No one is really watching Cable News

CNN was the first cable based news station to be invented to broadcast 24 hour, seven days a week. Over the past 30 years it has spawned clones of itself (Headline News), multiple imitators (Fox News & MSNBC), and numerous speciality derivatives (Bloomberg & CNBC). Under the original ownership of Ted Turner, the station produced novel real-time and informative reports about American politics and international news. Viewers were able to see in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989, and national events as they occurred. When Saddam Hussein wanted to know how the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 was going, he’d routinely turn to CNN’s live broadcasts with Peter Arnett and Bernard Lewis at the Al Rashid hotel in Baghdad to get his information.

This month CNN dropped to fourth place in terms of viewers, falling behind Fox, MSNBC, and even its own sister-channel HLN. While it is simple to bemoan the death of critical analysis and the concomitant rise of entertainment or fluff media masquerading as news, the real question one should ask is who is still watching these stations? Fox News proudly pounds its chest at coming first month-over-month, but is that title even meaningful? Consider the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and its off-shoot the Colbert Report, two fake news shows that get 50% more viewers than FOX’s number one evening show the O’Reilly Factor. It gets worst. Spongebob Squarepants, a Nickelodeon produced children’s cartoon, gets five times more viewers than the Factor (yes I know, I’m comparing rotten tomatoes with squishy sponges).

Here are the numbers:

For the month, CNN averaged 202,000 viewers between the ages of 25 and 54 – the group that television news organizations use as their basis of success because of their advertising sales. That was far behind the dominant leader, Fox News, which averaged 689,000. But it also trailed MSNBC, which had 250,000 viewers in that group and HLN, which had 221,000.

Given the amount of energy that goes into producing and distributing these programs, why are any of these stations in existence? With more than 300 million citizens, surely there are more than a few hundred thousand persons interested in the daily happenings in the world? First, the viewers of these shows skew towards the elderly and the DC-NY-LA technocrat class who dictate to the general population what they need to be told and more importantly what cannot be said. PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer gets higher ratings than all the cable news programs combined. One can assume that people who are interested in real facts and not opinionated drivel or state sponsored propaganda have long left American cable for other media like the internet or international carriers (i.e. BBC, CBC, France24).

Second, much of what is broadcasted simply isn’t news. In pursuit of advertisers’ dollars, management have dumbed-down content for the larger population. By putting lipstick on Michael Jackson’s dead corpse, Anne-Nicole Smith's drugged body, OJ’s wife, or a plethora of other tabloid stories and wheeling it out for public consumption, they have essentially ceded any credibility as agents of democracy who are tasked at holding the powerful in check.

No one is really watching, listening, or caring what is on any of these channels. No one cares what Anderson, Bill-O, Greta, Glenn, Campbell or any of these talking heads have to say, because it is of no consequence or value to the majority of the entertainment guzzling and consuming American public or those who actually independently think.

The Chinese Deception: GDP numbers don't add up

For the majority of this year I have been warning that the numbers being offered by the Chinese are not credible (as in my blog post "The Great Scam of China") and anyone who believes that their economy has expanded by 8% annually, when every other trading block has seen massive contractions or virtually no growth, are probably the same persons who told you to invest in dot-com companies in the late 1990's, lauded Enron, and told you that it was impossible for the housing market to precipitate a recession. While the image of the Chinese economy from an external perspective may seem robust and healthy compared to the stagnant wasteland that is the American and Eastern European economies, claims made by and about China have always been more fanciful than empirical.

Beijing's state economists announced recently that gross domestic product grew by 8.9% in the third quarter of 2009 compared with the corresponding period last year and that growth for the first three quarters was up 7.7%. A majority of international analysts still blather endlessly about the Chinese miracle and how we'll all be kowtowing to Beijing's dictatorial whims in the near future. For example, one news article predicted that, "India, China, Russia, and Brazil will become the world's richest nations over the next 40 years." Have you ever been to any of these countries? They're vast slums run by petty dunces, dictators, and pick-pockets, who reign over societies that are enmeshed in colossal corruption, incompetence, and in the cases of China and India, massive racial and ethnic strife that is only moderated by the brute fist of the federal state. CNN's Fareed Zakaria, who in my opinion has always been high in rhetoric but sparse in convincing data, declared that China was the real winner of the recession, by investing in infrastructure and technology.

However, the gig is up and more than a few peripheral critics are now being heard. Andy Xie, an independent economist who called both the US based housing collapse and global recession early in 2007, was recently quoted in the Economist magazine describing the entire Chinese stock market as a “giant Ponzi scheme.” How do you say Madoff in Mandarin? Gordon Chang, a Forbes magazine columnist, recently dismissed China's numbers. He asserts

The economy, for example, is still dependent on exports: Before the massive government spending, about 38% of GDP was attributable to sales abroad. Yet exports tumbled 23.0% in July, 23.4% in August and 15.2% in September. Another important indication of slowing activity was the third-quarter drop in imports. They fell 14.9% in the first month of the quarter, 17.0% in the second and 3.5% in the last.

Furthermore, he asks, "How can a country have robust consumer sales, nagging deflation and rapid monetary expansion all at the same time?" He concludes,

The answer is that Beijing's statisticians have gone back to their old tactic of making up figures to support the Politburo's predictions. The Chinese economy is probably growing due to state-led investment, but it cannot be doing so at the rates claimed. Wen Jiabao's stimulus plan is, above all, grossly inefficient. For all the money he is pouring into the economy, the country is getting a small return in economic output. That's why Premier Wen, despite the high growth numbers he's been reporting, consistently refuses to end his stimulus program. If his numbers were real, he would be worried about overheating. But he's apparently not.

Even the Chinese people themselves, who are best situated to evaluate the economic data, deride the statements as sheer propaganda and farce. An article in BusinessWeek summarizes the current opinion:

The People's Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, reported in July that the public reacted with "banter and sarcasm" to NBS figures showing average urban wages in China rose 13% in the first half of 2009. It quoted an online poll showing 88% of respondents doubted the official data and many thought wages had actually fallen.

There used to be an old saying around my college dorm, "There are two things that smell like fish; one of them is fish." At this juncture, I'd add the Chinese economic statistics as a malodorous and strong second.

Becoming More Stupid: Climate Change Disbelievers

Once again, the forces of human ignorance and absolute stupidity are on the march. According to:

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones and landlines, finds that 57% think there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades. In April 2008, 71% said there was solid evidence of rising global temperatures. Over the same period, there has been a comparable decline in the proportion of Americans who say global temperatures are rising as a result of human activity, such as burning fossil fuels. Just 36% say that currently, down from 47% last year.

That is a startling drop of common sense. It means that 14% of the US population, despite thirty years of research, innumerable scientific studies, irrefutable empirical evidence, and the Nobel Prize for Peace being given to the IPCC (Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change), have in the period of a year changed their minds. The only possible answer to this disturbing regression is that the forces of corporate propaganda coupled with the mainstream media's indifference to articulating facts about the subject and the persistent aloofness of the general population to basic science have given ample opportunity to dissuade the ignorant masses that it is once again acceptable to pollute their way to prosperity.

I've exhausted all patience with these evolutionary dead-enders who shriek at the slightest increase in taxes and the cost of beer, yet are incapable of rationalizing the simplest of scientifically determinable facts. I expect nothing of substance to come out of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December and furthermore expect that those who prevented change, impeded consensus, and disseminated propaganda will once again be amongst the first to demand that government save them and their businesses when the full effects of climate change occur.

Quote of the Day: Short-term thinking

People just want to go on doing what they're doing. They want business as usual. They say, 'Oh yes, there's going to be a problem up ahead,' but they don't want to change anything.

- James Lovelock

Whether it involves the current economic disaster, which was worst than the combined dot-com bust of the nineties and the S&L crisis of the 80's/90's, or the current projections related to the effects of continued industrial pollution, toxification of the environment, and ultimately climate change, we all seem to realize that we have very serious problems, but of course few are actually willing to engage in the challenges of actually disrupting the status quo.

In the Bible it says, "And that food shall be for store to the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt; that the land perish not through the famine." Genesis 41:33-36. For a civilization to survive it requires long term thinking and everyday sacrifices by all. There used to be a time, a short while ago, when the thought of being in debt and accumulating unnecessary material wealth was a moral failing. Today it is the norm. Gangs of thieves inhabit the sky-scrappers of New York and London, silently looting from public coffers and awarding themselves for their brilliant immorality. Standing Imperial armies are sent to secure natural resources in the name of freedom, while quenching indigenous opposition. The servant classes fret about credit card payments, stagnant wages, and mounting debt, while plotting how to keep up with the Jones' next door.

The song remains the same.

Another Bush Crony is sent to Jail!

The pervasive rot that was the Bush Administration continues to reveal itself in the conviction of Former General Services Administration (GSA) Chief of Staff David H. Safavian.

According to the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Mr. Safavian is considered amongst the top twenty-five most corrupt public officials within the George W. Bush Administration. His persistent attempts at concealing government related corruption that benefited himself, Republican congressmen, and the Republican party, were part of the core of this administration's ethos. While his crimes may seem trivial relative to the systematic looting of the U.S. Treasury to enrich military contractors, officials at the Pentagon, CIA operatives, and others well-placed within government during the early Bush years, it is important to understand that he was not an aberration or lone-wolf, but a symptom of the self-serving and corrupt machinations that permeated the Republican party.

On Dec. 19, 2008 a federal jury convicted Mr. Safavian of one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements. Today, he was sentenced to one year in prison on charges of obstruction of justice and making false statements in connection with the investigation into the activities of former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

One will recall that Jack Abramoff, a Republican super-Lobbyist and the man who Mr. Safavian was protecting, was exposed of trading expensive gifts, meals, and sports trips in exchange for political favors. He was additionally found guilty on five counts of criminal felony involving the defrauding of American Indian tribes and corruption of public officials. Altogether, for his accumulated deeds, he was sentenced to a four-year term in federal prison.

According to the US Department of Justice,

Safavian assisted Abramoff in connection with [sic] lobbyist’s attempts to acquire GSA-controlled properties, Abramoff took him on a luxury golf trip to Scotland and to London. The jury found that over the span of three years, Safavian made false statements in an attempt to conceal the fact that around the time of the golf trip he aided Abramoff with business before the GSA. The false statements included statements made to a GSA ethics officer and a GSA Office of Inspector General (GSA-OIG) Special Agent as well as falsely certifying a financial disclosure form. The jury heard evidence at trial that Safavian’s efforts to cover up the assistance he provided Abramoff continued after he left the GSA in November 2004 to become the Administrator for the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the Office of Management and Budget.

To date, 20 individuals, including lobbyists and public officials, have pleaded guilty, been convicted at trial, or are awaiting trial in connection with the ongoing investigation into the activities of Abramoff and his associates.

The Torturer’s Apprentice: Liz Cheney

Dick Cheney has long been described as being the most powerful vice-president in the history of the American republic. Over the period of eight years, it was impossible to distinguish where his authority and influence on the office of the president began and ended. It can be assumed however, that America’s long descent into unlimited war, domestic spying, wholesale torture, the escalation of Halliburton as an adjunct limb of the US military, and the myriad crony-capitalist dealings that came to typify this administration would have been different under the management of less Machiavellian operators.

It was written that Richard Nixon, another tricky Dicky, was the darkness reaching out from the darkness. Nixon, at his worst, was a paranoid and vulgar man that was obsessed with amassing power. In both Nixon’s and Cheney’s worldview, “if the President does it then it is legal!” Like Nixon, Cheney’s contempt for the constitution was legendary. His persistent attacks against the inherent constraints that limited the president’s power were exemplified in his attempts to create a unitary wartime president. Like Nixon, he was willing to fabricate evidence to support his warmongering ambitions. Like Nixon, if it meant undermining portions of the state, as when he leaked the identity of CIA intelligence officer Valarie Plame and undermined an entire clandestine network whose objective it was to actually prevent WMD dissemination, merely to prop up his overt lies, then so be it. To Dick Cheney, violations of the Geneva conventions, establishment of concentration camps, and torture to illicit false statements that would provide justifications for his previous deceit were not unethical, but the new normal and he would make no apology for his imperial excesses.

Within weeks of leaving office, Cheney went full-tilt on right-wing television to justify his actions as VP and impugn the Democrats, including Obama, as being weak on terrorism. He continued with his classic formula by levelling false accusations and once more playing the fear card by claiming that there was a “high probability” that terrorists would attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years and succeed. His maniacal aspersions continued throughout the first half of 2009. However, having earned a miserable approval rating of less than 20% upon departing the White House, Republican strategists realized that he was only reminding the public at large why they scorned him and had voted for Obama.

Liz Cheney, a chip off the old neoconservative freak show, was brought in to do what her father could not do: put a shiny lip-sticked smile on the face of evil. She is paraded out on a daily basis, as Michelle Cottle of the New Republic describes, to do “her usual song and dance about what a caring, devoted patriot her daddy is.” Of course the primary reason she and not Papa Doc Cheney is waltzed out into TV-land is because,

Everyone involved in political combat is well aware of the different rules that still apply to most female combatants--much less baby-faced blonde ones fighting for an aging, ailing daddy's honor. Men in particular must take care not to come across as bullying their fairer opponents.

This is the Republican version of affirmative action. Liz Cheney repeatedly has said, like her father, president Obama is sympathetic to terrorists, is holding hands with extremists, and is failing to protect America. On ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, 1 September 2009, she became apoplectic when Sam Donaldson and Stephanopoulos challenged her on the definition of torture, which she claims does not entail waterboarding prisoners; a act that strangely used to be internationally recognized as illegal when the Japanese used it on prisoners during WWII, when the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia, and when Latin American military dictatorships used it against their own populace.

Liz’s most recent act of naked propaganda, was saying that she thinks that Mr. Obama should, “Accept the [Nobel] prize on behalf of the U.S. military and frankly to send the message to remind the Nobel committee that each one of them sleeps soundly at night because the U.S. military is the greatest peacekeeping force in the world today.” The totality of this statement when weighed against the historical antecedent is so absurd and obscene that only the most facile minded and ignorant cheerleader of American hegemony and militarism would accept her statements as even being credible.

The fact that Dick Cheney now has to hide behind his own daughter’s skirt and that there are no elected Republicans willing to defend the history of the Bush-Cheney years, should be sufficient proof that the party has exhausted itself of any crediblity.

Update: Tuna & Ocean Conservation

The Christian Science Monitor has a good article updating the continuing crisis that surrounds the demise of large ocean faring fish like Blue Fin Tuna and what is being done about it by individual nation states and multilateral organizations.

I've already written fairly extensively on the decline of the Blue Fin tuna, the state of global fisheries, and even regional situations such as the Pacific Salmon along the coast of British Columbia, Canada.

To review, the bad news is that despite attempts to limit harvesting to preserve tuna and other species through regional fishery management systems, global fisheries on a whole are in severe crisis. The obvious culprits are global fishing fleets that scavenge the world's oceans using modern vessels, satellite tracking, and sophisticated fishing gear to maximize their haul and profits. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that, "Some 80 percent of commercial fish species are either fully exploited, overexploited, or collapsed." No less than nine of the world's 23 tuna species worldwide are “fully fished” and without immediate action all will face collective extinction in the years to come.

Furthermore, rampant exploitation motivated by commercial interests are again threatening the global commons and the viability of life in the open oceans.

Globally, $9 billion is lost to so-called pirate fishing, according to a study last year by the University of British Columbia and Marine Resource Assessment Group. In the Pacific alone, [illegal, unreported, and unregulated] (IUU) fishing takes 36 percent of the total catch, compared with a 19 percent global average.

These pirate fleets who plunder the global commons are a "huge problem in tuna fisheries across the western Pacific, particularly in “doughnut holes,” international waters between [exclusive economic zones] boundaries. In these waters, reflagged ships often use fish aggregating devices (FADs) that attract juvenile yellowfin tuna."

On the other side, there are international and regional compacts that may come to fruition next year that will give some reprieve to the tuna and other threatened species. For example,

The Obama administration... last month unveiled the outline of a comprehensive “ecosystem-based” plan to restore health to US ocean waters, including coastal fisheries. Among several measures, US fisheries would be pushed toward science-based instead of politically based catch limits. If the plan works, the United States could become a global model: It controls more ocean in its 200-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZ) than any other nation.

To improve the situation the following steps will have to be minimally implemented. They include:

• Restricting gear that is too good at catching fish. Nets with larger holes let younger fish escape, for example.
• Closing hard-hit and breeding areas to fishing to let them recover.
• Drastically reducing the number of fishing vessels chasing the fish.
• Reducing the total allowable catch.

Ralph Nader: "Obama is Conflict Adverse!"

Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and contrarian, still continues with his Cassandra-like march against the imperious forces of crony-corporatism, government incompetence, and inequity. His actions over the decades, through the institution of safer vehicles, consumer protection legislation and regulatory bodies, and his tireless work to expose the gross distortions of avarice masquerading as capitalism, has saved more American lives and a many public dollars than all the past half-dozen US presidents combined. In the above posted video from Yahoo tech ticker, he lays out in his opinion of the Obama administration's first nine months.

It includes such highlights as:

• His early months in office have been "very disappointing."
  
• Obama is "a frightened man," who won't take on corporate power.
  
• Obama is "conflict averse" - and a "harmony ideology type," who's being taken advantage of by the sharks in Congress, of both parties.
  
• He's "Bush-Cheney redux" when it comes to military and foreign policy, "albeit with better speeches" to the Muslim world. Given Obama's handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Nader wonders in amazement: "And they gave him the [Nobel] Peace Prize?"

Unlike the teabaggers and those on the right who have Obama derangement syndrome, Nader's criticisms are based on Obama's actual policies, which continue to be substantially less than and in too many cases opposite what he campaigned upon during the Democratic party primaries and full election.

Additional reading on "fact based" criticisms from the left, produced by Mr. Obama's less than awe-inspiring presidency can be found on this blog here and here.

Nobel Prizes for just looking Fabulous!

Like everyone in North America I woke to the news that President Obama had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. For a moment I too thought it was a joke, then the full realization of this event dawned on me. I don't speak Norwegian, so I assumed a newly updated translation of "Nobel" to English was, "Yeah... you're not that fucking idiot Dubya, so here's something." Obviously, that has to be the translation, because in the past decade, the prize has been given to no less than four individuals who have called or at least implied that George W. Bush was a war criminal, torturer-in-chief, environmental terrorist, global miscreant, and the worst president in the history of the USA.

Consider that a year after Dubya was appointed by the Supreme Court and weeks after he had his bullhorn moment on top of the ruins of the World Trade Center NY, the Nobel prize (on its centenary) was given to the United Nations and its leader Kofi Annan in recognition of it and its leader's involvement in multilateralism, international cooperation, and peaceful conflict resolution. Whilst the world grieved for the victims of 9-11, those with a knowledge of global wars were kindly reminding their American counterparts, that a collective threat to international stability needed a collective response and not cowboy antics.

In 2002, the world watched as the Bush Administration gave the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon free reign in dealing with the Palestinians. A parallel and even more disturbing march towards invading Iraq was being sold front and center by Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and the neocon trotskists. The Nobel committee looking for alternatives to the messianic-militarist's potential mayhem chose former US President Jimmy Carter, "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development." This wasn't just a slap in Dubya's face; it was a shot by the international community against Bush's imperial over-reach and overt war-mongering.

In 2005, with not a milligram of WMDs to be found in the sands of Iraq and the further ramping up of neocon blather about invading Iran, the Nobel committee gave the award to Mohamed ElBaradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way." The decider by this moment in history had demolished decades worth of bilateral and international nuclear, chemical, and bio-weapons anti-proliferation treaties, was posed to develop new generation of atomic weapons that would be smaller and more "usable", and had allowed -under his dismal watch- Pakistan and North Korea to engage in nuclear proliferation with actual rogue entities.

By 2007, the toxic-Texan had served his oily corporate friends well in deigning the existence of climate change, the scientific method, and fact based reality. His government had cut science research funding across the board to pay for their Middle-Eastern war-mongering, were pushing creationist dogma in research universities, were filling the FDA with Pharma lobbyists, NASA with college dropouts who were religious zealots, the Department of the Interior with sex and drug fiends who gave away oil & gas rights to energy corporations, and the EPA with lobbyists from major polluters. An entire decade had been lost to prevent a catastrophe that will undermine human civilization. To the American Taliban, everything they needed to know was in the Bible, so why bother with these inconvenient truths that humanity was destroying the planet. To wit, the IPCC and Al Gore were awarded, "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

And today, eleven months after his election to the presidency of the United States of America the award was given to Barack Obama, "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." After eight hard years of decay and decline, the Nobel committee said thank God we have someone who can pronounce "NUCLEAR" properly in the White House. Of course, this really was never about Mr. Obama per se. This was about demarcating the ideologues who allowed the American nation to be attacked by terrorists, wage two failed wars, allow an American city to be nearly destroyed by neglect, preside over two recessions, have the entire global economy nearly collapse due to their crony-capitalist mantra, increase global terrorism and religious extremism, exacerbate nuclear proliferation, and condemn humanity to a future of unknown environmental horror.

Is it any wonder that only 23% of Americans now identify themselves with the Republican party?

Elizabeth Warren: TARP Watchdog

Elizabeth Warren is a Harvard Professor specializing in bankruptcy, who has been tasked to be the head of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the government's financial bailout program or TARP. She has received accolades from Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and liberal economists like Dean Baker, who said, "She's done a great job calling attention to the Treasury's failing in ensuring that the taxpayers get a fair deal."

To the banks, the crony-capitalists, and the Wall Street crooks who broke the economy, but got a generous get-out-of-jail card from the government, she is Public Enemy Number One. As Stiglitz has said of her, "What she is doing is making a lot of people very uncomfortable." Indeed. During congressional hearings, she pronounced, "Today's [banking] business model is about making money through tricks and traps." She doesn't use the Greenspan-esque habit of mumbling in officialese and feeding the masses pre-packaged platitudes that invoke green-pastures of future growth. She is blunt in her prognosis of institutional corruption and even plainer in the necessity to rectify the imbalance of power and irresponsibility that currently passes for regulation.

MotherJones magazine has a short expose on her, written by David Corn. It outlines her modest origins and escalation through academia to her present position.

Warren focused on how financial policy and law affected folks at the kitchen-table level, and by 2005 she was testifying on the Hill against legislation sought by credit card companies and the financial sector—and eventually passed by Congress—that made it tougher to file for bankruptcy.

With respect to bank regulators, she believes they need to be stripped of their consumer protection roles, because as she says,"The regulators have turf to protect. They want to run big agencies with big budgets and lots of employees. The new agency would reduce some of their bureaucracy."

In a Reuters article,

Warren said banks are opposed to the creation of the new agency for two reasons: one, it would force real change upon their business practices, and two, it would compromise the cozy relationship banks often have with their primary regulators.

"They fear that the public may pay more attention to the consumer agency," she said. Warren said it is up to lawmakers to decide how quickly to pass legislation but said the financial system needs real change, and needs it soon.

"The bad news has been piling up for a year, but none of the rules have changed. Many of the same things that got us into trouble are still going on."

The greedheads and jackals of casino-capitalism are running scared, as McClatchy Newspapers reports, "The [US] Chamber [of Commerce] said it's spending about $2 million on ads, educational efforts and a grassroots campaign to kill the agency. It said that the grassroots effort has led to more than 23,000 letters sent to Congress to date." We all know how it will end again if effective reform is not instituted. The question is whether the President Obama and the spineless democratic stooges in congress will shake off the corporate lobbyists or merely play dead like a Virginia opossum when faced with the task of actually governing.

Chillout Sesson: METRIC, Sick Muse

Overexposure of the Canadian PM!

In what might be the most unflattering photograph of a political leader from Canada yet. Sure PM Silvio Berlusconi of Italy puts his foot in his mouth more often and Dubya's malapropisms never failed to amuse, but what is the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, thinking in this picture? He looks like he's carrying twins and the way his mouth is shaped, you'd think he was into gay porn!

Someone in the Prime Minister's Office quickly place this man on a treadmill.

Saturn: Why one of Detroit’s brightest hopes failed | csmonitor.com

Saturn: Why one of Detroit’s brightest hopes failed csmonitor.com

Saturn was supposed to be the American answer to Japanese competition. Better cars, no-hassle pricing, superior customer support, and innovative marketing. When Penske pulled out of the bidding for the GM division, those aspirations collapsed and Saturn joined the waste bin of another failed American enterprise.

The article by the CS Monitor provides a depressing reality for the little car company that could have, should have, but didn't succeed. A number of problems from insufficient models, inadequate attention to engineering high-quality vehicles, and internal dissidence from other GM divisions lead this company to die.

It started out with high minded goals

Created in 1985, the Saturn brand - launched with iconic commercials showing hordes of buyers in the Tennessee hills - represented a rare piece of forward thinking in traditional Detroit. But The Wall Street Journal chided the project for being too ambitious, requiring not just a new car, but a new plant, new dealers, and a new workforce.

Even as late as 2007, the company was looking at a comeback to compete with Japanese imports

Saturn had begun to make a comeback with the new models in 2007, but was hit hard by the recession. At its high point, the company sold 300,000 cars in a year, more than current US auto market players like Subaru and Mitsubishi.

The good news is that GM's management and the UAW, which never embraced the cooperative structure of the company, will have their final wish in seeing the company die. As the Wall Street Journal elaborates:

But make no mistake: The failure here isn't Mr. Penske's. Saturn was killed by its creators, GM and the UAW. The company starved Saturn for new products, and the union waged war against Saturn's labor reforms to keep them from spreading to other GM factories.

I'm sure they will enjoy feasting on the ashes as more union workers join the unemployment lines and fewer people buy domestic vehicles.