Michael Moore Says No Bailout To Detroit; Wants The Government To Buy and Run Detroit Auto Industry

Posted on December 3, 2008 by Mike Bock

Rather than providing a bailout, Michael Moore wants the government to buy up the Detroit auto makers outright, and hire effective managers to restructure the industry. Moore writes, “These idiots don’t deserve a dime. Fire all of them, and take over the industry for the good of the workers, the country and the planet.”

Moore claims that the government could buy all of GM stock for less than $3 billion. Moore writes, “This proposal is not radical or rocket science. … What I’m proposing has worked before. The national rail system was in shambles in the ’70s. The government took it over. A decade later it was turning a profit, so the government returned it to private/public hands, and got a couple billion dollars put back in the treasury.”

Moore says, “This proposal will save our industrial infrastructure — and millions of jobs. More importantly, it will create millions more. It literally could pull us out of this recession.”

Moore says, “I care about what happens with the Big 3 because they are more responsible than almost anyone for the destruction of our fragile atmosphere and the daily melting of our polar ice caps.

“Congress must save the industrial infrastructure that these companies control and the jobs they create. And it must save the world from the internal combustion engine. This great, vast manufacturing network can redeem itself by building mass transit and electric/hybrid cars, and the kind of transportation we need for the 21st century.”

Moore says that any bailout money given to Detroit at this point would simply be wasted. He says, “Let me just state the obvious: Every single dollar Congress gives these three companies will be flushed right down the toilet. There is nothing the management teams of the Big 3 are going to do to convince people to go out during a recession and buy their big, gas-guzzling, inferior products. Just forget it. And, as sure as I am that the Ford family-owned Detroit Lions are not going to the Super Bowl — ever — I can guarantee you, after they burn through this $34 billion, they’ll be back for another $34 billion next summer.”


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George W. Bush Denies Any Responsibility; Charlie Gibson’s Craven Interview Gives President A Free Pass

Posted on December 2, 2008 by Mike Bock

Last night on ABC News, President George W. Bush denied any responsibility for the financial crisis the country is now going through.  He was interviewed by Charlie Gibson, and was given a free pass to say whatever he wanted without being challenged even a smidgen.  (See interview here.)

Gibson asked: “Do you feel in any way responsible for what is happening (in the economy)?”

What a question — “In any way responsible” — for crying out loud, Bush has been president for eight years and for six of those years he has had complete control of the federal government.  Is he in any way, maybe, just maybe, just a tiny bit responsible?   What a goofy question.

Gibson’s question should have been something like:  “How in the world could you have allowed this to happen on your watch?”

But in response to the softball pitch he was given, Bush answered:  “When history of this period is written people will realize that a lot of the decisions made on wall street took place over a decade or so before I arrived as president.”

Huh?  Amazingly, Gibson let the whole thing slide.  Does ABC or anybody paying attention think this is journalism?  Compared to mush headed Gibson, Katie Couric is a tiger.

Bush has been president for the last eight years and, evidently, he would like for us to believe that the important factors causing the present degradation of our economy happened when Bill Clinton was president.  The absurdity of Bush’s arrogance and the gull of his fantasy thinking is astounding.  But more astounding is Charlie Gibson’s role in allowing such nonsense to go unchallenged.  Evidently, Gibson thinks it’s his job, in these latter days of Bush, to sanction and give respectability to whatever propaganda fantasy nonsense Bush wants to lay out.

Gibson should have asked any number of questions.  Here are a few:  “Do you think that fighting two expensive wars, while giving tax breaks worth hundreds of billions to the most wealthy, has anything to do with the destruction of today’s economy?  Do you think that taking us over three trillion dollars in additional debt just might have had some negative impact on the economy?  Do you think that this crisis of confidence in the market is somehow happening detached from the crisis of confidence in your administration?  Do you think you deregulation that allowed your rich cronies, corrupt lobbyist, powerful corporations have free rein in the market had anything to do with the plight in which we find ourselves in today?”

,P.

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DaytonOS — The November Report

Posted on December 2, 2008 by Mike Bock

At DaytonOS, in November, we averaged 428 visitors each day, and we averaged 1278 “hits” each day. A “hit” indicates that a specific article is accessed. As this chart shows, we were busiest around election day, and have been tapering off since then.

Sort of as an experiment, I placed five “channels” on DaytonOS to display Google ads. The revenue on these ads vary from day to day. My highest amount of ad revenue for one day was $3.63. Total ad revenue for the month was $21.36 or $.71 per day.

I’m thinking that if DaytonOS had fifty times the activity each day that it has now, the ad revenue would be fifty times as much. If the 428 visitors each day is multipled by 50 the result is 21,400. And if 21,400 visitors on average came to DaytonOS, I guess it would be a safe prediction that the the ad revenue would be 50 times as much: $.71 each day multiplied by 50 = $35.50 or $1065 for a 30 day month.

If it could ever be possible to have such a many-fold increase in activity on DaytonOS, the ad income produced from such activity could be used to hire some part time reporters or web-meisters.  As a web-site becomes successful, it gains capacity to become even more successful.  As they say, nothing succeeds like success.  Content drives readership.

DaytonOS has some big long term goals and plans. I am making a new strategy for moving toward these goals and I will write about that new strategy soon. The plans for DaytonOS requires getting a lot more people actively involved working towards a shared vision of purpose. This will require a lot of effort and my intention is to modify my lazy ways and start dedicating more time and personal energy to the project.

Right now, DaytonOS consists of my posts and the posts from Dayton area web-sites that DaytonOS syndicates. We syndicate these sites:

For each post coming from a syndicated site, for those readers who want to make comments, a link is provided to take readers back to the syndicated site.

DaytonOS has some readers who seem to check in on a regular basis, often making comments.  But the number of such loyal visitors is small.  Of the 400+ visitors we average each day, the great majority find DaytonOS while searching a specific question via a search engine.

I’ve gotten interested in analyzing the search phrases that bring visitors to DaytonOS. It’s sort of amazing that when you float a small bark out into the internet seas, someone, somewhere, is searching to find it. What is interesting is that oftentimes via a search engine, there may be hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of possible matches, but often DaytonOS articles are in the top ten.

My WordPress software tells the search phrase that visitors have used to find specific articles, and shows the search engine result.  This information is pretty ephemeral — only the last ten references are held and then the oldest is erased as new searchers are listed.

The last week or so, I’ve been checking the statistics periodically to see how people find DaytonOS.  Here are some of these references I noticed in the last week.  These show:  Search engine rank (position) out of (total entries indicated), Search phrase: the exact phrase used by searcher, The article found, the date the article was written:


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