Bluto's Annoyed Friday Musings

One of my sons asked an interesting question of me this morning. He said, "Dad, does a hybrid car run on more than one fuel source?" I answered in the affirmative and that began a conversation about different types of fuel used by different hybrids.

What stopped me in my tracks was when he asked the $64 trillion question. "Dad, why can't they build cars that run well on batteries or hydrogen fuel cells?" Ah, the wisdom from the mouths of babes. I started to explain that, son, they can build these but the Detroit automakers fought it for a long time because they didn't want to spend the money to build assembly lines to crank out effective alternative fuel cars, and they had a model in the old gas-guzzlers that they figured would work forever, and their unions wouldn't have gone for it because their union members were making $100 an hour to show up drunk and effectively work one day per week.

Am I being too harsh on the unions? I grew up with a couple of guys whose bread and butter for many years came from working on a GM assembly line. Trust me, the part about showing up drunk or stoned and putting in one productive day per week is gospel. The conventional wisdom that said only buy a car made on Wednesdays was right on the money.

So, I started to tell my son about all of the stimulus money being dumped on American automakers, basically to bail them out from all of their stupidity or their grand theft. I stopped because I don't want him to hear, at least not this morning on a happy Friday, about the way our current congress will just throw money at anything.

Then there's the new solar farm about to go up about 50 miles east of Memphis. Get this. Stimulus money is going to be used to build a solar farm that will power 500 homes. Great idea, right? How about $60 million to build that sunny puppy? True story. Do the math, gang. There will NEVER, I repeat, NEVER, be a profit from the thing, except, of course, for the company that builds it.

If a private company wants to come in and invest to build the thing, wonderful. If the private company gets a bit of federal loan money to fund it, great. But why should taxpayers be paying for yet another boondoggle? Because we're not watching. The media are willing to allow congress to spend us into oblivion by swallowing the spew (I almost went to the gutter on that one, and you should be impressed I put on the brakes) from Saint Barrack.

I'm pondering this morning if congress is deliberately trying to frighten us so it can spend and spend and spend and then tax and tax and tax.

And, speaking of the media, the Memphis media in particular, it seems almost nobody is willing to take WMC and WREG to task for their blatantly false reporting about a kidnapping in Shelby County from a couple of days ago. They broke into their programming with "breaking news" about a carjacking and kidnapping. The problem was, it wasn't true. A kid made up a story. This points out a terrible problem in the battle for ratings. WREG is leading the way at putting police scanner traffic straight on the air and calling it news.

The dangerous problem with this is that scanner traffic is notoriously wrong. Police are on the scene trying to make sense of things, and first reports are routinely inaccurate. They eventually get things figured out, but it's like a parent walking into the middle of a disagreement between their children and immediately trying to make sense of it all.

WREG has figured out that Memphis is so apathetic and stupid that it will not call it to task when it does irresponsible, unethical, and dangerous things such as this. WMC, because it's now in a trailing position, has started doing it as well. Memphis, PLEASE demand better. At least make a call to the stations' General Managers and get your friends to do the same. I am not convinced they'll do anything about it but, when it continues, if people will change their channels that is the ultimate power to force change.

Or, just accept that WREG is going to scare the hell out of you and your family with blatantly inaccurate reporting. It's your choice.

Is it just me or is Nancy Pelosi one of the biggest liars to ever hold public office? I mean, this woman thinks she can say whatever she wants and that people will believe it and ignore it. Hey, maybe she has some Herenton in her family lineage.

I feel terribly bad for the car dealers who are getting caught up in the automakers' bankruptcy. Some of the dealers are making good money, and their employees work hard. With fewer dealerships, and consolidation of inventory, you can see what's coming with car prices, right? I think it's a great idea that we force prices up so we can spend more money on cars we don't freaking want.

Tell me again why we bailed Detroit out? In a free market economy, doesn't the working model show that inefficient and unprofitable companies get punished? Isn't that the way it's supposed to work? Well, with liberals in congress we just print money. Mark my words, in five years or less the media will be wondering why the automakers are still not doing things right.

Let me take over. The first thing I'll do is fire the unions. Each and every member of their overpaid, lazy, unproductive asses will be on the streets. I'll pay a good hourly wage for an honest day's work. I'll make cars that people want to buy. I'll make them reliable and comfortable, and I'll stand behind them with an outstanding warranty program.

I realize all of this makes too much sense so it will never happen, but I could win Powerball and go live on the Outer Banks. That makes a lot of sense to me.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I will abandon sobriety in a few hours and watch my kids play in the sand. Not even Saint BO can spoil that. Hey Nancy, I'll buy you a beer. Of course Monday you'll say you bought it and that you gave me $50 million so I would enjoy it. I'm OK with that, in case you wondered.