Author: stormbear

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing

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I find it odd that the “Big Three” can’t believe they are in trouble. They decry they can’t make money or grow with the way our trade policies are and because of competition.

Please.

I own a Honda Element, manufactured in Youngstown, Ohio – the number one state in job loss in 2004, the year I bought the car. Other car manufacturers (those fucking socialist foreigners) are not having a problem competing. Yes, they are suffering from the economic downturn like everyone else, but they are not begging for money.

I am in the market for a new car, I tend to trade every 5 years. I looked at everything and the American cars I looked at were all gas guzzlers and when compared to their Japanese cousins, they are horrid in terms of build quality. The plastics in the interior of the American cars all seemed flimsy and insubstantial. In a Saturn, I opened a little storage bin and the damn door fell off in my hand. If they can’t get a storage bin right, what shape is the engine in?

I do not want to see possible millions of manufacturing jobs lost that could stem from a Big Three failure – it might put us in a shock that we may not recover quickly from. But I can’t see how Ford, GM or Chrysler can succeed. The management overhaul would take longer than would be reasonable. The debt these companies already have on the balance books is too much for a robust car company to handle. Maybe if Dems didn’t buckle on CAFE standards, government could have forced the Big Three to manufacture cars people wanted?

What I think needs to happen, is for a couple of billionaires to get together, buy all three plus the struggling Tesla Motors, thin out the product lines, kill the guzzlers and integrate Tesla technology into the model ranges. Also killing some of the brands would be a step in the right direction. Have you looked at the Mercury car line? Ugly, expensive, polluting and ripe for brand death.

But that idea will never fly, it makes too much sense.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing

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I hope you guys can relate to this. Now when I turn on the TV, there is a great lack of political news. Mumbai, puppy selection and Britney’s comeback seem to be taking up broadcast time. Here in North Carolina, the local news is running a story about a guy that got killed by falling in a mulcher. Another story is running about a guy that shot his wife while having sex – they were playing cops and robbers and the gun went off.

I realize Mumbai was a horrific event and it was covered well. But I have gone weeks now with no one covering the latest McCain outburst. No coverage of hate rallies where Palin was headlining. Hell, the GOP is having a love-fest over Hillary Clinton!

Talk about your basic WTF moment. When Limbaugh starts singing the praises of Hillary, we have surly passed across some sort of cosmic barrier in reality.

So I am going to continue channel surfing until I can find some news on a political poll – any political poll, just so the Earth will makes sense once again.

Amen.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing

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Three days, three press conferences where real questions were asked and honest answers were given. I am unsure if America can get used to this high level of competence. Isn’t there a training video or something that could help us worn out Americans through this transition?

In the past when broadcast television broke in for a speech by Bush, my wife complained that Bush was bumping her soaps. The way she saw it, and I must agree, there was more reality in the soap opera than there were in Bush’s speech.

When Matt Lauer broke in regular programming this morning to cover Obama’s third press conference of the week, my wife did not complain, she turned up the volume.

When you engage America, America will engage back.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing

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It was less than 2 hours after Barack was declared President that the first “Join The Obama Resistance” shirts were available on Cafe Press. Since then, websites have been launched, conspiracies have been formulated. Hell, even Alan Keyes has filed a lawsuit to verify Obama’s birth certificate!

This will not die down and it will not go away.

I remember the week after Bill Clinton was first elected, he and Al Gore appeared on the cover of a news magazine. I was in a bookstore when two rednecks drifted by and said, “Can you fucking believe THEY got elected? He ain’t nothing but a draft dodger.” That meme is still alive and well.

All the ugliness that John McCain, Sarah Palin and the rest of the right wing hate machine generated over the length of the campaign will continue until Obama is out of office. For us, our job is to always beat it back. The myth busting we did during the campaign will need to be continued… always.

We can’t stop.

Ever.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing

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For the past several years, Neil Young’s resistance anthem, Rockin’ In the Free World has become the music that I have tended to rage to. Whenever my wife and I would pass by anti-war protesters in North Carolina, we would always crank up the volume in our Honda Element and blast this song out into the huddled throngs.

Even though it was written in response to Reagan/Bush policies, it is apt for W’s administration – “I got mine so fuck you.”

Biden has served though some of the best and worst of Presidential administrations and I bet, someplace, somewhere, someone in the Obama/Biden administration has this loaded on their iPod.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing

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Barack Obama has been elected at the President of the United States of America. No further commentary is required.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing

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Prop 8 is a measure in California that would amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. If it is successful, it will be a major set-back for gay rights in America.

In the spirit of “leave it all on the road,” visit No On Prop 8 and get involved in this last day of campaigning against this awful proposition.

There is a lot of hate this campaign season – just visit any McCain / Palin rally if you want to hear applause when someone yells “nigger.” McCain’s campaign is the most racist since George Wallace walked the earth.

It is time to stand up for humanity.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing

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Ahh yes, Rick Astley – 80s sugar pop icon can be a political weapon!

From Wikipedia:

Rickrolling is an Internet meme involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up”. The meme is a bait and switch: a person provides a Web link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video. The URL can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the user cannot determine the true source of the link without clicking (and thus satisfying their curiosity). When a person clicks on the link given and is led to the web page he/she is said to have been “Rickrolled”. By extension, it can also mean playing the song loudly in public in order to be disruptive.

Most believe the practice began as a variant of an earlier prank originating from the imageboard 4chan called duckrolling, in which a link to somewhere (such as a specific picture or news item) would instead lead to a thread or site containing an edited picture of a duck with wheels. The user at that point, is said to have been “Duckrolled”. The first instance of Rickroll occurred on the site’s video game board, where a link to the Rick Astley video was claimed to be a mirror of the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV (which was unavailable due to heavy traffic). The joke was confined to 4chan for a very brief period.

By May 2008, the practice had spread beyond 4chan and become an Internet phenomenon, eventually amassing some coverage in the mainstream media. An April 2008 poll by SurveyUSA estimated that at least 18 million American adults have been Rickrolled.

So next time you see some bullshit about Obama on the internet, you know know where to link to!

The YouTube page.

The Rickroll Database

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing

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I was blown away by Powell’s endorsement of Obama and televised spanking of McCain and Palin. Powell has always had the ability to formulate his sentences in a manner that is plain spoken yet leaves no question about what he said.

John McCain sucks and General Colin Powell knows it.

What will the McCain response will be? I think he can only respond in one way and that is to start tearing down Colin Powell.

So here is my question, how long will it take for someone to call General Colin Powell gay, a Muslim or a socialist?

Limbaugh has already called Powell a racist, so socialist can’t be too far away.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing

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Voting for a Black Man ™ in West Virginia is a new concept which is strangely being embraced by the people of the Mountain State.

Having lived my early years and having most of my family come from West Virginia, I am shocked beyond belief that West Virginians are supporting Obama. When I was in 5th Grade in Athens, WV, there was on African American in our school. The horrific verbal and racist abuse she took was unimaginable. That was 32 years ago and maybe things have changed dramatically over that period.

Maybe I am shocked because I still see WV through the lens of my family that still lives there. My wife and I wonder if one of my uncles (hard right-wing nut) will vote for McCain because he hates Blacks so much or will he vote for Obama because the Republicans have wiped out his retirement?

I think he will vote for Obama because money tends to win out over hate. Remember the Montgomery Bus Boycott? The Whites of Montgomery, Alabama refused to let Blacks ride in the front of the bus – but once Dr. King organized a boycott of the bus lines, funds for the bus lines dried up and they city capitulated.

Money won out.

Maybe money will win out in West Virginia in November. The state has never been awash in cash, the state has mostly been looted of natural resources and the cash ended up in the private bank accounts of the coal barons. But West Virginians certainly notice when what few dollars they have disappear. Most live so close to the bone, a slight increase in gas prices can have tremendous impacts on household budgets, so when gas hits 4 bucks, it is a disaster. A total, economic disaster. Now, add on top of that the job losses, shrinking college grants, a panicked stock market and vanishing retirement savings you then see the ugly picture that is the West Virginia economy.

Miracles can happen… they can happen in West Virginia.