November 19, 2008

If I were a less-principled man...

I'd be all for a bailout of the Big 2.5.  My house is in Michigan, and I'm rarin' to get the Hell out of here, so any short-term bump to the state economy would be to my advantage.  In fact, if it does happen I recommend anyone with the opportunity take that same advantage that I plan to take.

The great big things that would actually help the Detroit auto industry aren't even under discussion: loosening of CAFE standards, and busting the UAW with right-to-work (preferably at the national level).  Any outpouring of Fed funds (i.e. money from the pockets of hundreds of millions of Americans that had nothing to do with the crapping out of Ford, GM, and Chrysler*) without impossible alteration of the regulatory environment or the way Detroit does business would be the equivalent of setting the money on fire.

UAW and management walked into this poopstorm hand in hand, with the expectation that the good times for Detroit would never end.  Neither of them has any chance of fixing this now without the binding arbitration of Chaper 11 bankruptcy.  Without UAW holding management's hand in a death grip, we might not have got to this point.  Look around on the blogs right now, and find plenty of UAW astroturf.  Sentiment against them is growing, and they're waging the same sort of PR war that Axelrod waged on behalf of Obama during the election.

If we're very, very lucky, DC democrats will crap on Michigan.  Most of them have nothing to lose by doing so (and plenty to gain in their home states by being "against the bailout"), and there's already a good chance that Dingell will lose his commitee headship.  We'll see how this plays out, I suppose.

*for limited meanings of the word "Chrysler"

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 06:43 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 305 words, total size 2 kb.

November 11, 2008

Veteran's Day

Thank a vet today.

We owe them more than can be repaid.  Honor that.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 09:06 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 16 words, total size 1 kb.

November 06, 2008

Glenn Beck is right

Obama won.  He will be my president as much as he will be every other American's president.  That's how the system works.  I'll disagree with him when he's doing wrong (just like I did with Bush over amnesty, the various bailouts, Harriet Miers, etc.) and I'll agree with him when he does right.  I fully expect to do more of the former than the latter, but I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised.

Case in point: John Dingell has been my congressman since I moved to Washtenaw county.  I've voted against him every time I've been able, because he's not all of what I want, but he's right as rain on the 2nd ammendment, and I appreciate that.

Also, no matter what my disagreements with BHO, I shall never stand on foreign soil and slur him.  Politics stops at the border, dammit.  Yeah, his supporters and his campaign did loads of unsavory and potentially criminal things in the leadup to the election, but it's over.  This is what the system has delivered us.  If you don't like it, we accept the results and then FIX THE DAMN SYSTEM.

Open primaries?  Get rid of 'em.  Voting without ID?  No, outlaw this, period.  Donation fraud?  We need total accountability for every dollar donated to campaigns and every dollar spent by them.  If corporations can put up with Sarbanes-Oxley, campaigns can do this.  These should not be controversial positions or goals.  Point to Operation Chaos if you have to, point out how much it cost donors to continue the primary fights.  Point, legitimately, to the problems with Obama's online donation site and the potential for abuse or foreign donation.  Fair, open, and trustworthy elections are in the interest of all americans.  If I can look at IN and see the obvious fraud in Marin and Lake counties, something's wrong with the system.  Ballot box stuffing in big cities is a punchline, and it shouldn't be.

Yeah, the media was in the tank.  They always will be, get over it.  Support media when it tells the truth, boycott it when it's biased.  Support alternative media, write letters, whatever it takes.  Encourage your friends to do the same, be they left or right.  We need an honest media, and cannot function without it.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 11:10 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 381 words, total size 2 kb.

November 05, 2008

Moron/Hostage meetup?

I know there are a few of us in the Ann Arbor/Ypsi area (not all of whom read my crappy blog, but still).  Anyone interested in trying to meet somewhere for a beer or 5?  I'm off booze until the Obamanation ends, so I can DD if necessary.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 09:28 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 50 words, total size 1 kb.

Encouraging thoughts of the day

If you missed those rascally bad guys from the 70's and 80's, you'll have them again soon enough.  Putin's gonna get his USSR.

Also: If the American Experiment has well and truly ended, at least we have oodles of new data for when we run the next one.

Posted by: leoncaruthers at 11:05 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 53 words, total size 1 kb.

<< Page 1 of 1 >>
30kb generated in CPU 0.0155, elapsed 0.0936 seconds.
59 queries taking 0.085 seconds, 211 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.