Various tidbits seen over the past week or two:

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From the Times Square Tea Party: "Do I look like a racist redneck teabagger to you?"

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A hilarious Good Samaritan story by Scott Adams:

Luckily I did not have jumper cables, because if I did, I knew we would be late for the movie.  I did my best to make a face that said, "I sure wish I could help," while being secretly gleeful that this was officially not my problem.  I wondered if the young man thought I was lying about not having jumper cables.  My fake sincerity face looks like a mime with an intestinal infection.

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Joe Biden on rural broadband funding:

The bottom line is, you can’t function -- a nation can’t compete in the 21st century -- without an immediate, high-quality access for everything from streaming video to information overline.

I don’t know what I’d do without a high-quality access to information overline.  In fact, I don’t even know what that means.

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This article claims that wheat bread is no better than white bread.  But what’s interesting is some of the detailed information about metabolic functions that it contains.

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From amazon: Classic Live Lobster Combo for Two People.  I don’t suppose it needs to be said that amazon rocks, this rocks, and "Lobsters-Online" rocks.

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Ceiling cat.  The photo of the cat looking down is great.

Quoting Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman:

"This is the CNN’s schedule.  They officially trained the people to come and hack Iran’s government Web sites.  This is the English text, I can give it to you.  This is a cyber war.  This, with, isn’t it a cyber war of the media with an independent government?  They asked people to use the DOS system to hack our Web sites," Qashqavi said.

I hear what you’re saying, but honestly, if they’re trying to use the DOS system to hack your Web sites, you’re probably OK.

Quoting The New York Times:

President Obama ... said the tobacco legislation was "a bill that truly defines changes in Washington" and one that "changes the way Washington works and who it works for."

These kinds of comments are often just political BS, but this statement is somewhat true since, as I’ve said before, the only reason tobacco is legal while heroin is not is the rich & powerful lobbying force behind tobacco.

Quoting The New York Times:

The legislation will enable the Food and Drug Administration to impose potentially strict new controls on the making and marketing of products that eventually kill half their regular users.

Obviously the fact that heretofore the FDA could not regulate tobacco -- a horribly addictive and deadly drug -- is just absurd.

Quoting The Wall Street Journal:

"Allowing the FDA to regulate tobacco in any capacity would inevitably lead to the FDA regulating the family farm," Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., said during the House debate.  "This could create uncertainty for family farmers as they are already struggling."

Talk about BS.  "Family farm" is not synonymous with "tobacco farm."  And guess what, when the product that you sell kills millions of people annually while serving virtually no valid purpose, then you deserve to go out of business.

During an hour-long press conference with Obama, during which only 13 questions were allowed, here’s the question that the New York Times came up with:

Quoting Jeff Zeleny, New York Times:

During these first 100 days, what has surprised you the most about this office, enchanted you the most about serving in this office, humbled you the most and troubled you the most?

Is this a press conference, or a third-grade field trip to meet the president?

There was a time when this would have been surprising, but not anymore.  Now it’s just embarrassing and sad.  It’s hard to believe there was a day when the New York Times -- now bankrupt in more ways than one -- actually mattered.

Quoting Ed Morrissey:

Barack Obama told me that if I voted for John McCain, I’d see a revolving door between Wall Street fat cats and smoke-filled back rooms of the White House and Congress.  What do you know — he was right!

Quoting Fox News:

American sea Captain Richard Phillips was safely rescued Sunday from four Somali pirates

That’s great news.

Quoting Fox News:

Three of the pirates were killed and one was in custody after what appeared to be a swift firefight off the Somali coast

And that’s about the best outcome we could have hoped for.  The reason these pirates have been attacking more and more frequently is partly because it’s extremely profitable -- to the tune of $50 million last year alone -- but mainly because there’s been virtually no risk in it for them.  Significantly increasing the risk/reward ratio is the only way to curb the attacks.

But the obvious question is: what is wrong with all these companies that they’re sending ships with millions of dollars worth of cargo through these pirate-infested corridors without any security on board?  Perhaps that’s somewhat defensible when ships are not being regularly attacked by pirates, but surely after the first or second or TWENTIETH attack, these companies would wise up and put a couple of armed security guards on each ship?

Quoting Roger Ebert:

Dear Bill: Thanks for including the Chicago Sun-Times on your exclusive list of newspapers on your "Hall of Shame."  To be in an O’Reilly Hall of Fame would be a cruel blow to any newspaper.  It would place us in the favor of a man who turns red and starts screaming when anyone disagrees with him.

Bill put the Sun-Times in his Hall of Shame for regularly publishing false and defamatory information.  Roger Ebert, in response, published a false and defamatory statement about Bill.

Bill’s show, The O’Reilly Factor, is on TV for an hour every weeknight and has been for over 10 years.  I watch it almost every night, so I know that Bill loses his temper only a few times per year, despite the fact that guests disagree with him every night.  The standard liberal line about O’Reilly, which Roger Ebert mindlessly repeated, is a flat-out lie.

Quoting Bloomberg:

Lawrence Summers, director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, earned more than $2.7 million in speaking fees from companies such as Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that later received taxpayer funds in the economic bailout.

Quoting Politico:

After promising to "push the reset button" on relations with Moscow, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton planned to present Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a light-hearted gift at their talks here Friday night  [...]  She handed him a palm-sized box wrapped with a bow.  Lavrov opened it and pulled out the gift -- a red plastic button on a black base with a Russian word "peregruzka" printed on top.

"We worked hard to get the right Russian word.  Do you think we got it?" Clinton said as reporters, allowed in to observe the first few minutes of the meeting, watched.

"You got it wrong," Lavrov said, to Clinton’s clear surprise.  Instead of "reset," he said the word on the box meant "overcharge."

So far this administration has been a non-stop blunderfest.  I wonder how long it’s going to take for people’s slobbering infatuation with Obama to fade, so they can start seeing him for what he really is: just a regular politician, and not even a particularly good one.

I miss W.

This statement, immediately after railroading us with the largest wasteful spending bill in history, is simply insulting.

Just before making his stupid "website number" remark, Joe Biden said something that might be even more comical -- if it weren’t so sad and pathetic.  In response to a woman who asked how the stimulus would help small businesses, Biden said this:

Quoting Joe Biden:

For example, it may very well be that she’s in a circumstance where she is not able, her customers aren’t able to get to her, there’s no transit capability, the bridge going across the creek to get to her business needs repair...

It’s hard to imagine a better way to prove that you’re out of touch with normal Americans than by honestly suggesting that you’ll help their small businesses -- which are in many ways the lifeblood of the country -- by fixing the bridge that goes over the creek on the way to the business.

Of course the truth is that there’s virtually nothing in the "stimulus" bill that will help small businesses.  The truth is that I will continue to pay a ~$5000 per year penalty, primarily in the form of extra Social Security taxes, as punishment for owning a small business.

Joe Biden forgets the "website number" for... recovery.gov.  And this is the guy overseeing the stimulus implementation...

Seriously, do any of these people pay taxes?  Not Daschle, not Geithner, not Killefer; and let’s not even get into Franken, Rangel, and Dodd.

What’s absurd is how many of these people are (or will be) in positions responsible for financial oversight.

Hope and Change!

Republicans: this stimulus bill would have to be drastically different before we could support it.

Obama: let’s not allow modest differences to prevent passing this bill ASAP.

Plus, a ton of economists who don’t believe we need this weight around our necks stimulus package at all.

Here’s a funny video that someone uploaded.  It’s about... politicians.  And boats.  Or something.

Bonus: an uploaded funny cats video.

Here’s a nice collection of photos of the former president, plus an interesting personal report (with photos) from Bush’s flight home to Texas, including many familiar names and faces from in & around his administration.

The headline is "Israel Rejects Cease-Fire" when Israel is the dissenter; but when it’s Hamas, the headline is "Hamas Says It Will Fight On."

When Israel targets enemy soldiers and it results in accidental civilian casualties, the Israelis are called "war criminals".  But when Palestinians deliberately kills civilians -- when their publicly stated goal is the death of every Jew -- the Palestinians are given a free pass.

Defeating the Nazis was so much more straightforward when they were concentrated in a single country, rather than spread across the world’s major news media companies.

Quoting The New York Times:

Few criticize Mr. Mubarak himself, and there are widespread feelings here that the radical group Hamas provoked the current crisis [in Gaza]. [...]

Government officials including Mr. Mubarak and Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit have blamed Hamas for abandoning the cease-fire with Israel and seeming to seek Israeli retaliation. [...]

But such complications are not easy for most Egyptians to grasp, especially when they see the constant repetition of images of Israeli bombs and dead Palestinians on Al Jazeera. [...]

Those demanding that Egypt open the Gaza border do not understand the dangers, said Samir Abdel Haadi.  "If we opened it, we’d be the Iraq of the Palestinians," he said. "There will be terrorism in the Sinai, and that’s our country."

Ms. Malky, the editor at Daily News Egypt, said that the government is making it clear it wants Hamas to fail.  "They’re afraid of the internal situation," she said.  "They don’t want a successful Islamic or Muslim Brotherhood experiment on their own border."

The other day on Car Talk, they suggested that now is the time for a (higher) gas tax.  The idea is that now, when gas is only $1.70 per gallon, an extra 50 cent tax would only bring the cost up to $2.20 -- still less than half what we were paying a few months ago.

According to the Car Talk guys, a 50 cent tax would bring in $50-$100 billion per year.  They suggest this could be used to help fund high-speed rail projects between major cities.  They also suggest the big 3 Detroit car companies could lead these projects.  Considering how well they run their current enterprises, though, I’m not so sure they’re the best candidates for the job.

It seems to me that getting lots of cars running on something other than gas should be a higher priority than setting up high-speed rail service between major cities.  When the gas runs out, people who live in cities aren’t going to have much trouble getting transportation to their jobs, since mass transit within cities already exists.  The real problem will be the huge amount of people who live in the suburbs and have long commutes to their jobs.

The best investment might be to work on upgrading the nation’s power grid.  Whether you’re talking about alternative energy from wind and the sun, or powering a large and growing fleet of electric vehicles, there seems to be consensus that the current grid isn’t going to be able to handle it without serious upgrades.

But whatever we would spend the money on, is the gas tax a good idea to begin with?  I’m not anxious to hand over more money to the government, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and the "desperate times" case can certainly be made right now.  There’s also the added bonus that when gas prices go up, people buy less gas, and of course reduced consumption will make the gas we have last longer.

Quoting Paul Mulshine:

Madoff [with his Ponzi scheme] at least made an attempt to invest the money he got from early investors to give them the returns he promised. [...] The federal government, on the other hand, never tried to make the Social Security system work. The feds didn’t invest the money in the market. They took the money that we gave them and lent it to themselves, promising themselves interest. To be paid by themselves. [...] This scheme is even more crooked than Madoff’s.

Indeed.  Maybe we can arrange to have them manage our health care, too.

Didn’t take long for somebody to upload this to the upload demo:

GM has been apologizing to the American public for nearly 30 years.  For decades they’ve been telling us that they’ve "turned the corner."  Unfortunately for GM, you can only turn the corner so many times before you’re just going in circles.

Quoting BusinessWeek:

GM has lost a breathtaking 74% of its market value -- some $43 billion -- since spring of 2000, giving it a valuation of $15 billion.

GM is not, as they’d have us believe, a fundamentally sound company fallen on hard times due to the economy.  Despite their continual pronouncements of an imminent comeback, they’re never going to regain the market share they once had; there are simply too many other car companies now for that to be possible.  And those other companies are actually profitable, unlike GM.

Quoting BusinessWeek:

GM has reached the point at which it actually consumes more cash than it brings in making cars, for the first time since the early ’90s.  GM, once the world’s premier auto maker, is now cash-flow-negative.  [...]  Normally a company in such straits contracts until it reaches equilibrium.  But for GM, shrinkage is not much of an option.  Because of its union agreements, the auto maker can’t close plants or lay off workers without paying a stiff penalty, no matter how far its sales or profits fall.  It must run plants at 80% capacity, minimum, whether they make money or not.  Even if it halts its assembly lines, GM must pay laid-off workers and foot their extraordinarily generous health-care and pension costs.  Unless GM scores major givebacks from the union, those costs are fixed, at least until the next round of contract talks in two years.

That was nearly four years ago!  And that is the crux of why a bailout is the wrong answer to GM’s problems: they don’t need some quick cash for a temporary problem; they need boatloads of money for a systemic problem: the UAW, which is bleeding GM to death.

GM and the union want to make it seem like a bailout is the only option, but the truth is, there’s another option: fix the real problem by renegotiating the labor contracts now.  In addition to actually fixing the problem, this has the added benefit of being funded by the people involved with the company, rather than being taken out of the pockets of the taxpayers, who never enjoyed the extremely high compensation that the UAW workers do.

Quoting Fred Wilson:

I really don’t know why it takes a year to negotiate a union contract, but if they want to auto industry to survive, the union leaders ought to be prepared to rip up their current contract and negotiate a new one over the weekend.  That’s how things are done when you are on the verge of going out of business and losing $4.4bn per month.

Indeed.  And perhaps if we stopped even entertaining the idea that taxpayers would willingly fork over tens of billions of dollars to finance such outlandish compensation packages, then the auto-workers at GM (and Ford and Chrysler) would consider a different solution:

Quoting Associated Press:

Most Southern U.S. auto plants run by Toyota, Honda Motor Co., Nissan Motor Co., BMW AG, Daimler AG and other manufacturers are nonunion. The UAW has tried numerous times without success to organize workers at the foreign-owned factories.

That’s because no sane person or business would want to be in the position that GM is in, and they’re in that position in large part because of the union.

To a GM employee, getting paid a fair market rate for their labor sounds bad, because congress is sending the signal that the other option is free money to preserve the unionized (and unrealistic) status quo.  But if those employees thought that the other option were actually unemployment -- as it would be in any other business in America -- then suddenly a fair market rate doesn’t sound so bad.

Of course creating realistic compensation packages will only solve part of the problem.  GM is also going to have to get a lot smaller in order to survive, which means some workers are going to have to lose their jobs -- and again, that’s something that the labor contracts make difficult or impossible.

Quoting Adam Pasick at Reuters:

It looks like a falling tide sinks all boats.  Out-of-work Wall Street workers have been on the front pages for months. Auto workers at the Big Three have been struggling for years...

Where I come from, when someone gets paid 70% more than other people doing the same job, we don’t call it "struggling."

Sad but true.

Let’s be honest.  This proposed 25 34 billion dollar bailout is a bailout for the United Auto Workers union.

The UAW has utterly failed at what is ostensibly its primary duty: to protect workers.  It has artificially inflated the wages of those workers to the point where they’re being paid far more than their non-union competition at other automakers.  Pricing your workers out of the market, out of their jobs, and driving their companies into the ground is hardly a good way to protect them.

Quoting The Wall Street Journal:

To put it concisely, the [other automakers] operate under conditions imposed by the free market.  Detroit lives on Fantasy Island. ... Hourly labor costs are $44.20 on average for the non-Detroit producers, in line with most manufacturing jobs, but are $73.21 for Detroit.  This $29 cost gap reflects the way Big Three management and unions have conspired to make themselves uncompetitive... Both management and unions chose to sign contracts that let them live better and work less efficiently in the short-term while condemning the companies to their current pass over time.  It is deeply unfair for government now to ask taxpayers who have never earned such wages or benefits to shield the UAW and Detroit from the consequences of those contracts.

Every dollar spent on labor is a dollar that the automaker can’t spend on R&D to improve its products, and can’t put towards lower prices to attract buyers.  So it’s not hard to see why Detroit is getting hammered by its competition.  And that competition isn’t so "un-American" as the UAW would lead you to believe:

Quoting The Wall Street Journal:

These are the 12 "foreign," or so-called transplant, producers making cars across America’s South and Midwest.  Toyota, BMW, Kia and others now make 54% of the cars Americans buy.  The internationals also employ some 113,000 Americans, compared with 239,000 at U.S.-owned carmakers, and several times that number indirectly. ... A government lifeline for Detroit punishes these other companies and their American employees for making better business decisions.

One person who knows how to run a business is Bill Gates; here’s his take:

Quoting AFP:

"If no one else is willing to invest, why is that?" Gates told CNN ... "What is it that investors are seeing about this business model or cost structure that makes them unwilling, and why, in that case, is the government alone stepping forward in this way?" Gates asked in the Wednesday evening broadcast.  "When you don’t have any private investors you really have to say, is taxpayer money going to have the desired effect?"

We’ve already given Detroit automakers $25 billion; do we really want to give another $34 billion to them, and then however many more billions they ask for after that?  The law offers bankruptcy protection for businesses for exactly this situation, so let them use it.

If we the taxpayers are going to be forced to fund automotive development, the funding should not go to failing companies; it should go to companies that are successful and innovative like Tesla, which is already delivering pure-electric cars with proven technology and putting us on a path towards energy independence.