Manufacturing Down, Blogging Up

Here are a couple of "leading economic indicators" for you: US car manufacturing is down 457 percent (caution: I invented this number to illustrate my point) while US blog creation is up 1532 percent (again, an invented number).

These trends came to me this morning as I was making my coffee and mulling over the insightful— yet humorous—comment I wanted to make on Joe Mazzanti's blog. I don't know what the exact numbers are, but you get the idea, and the idea is dead on.

After a few seconds of considering how and why these two "industries" are heading in opposite directions, a question occurred to me: What ever happened to the service industry sector of our economy?

We know that the traditional hard manufacturing industries have in large part left the United States for places like China, where cheap labor is found in abundance and pesky things like health and safety codes are found not at all. Okay, we get it.

But those manufacturing jobs were supposed to be replaced by the service industry sector. You know, those bastions of economic strength like the insurance industry (think AIG), investment banking (think Lehman Brothers), and transportation (think your favorite bankrupt airline here).

So we no longer make stuff and sell it to each other. Fine. It looks like we're about done "servicing" each other as well (excuse the word choice please). Now all we do is blog and blather back and forth to one another.

Is this our destiny?

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Contrary to Kristen's observation on her blog, The List, my blog entry about Miley Cyrus generated like zero page views. Is the pop world over Miley already, or is it just me? Rhetorical question. Don't answer.

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Some things are just words. There are people in the world who think it's wrong for Israel to try to defeat the people who keep lobbing rockets and mortars at them. These critics complain that Israel's response is disproportionate. In other words, Israel shouldn't try to win. "Disproportionate response" is just words. They sound good together. Nothing more, nothing less.

By the way, among those complaining that Israel's response to Hamas is "disproportionate" is France.

Enough said.

All the places I haven't seen Miley Cyrus

I live in Nashville right off Franklin Pike. Miley Cyrus lives right down the road in Franklin. It has recently come to my attention that blogs about Miley Cyrus get way more hits than mildly humorous blogs about global warming, so I want to tell you about all the times I haven't seen Miley Cyrus around town. (I haven't seen global warming yet either, but noooo, you don't care about that, even if my writing is on occasion mildly humorous.)

Christmas night we got home from visiting our youngest son in the LA area. When we got off the plane we didn't see Miley Cyrus in the airport. And ironically enough, we didn't see Miley Cyrus in Hollywood either when we took aforementioned youngest son to the Pantages theater (home of the Oscars from 1949 to 1959—that should be good for a few hits, don't you think?) to see Wicked featuring Erin Mackey, Teal Wicks, Derrick Williams, and Carol Kane, but not Miley Cyrus.

You might remember Carol Kane from her role as Simka in Taxi. It is interesting to note that Taxi was a hit sitcom on both ABC and NBC, garnering 18 Emmy awards during its run between 1978-1983, many years before Miley Cyrus was born in 1992. You do the math.

On our way back from the airport we almost stopped at an AM/PM mini mart to pick up milk. But when I saw that Miley Cyrus wasn't there, I just drove by. We had to skip our morning cereal the next day. Thank you Miley Cyrus.

Probably about once a week for the last month or so, my wife and I have been hitting Monell's Express for dinner on the way home and despite the fact that it is one of the most highly rated meat-and-threes in the area, so far no Miley Cyrus. This one is a little hard for me to comprehend.

Miley Cyrus held a free concert outside the Sommet Center a couple of months ago and my route to work took me right past the stage. But I was way too early and didn't see Miley Cyrus again.

I don't want to waste much more of your time describing all the places and times I haven't seen Miley Cyrus, so I'll finish this up with a quick list (apparently lists pull in the blog hits too):

1. Lovelace Cafe

2. Dollar General

3. Outside Ryman Auditorium

4. Lower Broadway

5. Upper Broadway

6. Frist Center for the Visual Arts

7. Kroegers

8. Green Hills Mall

9. Lake Radnor

10. All the places between above nine

So, Miley Cyrus, if you are reading this, how about hanging out in the Waverly-Belmont area one of these days? But call first and make sure I'm home.

Obama Policies Expose Rifts in Liberal Cabal

Here's an interesting question: Will Barack Obama align himself more with white liberal democrats or working class blacks? There are some profound differences between these groups which, because of the monolithic nature of liberal politics, has never really surfaced before. But now we are seeing some cracks in the liberal cabal, especially with the environmental and homosexual elements.

Black voters in California overwhelming voted for Prop 8, the constitutional ammendment banning gay marriage. Obama himself has walked a tightrope saying he was against homosexual marriage, but didn't think measures like Prop 8 were the correct way to handle the issue. (I don't understand this either, but there you go.)

Now that Obama has asked evangelical pastor Rick Warren to say a prayer at his inauguration, homosexual activists are screaming. You'd think Obama had appointed Pat Robertson to a cabinet post! I doubt, however, that the average black voter has any problem with Warren praying at the event.

An even more important rift is beginning to be exposed between Obama and the environmental activist arm of the Democratic party. The incoming president is concerned about jobs, and very rightly so. His idea is to build or repair highways and bridges, which are bad because they enable evil automobiles. He certainly doesn't want to see the auto industry go under either.

The black community understands the importance of job creation and retention better than most groups in this country. When it comes to balancing trees and jobs, black Americans are going to favor jobs every time. If Obama reflects this sentiment, environmentalists will be tree-sitting on the White House grounds before you know it.

Another area likely to get the incoming president in trouble is immigration. This may be a delicate subject, but my experience tells me that there is no love loss between the black and Spanish-speaking communities. Blacks often see latino workers as job stealers, newcomers who are willing to work for lower wages. Will Obama liberalize immigration policy on our southern border, or will his policy reflect the black community's desire to protect American jobs from the onslaught of impoverished Mexican workers?

As I write this, another issue comes to mind. History has proven that one of the most color blind institutions in the United States is the military. Black men and women have been able to find opportunities and achieve rank in the military in times when the civilian world was less open to them. White liberals would like to see the military go away. Shrinking the military would decrease opportunities for minorities. How will Obama balance this one?

I have always believed that on almost every social issue, affirmative action and maybe welfare policy being the major exceptions, black Americans aligned better with Republican ideals than those of the Democrats. The incredible irony of Obama's success is that this truth may now be exposed and if Republicans are smart enough, many blacks might take a serious look at the GOP in future elections.

Cooling proves Warming (I didn't make this one up)

Several months ago I wrote that increased evidence of global cooling was going to cause a panic in the media that has so much invested in global warming:

"...it looks like we are already in the early stages of global cooling.... If this turns out to be the case, it creates a unique condition in the mass media biosphere in which global warming and global cooling scares may be forced to coexist."

We are already seeing the signs of the media's feeble attempts to square cooling and warming. Here's what one AP writer had the audacity to write:

"Mother Nature, of course, is oblivious to the federal government's machinations. Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it's thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming."

So cooling actually illustrates how fast we are warming. Gotta love it. Read the whole article here.

Way-Broke Government Steps in to Save Going-Broke Automakers

Does anyone else see the irony, and potential catastrophe, in our government, whose debt now stands at $10.6 trillion, attempting to "bail out" a few car companies who say they will run out of cash sometime next year? Our government is spending amost $4 billion more each day than it takes it. What makes it think it is in any position to prop up the automakers?

Even funnier than this is the fact that the lawmakers want to create a Car Czar who will oversee the automakers' efforts to regain profitability: A Washington bureaucrat telling a Detroit auto executive how to run a lean, mean profit-making machine.

"Hi, I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

How about our lawmakers in DC first coming up with a plan to operate the federal government without going more in the hole year after year?

Jurassic Park Detroit Style

Since it's the Christmas season and our government is in the giving mood, why stop at trying to save the (really misnamed) Big Three? Why don't the geniuses in Washington bring back some of the other defunct major car manufacturers like Hudson, Packard, and Studebaker, just to name a few. If "saving" GM, Chrysler and Ford (which, by the way, apparently doesn't need to be saved) is a good idea, wouldn't it be just that much better to expand the program and create even more jobs by bringing them back to life? I'm sure Al Gore could make a strong case to revive the Stanley Steamer! Is anyone in the Office Of The President Elect listening?

And on a serious note, shouldn't Ford, which seems to be in a position to weather this storm, be rewarded for good management by allowing the other two to take their knocks without the this massive government largess? Come on Barack, where's that tough stand against corporate welfare?

(Perhaps the funniest part of the whole drama was the testimony from the auto executives that they can't use the bankruptcy system to reorganize because declaring bankruptcy would "hurt sales." Nobody broke out laughing! Surely that was offered tongue-in-cheek.)

Das Kapital

It looks like Washington will cut Detroit a big check, if not now, certainly after the new Congress is seated. It's very possible that the US government will take some kind of ownership position in these automakers, just as it did with the banks.

I just wish Karl Marx and Frederich Engels were alive to see it. They'd be so happy.

GWIX: The Update

The Global Warming Index (GWIX) went up to 7.34 when I gathered the data this morning. Indexed by Google news were 27,816 stories that mentioned global warming and 3,790 stories that mentioned global cooling. When I last checked on November 17, the index stood at 6.74. This indicates that global warming is being mentioned somewhat more often in news stories now than in November.

The total amount of mentions today—we'll call this the Composite Climate Story Index (CCSI)—stands at 31,606. I'm going to keep track of this data as well. As the press loses interest in climate change, I predict that this will go down significantly. I'm trying to find a way to develop an "Al Gore" filter, so I can take all Al Gore references out of the raw data. This would make the index a much better indicator of reality. No offense intended, Al.