Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
…and from there things spiral down.
Two Wheels on my Wagoner
[Mark Steyn]Incidentally, the government “overhaul” of GM is a useful shorthand for where we’re heading:
The first quid pro quo for the government giving you money (or “investing”, as President Obama and David Brooks say) is that it gets to regulate your behavior. Not just who sits on your board or (see Sarkozy last week) where your factory has to be. When the government “pays” for your health care, it reserves the right to deny (as in parts of Britain) heart disease treatment for smokers or hip replacement for the obese. Why be surprised? When the state’s “paying” for your health, your lifestyle directly impacts its “investment.”
The next stage is that, having gotten you used to having your behavior regulated, the state advances to approving not just what you do but what you’re allowed to read, see, hear, think: See the “Canadian Content” regulations up north, and the enforcers of the “human rights” commissions. Or Britain’s recent criminalization of “homophobic jokes.”
You’d be surprised how painlessly and smoothly once-free peoples slip from government “investing” to government control.
Blogger friend Buck found, I think, the perfect cartoon about this, and the best article I’ve yet seen to go along with it…
President Obama said Monday, “my team will be working closely with GM to produce a better business plan.”
To that confident assertion he added these stern sentiments:
“They must ask themselves: Have they consolidated enough unprofitable brands? Have they cleaned up their balance sheets, or are they still saddled with so much debt that they can’t make future investments? Above all, have they created a credible model for how not only to survive, but to succeed in this competitive global market?”
Who is in a better position to know the answers to these questions? Rick Wagoner, the GM CEO for nine years and former GM chief financial officer who has been with the automaker since the late 1970s, even running one of its foreign affiliates in Brazil, and who holds a Harvard Business School MBA?
Or President Obama, a former community activist from the south side of Chicago with a great rhetorical gift?
The president answered that question this week by ordering Wagoner’s firing.
:
It should now be clear: Federal bailout funds are a corporate narcotic. Once a company starts taking them, a chemicallike dependence develops. The addict does whatever will bring in more of the drug. Ultimately, like heroin, the short-term euphoria gives way to decreased function for the recipient, even destruction.
Being a wild-eyed right-wing blogger in his underwear, and therefore an extremist, I see two distinctly separate issues here. (God willing, the typical “moderate” voter and taxpayer sees at least one.) There is the issue, first of all, of federalism and traditional restraint. How long do we have before GM employees are somehow forbidden from taking their personal salaries, which after all were made possible with taxpayer funded bailout money, and using them to send their precious curtain-critters to parochial schools? Or signing ’em up with that “hate group” known as the Boy Scouts? This is the issue Steyn brings to our attention from across the pond in jolly ol’ Great Britain.
And then, secondarily, there is the issue of effectiveness. IBD contrasts the experiences and talents of ex-chief Wagoner, against our Messiah in the White House. I perceive it to be more like Wagoner against Congressman Barney Frank, and it’s a scenario straight out of Atlas Shrugged — tough, ambitious, dedicated and experienced men are isolated from the decisions that matter, and the baton is passed to slick, glib shysters whose rolodexes are packed full of just the right names. Men who’ve built the careers not on building things, but destroying things. Not on coming up with a formula for a better brand of steel, or on saving a company from insolvency, or on marketing, or on finding a revolutionary new way to extract oil from shale rock…but on walking away from disasters without absorbing any of the blame.
How is this new class of decision-maker, whose occasional episodes of honesty can happen only by the purest type of accident, to supply the judgment and talent needed?
If you think that has a good shot at happening, with the private-sector specialists such as Wagoner gracelessly tossed over the side, you’ll probably gain a new sense of perspective after you get done watching this.
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