Coda electric sedan

Behold, the Coda electric car by Miles EV. The company reports this as being a "midsize" car, so let's think of it as comparable to a Kia Optima for the sake of discussion. Coda claim that their car will hit the market at $45,000 before a $7,500 federal tax break for electric vehicles, so let's assume that they're right and call it $37,500. It's limited to about 80 mph (suggesting that it has a single-ratio transaxle connecting the electric motor to the wheels) and they report 0-60 in 11 seconds.

Let's compare that to a Kia Optima EX with the 2.4-liter 4 cylinder. It offers 10-ish second 0-60 performance with a proven company that has made tremendous strides in vehicle quality in recent years and has the most generous standard warranty in the business. Since Coda have the chutzpah to compare the price of their car to that of a BMW, let's assume that it's a full-on luxury car with leather seats, nav, etc. You know, all sorts of goodies installed to use up that battery power! So for a reasonably conservative comparison, I checked every option box on Kia's configurator and came up with $25,495. The Coda site lists only "climate control" as far as interior features, and we all know that no one is paying list for a Kia, but let's just stick with that number for now.

If you drove the Optima exclusively in town, getting only the 22 mpg city EPA-rated mileage, you'd have to drive 66,000 miles while paying $4/gallon for regular unleaded to burn through that $12k price difference, without even considering a) the cost of electricity to charge the Coda or b) the time value of money to amortize that $12k over the years it would take you to rack up 66,000 miles (and of course you could only drive 100 miles/day in the Coda, so no long trips... you'll have to rent a different car or pay airfare to go over the river and through the woods.) So realistically, you're looking at a payback of 8+ years without even considering whether or not you could get a better, nicer car for nearly 40 grand...

Do you want an expensive, unproven, limited-range, low-performance car from China?

The "debate" about Sonia Sotomayor disgusts me

In the 110th Congress, 59 senators and 174 representatives were also lawyers. You'd think that our national body of lawmakers, especially those who are also lawyers, might know something about the law, about judges and about courts of appeal. Apparently you'd never get these dolts to actually ADMIT it, though, because it might cramp their style when they have to tell the big lies about the other party's judicial nominees.

If Republicans want to paint Sonia Sotomayor as a liberal and/or activist judge, let them show the cases in detail that might suggest this. Let them also step aside after slinging their mud so that others might talk about the rest of Sotomayor's decisions that the Republicans weren't able to spin to their advantage so that we could actually have a reasoned debate on the topic.

Let every Republican who praised Alito's humble upbringing and said it would make him a better justice who understood the "real world" stand up after videotape of their remarks about Alito are played and say why this same standard shouldn't apply to a latina who had better grades than Alito and more years on the federal bench than he had when he was nominated. If even one elected official has the balls to do that, I might admire their ability to lie as much as I despise their willingness to do so.

I shouldn't even bother to be upset about it. No big scandals have turned up so far, so it looks like her nomination is likely to be confirmed. Still, it's galling to see the same people who huffed and puffed and cried "Politics!" about any suggestion that Democrats might not support Alito turn around and threaten filibusters and focus on irrelevant minutiae when a qualified, experienced, intelligent judge is nominated by a president who scares them as much as W scared sane people.

Rick Perry: Stupid, or evil?

Rick Perry, supposedly the duly-elected governor of my state, has repeated the long-debunked canard that Texas joined the US with a pre-approved agreement to secede if it chose to do so.  He couched this in a half-hearted statement that he didn't think Texas should do so, but the fact that he thinks we somehow have the right to do so is troublesome.  He's already been busy selling off as much of our state's infrastructure as he can get his helmet-haired head around to the private sector (including private companies based in other countries.) 

I was able to ignore Perry for the most part when the biggest part of my shame was that our former governor was busily wrecking the federal government (along with Iraq and Afghanistan) but now that there are signs that we have a president with detectable brain activity, it's time to get rid of Perry.  Even Kay Bailey Hutchison would be an improvement, and that is saying something.

Michael Steele is not very smart

So the shiny new chairman of the Republican party thinks that government-stimulated jobs are just work, but private-sector work is all JOBS and they'll last forever. Never mind the fact that the 8 years of tax-cut driven job-growth bonanza under our last president represented the LOWEST period of job growth since WWII. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

Here is a man who either hasn't even a vague clue about economics, or is such a partisan hack that he doesn't mind lying through his teeth to get the job done... either he's not very smart, or he'll say anything to oppose, obstruct and delay. How can addressing infrastructure needs that have been piling up since Saint Reagan convinced everyone that all government is bad and the private sector is the only group that can create the Shining City on a Hill be a short-term fix? Hell, we have enough real infrastructure needs to have projects going on for many years!

Whom does Steele think will do this work? Does he believe we'll suddenly have a Ministry of Work that runs the projects from start to finish, employing all the workers and manufacturing all the materials? Has he such a tenuous grasp on economics that he thinks there is a way to address these big infrastructure problems such as crumbling roads and bridges and an electrical grid largely designed in the 1950s such that all of the jobs and all of the money spent on the projects will just evaporate without any lasting effect on the economy?

I for one don't believe Steele is quite that stupid. I think he's really just a partisan hack who'll say anything to get on the news and get in the way. In his tiny, cold, calculating heart, Steele probably wants the stimulus to pass with as little Republican consent as possible, so they can go on saying what a horrible waste it is for another couple of years and pray that the economy is still wobbly when the 2010 election cycle rolls around.

The Republicans themselves ruined the very idea of government spending to fix things when they were given $350 billion dollars to buy up some toxic assets and stabilize the banking system, and instead they turned it into a big giveaway party to pay off John Thain's decorating bill and fund billions in bonuses to Wall Street zeroes who should be applying for unemployment instead. The real question is whether they were shrewd enough to think they were poisoning the well, or dumb enough to believe they'd get away with it.

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=6830288

Bailout bozos

I realize that a great many people were opposed to the banking bailout under any conditions, so they have no cognitive dissonance when they diss the automotive bailout. I wonder at others who think the $700-billion banking boondoggle was "essential," yet they'd let the US auto industry wither and die before they'd LOAN them 5% of that amount.

I think both industries are important to our economy and that of the rest of the world, but NEITHER industry is so important that we should just give them sacks of public money without restrictions and oversight. At the risk of sounding like a Republican bitching about "media elites" I've read articles such as this one by Joe Lauria advocating "ditch(ing) the automobile altogether." The man thinks everything will be okay if we just let people who have the temerity to live somewhere that's not served by a subway walk, or drive a Toyota or a Volvo, even though they are "slightly more expensive." Surely Toyota would sell at exactly the same price without competition from US manufacturers, no? And the fact that Volvo is currently owned by a US auto manufacturer escaped Mr. Lauria altogether. That lends him great credibility in commenting about US auto manufacturers!

A well-structured package of loans or equity positions that the car companies could buy back on terms favorable to the people would be a better use of our money than the disgusting waste that is the hundreds of billions thrown at the financial industry with few restrictions and less oversight. The fact that the gifts to the financial industry were done stupidly doesn't mean that the government couldn't offer useful assistance to the manufacturing sector that could benefit both the public and corporate situation.

If we allow the US manufacturers who sell MILLIONS of vehicles to disappear, Toyota et al will have fewer competitors and will probably become more than "slightly more expensive." Ford, if you've been paying attention, feels that they can actually operate for quite a while without government assistance, and GM has in the last 5 years begun to significantly turn their product line around, and they currently offer some competitive and desirable products. Chrysler may be beyond help... they have little in the way of competitive products, but they are in a different position as a privately-held company, Cerberus could sell them at firesale prices to PSA or perhaps a chinese auto maker that wants a foothold in the US.

Mr. Lauria thinks that if we offer the US manufacturers any assistance, it should be for the government to take them over and force them to make electric cars (because I suppose he approves of electric cars.) It's possible that in 10 years all-electric cars may be viable for extraurban transportation, but the best bet for a truly usable electric car comes from a company he's already written off, GM (the Chevrolet Volt.) All-electrics aren't up to snuff yet.

MANY public transportation projects could significantly improve the state of transportation in certain areas of the country, but the wholesale squandering of vast sums of public money to build a network that would be largely unused in huge parts of the country would be a bigger boondoggle than making well-structured loans to or buying equity stakes in the viable parts of the auto industry.

Mr. Lauria claims he doesn't want to outlaw the car, but still leaves the impression that he thinks the automobile is useless. Considering the scale of the 2 bailouts, I think we'd save more of the people's money by applying some constraints to the financial industry thefts...er...gifts than by ignoring the US auto industry, leaving millions unemployed and further damaging the economies of dozens of American cities. The numbers being bandied about are about 5% of what was tossed to the financial wizards who torpedoed the world's economy in the first place. We need to cut off the free gifts of billions to the financial sector unless and until they promise to use it wisely and responsibly. The billions Mr. Lauria would dump into mass transit would be useful in the densest metro areas and an utter waste in the majority of cities.

Michele Bachmann: The Second Coming of Joseph McCarthy

On "Hardball" on 17 October, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R, MN) as much as stated that she'd like to usher in a new McCarthy era. She'll probably want to call it Bachmannism, of course, because her version will be different in that it will go after every Democratic member of Congress. Don't feel left out, I'm sure she'll happily proceed to investigate every other American citizen who's not a card-carrying Republican willing to pray to Ronald Reagan and follow Karl Rove to the gates of Hell, it'll just take her a while to get around to it. She has to get her secret investigators, hit squads and anonymous-call-takers ready, so she's starting small by simply accusing Democrats in the House and Senate of being anti-American and calling for an investigation of them.

Write your Representative and tell them it's not acceptable for a member of Congress to accuse every member representing the opposing party as of being "unamerican." Tell them we want government, not theater. It's easy, you can do it via a web form or email, and here's where to find yours. I've written mine, and my Senators for good measure. We absolutely cannot afford the venal, dishonest, theatrical distraction of a modern-day "Red Scare" while there are real problems to be solved in this country. If there's any justice, Ms. Bachmann will find herself unemployed after 4 November anyway, but this kind of vile, virulent statement cannot be ignored.

While I think it's more effective to contact your representative directly, you can also join in the chorus of those calling for censure of Bachmann here.

You can view the interview here:

Sean Hannity emasculated by a funny old Brit

Keith Olbermann read a poem written by one of the funniest men to live in our time... perhaps in any time. One of the reasons John Cleese is hilariously funny is that he's very intelligent, which supports his unique sense of humor brilliantly. Apparently Mr. Cleese's opinion of Sean Hannity is quite similar to mine.

An Ode to Sean Hannity
By John Cleese
Aping urbanity, oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee, faking humanity
Journalistic calamity, intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity, you’re a profanity
Hannity.”

Ann Coulter is a filthy NeoCon whore

There. I said it. Nearly everyone WANTS to say it, but people for whom journalism and/or blogging is a career may be afraid to do so, because it's the sort of thing people get mad about. Of course, no honest THINKING person would get too upset about it, because they heard the wench lie, or read her lies, or felt nauseous while watching her lie on television.

Occasionally what she says is only slightly untrue, but couched in the most suggestive of phrasing to blame anyone who's not an Aryan neocon whore for all the ills in the world. At other times, such as her ridiculous assertions that the current financial crisis... the one happening at the end of 2008, after 7.5 years of the Bush administration and more than a decade of Republican control of Congress prior to 2006, the current financial crisis is of course 100% the fault of the Democrats.

The reason that I call her a filthy whore in the title and repeatedly in the text (besides the fact that it's a general truism) is that she suggests in the title of her "article" that good Aryan neocons were denied mortgages because banks were required to give them to minority borrowers. Where has this dumb bitch BEEN for the past decade? Anyone with a pulse could get a loan, it was bad business. Lots of dumb Republican crackers and crack-whores got zero-down loans on houses that probably weren't worth 75% of the loan amount. It was a cash-drunk feeding frenzy and it was lauded and supported by Republicans in the administration as well as Democrats in the house, and most of all by corrupt mortgage brokers everywhere. (I'm sure her next "article" will offer "proof" that every mortgage broker who sold a LiarLoan was a Democrat... she keeps all their party affiliations in their dossiers, you know.)

I am tired of her free pass. Are people afraid to mention her and give her more notice? Reading her trash makes me feel ill sometimes... there's only so much ignorant childish fiction passed off as news one can take, and Fox has exceeded my quota for the next decade... Coulter gets no free pass from me.

Small-town mayor thinks Obama might be the Antichrist

You thought this was going to be about Sarah Palin, didn't you? Actually, if Palin thinks Obama is the Antichrist she'd want him to win, since she attends an "end times" church. This does, however, offer some perspective about how little judgment is required of small-town mayors. (Actually, Kwame Kilpatrick showed us that big-city mayors can be pretty dumb as well, but that's beside the point.)

Danny Funderburk, mayor of Fort Mill, NC, forwarded an email chain letter that contains false claims that the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Christian bible describes the Antichrist as a man of Muslim descent in his 40s. The email then builds on THAT lie with the suggestion that Obama is the Antichrist. Funderburk claims he was "trying to get documentation" on whether or not this was true, but he didn't put that in the subject header. The story doesn't say if the actual email he sent contained any indication that he was looking for such documentation, and no copy of the email is included in the article.

If there's any truth to his claim, this man needs to learn to Google before he makes an ass of himself. Cynic that I am, I believe he's just an idiot who believed the chain letter and forwarded it on to friends so he could share this important knowledge. People like Funderburk give sane, intelligent Southerners a very bad name.

Stupid people shouldn't buy cool toys

Ah, our wonderfully litigious society... it's so much more satisfying for people to sue rather than taking responsibility for their own mistakes. Now some mouth-breathing moron has filed suit against Apple because it's possible to turn up the iPod loud enough to damage your hearing. (see the Cnet news story here) Mind you, he's not claiming the iPod increases the volume on its own, or that listening to Mozart at low volumes will suddenly destroy your hearing just because you're using an iPod. He's claiming that if YOU turn up the volume all the way, the iPod gives you the ability to damage your own hearing.

Now, I've had stereo equipment you could do this kind of damage with for years. I've not been dumb enough to do it, or perhaps I've just not been devious enough to decide to sue Linn for making speakers that don't automatically shut off at some "danger level." Then I guess I could file another suit against musical talent who have the nerve to make music that sounds good at high volumes (and of course I'd name all the record companies in that suit just to add some deep pockets to the mix.) Then, hopefully, someone would SHOOT me for being a greedy, irresponsible sack of shit who's a burden to society.

There's a REASON for the concept of torts in the legal system... there are cases in which EvilBigCompany does something irresponsible or even malicious and deserves to get sued. There are cases when Danny Drunk runs over a pedestrian and deserves to get sued (though usually his insurance company ends up taking the brunt of that.) If I can't figure out that sticking a screwdriver into a live light socket is a bad idea (especially when instructions tell me "turn off the breaker" or "call a professional electrician") then I deserve a 120-volt shock, not a check for a million dollars.

Someone's going to say "We need tort reform!" Well, if tort reform were enacted by honest, responsible people with only the best interests of society in mind that would be great. Unfortunately, it would be enacted by trial lawyers and politicians, so my cynical semi-Libertarian side says that would probably end up being a bad thing. Can't we just have IQ tests for jurors?