Quality Weenie

Bohemian Rhapsody

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

The Shine is Dulling Quickly

Obama's shine is quickly fading, on all sides of the spectrum.

It's not just the big things about this adminstration that are irratating people, it's starting to be the little things too. Like words ...

Perhaps it was a sign when President Barack Obama sat down in January to record his first weekly address and announced: “We begin this year and this administration in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action."

What has followed is declaration after declaration of “unprecedented” milestones. Some of them are legitimate firsts, like the president’s online town hall at the White House in May.

But others the president wins merely on a technicality, and several clearly already have precedent.

I guess you could say it's unprecedented for the media to say something bad about Obama.

The White House’s announcement of its unprecedented – “a first by an American president visiting China” – town hall meeting with students in Beijing, for instance, drew a collective eye-roll in certain circles back home, namely among former aides to President George W. Bush who had already been grumbling about Obama’s carefree application of “unprecedented.”

“I think I attended a town hall with President Bush in China,” former Bush adviser Karen Hughes quipped with a laugh, recalling a 2002 Bush speech in Beijing where he took questions from the audience

Far be it from Obama to admit that Bush did something before he did ...

And when it comes to the Chinese town hall, White House officials say the ex-Bush aides have it all wrong – saying it was the first full-blown “town hall” by a U.S. president in China (compared to Clinton and Bush, who took questions after a speech). It was also the first U.S. presidential event streamed to an Internet audience in China, the first with questions from the Internet and it garnered the biggest viewership, with 55 million Internet hits alone – making its audience unprecedented, the official said.

So while Bush and Clinton may have done it first, they didn't do it like Obama did it so that makes Obama doing it first because his was a better way to do it.

It's even better that the media is calling him out on this ...

Either way, for a president whose approach to exaggerated critiques of his administration is to “call ‘em out” and who has made an issue of forcing corporate America to expose the fine print, it’s a wonder if his use of “unprecedented” would pass his own litmus test.

And the experts they asked about Obama's use of the word unprecedented says about himself stop short of saying his narcassitic ...

It’s also a reflection of the president personally.

“It says how very unique he feels he is,” said Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who worked in the Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. Hess described Obama as “a man who sees himself as unprecedented in every way … given his background – his mother, his father, where he grew up, how he became president of the United States.”

“Of course, Biblically there’s nothing new under the sun and most everything he’s done as president there is some precedent for somewhere,” he added. “What he does is variations on a theme.”

“I don’t think he gets special credit for being unprecedented, but he thinks that way,” he said. “I think that tells us more about him than really anything else about how he runs the White House.”

Ouch, That is going to leave a mark.

But just how much does Obama's administration use the word unprecedented?

Obama has relied on “unprecedented” in more than 90 instances, using the word at least 129 times in everything from major addresses to small speeches, statements, memorandums and proclamations. (Bush, by contrast, used the word in 262 instances over eight years.)

Andrew Jackson was the first president to use the word “unprecedented” in 1831, according to a search of the archives of The American Presidency Project. For more than 100 years afterwards, presidents only used the word “unprecedented” in 72 speeches and mostly reserved it for major addresses.

And to throw another punch in that really is unrelated to the article but yet segways with the word unprecedented ...

“It comes close to a certain arrogance,” Hughes said, “as if this president has done things that no other president has ever done before – except that they have done them before.”

Obama even treads on unprecedented territory in ways he’s not trying to highlight. At this point in his presidency he’s spent more time on the golf course, for instance, than his immediate predecessor. He’s also attended more fundraisers. And sometimes he surprises people with his use of the characterization, such as in Tokyo last week when he declared himself “America’s first Pacific President.”

The article gives many instances where Obama feels he did something unprecedented but then tells you who did it before Obama did it.

A good article to cheer you up a bit! And I found the link to the article on Yahoo's front page!

Massive Recall for Toyota

Seems Toyota is spirling down the shit hole still, despite their claims that their products are safe and it's the drivers fault for defects.

Toyota Motor Corp. said Wednesday it will replace accelerator pedals on 3.8 million recalled vehicles in the United States to address problems with the pedals becoming jammed in the floor mat.

Toyota has been trying to avoid accelerator sticking problems for years now, always claiming it's the drivers fault and they were pressing the gas pedel instead of the brake pedel.

The government has attributed at least five deaths and two injuries to floor mat-related unintended acceleration in the Toyota vehicles and has received reports of more than 100 incidents in which the accelerator may have become stuck. A Massachusetts-based safety consultant who has investigated the Toyota cases, however, has found more than 2,000 incidents involving 16 deaths and 243 injuries potentially tied to the Toyota gas pedals.

Despite the recall Toyota is still refusing to take blame for the accidents or defect.

In early November, Toyota issued a statement saying NHTSA had confirmed "that no defect exists in vehicles in which the driver's floor mat is compatible with the vehicle and properly secured." But in a rare rebuke, NHTSA accused Toyota of releasing misleading information about the recall, saying removing the mats did not "correct the underlying defect." Toyota said it was not the company's intention to mislead anyone.

Now if this was an American auto company claiming this people would be screaming for executive heads in the streets.

Vehicles involved:

Popular vehicles such as the Toyota Camry, the top-selling passenger car in America, and the Toyota Prius, the best-selling gas-electric hybrid, are part of the recall. It includes the 2007-10 model year Camry, 2005-10 Toyota Avalon, 2004-09 Prius, 2005-10 Toyota Tacoma, 2007-10 Toyota Tundra, 2007-10 Lexus ES350 and 2006-10 Lexus IS250/350.

Suggestion on how to unstuck your accelerator:

If a vehicle accelerator pedal becomes stuck and a driver can't dislodge it, Toyota advises drivers to press on the brake with both feet and then shift the vehicle into neutral, which will disengage the transmission. The automaker says drivers should continue braking until the vehicle comes to a stop.

A driver can also try shutting off the engine or turning the key to the "ACC" position on the ignition. Drivers will not lose control of the steering or the brakes. But once the vehicle is turned off the driver won't have the benefit of power brakes or power steering. For vehicles that have a start/stop button for the engine, drivers are advised to hold the button for three seconds to turn it off.

And to continue the happy news ...

Toyota Motor Corp. will recall 110,000 Tundra trucks from the 2000-2003 model years to address excessive rust on the vehicle's frame. The government urged owners to remove the spare tire from the frame, concerned it could fall onto the road and create a hazard for other vehicles.

Bwahahahahaha, and Toyota still believes they are competitive in the Pick-up truck world, in their fantasies they are.

The recall announced Tuesday involves 2000-2003 model year Tundras registered in 20 "cold weather" states and the District of Columbia. The states are: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Which means they either skipped doing cold weather testing on the truck or someone made the results look better then they were.

Optimal Pooper!

I just love this commerical by Pedigree!

Nay Sayers, What Do You Say Now?

All you naysayers out there are about to eat your words!

General Motors Co. Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson has the board's backing, and the automaker may repay some of its $50 billion in U.S. bankruptcy aid this year, Chairman Ed Whitacre said.

"It's conceivable we could pay back some of the loans before the end of the year," Whitacre, 68, said Tuesday. He declined to commit the company to an initial public offering next year

$1 Fucking Billion in Profit

WOO HOO

YOU GO FORD MOTOR COMPANY!!!!!!!!

Ford, the only Detroit automaker to dodge direct government aid and bankruptcy court, surprised investors with net income of nearly $1 billion in the third quarter and forecast a "solidly profitable" 2011.

The automaker said Monday earnings were fueled by U.S. market share gains, cost cuts and the Cash for Clunkers program, which drew flocks of buyers to showrooms this summer. Ford's shares rose 58 cents, or 8.3 percent, to $7.58 in pre-market trading.

And it wasn't just overseas production in that profit.

Its key North American car and truck division posted a pretax profit of $357 million, the company's first quarter in the black since early 2005. Ford cited higher pricing, lower material costs and increased market share for the improvement.

That means that cars and trucks in the U.S. are moving out of the lots and into customers hands.

I imagine Ford would like to send a big shoutout to Obama

"Fuck you, your pay czar, your car czar and your government loans"