are matters involving climate change, stem cell research, and reproductive rights. While I'm sure the religious nutcake factions of the right-wing are wringing hands, gnashing and weeping, and maybe even going to the Florida extent of praying and fasting on courthouse steps (we all saw how well that worked for those nimrods, in their hopes of getting an abortion opponent in the White House), the crucial matter is climate change. Anything our next president does in that neighborhood should start with tackling a repeal of the Clear Skies Act, and working with Congress to overturn the rollbacks enacted on the Clean Air Act.
I congratulate our new President, and I sincerely wish him the best of luck in the pursuit of his agenda, as most anything would be an improvement on the last eight years, just so long as he doesn't allow the ghosts of administrations past to whisper too loudly in his ear. We the people apparently craved change, as evidenced by the vote (for the record, I voted for neither Obama or McCain), but the bottom line for your next four years will be how you tread the very fine line between change we can believe in and just more of the business-as-usual politics this country settled for throughout this decade.
It's fairly obvious to see how Obama won this election. Organization, fund-raising, staying on message, and avoiding the destructive attack tone of campaigning were points of order the Obama team clearly understood better than the slipshod McCain team. From the selection of an utterly unqualified and borderline incompetent running mate, to a stubborn insistence on attacking personal associations that McCain himself was just as close to, the Republicans could not have done a better job of laying down in the road as rush hour was beginning. The party's collapse into chaos has been striking, and more than a little fun to watch, as I haven't seen this much feeding upon itself than the time the four cannibals got caught at a REALLY long red light. If Sarah Palin is really being touted as the new face of the GOP, expect a lot more of the same four years from now. Whackjob, which is closer than most people understand, was more generous than I would have been, and is a lot more generous than I have, in fact been.
As for our new President-elect, the critics, bloggers, and journalists have been quick to start questioning whether or not change is really coming. Come on, people...it took a grand total of three days for me to see a commercial touting a Barack Obama commemorative coin. Made me wonder how many John McCain coins that company had to melt down on Wednesday morning, and how appropriate a term is melt down, considering how the last five or six weeks of the McCain-Palin, or Palin-Voices in her head campaigns went.
Granted, I can admit to a little skepticism. Some of the financial all-star team advising Obama throughout the campaign were already more than a little suspect, given their past roles in the deregulation of the financial industries that played a large part in getting us to the state we're in now. Paul Volcker? Robert Rubin? Larry freakin' Summers? I cannot argue against bringing in people with experience, but sometimes you simply need to hire new guards to work the room, not the guys who helped case the joint in the first place.
Much was made of President-elect Obama's first press conference last week, in which there was some fluff material about the selection of the new dog (or dogs, possibly) for the Obama children, and a humorous moment when Obama made an offhand joke about the reputed fondness for seances by former first lady Nancy Reagan, which Obama later said he called and apologized for. Me personally, I would not have done that. Not that I am entirely an unapologetic person, but let's get serious people, seances? I notice none of them included getting in touch with her husband's mind, after it went off to the great unknown during his second term.
As the first full week of the Obama-elect era winds down, I do find it promising that his transition advisers have compiled a substantial list of Bush administration moves that could be reversed, overturned, or simply tossed on the leaf fire out back. Key on this list are matters involving climate change, stem cell research, and reproductive rights. While I'm sure the religious nutcake factions of the right-wing are wringing hands, gnashing and weeping, and maybe even going to the Florida extent of praying and fasting on courthouse steps (we all saw how well that worked for those nimrods, in their hopes of getting an abortion opponent in the White House), the crucial matter is climate change. Anything our next president does in that neighborhood should start with tackling a repeal of the Clear Skies Act, and working with Congress to overturn the rollbacks enacted on the Clean Air Act.
I congratulate our new President, and I sincerely wish him the best of luck in the pursuit of his agenda, as most anything would be an improvement on the last eight years, just so long as he doesn't allow the ghosts of administrations past to whisper too loudly in his ear. We the people apparently craved change, as evidenced by the vote (for the record, I voted for neither Obama or McCain), but the bottom line for your next four years will be how you tread the very fine line between change we can believe in and just more of the business-as-usual politics this country settled for throughout this decade.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
At Ford, quality may be job #1, but shouldn't common sense be in the top 3 somewhere?
Let me see if I got this straight...according to Alan Mulally, chief executive officer of Ford Motor Company, the economic slump will be "longer and deeper" than most people previously thought. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Perhaps it was the $110 billion in asinine "sweeteners" tacked on to the bailout plan's second take, which surprised absolutely no one, as did the fact the second bailout passed with little of the hemming and hawing that punctuated the first attempt.
Never mind the idea that a guy making $26 million a year to drive a major (and formerly venerable) corporation into the ground like a tent stake is talking about economic slumps. I would say Mulally has taken pages from the Carly Fiorina playbook of business management, but something tells me it was just the playbook's lone page, which Fiorina didn't even bother coloring in completely.
Mulally didn't stop there while making remarks at the Paris auto show, making the non-statement that what makes it harder for everybody (the auto industry) is slowing global auto sales, and confirming that bankruptcy is not an option on the table for Ford. First, consistently sticking with vehicles featuring poor gas mileage performance, and that includes the so-called "crossovers" is what has led to, in large part, slowing global auto sales. Secondly, why would bankruptcy be an option? The guy in a long free-fall isn't so much worried about the view on the way down, just at what point rock bottom's going to arrive.
Never mind the idea that a guy making $26 million a year to drive a major (and formerly venerable) corporation into the ground like a tent stake is talking about economic slumps. I would say Mulally has taken pages from the Carly Fiorina playbook of business management, but something tells me it was just the playbook's lone page, which Fiorina didn't even bother coloring in completely.
Mulally didn't stop there while making remarks at the Paris auto show, making the non-statement that what makes it harder for everybody (the auto industry) is slowing global auto sales, and confirming that bankruptcy is not an option on the table for Ford. First, consistently sticking with vehicles featuring poor gas mileage performance, and that includes the so-called "crossovers" is what has led to, in large part, slowing global auto sales. Secondly, why would bankruptcy be an option? The guy in a long free-fall isn't so much worried about the view on the way down, just at what point rock bottom's going to arrive.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Monday morning again, damnit!
It's Monday morning, and I'm sitting here just drinking a cup of coffee, smoking a cigarette, and contemplating the state of my world. Normal stuff usually, but got a jolt at the grocery store the previous Saturday.
This week, 5 lbs. of potatoes cost 20 cents more than 10 lbs. did a week ago! Onions that cost 99 cents for 3 lbs. a month ago, then went to $1.69 for 3 lbs., now runs $1.69 for two pounds! Everything keeps going up except for my income. One check a month to cover everything just barely scrapes by until the cycle repeats the following month.
But I forgot- according to one particular politician running for office, the economy is doing great! Guess if I had 7 to 11, or however many homes and a spouse worth $100 million, I'd think it was great, too.
Unfortunately, no spouse (rich or otherwise, thank God), one home and as stated, one check per month, I can tell you the economy is the pits.
I can hear it now, if I gave up smoking, how much money I would have, how much better health I would have, and for what? Next thing I would have to give up would be breathing. Last time I checked, the side effects for the cure to that are a little disconcerting!
This week, 5 lbs. of potatoes cost 20 cents more than 10 lbs. did a week ago! Onions that cost 99 cents for 3 lbs. a month ago, then went to $1.69 for 3 lbs., now runs $1.69 for two pounds! Everything keeps going up except for my income. One check a month to cover everything just barely scrapes by until the cycle repeats the following month.
But I forgot- according to one particular politician running for office, the economy is doing great! Guess if I had 7 to 11, or however many homes and a spouse worth $100 million, I'd think it was great, too.
Unfortunately, no spouse (rich or otherwise, thank God), one home and as stated, one check per month, I can tell you the economy is the pits.
I can hear it now, if I gave up smoking, how much money I would have, how much better health I would have, and for what? Next thing I would have to give up would be breathing. Last time I checked, the side effects for the cure to that are a little disconcerting!
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