June 7, 2009 archive

The real roots of the auto crisis & who’s calling the shots.

One:  The real roots of the auto crisis.

Listening to Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren talk about auto woes last week left David Cole grinding his teeth.  So, too, about a dozen other national reporters and anchors who have called the usually mild-mannered expert in recent weeks for his wisdom on the trials and tribulations of the Detroit Three and broader auto industry.

Cole, a scientist and engineer by training, is chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, MI.  He has been seen on nearly every national TV news program explaining the challenges and perils of the troubled automotive industry.  He says the local media is well-informed as are some at the national level who are assigned to cover autos.  “It’s when you get to the general national media that things fall apart.”

Cole said, “This entire conversation is about the industrial future of our country.  The  auto crisis is not a result of a management problem, but is attributable to the massive collapse of financial markets.

And not having a true national energy policy.

And that most automakers around the world have received aid from their governments.

America is the only one that has not supported its manufacturers — that is, until recently.  

Cole added that it isn’t only some journalists who don’t get it.  

“Too many people are listening to what these experts and pundits are saying, and it isn’t only hurting Detroit, but the nation,” he said.  –snip–

“Of all the industrialized countries in the world, we are the only country that does not understand the role manufacturing plays in our economy,” Cole said. “It is so important in our economy … and it is right on the edge of a cliff.”

He added: “If GM doesn’t make it through this bankruptcy in a surgical way, this will be a catastrophe for Detroit and the nation.”

So now that our government is supporting US autos, how’s that going?  

The Stars Hollow Gazette

The populist case against corporate media

C’mon, you’d rather read this.

Fundamentally the entitled class sees their entitled position as a product of merit and diligence rather than birthright even though to an amazing degree they are mostly legacy members of Delta House.

That was Dartmouth.

Much as I love Bluto the fact that he “grew up” to become a United States Senator is hardly a ringing endorsement of Randian world views of dignity and self importance.  This culture of courtiers, these Versailles Villages don’t know how close to storming the Bastille we are.

And I mean that in a collapse of the Soviet Empire kind of way.

Are you looking for News in Truth?  Or Truth in News?  In your country, does it watch you?

Traditional Media has no credibility anymore.  And you know how it’s manifesting itself?  People ain’t buying your crap.

Verdict of the marketplace of ideas baby, I feel so Stephen Colbert.

They are voting right now with their eyeballs and you are losing the culture war.  Perhaps that explains your profane identification with the party of war profiteers, torturers, murderers and thieves.

Or perhaps it is about the dead presidents.

You know why sports stars make the money honey?  They entertain every day.  They fill the seats.  Put butts and bucks in the bucket.

I’m so very sorry cricket is not such a popular game.  I find it as fascinating as polo.  I have more faith in the WWE.

H.R. 2346, You have got to be f$%&ing kidding me

Crossposted at DKos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

Here is a good example of what is in H.R. 2346

   We are going to give $230+ million to a DoD Base Closure Account in order to carry out operation and maintenance, planning and design and military construction projects not otherwise authorized by law.

    ???

    Are we getting single payer health care? Are we getting a commitment to rebuilding America through building infrastructure and the manufacturing sector? Are we getting the return of the Glass-Steagal Act, or the repeal of Gramm/Leech/Bliley? Are we getting to the end of mountain top removal coal mining, or the beginning of a more sustainable energy plan? Are we getting investigations and a Special Prosecutor for the War Crimes committed by Bush/Cheney?

    No.

    What we are getting are drone missiles, new army bases overseas and defense contracts. With a side of suppression of evidence of war crimes and a big financial bailout on the side.

    We are getting a bill called H.R. #2346, The Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2009

This is an example of what your scarce national resources that are not there for national health care is going to…      

Sunday music retrospective: Trippin’

Trippin’



Jefferson Airplane:  White Rabbit



Procul Harum:  Whiter Shade of Pale

This one made my day complete

Global warming is now climate change.

Funny how scams morph into something else.

Docudharma Times Sunday June 7

Lawyers At The

Justice Department Against

Torture Go Along With It

No Backbone No Conscious      




Sunday’s Headlines:

Training the Top Guns of drone aircraft

Even football is political as election fever grips Iranians

Lebanese vote in key parliamentary election

Was British tourist a pawn in deadly intelligence game?

Africa up close

Ryanair drops royal ad campaign

Litvinenko suspect given key security role

The Taliban will ‘never be defeated’

Anna Chi: A film career that came by special order

Peru army imposes Amazon curfews

Obama to Forge a Greater Role on Health Care



By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: June 6, 2009


WASHINGTON – After months of insisting he would leave the details to Congress, President Obama has concluded that he must exert greater control over the health care debate and is preparing an intense push for legislation that will include speeches, town-hall-style meetings and much deeper engagement with lawmakers, senior White House officials say.

Mindful of the failures of former President Bill Clinton, whose intricate proposal for universal care collapsed on Capitol Hill 15 years ago, Mr. Obama until now had charted a different course, setting forth broad principles and concentrating on bringing disparate factions – doctors, insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, labor unions – to the negotiating table.

Tunnel fraud leaves Gazans on verge of financial ruin

For years, a network of underground smugglers’ routes from Egypt to the Gaza Strip has supplied a besieged population with everything from cement to cattle. But now a series of major scams has destroyed the dreams of desperate investors who saw the tunnels as a path out of poverty



Peter Bradshaw in Gaza City

The Observer, Sunday 7 June 2009

Jawad Tawfiq, a 52-year-old Gazan actor and director, was dubious at first, but his nephew insisted. If they could scrape together enough money, the nephew said, large profits could be made from investing in the tunnels that snake beneath the Egyptian border.

“They were liars,” Tawfiq said bitterly last week. “They took my money to put in their own pockets. And we are being offered a fraction of what we gave them.”

At first the tunnels emerged as smuggling routes; then they became the vital lifeline for a Gaza under economic siege by Israel. But many people who invested in the tunnels now see them quite differently – as a source of ruination.

The tunnel schemes were advertised as opportunities for doubling and trebling money by unscrupulous figures linked to powerful businessmen in Gaza and, allegedly, to senior officials in Hamas, but have instead led to huge losses for ordinary residents of the Strip.

USA

A Slow Burn Becomes a Raging Fire

Disdain for U.S. Policies May Have Led to Alleged Spying for Cuba

By Mary Beth Sheridan and Del Quentin Wilber

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, June 7, 2009



He was a courtly State Department intelligence analyst from a prominent family who loved to sail and peruse the London Review of Books. Occasionally, he would voice frustration with U.S. policies, but to his liberal neighbors in Northwest D.C. it was nothing out of the ordinary. “We were all appalled by the Bush years,” one said.

What Walter Kendall Myers kept hidden, according to documents unsealed in court Friday, was a deep and long-standing anger toward his country, an anger that allegedly made him willing to spy for Cuba for three decades.”I have become so bitter these past few months. Watching the evening news is a radicalizing experience,” he wrote in his diary in 1978, referring to what he described as greedy U.S. oil companies, inadequate health care and “the utter complacency of the oppressed” in America. On a trip to Cuba, federal law enforcement officials said in legal filings, Myers found a new inspiration: the communist revolution.

Hope rhymes with “dope”

Yes, I actually wrote a diary called “Fuck Obama”.  I did it for a reason.

But here are reasons I didn’t do it.

I didn’t do it because I get off on hating people.  I didn’t do it because I want other people to hate Obama.  Hating is not the point.  Not at all.  

I did it because the only way change will come in this country is if people quit “hoping”.

Late Night Karaoke

Why Oh Why Did I Do It

Considered Forthwith: Senate “HELP” Committee

Welcome to the eleventh installment of “Considered Forthwith.”

This weekly series looks at the various committees in the House and the Senate. Committees are the workshops of our democracy. This is where bills are considered, revised, and occasionally advance for consideration by the House and Senate. Most committees also have the authority to exercise oversight of related executive branch agencies.

This week Considered Forthwith will examine the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. The Committee is also commonly referred to by its acronym, The Senate HELP Committee.

I settled on a different committee than I planned because there The HELP Committee has a major hearing scheduled this week.

Display Some Adaptability, Mister Jones

For a bona fide rock star, I’m a man of surprisingly simple tastes. I like electricity. And amplification. I like wielding both of those things with fearsome power and sublime glory, and I’m not ashamed to admit that.  I love shaking up the citizens with a serious lightning bolt every once in a while, just to see them flinch. It’s one of my absolute favorite things to do. I mean, it’s one thing to be able to take a shock, but the ability-and willpower-to give a shock, to inflict a pure synaptic jolt of raw power upon someone else, well…that’s a whole other frequency, dude. That’s a level where only snow leopards play, ladies and gentlemen, and not many people truly comprehend what goes on up there.

The Beauty of Spring Blocks My Way

Spring comes slowly and quietly

to allow Winter to withdraw

slowly and quietly.

The color of the mountain afternoon

is tinged with nostalgia.

The terrible war flower

has left her footprints-

countless petals of separation and death

in white and violet.

Very tenderly, the wound opens itself in the depths of my heart.

Its color is the color of blood,

its nature the nature of separation.

The beauty of Spring blocks my way.

How could I find another path up the mountain?

I suffer so. My soul is frozen.

My heart vibrates like the fragile string of a lute

left out in a stormy night.

Yes, it is really there. Spring has really come.

But the mourning is heard

clearly, unmistakably,

in the wonderful sounds of the birds.

The morning mist is already born.

The breeze of Spring in its song

expresses both my love and my despair.

The cosmos is so indifferent. Why?

To the harbor, I came alone,

and now I leave alone.

There are so many paths leading to the homeland.

They all talk to me in silence. I invoke the Absolute.

Spring has come

to every corner of the ten directions.

Its, alas, is only the song

of departure.

~Thich Nhat Hanh, 1951

We Need a Peace Train!

Who wants peace?  The people of the world want peace!  I have proof, damn skippy.  I was messing around on Youtube looking at old classic rock videos and came upon Peace Train by Cat Stevens. I liked that song alot when I was younger and I like the nostalgia that comes with seeing the videos as opposed to just listening.    Then I checked out another version of Peace Train, the one done by Yusef Islam at the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony.  Of course, Yusef was Cat Stevens prior to his conversion to Islam.  It was very good, I also enjoy seeing the older performers still doing their thing.  Then I scrolled down to the comments and I found the proof.    

This proof makes me think.  Why don’t we have peace when the people of the world want peace?  The answer is simple, we need a Peace Train.  And we could get one running if we wanted.  Check out this video by Yusef:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Then check out the comments.  This video has been posted for a little over two years, has over a half million views, and the comments prove we can develop a Peace Train.  Over and over, the comments were a simple:

“Peace from: ______.”  

That’s it, with a few exceptions, that’s all they wrote!  Over 2500 comments from people in over 80 countries!  Really, go check it out.  You see, everyone wants peace.   It’s our damn governments, that we supposedly elect for our best interests, who are dissing the number one will of the people – Peace!

Peace from:

USA, England, Morocco, Iran, Canada, Georgia, Algeria, Australia, Dominican Republic, Turkey, Ireland, Kashmir, Malaysia, Brunei, Uruguay, Israel, Germany, Saudia Arabia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Norway, Iran, Sweden, Maracaibo, Kuwait, Argentina, Malta, Qatar, Norway, Vanuatu, Poland, Mexico, France, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Austria, Holland, Hong Kong, Zimbabwei, Nepal, Bosnia, Denmark, Italy, Tasmania, Croatia, Belgium, Nigeria, Mauratania, Puerto Rico, Serbia, Mambai India, Cyprus, Peru, Phippipines, South Africa, Switzerland, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Macedonia, Egypt, Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia, West Sumatra, Palistine, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Aruba, Libya, Colombia, Mauritius, Costa Rica, Afghanistan, Slovakia, Portugal, Maldives, Chili, Finland, Japan, Syria, Brazil, and Hague, the Netherlands!

 

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