Sunday

Sunday May 16, 2009

. . . .Like Van "The Man" Morrison said; No Guru, No Method, No Teacher

. . .Just live ladies and gentlemen, just live and breathe, it's all good.

. . . Today's playlist, a heartrending selection of love songs filled with sweetness and devotion, (he snickered)

. . . .So Dear Readers, I'm sitting here tonight, actually doing some research to help one of my old employers, Ford Motor Company, out and I receive the following epistle from one of the "enlightened masses":

First off they did everything you say and its about time we stop throwing bad money after bad. So far we've printed money we don't have to solve problems that can't be solved as quickly as some people would like. I'm sorry about the workers but they were hosed by the same people who claim to want to help them (UAW, American Government, corporate executives).
Personally the idea of one man having a golden parachute in case the corporate jet goes down is beyond greedy.
Or anyone involved in government accepting money from someone so they can get their way is beyond unethical. I wonder how many of the government officials have flown on a corporate jet?
As far as the UAW i've never met anyone so i can only associate them with other Unions in which i find a disproportionate amount of dumb asses earning obscene amounts of money for relatively simple tasks.
Optimism is great but there are still a lot of indicators that we have not hit bottom yet this being a great big one.
We all knew even with the bailouts the auto industry was going to die because no one has the money to buy a car and the banks aren't lending didn't have to be a rocket scientist to see that one coming. Maybe throwing bad money after bad money (we keep printing it at this rate it will be worthless and China and the Middle East aren't gonna be too happy either).
I just read an article about Tesla Motors the new and hopefully up and coming carmaker in the us. Damned if the owner didn't throw about a hundred million of his own money into it, I respect that. Thats the small businessman getting it done. Somewhere he was also talking about getting help from the government. How smart would it have been for our government to have invested in Tesla. We might have a new car maker that could already be hiring laid off auto workers and maybe retooling a plant or two and be farther ahead instead. We also wouldn't have wasted all our tax dollars either.

Man it would be nice if i could just close my eyes and ignore everything. But no I've got to work any fucking job at any fucking wage to keep my house.

Still respect ya Angel but that I hope your happy now comment pissed me off but your right it did make me happy in the fact the we can now get on with the job of "repairing her faults. Sometimes you have to wipe the slate clean and start over which is what a lot of us are having to do.

Suddenly Stoopid

. . . .That's the nice part of this gig. It's my column, I don't get paid, and I don't have to be objective or fair. I'm glad that you still respect me Stoopid, but I sure as hell don't respect your uninformed ignorant opinions. Here's the facts, those 5 to 7 million people who are getting laid off don't have jobs to go in this economy, so they'll be trying to get by on unemployment, Medicaid and Medicare paid for by you, me & everyone else that happens to be working right now. The "Government" pays for nothing, it's not a profit-making entity and it doesn't have a product to sell, only money to collect from we the people. Do they want that? HELL NO, YOU MORON! They're people, men and women, just like you who wanted nothing more than to support their families, raise their kids, build a home, see those kids through college, and just be folks, people who got through life making their own way.
You know nothing about them, yet you rain down some "terrible judgement" just because you have bills to pay too. Well, welcome to adulthood. I worked in those plants for 25 years, beside good people, people who had skills and talents. Anytime you want to walk in off the street and start running a 2,000 ton stamping press or a 32 station transfer line with no training and no skills, making a product to tolerances of 50 microns or better, a couple of thousand components a day that go into a 5,000 lb. piece of metal that anyone with two weeks of training is given a license to hurtle down the road at 70 MPH, you're welcome to it. Everyone I worked with was well aware of the implications of what they did, and well aware that most people are too damn ignorant to realize what it takes to put together an engine and transmission so they operate safely, despite the stupidity of the person behind the wheel.
No, the UAW and corporate executives did not kill the automotive industry, it was the incredible number of blind people in this country who just threw all the money they had at companies that were funded by two governments, Japan and Germany, who vowed to destroy us back in 1945. Well, they won, thanks to the traitors in this country who every day get behind the wheel of their axismobile, and curse the guy who worked in an automotive plant.
Got news, if it wasn't for Henry Ford, there wouldn't be a middle class in this country, he didn't invent the automobile, he invented the middle class, do a little economic and social research. If it wasn't for the automotive workforce, the wage level in this country wouldn't have been where it was at from 1950 onwards.
Glad they're gone? Try telling that to a family of kids who will now lose their home. Glad they're gone? Try looking any good honest man or woman who went to work everyday to make a living and did the best they could in the eye and saying that Ace.
In all the years that I worked in those plants, all the thousands of people I worked with (yes, thousands) I can honestly say that I never met anyone who got up in the morning, looked at his wife and kids and said "Hey, I'm just gonna put it to them today". I did work with a lot of people who did the absolute best they could everyday.
Tesla motors? Give me a break. The automotive companies are a profit making business, corporations, which by a 1963 Supreme Court ruling, are legally bound, as a legal entitity, to make a profit for their shareholders. As such, they gave the public what they wanted, which due to cheap gas up until 2 years ago, was SUV's and trucks! That's what the public wanted and would buy. Back in the 70's, it was muscle cars.
I'm gonna go back to what I said about Germany and Japan. There are millions of good men laying in National Cemeteries all over this country, men and women who wore the uniform of this country, it's flag, and fought and died in WWII and Korea. My own father wore that uniform and lays in a grave in Augusta National Cemetery, so this one's personal. You just pissed all over his grave, and countless others like him, who believed that an American citizen should support American companies. So, bub, I'd be the one in the middle of the picture up on the left. The two on either side of me would be my sons, you just pissed all over their Grandfather's grave. I'd recommend walking to the other side of the street if you happen to spot us anywhere. You want to wipe the slate clean? Start by getting every damn car that was built that the profits flow back overseas to two countries that were enemies off the street.

. . . .And to make a point, this link here takes you to an interactive map that details, by county and state, the economic distress level here in the U.S.

. . . I wrote last week about my personal opinion around the legalization of marijuana, though I stopped smoking it myself over 28 years ago. You can cruise the archives to get to it. Reader Dave P. sends this one along, from the New York Times Op-Ed page, by Nick Gillespie. It seems that I'm not alone in my opinion.

Here’s a better idea — and one that will help the federal and state governments fill their coffers: Legalize drugs and then tax sales of them. And while we’re at it, welcome all forms of gambling (rather than just the few currently and arbitrarily allowed) and let prostitution go legit too. All of these vices, involving billions of dollars and consenting adults, already take place. They just take place beyond the taxman’s reach.

Legalizing the world’s oldest profession probably wasn’t what Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, meant when he said that we should never allow a crisis to go to waste. But turning America into a Sin City on a Hill could help President Obama pay for his ambitious plans to overhaul health care and invest in green energy. More taxed vices would certainly lead to significant new revenue streams at every level. That’s one of the reasons 52 percent of voters in a recent Zogby poll said they support legalizing, taxing and regulating the growth and sale of marijuana. Similar cases could be made for prostitution and all forms of gambling.

In terms of economic stimulation and growth, legalization would end black markets that generate huge amounts of what economists call “deadweight losses,” or activity that doesn’t contribute to increased productivity. Rather than spending precious time and resources avoiding the law (or, same thing, paying the law off), producers and consumers could more easily get on with business and the huge benefits of working and playing in plain sight.

. . . .And while we're on a discussion of practical realities, reader Jim H. sends this one along from CNN's commentary page, by David MacKay:

We need to introduce simple arithmetic into our discussions of energy.

We need to understand how much energy our chosen lifestyles consume, we need to decide where we want that energy to come from, and we need to get on with building energy systems of sufficient size to match our desired consumption.

Our failure to talk straight about the numbers is allowing people to persist in wishful thinking, inspired by inane sayings such as "every little bit helps."

Assuming we are serious about getting off fossil fuels, the scale of building required should not be underestimated. Small actions alone will not deliver a solution.

Let's express energy consumption and energy production using simple personal units, namely kilowatt-hours. One kilowatt-hour (kWh) is the energy used by leaving a 40-watt bulb on for 24 hours. The chemical energy in the food we eat to stay alive amounts to about 3 kWh per day. Taking one hot bath uses about 5 kWh of heat. Driving an average European car 100 kilometers (roughly 62 miles) uses 80 kWh of fuel. With a few of these numbers in mind, we can start to evaluate some of the recommendations that people make about energy.

Take, for example, the idea that one of the top 10 things you should do to make a difference to your energy consumption is to unplug your cell-phone charger when you are not using it. The truth is that leaving a phone charger plugged in uses about 0.01 kWh per day, 1/100th of the power consumed by a lightbulb.

This means that switching the phone charger off for a whole day saves the same energy as is used in driving an average car for one second. Switching off phone chargers is like bailing the Titanic with a teaspoon. I'm not saying you shouldn't unplug it, but please realize, when you do so, what a tiny fraction it is of your total energy footprint.

In total, the European lifestyle uses 125 kWh per day per person for transport, heating, manufacturing, and electricity. That's equivalent to every person having 125 light bulbs switched on all the time. The average American uses 250 kWh per day: 250 light bulbs.

And most of this energy today comes from fossil fuels. What are our post-fossil-fuel options?

. . . .And continuing in that practical application of alternative energy, Part 7 of the NPR series that we started last week on upgrading and improving the efficiency of the national electrical grid:

The U.S. electricity grid is in the midst of a revolution. It has a track record of 99.97 percent reliability, but there are plans for a massive overhaul of the grid to accommodate increasing demand and more renewable forms of energy, like wind and solar.

While some proponents of changing the grid can be almost breathless in their enthusiasm, the utilities that will end up performing a lot of the work are a more conservative lot.

"The traditional regulated utility has one job, and that's to keep the lights on," says Martha Duggan, vice president for government affairs at solar energy company SunEdison.

Duggan, who began her career in the regulated utility world, likes to tell a story about a utility engineer who said the nature of his job was either to be ignored when the electricity was on, or criticized when it was off.

"And so his goal, really, was to be ignored," Duggan says. "When you apply that kind of thinking across an organization — as you might imagine — the opportunity for creativity or new ideas is not necessarily in top of mind for folks who work in that environment."

Room For Innovation

Duggan says there are a few exceptions around the country. She points to Xcel Energy, which is in the process of creating the first smart grid for an entire city in Boulder, Colo. Just recently, Florida Power and Light launched a $200 million upgrade to the electricity grid in Miami-Dade County. But for most of the other utilities, there is an impression of big stodgy companies that are resistant to change

"I think that's a total misperception," says David Ratcliffe, CEO of the Southern Company in Atlanta. "We've deployed a million new automated meters and will move to 4.5 million. We've deployed automated switching on our transmission and distribution networks."

But take those automated — or smart — meters. It's not as simple as just ripping out the old ones and installing new ones, then charging the customer a little extra to cover the cost. Utilities, by and large, are still regulated monopolies, and big changes require approval.

"There are all kinds of regulatory/financing issues here that the utilities are concerned they will not be able to collect all the money," says Ahmad Faruqui, an economist with the utility consulting firm The Brattle Group.

Keeping The Lights On

Such mundane issues might seem boring when placed next to all the exciting talk about a revamped electricity grid in the U.S. But even now, a utility CEO still sees his primary job as keeping the lights on.

"It doesn't have the same kind of sex appeal as new technologies and new 'golly-gee-whiz' — whether it's a new computer software program or a new computer itself," Ratcliffe says.

So don't expect the smart grid to be unveiled like the latest iPod — utilities will build out this updated grid methodically, as befits their conservative nature. Ratcliffe says change is under way. And there's a new generation of utility executives coming up through the ranks who tend to be more comfortable with change — and with the new technologies that will remake the country's electricity grid.

. . . .One of the scariest things I've seen yet came to light today in GQ online. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, during his tenure and during the Iraq war had his daily briefings for himself, his staff and the President (GWB) formatted to have a quote from Scripture at the top with the pictures:

on the morning of Thursday, April 10, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon prepared a top-secret briefing for George W. Bush. This document, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update, was a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House. The briefing’s cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days’ war efforts: On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square, a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad. And above these images, and just below the headline secretary of defense, was a quote that may have raised some eyebrows. It came from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him…To deliver their soul from death.”

This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine. On March 31, a U.S. tank roared through the desert beneath a quote from Ephesians: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” On April 7, Saddam Hussein struck a dictatorial pose, under this passage from the First Epistle of Peter: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.”

. . . .The Daily Beast covers this further, and in a staff written article, examines it a little further, and explores how Bush's handlers are releasing all this, and surprisingly enough, Rumsfeld gets the blame for Katrina too, and somehow is accountable for Ted Kennedy not getting a medal?!?!?

. . . .In case you missed last night's season finale of Saturday Night Live, Will Ferrell returned, and of course brought his GWB with him. Click here for the video link to one of the best sketches, Bush dropping in on Cheney in the make-up room before Dick's appearance on Meet The Press. "I used to be scared of you Dick, but I'm better now, I've watched a lot of Dr. Phil."

. . . .And as a service to you all, here's the round-up of the Sunday talk-shows (think of it as Talk Soup for smart people) first from the Daily Beast, and then from The Huffington Post.

. . . .I was listening to Shooter Jennings last night on his regular Saturday Night Electric Rodeo show on Sirius radio, he was talking about his new album, which he and The .357's are working on now in the studio and the number of rumors flying around that "Shooter is going rock". Hell, Shooter plays what he wants and has always done that, and refused to be categorized. That is one boy that is a dead ringer for his daddy, Waylon, in every way shape and form. Go Shooter, keep doing it your way, your Father was one of the original outlaws and I'm glad you're keeping it up, it honors his memory.

. . . .Outta here for now, kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they slip through your hands. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one gets out alive, and we don't get to dictate the terms and conditions of how the ticket gets punched. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow, and this ain't no dress rehearsal. It's about right fucking here and now. Go change your life, and that changes the world.

The Desolation Angel
[where: Hell, Michigan 48137]