Pontiac: Future "old guy" litmus test

---by Micheal
Recently, General Motors announced that it would soon drop the Pontiac brand from its line-up. Some took the news hard. Some took it wistfully, like the passing on of an old friend. Muscle-car zealots may disagree with me, but I don't think the news is a signal of the coming apocalypse.

Pontiac was a created brand, unlike, say, Buick or Olds which were named after their founders. General Motors invented the brand in the 1920s as a higher performance line to augment it's modest performance entry-level Chevrolet line and its more stately luxury lines. People of driving age in the mid 1960s to 70s knew of the hot GTO, TransAm and later Firebird. "Ah," they'll say, "those were the days..." while staring wistfully into space.

But, time moves on. Car brands are created and dropped. Rambler, Nash, DeSoto, they've all had their heyday and then moved on into the foggy mists. This steady cycle of creation and demise does provide us something. It gives us a litmus test for whether you're an old man or not.

When I was a youngster, the old men would sit around on the front porch and talk wistfully about their Hudson or their Packard. Those were real cars. The other old men would nod respectfully. At that time, those cars had been out of production for years. As a young would-be driver, I oogled the latest Mustang or Camero, etc. Those were "living" cars to me. Hudsons and Packards, Studebakers and DeSotos, were old dead cars that rusted out back of the barn, and who lived on only in the minds of old men.

With Oldsmobile (five years ago) and now Pontiac's demise, we have some new benchmarks for old-man-hood.

Now we'll have some men sitting around the BBQ grill, talking wistfully of their Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs. The young would-be drivers will roll their eyes. Their hearts will be taken with a shiny new Green-E from OneWorld Motors or MegaWorks' RapidCharge 3000, or whatever the new brands will be.

Talk of Pontiacs will instantly tag you as an old man. Rather than fight it, just go with it. Times change. Those young whipper snappers will have their day. Some time down the line, they'll be sitting around their virtual food fabricators, talking wistfully about their old Green-E or their favorite red RapidCharge. Their kids will just roll their eyes and fantasize about CosmoCorp's FluxoPod or whatever. Times keep changing.

So, goodbye Pontiac. It was great to know ya. You've got a new role now. Your red arrow-head logo will become a badge of honor on old men's caps -- a way to set apart those who know real cars from all those young whipper snappers who don't know what a real car is like.

Many Americans Catch On

---by Dave Buhlman

The stock market tanked around 2002, and Americans, most of them regular folk, lost about $8 Trillion. They hung in there.

Recently, the stock market tanked again and Americans, most of them regular folk, lost about $11 trillion. This recent bust also included the collapse of a portion of the housing market.

With the recent Tea Parties, which were much maligned by those in the controlled media, some Americans showed that they are catching on. Many were suspicious of the political system with its many cozy arrangements, but it was acceptable as long as those 401ks kept pace and led them to believe that a decent retirement was still possible. What they are catching onto now is that the system is rigged against them. Not only is it rigged against them, the rigging was set by those they voted into the Congress and Senate with all decent hope of these guys and gals doing the right thing. And they did do the right thing, for themselves and the banksters that control them. The banksters inhabit the system from the “Federal Reserve” bank, through the big boys like Bank of America, down to the savings and loan on the streets named Washington, and Ash and Oak, and Main.

Congressman Barney Frank (D-Commiewealth) was dedicated to protecting his boyfriend at Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae, Senator Chris Dodd (D-Nutmeg) was getting a sweetheart mortgage from the made man who ran Countrywide Mortgage into the ground, and many others in Congress were dancing to the sweet music=2 0and raising their glasses at Versailles parties held along the banks of the Potomac. All was well…for them.

Presidents Bush and Obama, and their main money aides, cooked up bank bailouts of about $700 billion, and more handouts for others were created. All recipients had indented footprints in the gravy train line leading to both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. They made out quite well, even doling out big bonuses to those who engineered the near collapse of these companies.

The bailout, the associated never-ending debt, the bonuses, and the obvious favoritism bestowed by Washington on members of the monied nobility, caused many clean-living, government-defending Americans to catch on. Maybe some them, the few who remembered the lesser knowns of the 2008 presidential election cycle, thought for a fleeting moment about that brilliant Congressman from Texas w ho was warning about the shaky money system and the damage debt was doing to the economy and our quality of life. Maybe Ron Paul, MD, wasn’t as far off the beam as the controlled media led people to believe.

In response, on April 15, hundreds of thousands of good, hurting Americans gathered at hundreds of Tea Parties across the country to express their distaste for the corrupt system that greed had created in the former swamp now known as Washington, DC.

In response, the power brokers in Washington, and in its toady media outlets, yawned.

Dave Buhlman is a former two-term New Hampshire State Representative.

Obscure Economic Indicators: Rising

---by Micheal

Every day on the radio, I'm bombarded with news about this or that economic indicator. Up, down, sideways. In the toilet. Recovering, Whatever. There are as many spin-meisters as there are radio stations. Sorry to say, I'm here to add one of my own.

Obscure Economic Indicator: How many calls my boss gets from investment firms.

Background: I'm the first one to get at work, so for an hour or so, I answer the phones. Months ago, my boss (a partner/owner in the small firm) would get one or two calls a week from investment firms. They would call early (when I was there alone) on the assumption that they could get the early-bird boss before the receptionist arrived and would screen his calls. They would also cloyingly act like an old personal friend of his as another tactic to get through the screening. "Is my ol' buddy Frank in yet?"

They all seemed to assume that as a business owner, Frank had a big pile of cash that really needed investing. Tyco this isn't. No lavish office curtains (actually, no curtains at all), no big expense accounts or fancy trips. We're brown bag all the way. Frank had no interest in talking to them, so I stopped taking down their 800 numbers.

Now that I think about it, those ol' buddies stopped calling last autumn. Not that I really missed their calls, mind you. They just quietly disappeared.

This morning, that changed. The phone rang before 8:00 am. "Hey, is Frank in yet?" asked the assertive and a bit too friendly voice. "Um...no, he's out of town until Tuesday," I said. The distinctive background buzz of a dozen other cubical callers droned behind John's cheery words. "Oh, well, tell him John from Morgan Stanley called. I'll call him Tuesday." (click)

They're calling again. Frank still doesn't have a stash of cash, but it struck me that I might have just witnessed an obscure economic indicator. The investment guys are active again. If, years from now, we look back and see that the recession bottomed out and started recovering in April of 2009, then remember my obscure economic indicator. It may turn out to be the secret crystal ball that has eluded all those other radio pundits.

Obama Backs Up The Bus

Now we have yet another example of the messy reality of being president vs. the purity of being a candidate. The early weeks of the Obama presidency have seen quite a few examples of reality not being nearly so easy and tidy as it seemed on the campaign trail. Obama (like all the other Democrats) promised to pull all our troops out of Iraq very quickly. The voters lapped it up. He gets into office, and behold, it's not as easy as all that. There might be some troops in Iraq for many years. Getting us out of the middle east was a big selling point, yet we're getting even more involved in Afghanistan. It was all so easy last November. Oops. Gotta back up the bus folks.

Then there was that notion that one could have a "clean" administration -- free from all ethical dark clouds and the taint of (hold up your crosses) lobbyists! The first few weeks proved that the Democrat ranks are every bit as muddied by ethical problems. Refusing to involve any lobbyists would mean having too few staffers to get the job done. It was so easy last November. Now? Have to back up that bus to pick up some new riders.

On the campaign trail, it so easy to proclaim that the era of ear-marks and pork legislation would be over. Enter the new term, and a back-breakingly bloated budget has BILLONS in ear-marks and pork. It was so embarrassing that Obama had to sign it behind closed doors. It was so easy to stand out in the spotlights back in November. Now? Gotta back up that bus a bit.

Now we have our latest backing up of the national bus. On the campaign trail, Obama promised Armenian-Americans that he would officially brand the mass killings in 1915 as "genocide." Now, he's overseas trying to get foreign relations up to speed and is dealing with our ally in the mid-east: Turkey. Lo and behold. When asked about his campaign rhetoric about Armenian genocide, Obama backs up. He sidesteps the issue with the mealy-mouthed evasion common to politicians. It was all so easy last November. Now? Not so much. Back up that bus.

It's not like I particularly blame Obama. He's a politician. They will say anything YOU want to hear to get your vote. Lie, steal, cheat, promise you anything. It doesn't matter. They know they cannot deliver. Reality is never as glossy and simple as it seems on the campaign trail.

Who I do blame, are all the blindly naive voters out there who fell for it. Poor fools. Have they never bought a product which did NOT perform as promised on TV? Have they never been told 'the check is in the mail" yet it never arrived? Have we really become a nation of gullible dweebs?

Perhaps we have. Obama has been regularly backing up the bus on his many strident campaign promises since day one. Bush was so purely and simply wrong. HE would step in and do the purely and simply obvious right things. It hasn't happened. Reality is so much more difficult than campaign pipe dreams. Yet, how many of his voters have even noticed? Obama told them the check would be in the mail. They're still sitting by their mailboxes -- waiting.

Michelle might be proud now, but I'm embarrassed.