Goodbye, GM

Is Michael Moore ever wrong? Seriously. This is an awesome analysis and forward-thinking piece by him. There is nothing else I can add to this! I love when he says, "we now own a car company!" - sj

two great excerpts:

"It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers."

"we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now."

click here for full story!

sigh. Palin caves, will accept stimulus money...

(originally linked at Salon.com)

Like other conservative Republican governors with national ambitions, Alaska's Sarah Palin initially made a very big deal out of her plan to reject almost half of the federal dollars directed to her state in the stimulus package. Now, however, she's singing a different tune, and will accept roughly $900 million of the $930 million available.

Palin's main objection to the money she said she'd reject was that it came with too many strings attached, and would create unsustainable burdens on the state government once the federal money ran out. But, the Associated Press reports, that's not how the state legislature -- which has been at odds with the governor -- saw things:

Alaska's Legislature conducted more than 20 public hearings on the federal stimulus package, and legislative leaders said they couldn't find any of the strings attached to the funds that Palin had warned about.

The only money Palin will turn away, an aide told the AP, is $29 million for a State Energy Program -- again, the governor says the funding's coming with unacceptable strings attached.

Jim Cramer's take on Obama's stimulus package

I love Jim Cramer. Always have. I love his knowledge, his passion, his personality, his confidence, and especially his humor. I totally respect his opinion as well. He brings up some great and simple points in this recent article of his, as well as solutions. Points that counter Obama's on the economy, and expose the danger and weaknesses of Obama's stimulus package. This is a great read. I've posted a few excerpts below. sj

"...Look at the incredible decline in the stock market, in all indices, since the inauguration of the president, with the drop accelerating when the budget plan came to light because of the massive fear and indecision the document sowed: Raising taxes on the eve of what could be a second Great Depression, destroying the profits in healthcare companies (one of the few areas still robust in the economy), tinkering with the mortgage deduction at a time when U.S. house price depreciation is behind much of the world's morass and certainly the devastation affecting our banks, and pushing an aggressive cap and trade program that could raise the price of energy for millions of people."

"...I wish it were true right now that stocks played less of a role in peoples' lives. But stocks, along with housing, are our principal forms of wealth in this country. Only the people who have lifetime tenure, insured solid pensions and rent homes but own no stocks personally are unaffected. Sure that's a lot of people, but believe me, they aspire to have homes and portfolios. If we only want to help those who have no wealth to destroy, we are not helping the majority of Americans; we are not helping the broader population."

"...we have no time for some of this now, on the verge of a second Great Depression. This is an agenda that must be held back for better times. It is an agenda that at this moment is radical vs. what is called for. I am proud to have voted for the Obama who I thought understood the need to get us on the right path, and create jobs and wealth before taxing it and making moves that hurt job creation -- certainly ones that will outweigh the meager number of jobs he's creating."

Governor Jindal = Epic Fail

Did he really use Katrina as an example? He went there?
I had heard Jindal was actually intelligent. WTF did we see last night?

David Brooks thought it was a "disaster".

Seriously?

The New York Post's editors clearly weren't thinking, which appears to be par for their course:

"But it has been taken as something else -- as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism," reads the statement. "This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize....However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past -- and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback," the statement says. "To them, no apology is due. Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon -- even as the opportunists seek to make it something else."

Come, now, you can't really believe that is a legitimate apology. Any reasonably sentient person with even a shred of historical perspective would easily make the association of the chimp to the first African-American President of the US. Given the legacy of racist depictions of African-Americans, over centuries, as monkeys or apes, any aforementioned reasonable person should draw the conclusion that a cartoon such as this would be perceived as at best insensitive, at worst blatantly racist.

As for the defenders of the artist and tabloid who point out that GW Bush was often portrayed as a chimp, the intent of the cartoon is beside the point. There is a line beyond which is no man's land when it comes to racial sensitivity, and there's just too much historical baggage for this to be taken in another context.

Zakaria: The legacy of America's most unpopular president

This is straight from CNN. I saw Fareed Zakaria's video discussion of this yesterday, and while there's nothing you haven't heard before in this article, Fareed does speak briefly on whether it's tax increases or tax cuts that truly help the economy. I will most definitely be exploring the facts behind this "debate" and posting more on this in the future. Here's one thing I know: Bush's tax cuts did absolutely nothing to help the economy; BOTH 'refund' checks during his 8 years here and his tax cuts exacerbated the the current economic woes.

Anything Fareed expresses in his interviews, books, articles, reporting, podcasts, etc, is highly informative and requires paying attention to. Of all the people in politics, news and worldwide affairs that I've come to "know," there is no one who I agree with more on such a wide array of issues, and no one who does as good a job as Fareed on breaking down FACTS, and what they actually mean to us as a people.


Story Highlights
Fareed Zakaria: Bush leaves office the most unpopular president in modern history
Bush tax cuts were "most significant bad decision," leading to sky-high deficits
Zakaria praises Bush's policies in Asia, attempting peace process in Middle East
Editor's note: Fareed Zakaria is a foreign affairs analyst who hosts "Fareed Zakaria: GPS" on CNN at 1 p.m. ET Sundays.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- In his final public address from the White House, a reflective President George W. Bush on Thursday recalled the ups and downs of his eight-year tenure while predicting a bright future.

"We have faced danger and trial and there is more ahead," Bush said. "But with the courage of our people and confidence in our ideals, this great nation will never tire, never falter and never fail."

Bush, who as president has been known for adamantly sticking to positions even when they've come under widespread criticism, acknowledged setbacks and said he would have done some things "differently, if given the chance."

CNN talked to world affairs expert and author Fareed Zakaria about Bush's legacy as the 43rd president.

CNN: What do you think history's judgment will be of President George W. Bush?

Zakaria: Well, he leaves office the most unpopular president in modern history. There are so many different strands of anger and disappointment in the president -- Iraq, Guantanamo, Katrina, torture, financial woes, his stand on the environment -- that I can't imagine it will fully dissipate over time. I certainly don't think he will ever be seen as a great hero.

CNN: In your view what was his biggest mistake?

Zakaria: I think the single most significant bad decision George Bush made came early in his presidency. It was a decision widely applauded at the time and with much bipartisan support. Remember the Bush tax cuts?

Remember their effect on America's finances? In 2000, the Clinton administration had almost balanced the federal budget and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was projecting that over the next 10 years the United States would have budget surpluses that would add up to $5.6 trillion.

By the spring of 2002, two-thirds of that projected surplus had evaporated and the rest disappeared soon thereafter. It was the most profoundly un-conservative act of Bush's presidency. Rather than pay down debt and save in the good times for the inevitable bad times, Bush squandered it all so that all of us -- particularly high income earners -- could indulge in a bit more consumption.

And now, when times have gotten bad and we sorely need that reserve, we're clean out of cash. The federal budget deficit will likely range from $1.2 to $1.8 trillion over the next few years. Imagine what we could have done by either saving that money or spending it wisely on an energy revolution, on upgrading the infrastructure, on modernizing the health-care system.

CNN: But hasn't he kept us safe from another terrorist attack?

Zakaria: I give Bush, and the American government as a whole, credit for this but it can't be the only yardstick by which to judge a president. After all, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy have kept France safe; Angela Merkel has kept Germany safe, yet we don't regard this as a singular achievement. And the obsession with "keeping us safe" has led to some bad decisions that have compromised American liberty and ethics.

After 9/11, governments everywhere were aggressive in busting terrorists' networks, following their money and tracking their recruits with almost immediate results. As a result, in the six years since 9/11, al Qaeda -- the group led by Osama bin Laden -- has been unable to launch a major attack anywhere. It was a terrorist organization; it has become a communications company, producing the occasional videotape rather than actual terrorism.

Jihad continues -- but they operate on a local level, usually through groups with almost no connection to al Qaeda central. And this improvised strategy has a crippling weakness; it kills locals, thus alienating ordinary Muslims.

The one area where this analysis is not entirely true is in Afghanistan-Pakistan and there the Bush administration bears some significant blame for the resurgence of the jihadis and militants. So, Bush deserves some credit for preventing terror attacks but not as much as the administration keeps implying.

CNN: There has to be a bright spot in his tenure.

Zakaria: Oh, there are several. Nothing is all black and white. His policies in Asia were all intelligent. He kept a strong relationship with China while also strengthening ties with Japan, India, Australia, and Indonesia. That was smart strategy.

He was also wise enough to reverse some of his most egregious errors -- the North Korea negotiations, attempting a peace process in the Middle East, reaching out to Sunni tribes in Iraq. The problem in many of these cases was that it was often too late to get a dramatic result -- but still better late than never.