Category Archives: News

Holy Mismanagement of Public Funds, Batman!

Posted on by

Incredibly, GM lost another $9.6 billion dollars in the last quarter.  Apparently it also set fire to $6 billion in cash, while it was negotiating for that $9 billion in government money.

What in the heck is going on here?  Does this seem insane to anyone else?  How do you spend $6 billion in three months, while at the same time begging with your hat in hand for $9 billion?  Thank god they kept the lights on, churning out crappy vehicles one after another.  They have been dealing with this for months now, and they still have only 6 vehicles out of 54 models available (54!) that even have hybrid as an option, and 4 of those are hybrid SUVs, like we need those somehow.  If this isn’t just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, I don’t know what it is.

Bravo, you guys are really burning up the carpet on this one.  I can’t wait to see how this all turns out, but the sad part is the folks that will suffer because this company can’t seem to pull it’s head out of it’s own butt.

Recommended Reading – Why America Hasn’t Been Attacked Since 9/11

Posted on by

I caught the first of a seven-day run of articles on terrorism on Slate, I highly recommend you read it too.  It’s going to start off at the “don’t worry” level and scale right up to the “pants-sh@!$ing terror” level by the end.  The article quotes Bruce Schneier, who I have mentioned here before as being an entirely sensible voice to listen to in this crazy world.

Stay tuned for the rest of the articles, I know I will be.

Finally, somebody’s listening

Posted on by

It seems that I have finally found someone to listen to my ideas, and it seems that the groundswell of support for me is finally beginning.  Just one week after I proposed the idea, President Obama today announced that I am a genius, and he will do exactly what I suggested.

Thank you, thank you.

The applause is deafening.  It took quite a while for the recognition, but this blog’s 13 hits per day is finally paying off.

Look for more brilliant ideas here soon.  Eventually I will solve all of the world’s problems.

Fit as a Fiddle

Posted on by

I just frigging love this story about a 72 year old woman who ran down a girl about 56 years younger than her who had taken her purse.  Apparently she had asked a group of girls for directions to a theater, they hopped into her car to take her there, and one of the girls took off from the back seat with her purse.  It didn’t hurt that the 72 year old was a champion sprinter in her youth.

“She had a head start but I covered 70 yards in about 15 seconds and was within two strides of her when she looked over her shoulder and saw me.

“She probably thought I was an easy target but she shouldn’t have judged a book by its cover. The look on her face was one of sheer amazement and she just threw my bag aside.”

Not that I would want to discount her physical fitness, but maybe this is a sign of things to come?  If you take into account the increasingly unfit teenagers, and the increasingly fit old-timers, maybe they will make more of a match in a few years than we ever could have dreamed.  This is a good thing for those of us, ah, past our teenage years.  It will no longer be a big deal when I’m retired and at the mall in my plaid pants, white belt and paisley cardigan and I see a group of teenagers coming towards me.  Maybe by then they will be the ones to lumber aside as I glower at their flabby physiques.  That’s right, sport.  You had better step back, or this geezer’s gonna be up in your grill.

Well, maybe not.  Still, the picture they took of our 72 year old sprinter is frigging adorable, and you should click through to read about the scolding her daughter gave her.

Dont mess with this lady...

Don't mess with this lady...

I saw this on Neatorama.

Recession Fixer?

Posted on by

It seems that the bank guys will have to explain just what the hell they have been doing with all that money today.  While we all would love to see a severe scolding given to these arseholes, I think it will be much more likely that they will mouth the right words and do some insincere hand-washing, and that will be the end of it.  Maybe I’m getting cynical in my old age….

Does anyone really believe that any of this money will help the situation?  They started with $700 billion or so, and now they are adding another $800 billion.  That’s a trillion and a half of taxpayer money, going to businesses and banks, and there’s no sign of anything changing.  Wonderful.  However, it’s the average consumer’s fault that they aren’t spending that the recession is deepening, of course.

Here’s an idea (I’m sure it’s not the first time it’s been suggested):  instead of giving the money to banks to line their own pockets at the taxpayer’s expense, how about using that money to pay down individual mortgages?  The ballpark value of all residential mortgages in the US is about 10.6 trillion, according to this site (which means nothing, so this could be way off).  So you have $1.5 trillion to spend, and $10.6 trillion in the kind of debt that probably makes people control their spending the most.  How about you use this money to help pay off individual mortgages?  It wouldn’t be very fair if you paid off the whole mortgage, and it wouldn’t go far enough, but how about giving every household about a year’s worth of mortgage payments?  It would probably end up being about $16 000 or so per household (I made most of this math up, I have no idea how many households there are in the US).  Wouldn’t that change your spending habits just a bit?  I’m thinking that would be a much surer way to get that money spent in the economy that just giving it to some jerkoff banker.

I am not an economist, and certainly don’t manage my own money all that well, so that’s probably why this would never happen.