"The agency that protects pension plans raised new concerns about Detroit's three auto makers, saying their use of pension funds to pay for restructuring threatens to drain the funds and leave the agency footing the bill.
The U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. this week sent letters to General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC asking for projections on how the companies plan to use their pension plans to cover early retirements or other buyout deals."
Monday, December 1, 2008
This is called and "indirect bailout"...
Pension Agency Sounds Alarm on Big Three
Hard to imagine....
Patterico:
Who would ever think terrorists would come in the back door?!?!
P.S. Mickey’s friend says the back door was locked. Well, there you have it, then. They must have teleported in.
Just what we need - another way to make parents stupider than they already are....
New genetic test asks which sport a child was born to play :
"When Donna Campiglia learned recently that a genetic test might be able to determine which sports suit the talents of her 2 ½-year-old son, Noah, she instantly said, Where can I get it and how much does it cost?"
Even Friedman is going off the deep end...
Instapundit
THE SPIN BEGINS! New York Times trying to credit Obama with Iraq win. Bob Owens deconstructs.
Compare with this assessment in the Kansas City Star: Bush leaves Iraq in good shape for Obama.
Does this surprise anyone?
Doctors shocked at hostages's torture:
"The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: 'Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again,' he said.
Corroborating the doctors' claims about torture was the information that the Intelligence Bureau had about the terror plan. 'During his interrogation, Ajmal Kamal said they were specifically asked to target the foreigners, especially the Israelis,' an IB source said."
Learn something new every day...
NBC Exec: Obama's Skin Color Gives Him More Legitimacy Than Any American Leader In History
"Imagine that. Because Obama is black, before he even steps into the White House and accomplishes one darned thing he already has more legitimacy around the world than possibly every American president that came before him.
Isn't that racist? Isn't suggesting that someone is better or more 'legitimate' solely because of the color of his or her skin a tremendously offensive concept?
Doesn't this go counter to Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that his four children 'will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character' (h/t NBer Mike Bratton)?
How did such obvious racism go completely unchallenged by Matthews and the rest of his panel? After all, doesn't this mean that all the white leaders of Europe and in other parts of the world are now LESS legitimate than Obama just because they're not black?"
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Just be nice to them....
Russia Tightens Europe’s Energy Noose
A leaked intelligence document issued by Spain’s CNI spy agency in October warns that Russia is aggressively pursuing a plan to “monopolize access to energy supplies to Europe.” The report validates what many analysts have been saying for a long time, namely that Moscow is using Russian energy companies to gain geo-strategic control over northern, central and southern Europe.
Interesting....
Top Officers Hopeful That Obama Will Bring More Realistic View Than Bush
"'The joke was that when you leave a meeting, everybody is supposed to drink the Kool-Aid,' Nash said. 'In the Bush administration, you had to drink the Kool-Aid before you got to go to the meeting.'"
Hating the Times....
Why I Love My Husband but not Sex
"Predictably, almost as soon as the engagement ring slid onto my finger, I fell in love with someone else. I fell madly, insanely, obsessively in love with a conservative Christian man who believed that I, as a Jew, was going to hell. We fought long and hard about that, and then had sex. This is so stupid, it pains me to write about it.If you want to see what is really wrong with this country and this world, just check out the Sunday Styles section of the NY Times. From the above quoted essay from the (worse than) pathetic Lauren Slater - whomever she may be, to the self-obsessed wedding announcements, one can virtually bathe in the silliness of folks and the "journalists" who have nothing better to do with their lives.
And yet this affair, I sensed, was necessary for me to move forward with my marriage. It was a test. I believed, but could not be sure, that just as sex had cooled for my soon-to-be husband and me, it would cool with this man, with any man, no matter what or whom — in which case my fiancé was the person I wanted to marry."
Inside the box?
Ben Stein:
"In what sense is he “change you can believe in”? How is he part of the solution, not part of the problem? I know he is a protégé of Robert E. Rubin. But isn’t Mr. Rubin himself the essence of the Washington-New York finance axis of power? He was a fine Treasury secretary while the tech boom made all things new, but Citigroup hasn’t exactly thrived during his tenure. Again, where is the change?
It’s not just Mr. Obama’s personnel choices that bear watching, but what he’s said about his economic programs. Public works seem to be the centerpiece of his effort to jolt the economy back into high gear. But recall the history of national attempts to “jolt” economies this way. In a word, their success is limited.
New Deal programs like the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps were highly visible but accomplished little on a macro scale. Yes, they employed hundreds of thousands, and that was great. They built post offices and bridges. But they created friction with unions because they paid sub-union wages.
Will the new administration be prepared to require that public works employees be union members? If so, of what union?"
We are not the ones who needed help here..
Citizen Journalists Provided Glimpses
From his terrace on Colaba Causeway in south Mumbai, Arun Shanbhag saw the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel burn. He saw ambulances leave the Nariman House. And he recorded every move on the Internet.
Mr. Shanbhag, who lives in Boston but happened to be in Mumbai when the attacks began on Wednesday, described the gunfire on his Twitter feed — the “thud, thud, thud” of shotguns and the short bursts of automatic weapons — and uploaded photos to his personal blog.
It would have been better, perhaps, if we knew less, and he fought back more.....
Update: Futher thoughts....
Perhaps there is another conclusion we should be coming to here...
Giants’ Burress Shoots Himself Accidentally in the Thigh
Giants receiver Plaxico Burress accidentally shot himself in the right thigh while at a Manhattan nightclub early Saturday, hours after he was deemed unfit to play in Sunday’s game at Washington because of a hamstring strain in the same leg.
Just remember - There is NO threat!
Little Green Footballs
"With the high level of training, preparation, and coordination these terrorists showed, it’s pretty clear that this was more than just a local battle. It was a strike at the heart of India’s financial sector, it was targeted primarily against Westerners and Jews, and it was a message to the incoming Obama administration that the global jihad is alive and well."
Because she wanted to...
Paranoid Gun Owners:
"Lovely of Ms. Dietrich to bring up race in an article on guns, or for that matter, any other topic except … um … race. I know plenty of gun owners who fear new restrictions on their right to own or carry guns. I also know plenty of gunophobes who think guns are icky, can’t imagine why an sane person would want to own one, and would be delighted to see government take everyone else’s guns away. I do not know a single individual, however, who is in favor of having his guns taken away from a white guy, but opposed to having them taken away from a black guy. Do you? Does Dietrich? If not, what the hell point is there in bringing race up?"
Just more of the same...
Obama's small donor base image is a myth, new study reveals:
Everybody knows how President-elect Barack Obama's amazing campaign money machine was dominated by several million regular folks sending in hard-earned amounts under $200, a real sign of his broadbased grassroots support.
Except, it turns out, that's not really true.
In fact, Obama's base of small donors was almost exactly the same percent as George W. Bush's in 2004 -- Obama had 26% and the great Republican satan 25%. Obviously, this is unacceptable to current popular thinking.
He already has...
Victor Davis Hanson
"I think Obama may do more for George Bush's reputation than anyone thinks."
The fate of the kleptocracy....
Instapundit
"If the 21st Century nation-state can’t even fight pirates, what’s it good for, exactly? Collecting taxes? What happens when taxpayers decide they’d rather be pirates?"
Let's take their guns away...
Mumbai photographer: I wish I'd had a gun, not a camera. Armed police would not fire back:
"But what angered Mr D'Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. 'There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything,' he said. 'At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back.'"
