A Brief Lesson For Conservatives

This is your President:

 

 

This is your President with balls:

 

 

Any questions?

 

 

The Beauty Of Truth

This is a tarpon. He's about six feet long. He is unafraid of humans

Grand Central Terminal

Yes, it really is as busy as the saying goes!

Nobody Asked Me, But...

In case you missed it, yesterday was the Blessing Of The Sun, a holy day in the Jewish calendar that occurs every 28 years, and celebrates the moment when the Sun returns to the exact position it was created. Question: how do they know?

 

And today, of course, is Good Friday. In honor of this, I thought I'd run the Stations Of The Cross for today's post. Please don't infer any parallels between the events and the life of Our Lord:

 

1) Two Tibetans were sentenced to death in a Chinese court for setting a fire which killed seven people and burned five shops in Lhasa to the ground.

 

2) Apparently, Florida for Spring Break is not universally appealing. But we all have our crosses to bear.

 

3) His first Falls.

 

4) Meeting his mother, always an emotional moment.

 

5) Simon picks up the cross...with Garfunkel! I'm guessing there's a way to work in troubled waters, too...

 

6) Veronica wipes the sweat off his brow.

 

7) He falls again. The weight is too much to bear.

 

8) He meets the daughters of Jerusalem.

 

9) Falls a third time. Very weak now.

 

10) He is stripped of his clothes.

 

11) Crucified.

 

12) Dies a martyr.

 

13) Is lamented.

 

14) And is laid to rest.

 

Peace be with you.

The Seagull

These guys are all around me most times I'm out shooting

A Message Of Hope

Y'know, it's pretty depressing out there.

 

It seems like the world is heading to hell in a handbasket, and I'm tired. I get a new perspective on the Great Depression. It wasn't so much economic as it was psychologic.

 

At least this week, the news is mixed on the economic front: jobless claims were surprisingly low last week, Wells Fargo, universally acknowledged as one of the few strong banks out there, reported good earnings, new home mortgages are rising, and the trade deficit is collapsing. On the other hand, retail sales are still in the toilet, meaning consumers aren't shopping, the auto industry is still on very shaky ground, and gas prices will begin their inexorable summer climb this weekend as people get their cars out of the garage and start the summer driving season early.

 

Nevermind the news page, the business section is enough to make people depressed! That's before the piracy in Somalia, the North Korean missile test, earthquakes in Italy, the Twitter uprising in Moldova...it's enough to raise the dead!

 

What's really depressing is to read blogs and watch television, and everyone is looking for someone to blame. If it's not God, it's the President. Or liberals. Or Muslims. Or immigrants. Or Hollywood.

 

I have a better solution: it's you!

 

Now, I realize the way of the world is to make our problems somebody else's. Both sides of the political fence claim the other scapegoats. The right claims we liberals are trying to build a nanny state. The left believes the right wants to deny and deflect their personal responsibility towards their fellow citizens.

 

Guess what? Both sides have a point (altho you'd be hard pressed to prove to me at this point in time how government is doing too much for us).

 

So the old saw is shown to be true: if everyone else is wrong, it really is your problem.

 

For the past thirty years, this entire nation-- heck, the entire world, when you realize that France has McDonald's on the Champs Elysee and Wrangler jeans are hot sellers in Abu Dhabi-- has spent its days, nights, lives in pursuit of the Material Me. Even so-called "radical lefty tree huggers" have to be seen hugging the right tree.

 

We have the latest, newest, greatest, biggest...and ultimately, most useless...junk on the planet.

 

Just. Stop.

 

Focus on the things that really matter: your health, your weight, your family, your friends, your life. The problems of the world will start to melt away if we all just "stick to our knitting".

 

Want to solve the health insurance crisis? Walk. Exercise. Pay a co-pay and see a doctor before you get sick. Eat healthier. Sleep better. Skip every other drink or every other cigarette. Lose weight.

 

Want to help solve the banking crisis? Spend less, save more. Take twenty percent of your paycheck and bank it. Put your loose change at the end of the day in a jar, then take it to the bank and deposit it each month.

 

Want to prevent a war? Talk to people. Don't argue, don't judge them. Just listen to them. Sit in a coffee shop and make a point of truly understanding someone.

 

Want to be happier with your friends? Be happier about yourself. The weather's getting nicer, take a walk. Take a camera with you. Take pictures of the kids out playing. Do something that has meaning to you but doesn't cost an arm and leg, not because it's "material," but because you don't have to sit there with part of you adding up the total money you just spent.

 

Search for beauty in an unbeautiful world.

 

You have a material home. Create a spiritual one. A place where your mind can rest and your spirit can play.

 

You have a material home that makes you unhappy. You have spent your life pursuing it, because this is what you were told to pursue, and eveeryone else is doing it. That's a powerful influence, that "everyone else". Marketing firms have made entire fortunes on the backs of you and your neighbors, convincing you to buy this gadget or that SUV.

 

You have the power to quit them. Use that energy, now exhausted, now spent, on yourself. You have a window full of stuff, but a house devoid of what you need. You have things, but no love, because you cannot love a thing. It cannot love you back. You have glee, but no joy. Glee comes from knowing you've bought the new toy. Joy comes from living with what you have. Glee is a drug. It requires constant reinforcement. Joy is everlasting. it grows on its own if you just give it room.

 

Give room to your joy. Shun your glee. Don't you have enough? Do you have all that you need? Most of us do and are unaware of it. And besides, everything is on loan here. It can be taken from you in the wink of an eye, but the one thing that will always be with you is you.

 

Give to people. Give your time. Give your love. Give your joy, because the best soil for joy to grow in is soil that two people tend. Don't worry, it grows quickly!

 

Give your things, too. A gift given gives twice, or so the saying goes.

 

The damnable trap of the past thirty years is that we have taken, but we haven't taken from others...well, not much. As others have taken from us, however-- and that has happened-- we have also taken from ourselves and our futures. We borrowed money we didn't have to buy things that might not even be around now that the bill has come due.

 

By allowing others to take from us, we have robbed ourselves of our humanity, our dignity, and our individuality. By buying the iPod or the car or the Britney Spears CD or the Disney DVD, we have allowed others to take "us" in exchange for making us more like everyone else. We have fuller closets and emptier hearts, prettier clothes and uglier bodies, bigger cars and smaller minds.

 

But when you give, you maintain who you are. You become who you need to be. You keep what and who you want in your life, and you stop pushing aside the important things in life.

 

Yes, the world is troubled. Yes, you will be buffetted and affected and maybe even harmed for decisions you've made in the past.

 

But you can be the future, too, and that is where you will live. Do the things you need to do now to make that a better life.

American Hangup

The yellow makes this picture work for me

Ghosts In The Machine

Two stories surfaced while you were sleeping that ought to help open your eyes as you stumble around for a cup of coffee:

 

Item 1:

The FBI is investigating whether counterfeit routers and computer hardware from China installed in U.S. government computer networks might provide a secret gateway for hackers to tap into secure government databases.

Sources told ABC News the counterfeit hardware could represent a major breach to national security. An FBI PowerPoint presentation, which somehow ended up on a Web site, lays out the concerns and the breadth of what has been a far-reaching investigation.

Friday afternoon a somewhat miffed FBI released a statement that read: "At the request of another federal government agency, on Jan. 11, 2008, the FBI's Cyber Division provided an unclassified PowerPoint presentation and briefing on efforts to counter the production and distribution of counterfeit network hardware," said FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director James Finch. "This unclassified briefing was never intended for broad distribution or posting to the Internet."

Finch goes on to talk about Operation Cisco Raider, which "targeted illegal distributors of counterfeit network hardware manufactured in China and included 15 investigations across nine FBI field offices and the execution of 39 search warrants."

According to Finch, the FBI "disrupted a large distribution network and recovered approximately 3,500 counterfeit network components with an estimated retail value of over $3.5 million."

Ahhhhhhhhhhh, outsourcing!

 

Item 2:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls, the newspaper said, citing current and former U.S. national security officials.

[...] Officials said water, sewage and other infrastructure systems also were at risk.

Ahhhh, nostalgia! Hearken back to a time when Boris and Natasha...and now Li and Guangmei... would drop microfilm canisters off in a tree stump on the Appalachian Trail....

 

Granted, these are nations with means and resources (and in the former instance, incredibly easy access, bordering on the treasonous) to implant the software necessary to spy on and perhaps disrupt American society.

 

It may not sound like much, to hit our electrical system or our water and particularly our sewer systems, until you realize just what would happen: we've had regional blackouts, one as recently as August 2003, that crippled half the country and affected the rest with flight delays, food shortages, and so on. Imagine that on a national scale.

 

Imagine turning on the tap in any location where water is distributed and pumped mechanically or electronically, meaning basically every place west of the Rockies and south of Oregon and most of the Midwest and farm country.

 

Now add to that a massive sewage backup (since treatment plants would be the likely target of a cyber attack), and murky brown water that begins to spurt out of your drains.

 

Yea. That bad. With no place for all that crap to go, because storm drains would be the first to back up.

 

You want a disheartened nation? Tell 330 million people they have to shovel shit for a few days, nevermind weeks. In the dark. Without fresh water to bathe in, even if they could clear enough of their drains for the waste water to flow down. Probably in the middle of winter, just make things really horrid.

 

I can almost hear Limbaugh now: "My friends! Shoveling shit builds character! Why, it's no worse than spreading manure on your gardens! I shovel shit every day and look at me! I'm filthy rich for it!"

 

I say Limbaugh will support this because quite simply, the Russians and Chinese aren't going to do this on Barack Obama's watch, but should some idiot Republican (and it always seems to be them, don't it?) get us into another useless war, even a cold one, with Russia AND China, they won't hesitate. They'll trigger the "S" bomb.

 

Sorry for ruining your breakfast!

Coming Soon To A Calendar Near You

Summer

The Future Is Now

One wonders if GM really did need a bailout?

US carmaker General Motors is joining with scooter maker Segway to make a new type of two-seat electric vehicle.

The prototype, which will be debuted in New York, is aimed at urban driving. GM aims to start making them by 2012.

The vehicle, named Puma, can go as far as 35 miles on a single charge. It will use lithium-ion batteries.

See guys? If you had started on this path thirty years ago, even using just one percent of your annual revenues, you could have been poised to corner the market on this kind of vehicle. Instead, you find yourself piggybacking on someone else's idea.

 

There had been rumours in the tech press for months that Segway was poised to announce a new product that would complement its futuristic  Segway Personal Transporter, which failed to capture much more than the imagination of people nationwide, likely because of its cost ($5,000) and its niche marketing ("Is it for sidewalks or streets?").

 

The P.U.M.A. (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility) would essentially be a scooter with a top speed of 35 miles per hour, but far cleaner and far safer, with a nav system and a sensor array that would identify obstacles and steer around them, essentially driving itself.

 

It would also be far cheaper, about the third of the cost of a car (let's say $10,000), and ideal for uses on college campuses and for traffic enforcement agents (you know, meter maids?). It would eventually find its way to suburban homes as station cars, and even into the city as a day-to-day vehicle that can be crammed into tiny parking spaces.

 

The first and most obvious market for this vehicle is the Asian market, where cars haven't penetrated yet to the extent they have in the west and where cities the size of Chicago seem to pop up overnight. We'll see them here eventually now that the national attention has been focused on green technology and improving the national infrastructure.

There are few things as damaging to the infrastructure and environment as the internal combustion engine, with its thousands of mini-explosions for each trip it takes. This vehicle weighs 300 lbs. A car weighs 6 times that. You do the math.

 

The PUMA can be put into production immediately, as the technology is off-the-shelf for Segway. The only question would be how quickly can a dinosaur like GM ramp up its production lines to make this machine.

 

Aye, there's the rub and has been for Detroit for a long time. Flexibility has never been a key component in the US auto industry and to be sure, the dinosaurs who sit on the boards of directors haven't been strident in their advocacy of becoming more nimble, with the effective result being a dinosaur who can rollerskate a little.

 

That's sad for a nation that has always prided itself on invention.

Space Aliens Are Real!

alienvisitor
Originally uploaded by actor212

I see this little feller staring at me nearly every morning on my way to work....watching...waiting...he knows we'll make a mistake one day...

Gunnin' For The Bottom

After only the second mass murder by a non-white American, perhaps now a legitimate dialogue about gun control can take place in this country:

As the nation gets a clearer picture of two killers who have made headlines in recent days -- one near Pittsburgh, one in Binghamton, N.Y. -- some are wondering whether Americans have too much access to guns.

 

[...] As the gunman, identified as 41-year-old Jiverly Voong, blasted his way through the American Civic Association, DeLucia, 61, stayed on the phone for 38 minutes, guiding police and trying to provide them with information to prevent more people from being shot. Voong killed 13 people before turning the gun on himself.

 

[...] On Saturday, one day after the Binghamton shootings, three Pittsburgh-area police officers were gunned down after responding to what they thought was a domestic disturbance call. Richard Poplawski, 23, the alleged shooter, was shot several times in the leg.

I suspect there's a small number of gun nuts out there now, reading about this story and realizing that yet another exclusive domain of whites, and particularly, white males, is being outsourced to lower-wage criminals: spectacular mass murder.

 

Sort of takes the fun out of killing people to make a political point, like the militias of Montana and Michigan would be wont to do, or the Oklahoma City terrorists when they might just as easily fire back.

 

A point I've always stressed in any gun discussion here is that there is a definite need for some guns in America, and Binghamton is on the cusp of an area where guns might be needed.

 

But certainly not automatic weapons.

 

Binghamton is a fairly large town, a city even, at the intersection of three interstate highways: NYS Route 17 (soon to be Federal Interstate Highway 86) and Interstates 81 & 88. I've walked the banks of the Susquehana there, and had a draft or two in some of the bars there. Indeed, I've even visited during the gay pride weekend.

 

Yes, it's that evolved a town.

 

Drive 90 minutes in any direction, and you are in the middle of the wilderness: a forest, a nature preserve, a state park. Up there, it's bear country, even puma country. You can't always call the cops and expect them to show up in the same hour, although they try their hardest. So yea, a long barrel gun is a necessity and since it's not likely you'd get a second shot quickly, even these don't have to be semi-automatic. And handguns? Forget it. You ain't taking down a bear or even a deer with a .44, sorry.

 

Those are guns I can support. I cannot support a gun that a man can walk into a building with and take out a dozen people in an urban setting (or suburban school or a rural church). That's just patently ludicrous and anyone who defends them should not be taken seriously.

 

When police departments nationwide, departments made up of people like any other average American and without any "liberal" agenda at all, can warn against the ease of purchase of guns, it's time we took the issue to heart.

 

Maybe now, the extremist gun owners on the far right lunatic fringe will sit down and seriously reconsider their knee-jerk reaction to even the most reasonable of controls on guns and gun ownership: licensing, registration, and criminal background checks on all gun sales. We require insurance to own a car, even the most minimal insurance. We can surely require *something* that minimizes the likelihood that we'll have to watch mass funeral services for innocent people ever again.

Imaginary Flower

carl 002.jpg
Originally uploaded by actor212

This photo just works on so many strange levels, that I thought I'd blog it. I took it with a Nikon Coolpix 8Mb camera, ran it through the hideous Micro$oft Photo Editor for sharpening and posterizing, and then turned it into a negative of itself.

It was a blue pansy shot in a container outside the NY Public Library on Fifth Avenue.

Friday Cat Kitten Blogging

Mah peeps! Ah bin bizzee dis wintah kippen a eye out foah burds, butt Ah hab a sekrit!

Ah leff a poop in da ole Preznidet's limoh!

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) We're Americans, and you aren't our Queen anymore. We hug. Get over it.

 

2) We're Americans. We don't have to follow tradition and invite our fiancee's family to the engagement and give them ammunition for the next five decades of reunions!

 

3) We're Americans. We give gifts that have meaning to the person who receives it, not some stupid bronze statue that's a copy of a crappy statue in Texas.

 

4) Last week it was vampires in Boston. This week, zombies in Chattanooga. LEAVE BRITNEY ALONNNNNE!!!!!!!!!

 

5) "Dieter! Let me try zhust vun more time!"

 

6) We're Americans! We can't be bothered figuring shit out on our own!

 

7) This is your robot. This is your robot on brains. Any questions?

 

8) Four words if you start bleeding: You're doing it wrong.

 

9) We're Germans! We like filth!

 

10) Hell, if he does windows and scoops cat littler, I'll marry him!

 

11) This is just wrong on so many levels!

Parallel Lines

I think I've told the anecdote in the past here where I was sitting on the subway, and time reversed itself.

 

If I haven't, forgive me, because the older I get, the more I think I'm right that we're moving backwards in time.

 

It was early in the Bush the Elder administration. I was sat on a subway train pulling into Times Square station on my way to work. A Wednesday, as I recall.

 

The train stopped suddenly, went into reverse (which trains never do), stopped again, and inched forward. I made a mental note at the time to check if time had stopped and reversed itself.

 

I think it has.

 

Mark Twain famously observed that history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. It cycles, with each cycle events occur that reflect early events, if not directly, then certainly in shape and form.

 

This decade, the Oughts, seems to be mirroring another recent decade: the 60s. Only not so much. And in some ways, even more.

 

You can mark the 60s, I think, by three events: The election and death of our youngest (and first and only Catholic) President, a hated President who followed him in office and ran and escalated a war that no one wanted and was completely unnecessary, an economic boom that had lasted nearly 50 years, and an event that galvanized the world and brought us closer, the Apollo moon missions.

 

Here, we see an almost didactic opposite decade. It ends with the election of change, and began with a tradgedy not unlike the assassination of JFK in the events of September 11. In between, we've had a despised President who led us into an unwinnable and costly war.

 

And the event that has galvanized the world is an economic depression. The questions remaining to be resolved are how long and how will it affect the world?

 

Will this economic meltdown bring America and the world closer together as a family of man or will it drive deep divisions into us all, and polarize the world further?

 

Signs for both outcomes are around us. History is not kind in this regard: economic crises of this magnitude usually require a war to make them end. The Great Depression did not end until World War II, although the seeds of renewal were planted in the New Deal policies of the Thirties. They might have sprung up anyway, more slowly and perhaps more safely.

 

The flip side is the heartening news that at least some people have not lost the vision of a world culture. We know the future can only be embraced by humanity when we decide to lay down our arms, at least the ones that can wipe out the entire planet, and work together. A single currency would begin that transition. It would help prevent the large seismic shifts in economic power that history has shown us can be even more antagonistic than even an economic meltdown.

 

Indeed, those imbalances can cause economic meltdowns.

 

History cycles, and sometimes it cycles in reverse. Perhaps this time it's possible that a war created the global economic meltdown and that a currency "exchange" (trading into this Chinese scheme) would prevent a worse war.

Whoda Thunk?

So the first "referendum" on President Obama's administration has come and gone. Or, maybe not gone...

A mere 65 votes separated the two candidates late Tuesday in a Congressional contest in upstate New York that received national attention and was widely seen as a referendum on the Obama administration's economic recovery efforts.

With all precincts reporting, the Democrat, Scott Murphy, a 39-year-old venture capitalist, led 77,344 to 77,279 over his Republican rival, Assemblyman James N. Tedisco, 58, for the seat vacated by Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, a Democrat. The turnout was surprisingly strong for a special election.

But 10,055 absentee ballots were issued — and 5,907 received so far, state election officials said — meaning the election cannot be decided until the paper ballots are counted. Moreover, it is likely that the count may not begin until at least April 6, said Bob Brehm, a spokesman for the State Board of Elections.

Republicans held out hope of recapturing the seat in the 20th Congressional District, which is heavily Republican and stretches from the Catskills through the Albany suburbs to the Adirondacks. Democrats, meanwhile, waited to see whether their standard-bearer, a first-time political candidate who campaigned on his support for the federal stimulus package, could pull off an upset.

In that last paragraph, you read the spin for both sides. Democrats recognizing that this is a heavily Republican district, despite the fact that the last incumbent was a Democrat (now-Senator Kirsten Gillibrand). Republicans trying to paint this as some sort of upset because Obama's party did not win a clear majority.

 

Either way this story ultimately breaks, we've not heard the end of it. Should Murphy lose, the seat will be recontested next year. Should Tedisco lose, he has his Assembly Minority Leader job to fall back on, and can spend the next year campaigning heavily.

 

Indeed, the district ought to be prepared for that in either case. The district has demonstrated that despite its heavily Republican roots, it can vote Democratic pretty easily. It went for Clinton, Spitzer and Gillibrand in 2006, Obama in 2008, and appears to have chosen Murphy in 2009.

 

It has been said that there are parts of upstate New York which are so red they make Alabama look liberal. This is not one of those, but it could give Kentucky a run for its red money. Conversely, this district has not shown fealty to the Democrats, either, voting in two rock stars (Clinton and Obama) and electing one Congresswoman by dint of the abject failure of the previous incumbent to comport himself and represent the district with any kind of dignity.

 

Indeed, the name that stands out in that list of Democrats who won recent votes in the 20th is Eliot Spitzer, but remember he was running after a hugely successful incumbency at Attorney General for the state (he was years ahead of the curve in exposing AIG's fraudulent behaviors) and the governor's seat was vacant.

 

Clearly, then, the spin for both sides is right and not mutually exclusive. This is a bellwhether election, but not to the degree the Republicans would want us to believe. And this district is heavily Republican, but clearly not married to the idea of voting back in a party that ruined the state and the nation after decades of rule.

 

At least not just yet.

 

The real story, in fact, is that Tedisco had a twelve point lead as late as January in this race, and lost it all back and then some to Murphy. This sums up the recent political history of this district in a nutshell.

Agree To Disagree

Say what you want about Obama's policies so far in his term, he's put European leaders in a quandry:

Washington - The new American president's debut on the world stage, beginning Tuesday in London in advance of the Group of 20 meeting, is sure to have its share of "Hello!" magazine moments and glamour. He will, after all, meet with Queen Elizabeth II, an established member of the thin upper crust of global personalities and an international rock star in her own right.

But President Obama may be speaking sotto voce and out of the spotlight while in the company of presidents and prime ministers. That's because he is expected to articulate positions and prescriptions that are out of step with leaders from Western Europe, China, Russia, India, and beyond – on issues ranging from the global economic crisis to the war in Afghanistan.

Indeed, Mr. Obama may well find himself in the inverse position from where George W. Bush stood by the end of his White House run. Whereas Mr. Bush enjoyed greater cooperation and like-mindedness with many key foreign leaders, though he remained unpopular with the international public, Obama is expected to encounter an adoring public but a deep skepticism – even resistance – among heads of state.

England has already made conciliatory and supportive comments for Obama ahead of the summit, but the current leader of the European Union, Czech Mirek Topolanek has all but said Obama will drag Europe to damnation.

 

Pretty strong words from a diplomat, to be sure.

 

The pressing issue for this summit is the economic crisis. Obama has made some curious statements with respect to "more stimulus" from the European Union. Here's why this sounds sort of flat.

 

The European Union as a whole has the largest economy in the world, on a par with the US (currency fluctuations can have one or the other as the larger, so it's just easier to call them the same size). The difference is, the European Union has already invested the spending in the areas that Obama wants to port to America: healthcare, infrastructure, advanced energy technologies, green technologies, and so on.

 

The trade-off Europe makes in its GDP and its economic growth is this: its labor force is about 50% bigger than the United States, yet generates "only" as much revenue as we do. This means that much of its growth potential is tied up in taking care of its citizenry.

 

This is a good thing, but the downside to this equation is that this hurts them in terms of having a cushion from which to increase spending. Europe has a group commitment to see that deficits for individual states do not exceed 3% of the individual GDP, so deficit spending is not an option. So what little surplus the states may have is going to have to involve cuts to either its population or to its business models (read that as higher taxes), neither of which is an attractive option in a faltering economy.

 

So you can understand why European leaders are hesitant to jump on the US bandwagon here.

 

On the other hand, the general populations of the European nations look to Obama in many of the same ways they looked to Bill Clinton. He is a rock star, accorded rock star status by some truly legitimate rock stars like Bono, and as such will have powerful sway over public opinion.

 

Worse than that for European leaders, lets assume the average European is about as informed as the average American, e.g. they watch the TV news and then extrapolate to their lives. They're going to see Obama browbeating the EU for more spending and they're going to look around and realize that their friends are out of work, their mortgage payments are harder and harder to make, and the roads need repair.

 

As we've seen in America, if a politician promises to put more money in your pocket, he stands a very good chance of persuading you to his side. Couple this with the general attitude in Europe that governments ought to fear the people, rather than the other way around (this holds truer in "Old Europe," like France), and you have pretty enormous pressure for EU leaders to capitulate and throw money at problems. 

 

I haven't looked at Obama's specific European recommendations but I suspect he'd call for more green technology spending, particularly in former Soviet republics like the Czech Republic...which is why Topolanek is crying "Uncle." After all, these are the economies with the most potential to grow quickly if cheap energy sources can be made available, manufacturing and industry were already solid performers there. 

 

I would imagine Obama has asked for a stronger commitment to fighting global warming, although his footing here is unsteady, given the recent American stance on this issue and the Kyoto protocols, as well as the upcoming Copenhagen summit on this very topic. 

 

Finally, the contention that NATO needs to strengthen its commitment to Afghanistan is tied into helping America out of it economic crisis. After all, every additional euro President Obama can wrest out of the EU is one and a half dollar less he has to spend there.  

15 Books That Will Always Stick With Me

As tagged by Lance Mannion:

1) The Bible - Various authors, even tho One Guy claims sole authorship. Sort of like Mark Rothko's body of work.

2) The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams

3) Hamlet - William Shakespeare (I'm claiming book by dint of the edition I read, which was annotated)

4) A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking

5) Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions - A. Square (Edwin Abbott)

6) An Actor Prepares - Constantin Stanislavski

7) Lateral Thinking - Edward de Bono

8) The Drama of the Gifted Child/Alice Miller; Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child/John Bradshaw I just felt these two needed to be together.

9) Moby Dick - Herman Melville

10) Death Be Not Proud - John Gunther

11) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

12) Bullfinch's Mythology - errrr....Bullfinch, I think. (Thomas. I knew that)

13) Le Morte d'Arthur - Sir Thomas Malory

14) Beowulf

15) The Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov

Political Triage

By now, an awful lot of pundits and opinionistas have weighed in on this story:

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is sending a blunt message to Detroit automakers: To survive _ and win more government help _ they must remake themselves top to bottom. Driving home the point, the White House ousted the General Motors chairman as it rejected GM and Chrysler's restructuring plans.

Obama is set to elaborate on that message Monday when he announces what his White House told reporters over the weekend: Neither GM nor Chrysler submitted acceptable plans to receive additional federal bailout money.

GM chairman Rick Wagoner became the most conspicuous casualty of that decision, forced out Sunday as the White House indicated Detroit must make management and other changes if it hopes to survive _ and that the Obama administration will have a hands-on role in those changes.

Wow. The US government forcing a big company to change it's strategic planning, to the point of forcing the resignation of the COB? Whoda thunk?

 

GM has been conspicuous in its singular inability to change with the times. Not that any of the major three car companies has exactly been models of being ahead on the curve, for that matter. Car manufacturing requires enormous investments of time, money, energy and industrialization and to be flexible is nearly impossible for firms based on the old "time and motion" studies that created the Henry Ford assembly line in the first place.

 

The US auto industry IS a model of repetitive stress disorder, however. What the US auto industry needed to be was out front of demand, when in fact, it has always tried to browbeat people with their offerings.

 

Think about it: ahead of last year's major oil crunch, when oil was only just starting its five-year long upward climb (plenty of time to retool, mind you), what commercials did you see?

 

Did you see Chrysler/Dodge push compact cars, reminding people that oil prices are hopping and that global warming is coming? Did you see GM push their economy lines? Ford sell us hybrids?

 

Toyota did. Honda did. Hyundai did. Even Volkswagen did.

 

To make this mistake once in a lifetime is one thing, but it's not like Detroit hasn't had plenty of warning that oil prices were about to start an inexorable climb to the sky. Indeed, despite the terrible economic collapse, OPEC looks to be aiming for a $50 a barrell price in 2009. That would put us at about 2005 levels, and maybe have gasoline at $2.50 a gallon, maybe $3, by the summer.

 

In fact, more than thirty years ago, Detroit had the warning that oil was not going to remain the implacably cheap resource it always had been and for people who live and breathe on supply and demand, they somehow missed the fact that India and China would be driving more and using more oil, guaranteeing a permanent rise in prices.

 

Someone's head had to go if only for blatant incompetence, in other words, much like Jake DeSantis should have left AIG quietly last week.

 

Too, Obama's team probably senses that the American people, while still largely supportive of his attempts to revitalize the economy, are getting tired of "no-strings attached" reclamation projects. I can't blame Obama much for these. They really started with the Fed's bailouts last year under Bush, which sort of forced Obama to throw good money after bad this year, an allusion he made last Thursday.

 

So he's fired a warning shot after carefully choosing his target. He could have picked the Chrysler chairman and thrown the merger talks with Fiat out of whack. He could have chosen any banker in the mix, but that might have created massive turmoil in the credit and stock markets, and he really had no leverage at this point in that indstry anyway.

 

So he took the biggest, juiciest and easiest target: an incompetent boob running an incompetent company incompetently.

 

Good for him.