Bob Morris @ 22:10 Category: Unfiled;
Of course, it’s wouldn’t really be a merger, as the giant sick zombie that is GM would be absorbing a comatose has-been. The WSJ says half of Chrysler’s plants would be closed, with as many as 200,000 jobs lost.
It’s difficult to see how Detroit recovers from this. Unemployment there already is near 10%.
Tell me again, why is the US government giving the auto companies billions of dollars?
Bob Morris @ 20:27 Category: Unfiled Tags: Congo;
Officials fear bloodbath in Congo as truce wavers
As a rebel militia prepares to defeat a drunken army, a catastrophe is looming
Both the army and the rebels are looting, pillaging, raping as hundreds of thousands flee for their lives.
Bob Morris @ 14:10 Category: Election 2008;
Andrew Sullivan on the Esquire article about how some white supremacists want Obama to win while some black nationalists back McCain
The Chairman of the American Nazi Party, among other self-proclaimed racists, is voting for Obama. It’s called heightening the contradictions - something all good communists and neocons also understand.
The delusion of political extremists everywhere is their confused belief that once the ignorant masses hear The Truth from them, they will rise up in righteous fury and smite the Enemy. Their confusions are multiple. First, they are utterly convinced that they, and only they possess the Real Truth, and thus are not interested in discussion, only in converting you. Second, they treat the masses they pretend to want to embrace with ill-concealed contempt. You’re just something to be manipulated.
That “heightening the contradictions” so as to force massive State repression will more probably result in them being imprisoned or shot rather than seizing the reins of power never seems to occur to them. But then, their certainty about the rightness of their beliefs is exceeded only by their lack of a sense of humor and perspective.
“If I can’t dance, I don’t want your revolution” - Emma Goldman
Never trust politicos and revolutionaries who don’t want you to dance.
Bob Morris @ 10:00 Category: Election 2008;
It seems to afflict progressives more. After years of numbing defeats, can it be, is it possible the voter tide is finally moving leftwards?
The symptoms include obsessively checking blogs and websites every fifteen minutes for the latest poll results, pondering if the crucial Left-handed Albanian Soccer Mom voter segment in Pennsylvania will tilt towards Obama, torturing oneself with paranoid fantasies about how the neocons will steal the election again, and so on.
Omigod. A Rasmussen poll this morning only has Obama up by 4 in Pennsylvania. Time to work on contingency plans to move to Ireland should “President Palin” become a reality? But wait. Other recent Pennsylvania polls have Obama up by more. Perhaps a generalized freakout followed by cardiac arrest isn’t the appropriate action.
Come November 5, after Obama has been elected, then the difficult Jonesing process will begin. Millions of addicts will go into immediate withdrawal and there will be a huge void in their lives. We will need to be there for them.
Bob Morris @ 09:40 Category: Credit crisis;
Major public pension funds have taken severe losses. Many are down 20% or more. CalPERS, the largest in the nation, managed to lose $40 billion, about 20%, since July and their public pension benefits are guaranteed by law.
A huge taxpayer backlash against overly generous public pension plans is brewing. Boomers with destroyed stock funds and IRAs are not going to want to have taxes increased so that public workers can get 90% of their salaries for the rest of their lives during retirement.
Sure, we’re in a bear market. But losses like these are unacceptable for a pension fund. What kind of investments were they in and why didn’t they see the crash coming? Look. I’m a small investor and I’m up 10% so far this year, mainly by buying puts. It wasn’t rocket science. I find it astonishing these pension funds suffered such huge losses.
The bear market is nowhere near over either. We will probably have an Obama rally for a bit, so enjoy the current bear market rally while you can because the bad earnings season is coming. That means more pain for the pension funds.
40% of pension plans are underfunded and that assumes future returns of 8% annually. Good luck with that.
Bob Morris @ 05:26 Category: Unfiled;
Specifically, DHS wants to monitor blogs looking for evidence of terrorists about to use IEDs (improvised explosive devices.) They will also examine message boards, Twitter and online games.
Um, if you were going to blow something up, would you blog about it first? While any of those online sites could be used to pass messages, they would almost certainly be encrypted, concealed with steganography, or otherwise hidden.
That DHS (Hi there!) might be monitoring blogs concerns me not. Google monitors this blog several times a day as do multiple another search engines and spiders. In fact, that’s what the Net is about. Open access to data and do with it as you will. Hey, maybe DHS should just use Google instead!
Bob Morris @ 01:24 Category: Unfiled;
Debris left by Hurricane Ike will be used to generate electricity in a biomass plant for the City of Houston. Wow. Sure beats burying it in a landfill.
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