Some people care about the most inane shit.

Fear not the fate of the republic.

Yeah, I know, it’s old news. I’ve just recently escaped from a time-warp so I’ve missed out on some current events so you’ll just have to bear with me until I can catch up.

Still, time plus distance makes the stench even stronger, don’t you agree?

GM says new Volt to get 230 mpg in city driving

The EPA guidelines, developed with input from automakers, figure that cars like the Volt will travel more on straight electricity in the city than on the highway. If a person drives the Volt less than 40 miles, in theory they could go without using gasoline.

[Yahoo AP]

According to this bogus claim, actual fuel used- if your test consists of driving the vehicle for under 40 miles at a sedate pace- is actually none at all (not counting the coal burned to charge the batteries).

Which is infinity, or ∞mpg.

Why not run with that as the lede?

I guess that angle seemed too unrealistic, even too grandiose that the GM spokes-holes didn’t think such a tall tale would fool even idiotic AP beat writers (really?). Little did they know these glorified stenographers just jot down what they hear without question, and it gets published. Now I bet they wish they’d not restrained their inner Gecko.

This is the kind of spin which strains credibility, so typical of glorified beancounters, detached as they are from the real world. Especially true in the case of GM, which, judging from the desperation such gimmickry reveals, is probably not a good bet to survive.

Do they really think the public is that stupid?

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“You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.” -Scott Adams

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Not only can’t these tards get the truck in the bin (too small? perhaps they should have thought this through), they apparently feel it’s perfectly fine to trash a perfectly good vehicle because they made a (taxpayer subsidized) sale. Big whoop.

And you and I get to pay for this lunacy.

Of course, Alabama doesn’t have the market for ‘tards cornered, no sirree Bob- we got a an entire nation of them. To paraphrase Howard Dean, they’re in California, and Montana, and New York, and Florida, and Texas… etc.

Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan

Think Bandar Bush will eventually receive that particular (Saudi) royal treatment: beheading?

Who knows, but this steaming turd once threatened UK officials that if they did not stop the investigation into the British Aerospace (BAE) slush fund which him and his family/cronies relied upon for frequent travel and million dollar shopping excursions (no lie) then the UK might soon see another 7/7.

In kingdom, Saudi prince’s coup ‘fails’
Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:03:54 GMT

Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the kingdom’s former ambassador to the United States, is reportedly under house arrest over a conspiracy against the monarch.

Saad al-Faqih, head of the opposition group Islamic Reform Movement, told Arab-language TV al-Alam that Prince Bandar has been disappeared and the media has published no word from the ex-diplomat’s whereabouts since nearly three months ago.

According to al-Faqih, the prince first disappeared in Britain but he returned to the kingdom shortly afterwards.

He added that after Saudi officials discovered that he had provoked 200 agents working for the Saudi security service to stage a coup against King Abdullah, he was put under house arrest.

Al-Faqih said people close to the king had disclosed Bandar’s plots and foiled them.

He said Saudi sources believe that intelligence provided by some Arab countries help the Saudi monarch foil Prince Bandar’s conspiracy.

Power struggle between members of the Saudi royal family has been common as power is shared among some 200 princes out of the estimated 7000 family members.

Known as Bandar Bush because of his close relations with former US President George W Bush, the prince is son of Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz.

I am sure it is all one big misunderstanding.

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“It will be many years before the masses discover just how completely they have been fleeced by the power elite.” -Richard Smith

The expense scandal in the UK has resulted in a few token resignations:

First, Jaqui Smith:

Most damagingly, she faced the humiliating disclosure that her husband claimed for pay-per-view pornographic films on her Commons expenses.  It has also been revealed that she claimed for items including a barbeque and a butt-plug.

[Telegraph]

OO-er.

Now for the rest:

• Two government ministers also say they’re going
• Two more Labour MPs are to step down
• Private prosecution threat for Chaytor and three others
• Cameron: Election essential to ‘cleanse’ Parliament
• The axe is also still hanging over Chancellor Alistair Darling
  [Daily Mail]

Penny-ante sneak thieves claiming phantom expenses for as little a few pounds. Tsk-tsk.

You know your country is FUCKED when even crooked politicians have no outsize ambition.

Give me Huey Long any day over these pikers.

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“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” — George Orwell

State proposal could steal borrow millions from cities

Last week, the state’s Department of Finance informed cities of its proposal to steal borrow as much as 8 percent of local governments’ property tax revenues — giving the state an extra $2 billion. The cities could in turn borrow the money from the private sector, the proposal suggests, but city leaders scoff at the notion.

[Mercury News]

The muni’s can borrow (at interest, of course) from the private sector to make up what the state takes? Good luck with that!

We’ve got trouble at every tier of .gov.

We’ve got a president sorely deficient of any depth of knowledge of how business should be conducted (not that he’s much worse than the leechfucks populsting Wall St.). He relies on goons to set policy, and all these leechfucks know how to do is spend.

These ass-klowns  have already committed to MORE THAN ONE-HALF OF THIS NATION’S G.D.P. to turn private banking institutions into what are now essentially GSE’s.

Spending isn’t the answer to our problems, the PPiP-tards just think of this as the easiest way out; not the smartest; not the best; just easy.

What else would you expect but a predictable and pedestrian response from bureacrats-for-life.

And they’ll be long gone from the party before the bill arrives.

And arrive it will.

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When the only tool you know how to use is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

Won’t You Join Me and Raise a Finger to the All-powerful Welfare Class?

Most Americans think we live in a country that is governed by democracy, a country where capitalism has free expression.

The truth about this, which surprises most Americans because it wasn’t what was emphasized (much) in school,  is that we live in a republic, where socialism is practiced most profitably at the highest levels of society (‘old money’ investors, coporate interests), and favoritism (‘crony capitalism’, ‘corporate welfare’, lobbys) in fact reigns.

The recent disasters in banking, equities and politics has exposed cracks which are quickly being patched over. The cracks are still there; however most Americans are too busy (or too frightened) to peer in and see just what those cracks reveal.

Among the many travesties we have witnessed these past two years, one aspect that gets little recognition, but which helps explains much of the motivation of why things got done the way they got done (‘bailout’), is that America has become a manifestation of the “Big Daddy” economy.

Let me explain, using our most recent ex-president as an example.

George W. Bush was by reliable accounts a feckless businesman [1]. If it were not for family connections, he’d be hard pressed to find regular employment (‘day job’). What he personally lacked in intelligence and creativity, he absolutely made up for with lazy, entitled ambition. Apparently the acorn fell pretty far (but not too far!) from the tree.

W’s ’success’ in the business sector would be later spinned by the Reuplikrats during campaigning to ‘prove’ his ’success’ and ‘free market’ bona fides. In fact, W was the living embodiment of the Peter Principle, succeeding upwards with each failure. In that way he resembled his most avid supporters.

Running companies into the ground, only to be bailed out by his daddy’s cronies, became his modus operandi true calling, as we came to see (“when the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.” [Wiki]). W and many of his cronies contemporaries (Steve Forbes, Bill Simon, 1,000 others) would inevitably fail in life at achieving personal success outside the shadow of their fathers; but they would succeed in carrying this undercurrent, this message of tough-talking incompetence with a safety-net (see the double meaning of “too big to fail” [2]), into this nation’s very psyche, informing and interfering with it’s economic operation, materializing into the now-familiar bailout mentality… similar in many ways in which mail carriers go postal.

Preferred ‘clients’  (cronies, ‘fortunate sons’) are bailed out, rather than allowed to be free to fail (the banking lobby’s recent success at mythologizing ’systemic risk’). As if failure is bad thing, rather than simply a part of the overall capitalist experience.

Ordinary people, untethered to the rightful welfare class, who have succeeded in life and business, are not being politely asked by the crony class for a ‘hand-up’- they are not even being told to pony up. They are being imperceptibly pick-pocketed by the tag-team of Treasury and Federal Reserve, Inc., the latter which has the power to inflate currency. Thus, lowering the value of your dollar; thus, stealing from you and your future earnings, in order to buy ginormous amounts of spackle for the banking community today (RUSH JOB!).

Everywhere you look, from Benron Bukkake, to Hanky (Panky) Paulson, to Elmer ‘Dicky the goldfish’ Fuld to <insert your fave crony capitalist here>, there are connected (or ‘made’ boys men) acting like surrogate daddies to their ideological offspring (I got yer ‘neo liberal bias’ right her Faux Nooz). Yes, they have succeeded in ways their fathers never imagined; instead of stewarding a system where hard work and fresh ideas are rewarded in the marketplace, and commercial growth is stimulated in organic ways, they’ve rigged the game so they can reap the benefits of your success, make your success theirs too, in ways feudal lords could only have dreamed.

All-in-all an immense improvement over the divine right of kings, who in olden times would rape your daughter and bugger your son. Today, they only want their/your money!

Isn’t crony capitalism a wonderful thing? What’s that you say, you aren’t a crony?

Sucks to be you!

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1. Arbusto Energy (sometimes referred to as Arbusto Oil) was a petroleum and energy company formed in Midland, Texas, in 1977, by former US President George W. Bush and a group of investors which included Salem bin Laden of the Saudi Binladin Group. This fact became controversial after the September 11, 2001 attacks due to Salem bin Laden being an older, half-brother of Osama bin Laden, who planned and financed the attacks. Payback is a bitch!

2. The Too Big to Fail policy is the idea that in economic regulation the largest and most interconnected businesses are “too big to [let] fail.” This means that it might encourage recklessness since the government would pick up the pieces in the event it was about to go out of business. The phrase has also been more broadly applied to refer to a government’s policy to bail out any corporation. It raises the issue of moral hazard in business operations. Often incorrectly interpreted by Joe Six Pack to mean fail was not possible, the phrase’s true nuance has become the wish that came true, and is now an eyesore to this intrepid blogger as each time I am reminded of who is really footing the bill.

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Consume less and enjoy a better quality of life.

Sen. Feinstein’s Husband Cashes In on Crisis

California senator sought $25 billion for a government agency that had awarded her husband’s real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties.

On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband’s real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms, the Washington Times reported on Tuesday.

Mrs. Feinstein’s intervention on behalf of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was unusual: the California Democrat isn’t a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC; and the agency is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments – not direct federal dollars.

Documents reviewed by The Washington Times show Mrs. Feinstein first offered Oct. 30 to help the FDIC secure money for its effort to stem the rise of home foreclosures. Her letter was sent just days before the agency determined that CB Richard Ellis Group (CBRE) – the commercial real estate firm that her husband Richard Blum heads as board chairman – had won the competitive bidding for a contract to sell foreclosed properties that FDIC had inherited from failed banks.

About the same time of the contract award, Mr. Blum’s private investment firm reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it and related affiliates had purchased more than 10 million new shares in CBRE. The shares were purchased for the going price of $3.77; CBRE’s stock closed Monday at $5.14.

Spokesmen for the FDIC, Mrs. Feinstein and Mr. Blum’s firm told The Times that there was no connection between the legislation and the contract signed Nov. 13, and that the couple didn’t even know about CBRE’s business with FDIC until after it was awarded.

Senate ethics rules state that members must avoid conflicts of interest as well as “even the appearance of a conflict of interest.” Some ethics analysts question whether Mrs. Feinstein ran afoul of the latter provision, creating the appearance that she was rewarding the agency that had just hired her husband’s firm.