Just in case you doubt what stopping the automakers rescue was all about for the Republicans, this from “an e-mail circulated among Senate Republicans on Wednesday” as reported by the Los Angeles Times:
“Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it.”
As NewMexiKen was leaving the restaurant this evening, newly hired New Mexico Lobos football coach Mike Locksley was walking in — Albuquerque is a small town and it’s a well-known restaurant.
Anyway, it was too sudden for this season ticket holder to react, but I wish I had.
“No damn screen passes, Coach.”
Locksley is one of just four African-American coaches among the 119 Division I-A schools. He’s more recently an assistant at Illinois and Florida.
Woof. Woof.
Someone I read suggested the best way to solve the credit crisis and bring us out of recession would be to make all the Monopoly money legal tender.
The publisher of the Detroit Free Press, the country’s 20th largest paper by weekday circulation, is expected to announce next week that it will cease home delivery of the print edition of the newspaper on most days of the week, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking.
The publisher hasn’t made a final decision, said this person, but the leading scenario set to be unveiled Tuesday would call for the Free Press and its partner paper, the Detroit News, to end home delivery on all but the most lucrative days—Thursday, Friday and Sunday.
Give ’em facts.
For example, “The wage gap between U.A.W. workers and workers at other car companies is no longer that big, and labor costs at this point account for only ten per cent of the cost of producing a vehicle.”
Another instance of the old stock market axiom — buy on the rumor, sell on the news.
Look, for instance, at what happened to the auto stocks today. Ford was as low as $2.12 a share in the opening moments of trading, but as news spread that the bailout might still happen, it rocketed upward, and at one point it reached $3.21. In other words, it rose forty-five per cent in a couple of hours. G.M. needs the government’s money more than Ford does, and so its upward spurt was even more impressive: after being as low as $2.66, its shares reached $4.23. That’s a sixty per cent move. It’s simply implausible to believe that this would have happened if investors were not expecting some form of government intervention.
The CEOs of GM, Chrysler and Ford have each agreed to an annual salary of $1 in hopes of getting financial support for their company.
But don’t forget, these guys all have stock options.
That means they’re probably really working for $3 a year.
Sweetie Mack, as noted elsewhere, will be 8 tomorrow. Last Saturday he ran his last distance race as a 7-year-old, a 5K with 4,473 other runners, the Reindeer Romp. He finished 252nd overall (that is, he finished ahead of 4,222 runners).
Even better, he took first place among all boys and girls in his age group (7 and under).
Indeed he finished better than any of the 8-year-olds in the race. He ran the 3.1 miles in 29:10.
That’s him in the photo a few blocks from the finish. Click image for larger version.
Tomorrow is Sweetie Mack’s 8th birthday. Before the NFL season began last year, Mack picked the New York Giants to win the Super Bowl — amazingly he called the long shot. Along the way he became a big fan. To celebrate his birthday (and his prescience) Mack’s dad snagged three New York Giants tickets for last Sunday’s game against the Eagles. Grandpa got invited along.
We drove from Virginia to New Jersey Saturday evening — it was snowing much of the way, but no one slowed down. When we got to the Marriott in Ridgefield, I noticed a man who looked very much like a professional football player. I told Mack, I think the Giants are in this hotel — and indeed they were. It was running back Brandon Jacobs I had noticed. Mack got his autograph and those of Corey Webster and R.W. McQuarters. (Plaxico Burress was nowhere in sight.)
Mack got me up at 6:37 Sunday morning to go down to the lobby and find more players. The Giants, of course, had more sense than to be up that early — and fortunately we had more sense too, and took the morning to go into New York City rather than hang out in hopes of a glimpse of Eli Manning.
I have been to NYC a few times, but never to Wall Street. That’s the New York Stock Exchange in the picture (taken with my iPhone). We were able also to walk around Rockefeller Center (and see the Christmas tree and ice rink) and Times Square before heading back to Jersey for the game.
79,000 other folks joined us at the Meadowlands (attendance was 79,003) on a blustery, cold day. We were in the 19th row on the 20.
The Eagles won 20-14 as the Giants scored their only offensive touchdown in the last two minutes of the game. The only real exciting play was a blocked field goal run back for a touchdown by the Giants to end the first half.
Click the photos for larger versions.
Wall Street fearing Santa will leave nothing but cinders under its tree this Christmas.
Photo taken last Sunday morning with my iPhone; click image for larger version. That’s the New York Stock Exchange on the right.
So, I leave the blog unattended for 8 days and only on the eighth day do two people email me to ask about it. My family knew where I was, and a couple of readers are my friends on Facebook, but most of you just go blithely on your way.
Sigh.
… there would be:
60 Asians
14 Africans
12 Europeans
8 people from Central and South America, Mexico and the Caribbean
5 from the USA and Canada
and 1 person from Australia or New Zealand
Source: State of the Village Report
It’s A Wonderful Life in 30 seconds with bunnies.
… of Bob Barker. C’mon down, he’s 85.
… of Connie Francis. Do you suppose she’s still trying to get to where the boys are at 70.
… Dionne Warwick. Perhaps she’d just as soon walk on by her 68th birthday.
… of Dickey Betts. The member of the Allman Brothers band is 65.
… of Cathy Rigby. The Olympic gymnast is 56.
… of Tracy Austin. The one-time tennis prodigy is 46.
… of Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly. She’s 38.
John Jay was born on this date in 1745. Jay, a delegate from New York, served in the First and Second Continental Congresses. During the War for Independence Jay served as president of the Continental Congress, minister plenipotentiary to Spain, and peace commissioner (in which he negotiated vital treaties with Spain and France). He was Secretary of Foreign Affairs under the Articles of Confederation. During the ratification of the Constitution, Jay was author of the Federalist Papers, along with Madison and Hamilton. He was the first Chief Justice of the United States. While Chief Justice, Jay negotiated a vital, though flawed treaty with Great Britain in 1794, the Jay Treaty.
Pennsylvania ratified the Constitution on this date in 1787, thereby becoming the second state.
The first radio transmission across the Atlantic was made by Guglielmo Marconi on this date in 1901 (Cornwall, England, to Newfoundland, Canada). The message consisted of Morse code for the letter “s”. That would be dot-dot-dot.
Which is better than a lot of stuff on the air 107 years later.
Frank Sinatra was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, 93 years ago today (1915).
This from Sinatra’s New York Times obituary in 1998:
Widely held to be the greatest singer in American pop history and one of the most successful entertainers of the 20th century, Sinatra was also the first modern pop superstar. He defined that role in the early 1940’s when his first solo appearances provoked the kind of mass pandemonium that later greeted Elvis Presley and the Beatles.
During a show business career that spanned more than 50 years and comprised recordings, film and television as well as countless performances in nightclubs, concert halls and sports arenas, Sinatra stood as a singular mirror of the American psyche.
His evolution from the idealistic crooner of the early 1940’s to the sophisticated swinger of the 50’s and 60’s seemed to personify the country’s loss of innocence.
Today is the 477th anniversary of the appearance of La Virgen de Guadalupe on the cloak of Juan Diego.
Guadalupe is, strictly speaking, the name of a picture, but the name was extended to the church containing the picture and to the town that grew up around the church. It makes the shrine, it occasions the devotion, it illustrates Our Lady. It is taken as representing the Immaculate Conception, being the lone figure of the woman with the sun, moon, and star accompaniments of the great apocalyptic sign with a supporting angel under the crescent. The word is Spanish Arabic, but in Mexico it may represent certain Aztec sounds.
Its tradition is long-standing and constant, and in sources both oral and written, Indian and Spanish, the account is unwavering. The Blessed Virgin appeared on Saturday 9 December 1531 to a 55 year old neophyte named Juan Diego, who was hurrying down Tepeyac hill to hear Mass in Mexico City. She sent him to Bishop Zumárraga to have a temple built where she stood. She was at the same place that evening and Sunday evening to get the bishop’s answer. The bishop did not immediately believed the messenger, had him cross-examined and watched, and he finally told him to ask the lady who said she was the mother of the true God for a sign. The neophyte agreed readily to ask for sign desired, and the bishop released him.
Juan was occupied all Monday with Bernardino, an uncle, who was dying of fever. Indian medicine had failed, and Bernardino seemed at death’s door. At daybreak on Tuesday 12 December 1531, Juan ran to nearby Saint James’s convent for a priest. To avoid the apparition and the untimely message to the bishop, he slipped round where the well chapel now stands. But the Blessed Virgin crossed down to meet him and said, “What road is this thou takest son?” A tender dialogue ensued. She reassured Juan about his uncle, to whom she also briefly appeared and instantly cured. Calling herself Holy Mary of Guadalupe she told Juan to return to the bishop. He asked the sign for the sign he required. Mary told him to go to the rocks and gather roses. Juan knew it was neither the time nor the place for roses, but he went and found them. Gathering many into the lap of his tilma, a long cloak or wrapper used by Mexican Indians, he came back. The Holy Mother rearranged the roses, and told him to keep them untouched and unseen until he reached the bishop. When he met with Zumárraga, Juan offered the sign to the bishop. As he unfolded his cloak the roses, fresh and wet with dew, fell out. Juan was startled to see the bishop and his attendants kneeling before him. The life size figure of the Virgin Mother, just as Juan had described her, was glowing on the tilma. The picture was venerated, guarded in the bishop’s chapel, and soon after carried in procession to the preliminary shrine.
The coarsely woven material of the tilme which bears the picture is as thin and open as poor sacking. It is made of vegetable fibre, probably maguey. It consists of two strips, about seventy inches long by eighteen wide, held together by weak stitching. The seam is visible up the middle of the figure, turning aside from the face. Painters have not understood the laying on of the colours. They have deposed that the “canvas” was not only unfit but unprepared, and they have marvelled at apparent oil, water, distemper, etc. colouring in the same figure. They are left in equal admiration by the flower-like tints and the abundant gold. They and other artists find the proportions perfect for a maiden of fifteen. The figure and the attitude are of one advancing. There is flight and rest in the eager supporting angel. The chief colours are deep gold in the rays and stars, blue green in the mantle, and rose in the flowered tunic.
(The Catholic Community Forum, taken from a 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia article)
“So where did the auto-bailout negotiations break down? Over the demand by anti-union Southern Republican senators that domestic automaker workers be forced to accept immediate wage cuts, and the loss of benefits. I’m with Barney Frank on this one: No one asked the rank-and-file employees of Citigroup or AIG or Morgan-Stanley to cut their salaries in exchange for government handouts. Assembly-line workers at GM and Chrysler, on the other hand, must tighten their belts.”
“So it’s a particularly amusing sign of how far the political climate has shifted that in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, only 33 percent of respondents admit to having voted for the guy [George W. Bush] twice, while 52 percent said they’d never voted for him at all.”
“Republicans to Detroit: if only you could figure out a way to pay your executives and not your workers, we might help you.”
