Tuesday, March 31, 2009

RIP Andy Hallett

Right before bed last night I saw this and just couldn’t believe it. 1st reaction was how does a 33 year old guy die of heart disease!?! and he’s been fighting it for the past 5 years? WTF, man this sucks, that’s just far too young to die.

I was a huge fan of Angel and one of the main reasons other than Angel of course was Lorne, the host. Played brilliantly by Andy. You could always count on him to show up and liven up any scene he was in or break out into song with a surprisingly good voice.

God bless Andy. He will surely be missed.

Links to check out:

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Happy Birthday....



...to me! Yeah, might has well toot my own horn.

On March 30th I'll be 41 and can't farking believe it. Seems it wasn't that long ago I was bummed out about turning 30 and I'd love to be 30 again knowing what I know now. Oh well, like they say. Getting older is always better than the alternative.

Funny side note is my wifes parents are celebrating their 41st wedding anniversery too! So they were married roughly the same time I was being born. Weird ehh? Just shows we were meant to be together.

We don't have much planned for today as it's a weekday but my lovely wife has planned a great Saturday for us night next weekend at the Melting Pot and I can't wait. There's about 3 bomb pop's with my name on them.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Maskatron lives!

Well I found something I didn't know I was looking for and it's made me giddily happy for some reason. Maskatron!

Ok queue the crickets and tumble weeds as I'm sure nobody but me knows what the hell I'm talking 'bout. Well let me 'splain...

Maskatron is a Six Million Dollar man action figure that I had back in the 70's and I absolutely loved it. Played with it ALL THE TIME. Even had bath time adventures with it. In fact I still have it's head in a box of old junk over at my parents house and I think there’s a face or 2 with it. There might be more so I need to leave work and go look. Will post pics if I find anything worthwhile.

Ran across this great spread of 6 million Dollar man toy ad’s over at the Plaid Stallions website. Looking at all these I think I had almost everything. Even some of the Bionic Woman stuff! No, wasn’t gay or even curious but needed her to make the crossover episode re-enactments authentic :-)

Also check out Maskatron on bionic wiki

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Bravo Daniel Hannan

If I’ve seen this once I’ve seen it 10 times and no I am not kidding on that but it’s so good just had to post it. If not other reason so I could find it again if needed.

It is so very refreshing to witness a politician speak the truth with strong conviction like this fellow. Would be even better if our worthless criminals in congress were more like Daniel. If so I have a feeling our country wouldn’t be in the shitter as it is now.

Sidenote: Ever notice that if you speak with a British accent you can say almost anything and still sound dignified and above the fray? Just saying….

Read Daniel’s blog at www.hannan.co.uk

Going after CEO’s then go after Hollywood

 

Great idea from Linda Harvey at WorldNet Daily

Is Nicole Kidman worth $15-$20 million a picture? How about George Clooney, Matt Damon, Reese Witherspoon or Angelina Jolie? If we're capping Wall Street salaries, we need to be socially just and review the West Coast as well.

Are there people who could be substituted for Cameron Diaz, who'd be willing to work for, say, $5 million a film? Or even a paltry million? Shouldn't we share that wealth? Maybe she'd become nicer or at least well-informed at a lower rate of compensation.

Sidney Poitier said recently that Hollywood CEOs should earn no more than $500,000, and I'm with him. The same should apply to the stars. I know it's a hard-knock life, but people have been known to live on money like that.

And what about pro sports? Terrell Owens reportedly earns around $7 million a year. Aren't there ex-high school receivers out there willing to step into his cleats for a lot less than that?

Don't miss Whistleblower magazines definitive exposé on Left Coast celebrities, "Why Hollywood is Insane"

And we haven't even gotten to the musicians yet. How much effort does it take for some of the music produced now? These people don't need compensation. Wouldn't most be willing to work (if you can call it that) for nothing? I say, free downloadable music for everyone, all the time, under the new regime!

If our wealth confiscating Government is going to start ‘fixing’ everyone’s pay to ensure ‘fairness’ then start where the salaries are truly out of control, Hollywood. Let’s see if all the celebutards will still support and throw fund raisers for Chairman O when 1/2 or more of their income disappears.

Applying the Liberal wealth redistributionist’s thinking to this you know it’s not fair that huge stars like Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie are paid so much per film while other lesser known actors who work just as hard are not. Who cares if they aren’t good enough to get paid as much as a A-list celeb. This is all about FAIRNESS not actual talent.

And hell, that’s just scratching the surface, next stop professional athletes. NBA, NFL, MLB, PGA. Some of those guys surely aren’t worth what they are getting paid right? It’s just a outrage that contracts were drawn up privately between consenting adults to arrive at a monetary amount that both parties feel is in their best interest. That’s not fair to the less talented athletes! Regardless of their talent or lack thereof  they deserve to be paid more!

Now let’s set our sights on rock star’s income. The big Liberal tax the evil rich types like Jon Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen and Bono earn far more than they need. About time they pay their ‘fair share’ don’t you think?

If the punish and demonize the rich plan would go after those groups I just might get behind the punish the rich crusade. Soon as monkeys fly outta my ass and I turn into a socialist that is.

Capping salaries? Start with Hollywood

Monday, March 23, 2009

Official Logo of TOTUS

Chairman O has a rather creepy cult like logo so his teleprompter should as well and it’s not even creepy. Just cool & hilarious.

Friday, March 20, 2009

TOTUS has it’s own blog

image

This is one of those ideas wish I’d thought of.

What  the hell is TOTUS your probably asking. Well if you a Rush fan you KNOW. Teleprompter of the United States. Tell me that’s not funny as hell.  Rush is talking it up and has been on a roll lately saying things like Obama’s teleprompt told him to say this or that. LOL

Barack Obama's Teleprompter's Blog

And of course, he/she is on twitter as well BOTeleprompter Not sure about Facebook. Will check and get back to ya :)

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Shep Smith shooting straight on AIG

Always thought Shep was a centrist or even left leaning at times but boy he's dead-on with this. I’ve watched it about 5 times and haven’t got tired of it yet.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Overall #1 seed is your Louisville Cardinals!

 

It’s about time. Like Rodney D. used to say we get no respect but we are now. Nationwide & perhaps worldwide the cards finally some recognition for being a great team.

No doubt this group of guys have the skills to go all the way I just hope they don’t get caught up in the hype and not let being #1 go to their heads. Keep blinders on, keep playing your game and you’ll do fine.

Good luck guys!  Links to some good b’ball reading:

Louisville earns school's first appearance on top of AP poll

Louisville gets No. 1 overall seed

Cards at the top of their game

Big Dance: Who takes the crown?Big Dance: Who takes the crown?

Fifty Thoughts on Selection Sunday

Beast in the East: Louisville Stops Syracuse, 76-66

For all you old farts take a listen Kenny Loggins – This is it You can can almost see Dr. Dunkenstein, Roger Burkman, Wiley Brown, Scooter, Rodney and all the rest from that magical team.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Richard Allen Davis will never be executed

If ever there was a poster child for the pro death penalty side it’s the human crapstain Richard Allen Davis. If we had such a thing as real justice in America that piece of trash would be chained up to a wall this very moment and Polly Klaas’s father Marc, would be allowed to beat him until he was unrecognizable. Unfortunately that will never happen but at least we can dream.

This story hammers home the point of why it’s more costly to put people to death than to incarcerate them for life. The whole process is SLOWER than the glacier that created the grand canyon. I mean look at this:

How did it take this long? Davis was sentenced to death in September 1996 for the 1993 crime. Then it took the California Supreme Court office that handles appellate attorneys until mid-2001 to appoint attorney Phillip Cherney to represent Davis. As I've reported before, five years is not an unusual hiatus.

Then it took Cherney until July 11, 2005 to file an opening brief. Producing the appeal took longer than the prosecuting of Davis.

After another four years of delay and back and forth with the California attorney general's office, voila, there was a hearing in March.

Unreal isn’t it? Chances almost 100% he will OD on death row or die of old age before he’s ever put to death and he knows it. Easy way to solve this is so simple. I call it my 1 and 5 rule.

When convicted and sentenced to death you get 1 and only 1 automatic appeal that takes place 5 years to the day you were convicted. You have 1825 days to either prove your innocence or cast enough reasonable doubt in a jury’s mind that they won’t put you to death.

If you are successful then no death for you. If not then you are led from the courtroom and immediately executed with whatever method the state is using at the time.

Should be very simple but sure I’m missing something in the big picture of things. It’s unarguable that it would save a blue TON of money and keep death row fairly cleared out. Sounds like a win win to me.

Richard Allen Davis: Safe on Death Row

No Cost Stimulus, great idea. Too bad it will never happen

 

This is a great plan that anyone who’s not a anti-capitalist green fruitcake (or in their back pocket) should agree with. Costs basically nothing, removes rules and regulations that have stifled access to our energy sources for decades. Could also provide ten’s of thousands of jobs and potential trillions in tax revenue.

What the bloody hell is not to like about that?!?!

Well, trouble is it will never EVER pass because of the enviro-whackjob lobby won’t allow it. They have bought and paid for most of the dimo-crat party and whoever they don’t own won’t go for it because it relies on the Government giving up control. Something neither party will do.

Economists, politicians, and the public alike are questioning the viability of the massive $787 billion stimulus signed into law. In response, Congressman Rob Bishop (R–UT) and Senator David Vitter (R–LA) recently introduced legislation that would create an estimated 2 million jobs, increase gross domestic product $10 trillion over the next 30 years, and lower energy costs—all without a huge expense to the taxpayer.

The No Cost Stimulus Act of 2009 would do this by expanding domestic energy supply and streamlining burdensome, unnecessary environmental review processes that have placed a stranglehold on access to reliable U.S. energy sources for decades.

No Cost Stimulus Expands Energy Supply and Creates Jobs

No Cost Stimulus Being Announced Today

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Rise & fall of the big 3

Want to start this off by saying I DID NOT WRITE THE BELOW ARTICLE! Only reason I’m posting the entire piece and not quoting it is because it’s actually a speech by Joseph B. White and I ran across it on Free Republic. It’s a long but very good read on how the big 3 went from kings of the road to teetering on insolvency. So settle in with a pack of smokes and bag of popcorn and start reading……

How Detroit's Automakers Went from Kings of the Road to Roadkill
Hillsdale College Imprimis | February 2009 Issue | Joseph B. White

Posted on Wednesday, March 11, 2009 06:27:56 by IbJensen

JOSEPH B. WHITE is a senior editor in the Washington, D.C., bureau of The Wall Street Journal. A graduate of Harvard University, he has worked for the Journal since 1987, and for most of that time he covered the auto industry, serving as Detroit bureau chief from 1998-2007. He writes a weekly column on the car business and the regulatory and social issues that surround it for the Journal's online and print editions, and contributes new-car reviews to SmartMoney magazine. Mr. White is co-author (with Paul Ingrassia) of Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry, and won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1993.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College on January 26, 2009, at a seminar on the topic, "Cars and Trucks, Markets and Governments," co-sponsored by the Center for Constructive Alternatives and the Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series.

I'D LIKE to start by congratulating all of you. You are all now in the auto business, the Sport of Kings-or in our case, presidents and members of Congress. Without your support—and I assume that most of you are fortunate enough to pay taxes—General Motors and Chrysler would very likely be getting measured by the undertakers of the bankruptcy courts. But make no mistake. What has happened to GM is essentially bankruptcy by other means, and that is an extraordinary event in the political and economic history of our country.

GM is an institution that survived in its early years the kind of management turbulence we've come to associate with particularly chaotic Internet startups. But with Alfred P. Sloan in charge, GM settled down to become the very model of the modern corporation. It navigated through the Great Depression, and negotiated the transition from producing tanks and other military materiel during World War II to peacetime production of cars and trucks. It was global before global was cool, as its current chairman used to say. By the mid-1950s the company was the symbol of American industrial power—the largest industrial corporation in the world. It owned more than half the U.S. market. It set the trends in styling and technology, and even when it did not it was such a fast and effective follower that it could fairly easily hold its competitors in their places. And it held the distinction as the world's largest automaker until just a year or so ago.

How does a juggernaut like this become the basket case that we see before us today? I will oversimplify matters and touch on five factors that contributed to the current crisis—a crisis that has been more than 30 years in the making.

First, Detroit underestimated the competition—in more ways than one.

Second, GM mismanaged its relationship with the United Auto Workers, and the UAW in its turn did nothing to encourage GM (or Ford or Chrysler) to defuse the demographic time bomb that has now blown up their collective future.

Third, GM, Ford, and Chrysler handled failure better than success. When they made money, they tended to squander it on ill-conceived diversification schemes. It was when they were in trouble that they often did their most innovative work—the first minivans at Chrysler, the first Ford Taurus, and more recently the Chevy Volt were ideas born out of crisis.

Fourth, GM (and Ford and Chrysler) relied too heavily on a few, gas-hungry truck and SUV lines for all their profits-plus the money they needed to cover losses on many of their car lines. They did this for a good reason: When gas was cheap, big gas-guzzling trucks were exactly what their customers wanted—until they were not.

Fifth, GM refused to accept that to survive it could not remain what it was in the 1950s and 1960s—with multiple brands and a dominant market share. Instead, it used short-term strategies such as zero percent financing to avoid reckoning with the consequences of globalization and its own mistakes.

Competition from Overseas

In hindsight, it's apparent that the gas shocks of the 1970s hit Detroit at a time when they were particularly vulnerable. They were a decadent empire—Rome in the reign of Nero. The pinnacles of the Detroit art were crudely engineered muscle cars. The mainstream products were large, V8-powered, rear-wheel-drive sedans and station wagons. The Detroit marketing and engineering machinery didn't comprehend the appeal of cars like the Volkswagen Beetle or the Datsun 240Z.

But it took the spike in gas prices—and the economic disruptions it caused—to really open the door for the Japanese automakers.

Remember, Toyota and Honda were relative pipsqueaks in those days. They did not have much more going for them in the American market prior to the first Arab oil embargo than Chinese automakers have today, or Korean automakers did 15 years ago. The oil shocks, however, convinced a huge and influential cohort of American consumers to give fuel-efficient Japanese cars a try. Equally important, the oil shocks persuaded some of the most aggressive of America's car dealers to try them.

The Detroit automakers believed the Japanese could be stopped by import quotas. They initially dismissed reports about the high quality of Japanese cars. They later assumed the Japanese could never replicate their low-cost manufacturing systems in America. Plus they believed initially that the low production cost of Japanese cars was the result of automation and unfair trading practices. (Undoubtedly, the cheap yen was a big help.) In any case, they figured that the Japanese would be stuck in a niche of small, economy cars and that the damage could be contained as customers grew out of their small car phase of life.

They were wrong on all counts.

There were Cassandras—plenty of them. At GM, an executive named Alex Mair gave detailed presentations on why Japanese cars were superior to GM's—lighter, more fuel efficient, and less costly to build. He set up a war room at GM's technical center with displays showing how Honda devised low-cost, high-quality engine parts, and how Japanese automakers designed factories that were roughly half the size of a GM plant but produced the same number of vehicles.

Mair would hold up a connecting rod—the piece of metal in an engine that connects the piston to the crankshaft. The one made by GM was bulky and crudely shaped with big tabs on the ends. Workers assembling the engines would grind down those tabs so that the weight of the piston and rod assembly would be balanced. By contrast, the connecting rod made by Honda was smaller, thinner, and almost like a piece of sculpture. It didn't have ugly tabs on the end, because it was designed to be properly balanced right out of the forge. Mair's point was simple: If you pay careful attention to designing an elegant, lightweight connecting rod, then the engine will be lighter and quieter, the car around the engine can be more efficient, the brakes will have less mass to stop, and the engine will feel more responsive because it has less weight to move.

Another person who warned GM early on about the nature of the Japanese challenge was Jim Harbour. In the early 1980s, he took it into his head to try to tell GM's executives just how much more efficient Japanese factories really were, measured by hours of labor per car produced. The productivity gap was startling—the Japanese plants were about twice as efficient. GM's president at the time responded by barring Jim Harbour from company property.

By the late 1980s, GM's chairman, Roger Smith, had figured out that his company had something to learn from the Japanese. He just didn't know what it was. He poured billions into new, heavily automated U.S. factories—including an effort to build an experimental "lights out" factory that had almost no hourly workers. He entered a joint venture with Toyota to reopen an old GM factory in California, called New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc., or NUMMI. The idea was that GM managers could go to NUMMI to see up close what the "secret" of Toyota's assembly system was. Smith also launched what he promoted as an entirely new car company, Saturn, which was meant to pioneer both a more cooperative relationship with UAW workers and a new way of selling cars.

None of these was a bad idea. But GM took too long to learn the lessons from these experiments—good or bad. The automation strategy fell on its face because the robots didn't work properly, and the cars they built struck many consumers as blandly styled and of poor quality. NUMMI did give GM managers valuable information about Toyota's manufacturing and management system, which a team of MIT researchers would later call "lean production." But too many of the GM managers who gained knowledge from NUMMI were unable to make an impact on GM's core North American business.

Why? I believe it was because the UAW and GM middle managers quite understandably focused on the fact that Toyota's production system required only about half the workers GM had at a typical factory at the time. That was an equation the union wouldn't accept. The UAW demanded that GM keep paying workers displaced by new technology or other shifts in production strategy, which led to the creation of what became known as the Jobs Bank. That program discouraged GM from closing factories and encouraged efforts to sustain high levels of production even when demand fell.

GM and the UAW

This brings me to the relationship between Detroit management and the UAW.

It is likely that if no Japanese or European manufacturers had built plants in the U.S.—in other words, if imports were still really imports—the Detroit carmakers would not be in their current straits, although we as consumers would probably be paying more for cars and have fewer choices than we do. The fact is that the Detroit Three's post-World War II business strategies were doomed from the day in 1982 when the first Honda Accord rolled off a non-union assembly line in Ohio. After that it soon became clear that the Japanese automakers—and others—could build cars in the U.S. with relatively young, non-union labor forces that quickly learned how to thrive in the efficient production systems those companies operated.

Being new has enormous advantages in a capital-intensive, technology-intensive business like automaking. Honda, Toyota, Nissan, and later BMW, Mercedes, and Hyundai, had new factories, often subsidized by the host state, that were designed to use the latest manufacturing processes and technology. And they had new work forces. This was an advantage not because they paid them less per hour—generally non-union autoworkers receive about what UAW men and women earn in GM assembly plants—but because the new, non-union companies didn't have to bear additional costs for health care and pensions for hundreds of thousands of retirees.

Moreover, the new American manufacturers didn't have to compensate workers for the change from the old mass production methods to the new lean production approach. GM did—which is why GM created the Jobs Bank. The idea was that if UAW workers believed they wouldn't be fired if GM got more efficient, then they might embrace the new methods. Of course, we know how that turned out. The Jobs Bank became little more than a welfare system for people who had nothing more to contribute because GM's dropping market share had made their jobs superfluous.

Health care is a similar story. GM's leaders—and the UAW's—knew by the early 1990s that the combination of rising health care costs and the longevity of GM's retired workers threatened the company. But GM management backed away from a confrontation with the UAW over health care in 1993, and in every national contract cycle afterwards until 2005—when the company's nearness to collapse finally became clear to everyone.

In testimony before Congress this December, GM's CEO Rick Wagoner said that GM has spent $103 billion during the past 15 years funding its pension and retiree health-care obligations. That is nearly $7 billion a year—more than GM's capital spending budget for new models this year. Why wasn't Rick Wagoner making this point in 1998, or 1999, or even 2003? Even now, GM doesn't seem willing to treat the situation like the emergency it is. Under the current contract, the UAW will pay for retiree health-care costs using a fund negotiated in last year's contract—but that won't start until 2010. GM is on the hook to contribute $20 billion to that fund over the next several years—unless it can renegotiate that deal under federal supervision.

Quality is Job One

Rick Wagoner told Congress: "Obviously, if we had the $103 billion and could use it for other things, it would enable us to be even farther ahead on technology or newer equipment in our plants, or whatever." Whatever, indeed.

This is a good place to talk about the Detroit mistake that matters most to most people: quality. By quality, I mean both the absence of defects and the appeal of the materials, design, and workmanship built into a car. I believe most people who buy a car also think of how durable and reliable a car is over time when they think of quality.

The failure of the Detroit automakers to keep pace with the new standards of reliability and defect-free assembly set by Toyota and Honda during the 1980s is well known, and still haunts them today. The really bad Detroit cars of the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s launched a cycle that has proven disastrous for all three companies. Poor design and bad reliability records led to customer dissatisfaction, which led to weaker demand for new Detroit cars as well as used ones. Customers were willing to buy Detroit cars—but only if they received a discount in advance for the mechanical problems they assumed they would have.

During the 1990s and the 2000s, a number of the surveys that industry executives accept as reliable guides to new vehicle quality began to show that the best of GM's and Ford's new models were almost as good—and in some cases better—in terms of being free of defects than comparable Toyotas, Hondas, or Nissans. But the Detroit brands still had a problem: They started $2,000 or more behind the best Japanese brands in terms of per-car costs, mainly because of labor and legacy costs, with a big helping of inefficient management thrown in. To overcome that deficit, GM and Ford (and Chrysler) resorted to aggressive cost-cutting and low-bid purchasing strategies with their materials suppliers.

Unfortunately, customers could see the low-bid approach in the design and materials used for Detroit cars. So even though objective measures of defects and things gone wrong showed new Detroit cars getting better and better, customers still demanded deep discounts for both new and used Detroit models. This drove down the resale value of used Detroit cars, which in turn made it harder for the Detroit brands to charge enough for the new vehicles to overcome their cost gap.

GM, Ford, and Chrysler compounded this problem by trying to generate the cash to cover their health care and pension bills by building more cars than the market demanded, and then "selling" them to rental car fleets. When those fleet cars bounced back to used car lots, where they competed with new vehicles that were essentially indistinguishable except for the higher price tag, they helped drive down resale values even more.

So the billions spent on legacy costs are matched by billions more in revenue that the Detroit automakers never saw because of the way they mismanaged supply and demand. This is why the Detroit brands appear to be lagging behind not just in hybrids—and it remains to be seen how durable that market is—but also in terms of the refinement and technology offered in their conventional cars.

What to Build?

The recent spectacle of the Diminished Three CEOs and the UAW president groveling before Congress has us focused now on how Detroit has mishandled adversity. A more important question is why they did so badly when times were good.

Consider GM. In 2000 Rick Wagoner, his senior executive team, and a flock of auto journalists jetted off to a villa in Italy for a seminar on how the GM of the 21st century was going to look. Wagoner and his team talked a lot about how GM was going to gain sales and profit from a "network" of alliances with automakers such as Subaru, Suzuki, Isuzu, and Fiat—automakers into which GM had invested capital. They talked about how they were going to use the Internet to turbocharge the company's performance. And so on. But five years later, all of this was in tatters. Much of the capital GM invested in its alliance partners was lost when the company was forced to sell out at distressed prices. Fiat was the worst of all. GM had to pay Fiat $2 billion to get out of the deal—never mind getting back the $2 billion it had invested up front to buy 20 percent of Fiat Auto. GM said it saved $1 billion a year thanks to the Fiat partnership. Obviously, whatever those gains were, they didn't help GM become profitable.

At least GM didn't use the cash it rolled up during the 1990s boom to buy junkyards, as Ford did. But GM did see an opportunity in the money to be made from selling mortgages, and plunged its GMAC financing operation aggressively into that market. Of course, GM didn't see the crash in subprime mortgages coming, either, and now GMAC is effectively bankrupt.

GM's many critics argue that what they should have done with the money they spent on UAW legacy costs and bad diversification schemes was to develop electric cars and hybrids, instead of continuing to base their U.S. business on the same large, V8 powered, rear-wheel-drive formula they used in the 60s—except that now these vehicles were sold as SUVs instead of muscle cars. And indeed, Detroit did depend too heavily on pickup trucks and SUVs for profits. But they did so for understandable reasons. These were the vehicles that consumers wanted to buy from them. Also, these were the vehicles that government policy encouraged them to build.

When gas was cheap, big gas-guzzling trucks were exactly what GM customers wanted. Consumers didn't want Detroit's imitation Toyota Camrys. Toyota was building more than enough real Camrys down in Kentucky. GM made profits of as much as $8,000 per truck—and lost money on many of its cars. Federal fuel economy rules introduced in 1975 forced GM to shrink its cars so that they could average 27.5 miles per gallon. GM did this poorly. (Remember the Chevy Citation or the Cadillac Cimarron?) But federal laws allowed "light trucks" to meet a lower mileage standard. This kink in federal law allowed GM, Ford, and Chrysler to design innovative products that Americans clamored to buy when gas was cheap: SUVs. When Ford launched the Explorer, and GM later launched the Tahoe and the upgraded Suburban, it was the Japanese companies that were envious. In fact, one reason why Toyota is on its way to a loss for 2008—its first annual loss in 70 years—is that it built too many factories in the U.S. in order to build more SUVs and pickups.

One irony of the current situation is that the only vehicles likely to generate the cash GM and the others need right now to rebuild are the same gas-guzzlers that Washington no longer wants them to build. Even New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has now come to realize that you can't ask Detroit to sell tiny, expensive hybrids when gasoline is under $2 a gallon. We have two contradictory energy policies: The first demands cheap gas at all costs. The second demands that Detroit should substantially increase the average mileage of its cars to 35 or even 40 miles per gallon across the board. How the Obama administration will square this circle, I don't know.

Thinking Anew

So now, where are we? GM has become Government Motors. With the U.S. Treasury standing in for the DuPonts of old, GM is going to try to reinvent itself. One challenge among many for GM in this process will be coming to terms with the reality that the U.S. market is too fractured, and has too many volume manufacturers, for any one of them to expect to control the kind of market share and pricing power GM had in its heyday. Today, according to Wardsauto.com, there are ten foreign-owned automakers with U.S. factories that assembled 3.9 million cars, pickups, and SUVs in 2007, before auto demand began to collapse. That's more than Ford's and Chrysler's U.S. production combined.

GM's efforts to cling to its 1950s self—with the old Sloanian ladder brands of Chevy, Pontiac, Buick, and Cadillac, plus Saturn, Saab, Hummer, and GMC—have led its management into one dark wood of error after another. Since 2001, GM's marketing strategy has come down to a single idea: zero percent financing. This was the automotive version of the addictive, easy credit that ultimately destroyed the housing market. Cut-rate loans, offered to decreasingly credit-worthy buyers, propped up sales and delayed the day of reckoning. But it didn't delay it long enough. The house of cards began tumbling in 2005, and I would say it has now collapsed fully.

Between 1995 and 2007, GM managed to earn a cumulative total of $13.5 billion. That's three-tenths of one percent of the total revenues during that period of more than $4 trillion—and those are nominal dollars, not adjusted for inflation. Between 1990 and 2007, GM lost a combined total of about $33 billion. The six unprofitable years wiped out the gains from 12 profitable years, and then some. But old habits die hard. Within hours of clinching a $6 billion government bailout last month, GMAC and GM were back to promoting zero-interest loans.

During the 1980s and 1990s, GM's leaders refused—and I believe some still refuse—to accept the reality of the presence of so many new automakers in the U.S. market, more than at any time since the 1920s. This hard truth means the company's U.S. market share going forward isn't going to return to the 40 percent levels of the mid-1980s, or the 30 percent levels of the 1990s, or even the mid-20 percent levels we have seen more recently. One thing to watch as GM tries to restructure now will be what assumptions the company makes about its share of the U.S. market going forward. If they call for anything higher than 15 percent, I would be suspicious.

Since all of you are now part owners of this enterprise, I would urge all of you to pay close attention, since what's about to unfold has no clear precedent in our nation's economic history. The closest parallels I can see are Renault in France, Volkswagen in Germany, and the various state-controlled Chinese automakers. But none of these companies is as large as GM, and none of these companies is exactly a model for what GM should want to become.

As I have tried to suggest, it's hard enough for professional managers and technicians—who have a clear profit motive—to run an enterprise as complex as a global car company. What will be the fate of a quasi-nationalized enterprise whose "board of directors" will now include 535 members of Congress, plus various agencies of the Executive Branch? As a property owner in suburban Detroit, I can only hope for the best.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Interesting scenario...what if Rush goes Galt?

Might seem far fetched but if Chairman O keeps going with his socialist policies and tries to reinstitute the fairness doctrine (it won’t be called that) then this scenario seems totally plausible. Hell if I was in El Rushbo’s shoes I’d do it!

The disappearances began four weeks ago when noted conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh ominously closed his radio show with the phrase, "Who is John Galt?" Since that day, the whereabouts of Mr. Limbaugh have been unknown even to his closest colleagues and friends.


His perplexing disappearance follows on the heels of months of criticism of the radio talker by the Obama administration over Limbaugh's outspoken concerns of the Financial Bailout, the automotive bailouts, the airline bailout, TARP I, II, III, and IV, and the institution of the Radio Equality and Airtime Parity Act (sometimes referred to as the fairness doctrine).

Going, Going, Going, Galt

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Alan Keyes nails Chairman O

 

Alan Keyes brilliantly saying what a LOT of us are thinking. Why couldn’t a guy with beliefs like his be our 1st black president instead of the socialist we wound up with?

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Bank of Obama

 

This website is simply brilliant.

Times like this I wish I could write code!

Bail out your friends today at the Bank of Obama

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Another of the greatest generation marches into the mist of history

They die by the hundreds perhaps thousands everyday and with them go many stories of their heroic deeds in WWII that saved this country and the entire world from Nazism and Japanese imperialism. If anyone truly deserved to never grow old and feeble it is that generation who sacrificed so much to save the world in the twilight of their youth.

Below is a outstanding tribute to a ball gunner on a B-24J Liberator bomber in the South Pacific from his son.

If this doesn't bring a tear to your eye then check your pulse.

My father asks for nothing

Wealth producers starting to shrug

Ruh-ro! Looks like thousands of John Galt's across America are starting to say enough. No surprise to anyone with a ounce of common sense. This is what you get when you demonize and punish achievement. Unless Chairman O's wealth destroying polices are stopped we are in for some very dark days indeed.

From Michelle Malkin’s latest column:

"I have frozen hiring in my firm. ... No investments will be made in taxable accounts -- only 401k/IRAs. I am buying silver and gold instead of CDs or stocks with non-qualified money and savings. I have stopped taking new clients, thus freezing my income. I barter more and more. Spend less. I stopped leveraging assets (don't borrow)."

"I have cut WAY back -- I'm no longer buying retail, driving out of a 10-mile radius, spending money on eating out or putting my money in a savings account. I am using the money to pay off all of our debt. It has made our family closer, more appreciative."

"Going Galt": America's Wealth Producers Vs. Wealth Redistributors

Monday, March 2, 2009

Miss America Snowed out of globull warming rally



About puked from laughing when I saw this. Maybe next time the enviro-commies will wait until summer to have a rally. Would have a better chance of not looking like total MORONS.

(CNSNews.com) – Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had to cancel an appearance Monday at a global warming rally in Washington, D.C., that was hit by a snowstorm because her flight was delayed, her office told CNSNews.com. 
 
Brianna Cayo-Cotter, the spokesman for the Energy Action Coalition that held the rally,  told a group of reporters that she had been in contact with Pelosi  and that her flight had been delayed because of inclement weather.
 
A blizzard Sunday night and early Monday morning blanketed the nation’s capital with snow, causing events to be cancelled and delayed across the city.

CNSNews.com - Pelosi Snowed-Out of Global Warming Rally

A golden voice is silenced

God bless Mr. Harvey, you will be missed by millions all over the world.

Paul Harvey's singular voice falls silent

Broadcasting pioneer Paul Harvey dies at age of 90

Paul Harvey,radio legend, has died

Radio Legend Paul Harvey Dies

Paul Harvey homepage

Wikipedia Entry