Recent Comments:
Mehbooba Ahadyar, Afghanistan's Only Female Olympian, Disappears in Italy {Fanhouse Olympics Blog}
Jul 14th 2008 9:31AM Godspeed Ahadyar. Don't go back to Afghanistan and leave Islam behind, too.
People, here we have yet another example of Islam, "the religion of peace." Believe it...or else!
www.thereligionofpeace.com
Hot Seat: Patriotism {Political Machine Blog}
Jul 4th 2008 1:49PM I'll tell you what: Every single one of those 8 percent who do not consider themselves patriots? Guess which political part they belong to?
OSAMA OBAMA...YO MAMA!
Stereo Company Installs GPS, Causes $13K in Damage {Switched.com}
Jul 2nd 2008 6:02PM As a former BMW mechanic, my advice is if you have a BMW with no electrical problems...leave it alone.
These cars are simply not designed to accomodate aftermarket electronics.
I've seen a lot of BMWs with botched audio installations and the car is never right again without big expenditures.
Hot Seat: Did Bush Sanction Torture? {Political Machine Blog}
Jun 24th 2008 3:12PM Charlie,
Whether torture results in the truth depends on two things: 1) Whether the subject knows the truth; and 2) the skills of the torturer. A skilled interrogator knows whether the subject knows the truth or not.
Hot Seat: Did Bush Sanction Torture? {Political Machine Blog}
Jun 24th 2008 3:07PM First off, the media throws out this term "torture" without any definition. Tell me what constitutes torture and I'll make a guess whether the president would authorize it.
I'll tell you what is NOT torture: Simulated drowning isn't torture; real drowning is torture. Haven't to take your clothes off isn't torture; getting your head sawed off is. Being paraded around in women's underwear isn't torture -- have these idiots would probably pay good money for that kind of treatment.
Secondly, I wouldn't have a problem with it even if President Bush did authorize torture -- anyone's definition.
Time now to face reality: We are fighting a global Islamic jihad against non-Moslems, and we will fight it to the death -- ours or theirs.
Consumers sulk as inflation devours their stagnant income {BloggingStocks}
May 30th 2008 7:30PM The consumer confidence level is the result of more than stagnant income and the risk of job loss. In reality, I sense an overall feeling that there’s a bad moon rising -- that something big is about to happen, no one quite knows what it is, but for right now they're not spending any more than they have to.
Our current recession is NOT the result of the subprime mortgage debacle – that is just being used as a scapegoat. In reality, the subprime mortgage debacle is more of a symptom than a cause of the problem.
Inflation is not 2.6 percent.
I think the government’s 2.6 percent “announced rate of inflation” is and has long been, to be polite, a lie. They’ve been feeding us this number for years, when I think in reality the true rate of inflation has been much higher. My guess is somewhere between 8 and 15 percent – since about the mid-1980s.
Since that time, middle-class-and-below wages have remained stagnant or fallen due to globalization, outsourcing, and downsizing.
Just in the last eight years my own utilities are up 200 percent (and about to double again once Pennsylvania removes the rate caps from electricity in 2009), industrialized food is more profitable for the corporations, but lower quality, less nutritious -- sometimes poisoned -- and skyrocketing in price, my property taxes are up some 80 percent, gasoline and healthcare are completely out of control. Meanwhile, my income has increased only about 10 percent – and for a middle-middle class earner, that’s actually good, but it was largely due to the fact that I took a second job...as a military reservist. And, of course, here in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the real estate bubble never did inflate like the cost of everything else.
The average guy is really, really hurting right up through the upper middle class.
Now, are we in too much debt? No doubt yes, because lots of people used expensive credit foisted upon us by a freewheeling unregulated credit industry to pick up the slack created by double-digit inflation in the face of stagnant or decreasing wages. They wanted to maintain their lifestyles, and they did…until now.
The problem is, quite simply, that inflation has exceeded income growth for at least twenty years. Meanwhile, the corporatists have created a culture of credit and debt in the United States while at the same time selling out our jobs overseas and slashing wages for those lucky enough to keep their jobs, even as our social safety nets have quietly disappeared.
The backlash has already started. Right now, there is a web site dedicated to helping people (for a hefty fee, of course) orchestrate their own foreclosure while minimizing out of pocket expenses so they can start over (www.youwalkaway.com). There are similar sites to educate people on how to stiff the credit card companies.
Corporate policies are running smack dab into the Law of Unintended Consequences: The very wealthy have a saying: “If you owe a bank 200,000 and you can’t pay, you have a big problem. If you owe a bank 200 million and you can’t pay, then the bank has a big problem.”
The “stimulus package” is not going to help at all – most people are going use that money to make a credit card or mortgage payment. Unless Congress acts decisively, quickly, and drastically to stop the fleecing of America by corporate interests, lower the boom on the credit industry, cut the insurance industry out of heath care, create an intelligent energy strategy that is not based on pure profit alone, secure the border, and revive safe and sane labor and social laws, the age of American hegemony will be over so quickly it will make our heads spin. The age of Asian Hegemony will appear overnight, and it will be our own damn fault.
We need a new New Deal.
Grad Student Creates 'Virtual Girlfriend' {Asylum}
May 25th 2008 8:15PM Well, as a chronic bachelor, I'd have to say that the "virtual girlfriend" would be a constant and blatant reminder of the fact. I've come to terms wtih my lonely bed. I'd rather keep it that way.
Woman Quiets Catcalls By Stripping Down {Asylum}
May 25th 2008 2:29PM Well, I would say guys who whistle at women and honk horns are pretty much just as unreasonable as women who are offended by the behavior.
Does it happen less? Probably, but that may be because it never works. Maybe it did at one time.
What works today? MONEY. Plain and simple. That's all they care about.
British Regulators Move to Quiet Obnoxiously Loud Commercials {Switched.com}
May 15th 2008 11:13AM I just hit the mute button for commercials or surf other stations. You have to, otherwise the advertising will drive you nuts.
Volkswagen to offer three-years of free maintenance on 2009 models {Autoblog}
May 14th 2008 10:14AM I'm a BMW driver. BMW has had a similar maintenance program for years now: "Free scheduled maintenance during the warranty period."
Well, here's the deal: The operative word is "scheduled."
Once BMW came out with free scheduled maintenance, lo and behold the schedule was heavily revised. Before free scheduled maintenance, you couldn't change oil often enough according to the dealer, and every time the car was at the dealer, it would be due for this service or that inspection, all at the owner's expnese.
BUT, once BMW started paying for maintenance, all of the sudden the cars hardly needed any maintenance at all!
Yes, maintenance is free...because they don't do anything!
