I know I swore I wouldn’t do this anymore, but whatever. A post at TPM got me to thinking. Talking about the state of the auto industry, a veteran of the wars made a couple of fascinating observations.
I was meeting a friend in the GM building in downtown Detroit about 18 months ago and was astounded to learn how few people there were actually involved in making cars and how many were involved with other GM business interests.
GM got out of the car business long ago. Oh sure, they still make cars. But is that their business? Heck no. For the last two decades GM’s business has been buying dollar bills for a buck and selling them for a buck-fifteen. That’s what GMAC was all about. Cars, if you’ll pardon the pun, were just one vehicle toward that 15% or more they were making. It didn’t matter whether they were quality or not, only that they were financed. They were also heavily into real estate and credit cards.
Their problem isn’t so much that no one wants their cars. It’s that no one is willing to pay such exorbitant prices for money anymore. Mitt Romney can stomp up and down all he wants about how the unions killed GM. It isn’t so. It was the money men.
The guy continues:
In Chrysler’s case, this was a weak company driven into the ground and thoroughly looted by it’s “merger” with Daimler-Benz. It was funny going to hotels around the Chrysler headquarters in Auburn Hills and thinking you were in Germany due to the huge number of German speaking guests. Each staying for long periods of time on the company dime and all being charged to Chrysler.
Aha! Suddenly those frequent Lufthansa flights between PDX and Frankfurt make a whole lotta sense. Are they really about boosting our local economy? Or are they about corporate big wigs coming out here and bleeding a once proud local company dry? I think we know the answer.
The more I think about it, the more I think Obama needs to just cut the auto makers loose. It’s over.
Dear God, is The Office excruciating. As Michael crawled around on the floor tonight, I wondered why the show couldn’t just call it quits today. Wrap everything up in a nice bow at the end with Jim and Pam happily married and Stanley sailing off to retirement. Just put the whole damned thing out to pasture. Sending Michael back in after he’d already been escorted out was just too much. It was jumping the shark times ten.
But then, of course, the writers surprised me. Pam quits and joins Michael in his new venture. The new boss puts Kevin at the reception desk and Stanley in charge of productivity. Everyone is outside their comfort zone. Please, please let this new arrangement stick. And please no more cringing with Michael.
One gets the feeling Ed Henry sent an aide back to the Oval Office after the presser and had them attempt to retrieve his manhood for him. Tomorrows question will be “were they successful?”
Thanks to Cleveland State my Midwest bracket looks like it was set-upon by my old middle school English teacher. Lots of red. The Committee obviously tried to warn me by giving them a #4 seed, but did I listen? Noooooo!!!
Thinking about it today, I thought about my own struggles with mental health. The thing is, no matter how sunny things are in your life, and right now it’s nothing but blue skies and ocean breezes in mine, that little black cloud is always around. And you’re always aware of it. It could be over your shoulder. It could be way out on the horizon. But it’s there. It’s kind of comforting in a way, because you know you can always run to it and find refuge. You can hide inside it and shut out the rest of the world. Sometimes it’s a struggle to keep looking ahead, goodness knows I’ve had my moments.
So we soldier on. We’ll watch and see what Steve is up to. We’ll keep an eye on the band too. It won’t be the same. But then, that’s what adulthood is all about, isn’t it?
I guess I’m going to be the only one to stick up for Peter DeFazio regarding this airport incident of his. Look, we all know air travel post-9/11 blows. It’s a complete hassle and a waste of everyone’s time. But we also know it’s not going to change without some sort of Congressional mandate. They, of course, don’t want to do it because of the political backlash of looking soft on terrorism. And so here we are.
The only way we had any hope of changing things was to get someone in power pissed off enough about how they were treated to actually go do something. Well, hopefully that’s what happened to Congressman DeFazio earlier this week. Was he a dick during screening? I certainly hope so. And I certainly hope he follows through on his promise to review procedures. It would be a welcome change.
This is probably old news by now on these here Intertubes, but it’s news to me. ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons did a two-part a podcast last week with writer Chuck Klosterman. In part one, the two discussed basketball. College basketball. NBA basketball. Which is more interesting. What’s wrong with each. What each gets right. It was a fascinating exchange. You can listen to it here (scroll down to 3/12).
Simmons made one comment that really put a lot of pro sports in to perspective. I don’t know whether it’s true, but he suggested the NCAA makes more money on March Madness than the NBA makes in a year. True? Boy, it’s probably close. Then just after that he made a suggestion for the NBA which would revolutionize the sport and catapult it in popularity.
Get this:
The NBA cuts its schedule down from 82 games to something more in the 65 range, and add a mid-season 16-team single elimination tournament with some sort of reward to the victor. He suggested maybe a first-round bye in the playoffs. But something.
Holy crap! I would sign up for that tomorrow. Basically it would involve doing away with the home-and-home games between the two conferences. Instead divisions would alternate playing one another. The Atlantic division would play at the Pacific but host the Southwest and split the Northwest and so on. Obviously it would need to be tweaked, but it could be done. The downside is you’d only see LeBron once a year, but the plus side would be each game would mean more. 82 games is just too damned many.
The mid-season tournament would be the perfect antidote to the February sports doldrums. Imagine rolling straight out of the Super Bowl and into an NBA tournament. We could spend days discussing a Blazer first-round match-up with Cleveland or Boston. Talk about a winner.
Pro sports are headed into some serious uncharted territory in the next few years. Both the NBA and NFL are staring down the barrel of work stoppages which, in addition to the economy, will kick their sports right in the teeth. It’s time for both to start thinking of new ways to generate interest. Ditching the all-star game and going to a tournament would be one way to do that.
Weber State, who twice beat Portland State by double-digits this season, will beat San Diego State in the first round of the NIT tonight. Weber State has played well on the road all year and will give the Aztecs fits. You watch.
Meaningless? Sure. But it will be further vindication for the Wildcats who should be in the big tournament this season, not Portland State.
Update:Shows what I know. I’m also taking Xavier by double-digits. Adjust your bracket accordingly.
I’ve been a fan of Steve Martin’s for years now. I’ll stop whatever it is I’m doing to watch The Jerk, and Roxanne and LA Story both remain among my all-time favorites.
In addition to the stuff you’ve seen on TV and in the movies, he’s also quite an author. Shopgirl was fantastic and I just finished his memoir Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life. Turns out there’s quite a mind inside the head that spent a decade with an arrow through it.
Wow. What an AWFUL sentence. We trudge on…
There’s been quite a controversy over in La Grande about a high school production of Martin’s play Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Parents successfully petitioned the school to cancel the production. Undeterred, the students took the whole thing off-campus and are presently scheduled to perform it on the campus at Eastern Oregon University in mid-May.
Martin has become aware of the issue and sent a letter to the La Grande Observer offering to pay for the production. That’s the Steve Martin I love.
I’m going to try and get over to La Grande to see the production, not only to support the kids but also to support Martin.
