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Nascar Fans react to fake Obama article

Posted by Bob Weber on Apr 2nd, 2009 in Our Changing World | 0 comments

In honor of April Fools, Car and Driver ran an article yesterday that reported President Obama was going to force Chevrolet and Dodge out of Nascar in exchange for a Government bailout. Nascar fans didn’t react well.

“Just when we thought we could take a breather from Barack Obama’s wacky policies, he reached across the Atlantic today to drop another one on us,” wrote Sandra Rose at Rightfielders.com. “Naturally, NASCAR fans are outraged.”

Maybe it’s time for this silly Internet April Fool’s nonsense to end. We all count on these websites for accurate information, but have to sift through these fake stories, not just for one day, but for all of eternity because nothing ever dissappears on the Internet (except for this Car and Driver article). The stories just get more contrived an annoying – how irritating would it be if every newspaper in the country ran fake headlines on April 1st. With traditional media going away and the ‘new media’ becoming the standard, maybe it’s time to act a little more grown up.

Ballistic missiles are about as passe as e-mail

Posted by Bob Weber on Mar 26th, 2009 in Our Changing World, Politics, Tech | 0 comments

I love it when we see government and military officials make ridiculously absurd statements. In an article today on the obsolescence of the US missle defence system. In it he compares the out-datedness of ballistic missles with that of e-mail.

Marine General James Cartwright told an audience invested in missile-defense that the bad guys have already abandoned the notion of shooting ballistic missiles toward the United States. “Ballistic missiles are about as passe as e-mail,” said Cartwright, who before becoming the nation’s No. 2 military officer headed U.S. Strategic Command, which grapples with these issues. “Nobody does it anymore. Okay? It’s just gone.”

So nobody sends e-mail anymore? e-mail is passe? Wow, somebody should have told the thousands of people that e-mail me every day. I’m glad General Cartwright let me know – I might have continued to use it.

Fortunately, now we all know, so throw away those Blackberry’s, cancel your Gmail account and stop living in the past.

Obama Stimulus package in historical terms

Posted by Bob Weber on Feb 14th, 2009 in Economics, Government Waste, Our Changing World, Politics | 0 comments

The stimulus package that just passed both legislative houses of the government is set at $789bn. This cost, along with previous stimulus packages and the guarantees the government has made to back some financial institutions could bring the total costs of this bailout, in a worst case scenario, to over 9 trillion dollars.

Just to put things in perspective, here is an analysis by Jim Bianco of Bianco Research of what the largest historical US government projects cost in today’s dollars.

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

The New Deal, which was created to get us out of the worst depression this country has experienced and which included the construction of numerous parks, roads, buildings, dams, power plants, airports and other projects which are still in use today would ONLY cost $500 billion today. That’s less than 2/3 of the plan President Obama has managed to push through congress this week, and only a drop in the bucket compared to all the guarantees the government has made.

We can only hope that this money doesn’t go to bonuses, office remodels for CEOs and other perks for the upper class like the last round of bailout money did.