Drag Me To Shorties

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I love the new sign for my office. Let’s evaluate some mayhem, shall we?

Says Who? The conventional conservative wisdom on “green cars” is that it would cost American jobs. I never understood that one, since they can be made on the same assembly line they currently use for other cars. Anyway, Congress figures that if they give people money for their old cars, they’ll have money to buy new ones. On one hand, I’ve seen a lot of lower income families waste a lot of money on their clunkers because they don’t see how they are already paying as much as they would on a newer, more reliable car. On the other hand, this feels a lot like the rebates and stupid-low interest rates that helped the auto industry get into trouble in the first place!

Speaking of the Automotive Industry:  Who’s to blame for GM’s Bankruptcy.

Cars and Insurance Go Together: Both GM and Citi are out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, replaced by Cisco and Travelers (formerly part of Citi). Oops, as of this writing CNN.Money.com hasn’t updated their list of DJIA components! Surely they’ll get around to that in the morning.

Speaking of Insurance: a few tidbits on health insurance from Ezra (twice) and Dr. Dean (via Suburban Guerrilla). Now, even the White House thinks we can stimulate the economy through “health reform.” Even Baucus is coming off his high horse to pretend to ask the people what they want.

Depressing: The FDA put a warning on antidepressants. Now fewer people are being diagnosed as depressed. Interesting.

Here a bubble, there a bubble: Thanks to Kiko’s House, we wonder if there’s a college education bubble. After all, we’ve been beating the “everybody ought to go to college” drum even longer than the “everybody ought to own a house” drum.

Green Homes Don’t Have to be Expensive: they can be pre-fab models with construction costs as little as $200 per square foot. Of course you can also buy a bank owned home for less than $100 per square in Vegas right now…

Speaking of Bank Owned Houses: The New York Times thinks we are on the cusp of a new wave of foreclosures, propelled by unemployment.

I’ll be glad when this is no longer a problem: facts and myths about child soldiers.

Quick, Junior! To the Gaming Console: The United States Air Force thinks we may have a future shortage of video game programmers. Well, if the **** I see coming out of E3 is any sample, we already have a shortage of decent ones.

Japanfilter: Happy 150th birthday to the port of Yokohama.

My How Banking Has Changed: How did banks get too big to fail? How did we end up with so few banks? A different spin on the same question.

How Much Do You Know: Here’s a little quiz on current events. Only 6% of randomly called American adults could correctly answer all 12 questions. How did you do? (12 out of 12, thanks. I guess that makes me a news junkie.)

On the Forced-Birth Terrorist: While he does turn out to have been a religious zealot with ties to anti-abortion groups, it’s looking like he wasn’t the “loner” that such groups will soon wish he was. He had a history of hanging out with anti-government nuts, having bomb making materials, and hating Dr. Tiller (whom he had never met).

On the Doctor He Murdered and the People He Helped: Here’s a piece on his life. The stories of people who needed his services are very terrible and very personal. While I can’t blame any of these people for not wanting to discuss such things, I think we need to have a better idea of why a mother can come to the conclusion that this is the best option. Here’s the truth about 3rd trimester abortions (it’s not murder to kill the dead)– and why Dr. Tiller was aquitted of all charges mere months ago. As Chuck Butcher so nicely put it, “legal and unfortunately necessary.”

On the Possible Conspiracy to Commit Acts of Terrorism: We need to be on the lookout for other, related domestic terrorism, because these people are dangerous as long as they don’t get exactly what they want (which is for women to be nothing more than baby-boxes). Even the most innocent seeming of these protesters want to prevent people (all women, coincidentally) from getting medical services. This particular terrorist had something in his car that may cause the whole thing to unravel, and a local news crew took a picture as proof: the phone number of Operation Rescue’s Senior Policy Advisor — who happens to have been convicted in a bomb conspiracy back in 1988. If that’s not enough to get a subpoena for phone records and start digging, then I’m unclear on what is. We’ve got a nice, shiny PATRIOT ACT, let’s use it against these terrorists.

On the Media that Made Terrorism Sound Like a Good Idea: They include church elders (I bet they wouldn’t have been happy if the murder had taken place in their church!) and Fox News. That being the case, Olbermann is calling for a boycott not of  Fox News, but of the places that air it publicly. Jesse had it right when he pointed out that it’s pretty messed up when you have to specifically send a press release that says you don’t condone murder. The Loony Fringe has nerve claiming that (even as they gloat) they are all being unfairly blamed for fanning the fires of hate. Maybe it’s the match in one hand and the fan in the other that gives us that idea.

Well, we’ve evaluated enough mayhem for the day. I hope you’ll join me again soon.