Psst! Want a Car Negotiator?I didn't mean to start of what should be happy friday as a grouch, so if surly, sour, and real bothers you, go hit some infotainment site. I'm in a grouchy mood. Why? You wanna know why? I'll tell you why...
The headlines are pretty grim around the GM story. "GM suppliers face new threat as bankruptcy looms for Automaker" reports Bloomberg this morning. And it looks like it could be filed as early as Monday.
Now, I'll tell you what stumps me - and it has bothered me about the AIG deal, too. When the public puts in piles of dough - and in GM's case, you and me put up the dough - and in any other kind of company I've ever read about, that would buy us (taxpayers) control of the Board of Directors who in turn call the shots in concert with the CEO, right?.
I usually won't go name-calling. I usually try to stay above such trivialities and leave that to the overly rabid right. But just between you and me, if a company's board of directors oversees a decline of stock price from over $38 a share to just over a buck at the close yesterday, should they...you know...be replaced?
Oh sure, I know what the excusifications will be - "Oh these guys all know the car industry" might be proposed. Oh? How many billions have they lost again? They don't know jack.
"Oh, we want to preserve stability" might be another. Yeah, like tell that to the millions impacted by their wisdom and who are taking gunpoint vacation time this summer because the company has been run into the ground.
I don't know why the government doesn't just come in and sweep it clean. Down here in East Texas, $70-billion confers serious ass-kicking rights. But not so, apparently, in 'politically correct land' inside the Beltway. Are you kidding?
For the roughly $70 billion plus this steaming lump is going to cost us all (roughly $228.76 for every man, woman, and child in America, by the way), can we please - pretty please with sugar on it - find a new group of Deciders in the board room; people with vision. Ever hear of a concept called 'getting ahead of the curve' instead of being run over by it?
Because the folks who build the cars aren't to blame for GM's failure. It's an outmoded, heavy into denial decision-making process and upper management style that has failed and I want no part of my $228.76 that I've got as skin in this game going in any form - options, stock, travel, or cash - to the people who didn't see it coming and haven't 'gotten it' since the rice burners came to America 40 years ago and kicked our ass.
Like I said: I won't name call here, but look up the Greek word "idios" in the dictionary and read on a ways from there. You following me?
At current prices, I figure I own 200-shares of GM - and do everyone in America.
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As I've said before, the fact that GM isn't looking at a whole inside-out change to something like Harley-Davidson's org chart and ethics, dims my faith in the country's future, not to mention what democracy puts in office in terms of 'best and brightest' may not be that.
I may be a small-time consultant, but look at the motivation and strategy guys like Evan Carmichael come up with as building blocks for success at Harley:
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Innovation
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Exhibition
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Dedication
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Passion
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and Branding
Think more focus could have helped GM if they'd gotten massively proactive? Until recently you know, reports are the GM Board was meeting once a month. Now at least, they are meeting several times a week. Better late than never? I won't touch that bet.
May I make a modest suggestion to the Obama car trouble team and the GM board? Find the "designated smart guy" inside of Harley Davidson and get his butt on the next plane to Motown. Is he there yet? Then resign.
Oh, and tell those people in Washington I want my share certificates for both AIG and GM. Don't like holding things in 'street' name. I know how that works., LOL.
Sound far out? Not as far out as this "Germany calls on Clinton to resolve GM fight. "
Selling Green
I see where Nancy Pelosi has time to be in China talking to kids about the need to go green.
WTH? Don't we have a few more pressing issues that demand action here in the USA? I mean GM's about to go toes up, we're a couple of months out from the commercial real estate meltdown and she's talking global warming on what sounds like a Gore-Lite tour in a country which is already not very trusting of us since our dollar's tanking sooner than later (which is why gold is up today, BTW).
Glad I don't live in her district, for damn sure. No, instead I live in the district of a poster-boy for the credit card industry, but that's another rant for another day.
Might I ask that Ms Pelosi come back to America and get to work on headlines like "Leap in U.S. debt hits taxpayers with 12% more read ink"?
USA Today figures the US federal government debt is $546,668 per household. Oh? Does $211,068 per person feel any better?
I'm ticked and I want the 'old ways' gone NOW. But I ain't your problem Madam Speaker. Nope. Your problem is that you ain't 'getting it' about how mad the average American is and since the Bush administration drove the country into the front of this Depression, 5.7 million people have lost their jobs and there are right now - today - nearly 14 million people unemployed. That's your problem right there. That and pitchforks.
So let me ask again more politely: Madam Speaker: What the hell are you talking to school kids in China for? Who bought your plane ticket, anyway?
NK's Newest
Another day, another missile - and this one with enough range to get to most of South Korea from the North. The West has raised its alert status to Defcon 2 in the region - just short of going into butt-kick mode.
Iran's Troubles
Iranian media are reporting 19 people killed in an apparent suicide bombing at a Shi'ite mosque in Iran today. No, Israel is not their only problem.
That "New Russia"
Turns out, figures Amnesty International that its still a place where dissent is still stifled, there are racist attacks, and substandard justice. Come on! With an old KGB boss still pulling the strings behind the nominal president, what were you expecting? Marin County?
Army Recruiting
Rebecca Price, cartoonist extraordinaire over at www.toon-republic.com has been eyeing increased military recruiting in public schools lately with more than a bit of suspicion:
Yeah, forget my motto "What this country needs is a good 5-cent high..." No way! What we really need is another war - yeah, that'll fix everything. Puff up the market, print up some more debt. you bet'cha.
Hey! Where's my GM & AIG shares?
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Coping: A World Software Preview!
Before I turn you loose on the English language first release of new software here, you need to go to 'cookie school'. So put on your thinking cap (or pour another cuppa bean and let me fill you in...
I went to 'cookie school' on Thursday morning - in the form of a conference call with the CEO and CTO of www.maxa-tools.com - makers of the German cookie-catching software that I've spoken so highly of because they are one of the few groups in the whole world that really 'get it' when it comes to cookies.
Cookies, if you are not a whiz at computing, are little snips of computer code that allow a web site to 'remember' who you are. Normally, when you come to UrbanSurvival.com you won't have a cookie 'set'. However, on occasion, as when I put a link to an Amazon book that I recommend, the code that points you to a particular book Amazon sells will include a code that says "Aha! This book purchase was referred to us by George Ure's web site, so we will pay him a commission of 8¢ (or whatever, depending on book price) as an advertising referral fee.
This is standard practice on the 'net - and probably 99% of the ads that you see around the margins of this website, or that, contains a cookie. OK? Simple enough so far.
But there are many different kinds of cookies. For example, if you hit the Maxa-Tools page yesterday, you may have noticed that what kind of browser you were using was noted - along with your IP address and an approximate physical location.
A lot of people just hit the 'delete cookies" when browsing, say in Explorer 8.0 and think that when they fire off Foxfire - or some other browser - that they are then able to have a little more anonymous surfing experience. Well, hate to tell you this, but....
No.
There are two broad classes of cookies: Those that are browser dependent, and those which are not. And the latest in the 'cookie wars' is the increasingly widespread use of browser-independent cookies are the ones to be ultra-aware of because if you think you have a clean machine - you're probably very wrong..
Maxa-Tools has provided us with a free demo which you're welcome to try - and even though the free demo version won't remove all the browser-independent cookies (they need to be compensated for their development work, after all) even the free version of their Cookie Manager is usually an eye-opener for people who (wrongly in most cases) think that a combination of pop-up blockers and fire walls software plus regular updates from an antivirus program will result in 'safe' computing. Nope, sorry, world don't work that way.
So here's the download link for the free demo:
www.urbansurvival.com/setupMCMstdGU.exe
When the program pops up, save the executable file on your computer, then run it, and that installs the free/demo version of their Cookie Manager. If you want to buy the full-up Pro version (which I use), you'll see a link in the upper right corner where you can upgrade - it's only $30 and in the interest of disclosure, yes I get some compensation if you buy it. Web sites don't operate free, as you should already have figured out.
In the interest of really knowing about cookies - even if you don't want to take Cookie Manager for a spin (why you'd pass up being the first on the block to have the program since the demo version is free is beyond me, but let's just suppose you're an idiot) at least click here to read the 21-page white paper on cookies and how they're used (and abused) on the web.
Why am I a fanatic about cookie control? Lots of reasons, including hard drive space. From the Maxa-Tools white paper:
"The well-known Macromedia/Adobe Flash-player present on most PCs controls these "Local Shared Objects". The files produced per website can take up to 100kb of disk space. In addition they can store the pre-requisites required to run multimedia applications."
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"Silverlight is Microsoft's counterpart to Flash. Here too, each Silverlight application can save and read up to 1 MB of data on the hard disk..."
OK, that's one part of it: Overhead in terms of disk space and potential for speed loss of my machines which I keep in Formula one racing condition as best I can.
The second part has to do with the kind of tracking information about me. There is so much value to 'consumer research' outfits that they will sometimes go so far as to provide free hosting to a high traffic site - or at least pay pretty good - so they can harvest consumer information like where you've been on the net, and maybe infer (based on your cookies) something about you.
One tip: Before you go to a new site, clear all your unwanted cookies. Then go to a new site - then hit the refresh button in Cookie Manager - that will show you what was set on the way in - then put in the IP of some known clean site and hit refresh again to see if cookies were set as you left.
So there you have it. Cookie School and a tool to fight back with, unless you like wandering around the net with your cookies showing. -- Enjoy!
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Update: Oh, someone asked about compatibility: Yes, of course, Cookie Manager works with MS Internet exploder, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. Just for good measure, Windows 7, too.
Come on - if you hadn't figured it out from my hanging with a guy who turned the internet into a rickety time machine, this oughta be a major clue that I don't hang with folks who don't know their stuff, 'K?
F-35 Recheck
Remember yesterday I was talking about that F-35 video which some in the conspiracy crowd were touting as 'evidence' that the US already has anti-gravity technology?
Laughs on them because one reader got it as "...it is a scenery from a game named Battlefield 2. on the screen are parts of the HUD visible..."
But wait! Is the laugh really on them? Remember the predictive linguistics are talking about UFO's and secrets revealed along this Spring and over summer into fall. And what's this? "Roswell Debris Confirmed as Extraterrestrial: Lab located, Scientists named" says UFO Digest. Maybe wanna hold that laugh for a while.
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Now that swine fluage has disbanded the Tea Parties (fear of public assembly - and it turned out to have short-term taken some of the air out of the Tea Party sails, I'm waiting for the next republicorp move. How about an ebook like "Hillary and the Greys"? That oughta harmonize with someone...
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Send lunatic fringe rants, ufo reports, thousand dollar bills, and huckleberry pies to george@ure.net
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