Batteries not included in economic recovery

This happens to be Buzz Golfcart - oops I mean, Lightyears personal car. And you too, might be driving one!

In several cities in Michigan, new ion batteries are being produced for the giant wave of electric cars that will be taking over the highways and byways of America. Mind you, the cars aren’t really there, the demand isn’t there, but the batteries will be. In fact, most Americans don’t even want this kind of car.

I envision a warehouse in Livonia, MI full of ion batteries for a car that will never be embraced by the American people – until the gas prices go so high, thanks to the government, that we have no choice left.

From the AP- 9/12/10:

“Cost is high [for the electric car batteries].”

How high you ask?

Right now they will cost the consumer $33,000.00. That’s on top of the price of the car. “Although stimulus money could [- COULD -] bring them down to $10,000.00 by the end of 2015.”

That’s still $10K on top of the price of a new car. But Good Lord – who can afford a new car, anyway?

Remember those words from Obama’s Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, and I paraphrase: I plan to coerce Americans out of their cars.

Buzz Lightyear, the new Government Motors mascot

The battery has a life of 100miles, when charged. You won’t be going too far from home, will ya? Once again, a ploy by the statists to control your travel . . . your mobility. Easier to keep track of the population when they can’t go anywhere, isn’t it?

The battery factory in Holland, MI expects to employ 90 workers and produce between 75,000 and 150,000 cars by the end of next year. But of course, this all depends on the demand for the Lego-like cars to be produced. (I know I’m mixing cartoons and toys here – Lego and Disney – but never mind that.) This factory got almost $300 MILLION in federal grant money.

“The rapid buildup of production capacity by companies with limited experience for product with challenging market may prove wasteful,” said Menahem Anderman, founder and president of Total Battery Consulting, a California-based battery consulting firm. (There are consulting firms for BATTERIES???)

Yes, well, that’s my point. We are producing massive amounts of car batteries for a car that is hardly rolling on the roads, yet and may never be rolling.

But doggonit! we the taxpayers are employing thousands of Michiganders!

Classless, clueless and drowning

This story is a prime example of why I have no confidence in this guy. I read this a week ago and its been on my mind since. He bows to foreign leaders, returns gifts to our allies and gives them worthless DVDs,  and doesn’t know when to leave or when to stay. To top it off, he then met with his war council… whoa!

Talk about being classless, clueless and in over your head:

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (November 23, 2009)

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is getting used to leaving events before they end – even when he doesn’t have to.

Obama on Monday mistakenly left a White House ceremony honoring two activists’ work in Zimbabwe. After finishing his remarks in the East Room, he walked with first lady Michelle Obama into the grand hallway across the main floor of the Executive Mansion.

He returned a moment later, a bit sheepishly.

He said with a laugh, “I’m allowed to stay.” Then he added, “I never know what I’m allowed to do.”

Obama left when he had finished presenting the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. His war council met a short time later to discuss options for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Welcome to hell… Detroit, Michigan

Coming soon: Shepard Fairey’s Tole Painting Class

As a one time art major (until I figured out that I could not make the kind of living that I wanted to make) I can explain something about pop art and how truly bogus *most* of  it is.

And this is how easy it is for you to do at home:

Take a photo of Campbell’s tomato soup, for instance. No, really.  Take a photo of it. Put it in a projector/enlarger that reflects on a canvas or watercolor paper or wall. Pencil the photo onto the canvas or wall. Then, start painting or coloring it in.

That’s how easy it is. That’s what Warhol basically could do with a soup can or a photo of Marilyn Monroe or any number of famous people. That’s how I painted a mural, in high school, of Minnie Mouse on a hallway at my alma mater. (Now to be clear, this is not exactly how Warhol did it. He silk screened the image of Marilyn onto canvas.)

Called "Gold Marilyn Monroe" this is Warhol's portrait that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

Photoshop and other web sites online will also allow you to take a photo (maybe of yourself) and add effects that make it look like a cartoon or a painting. (And considering that Fairey admits to deleting computer files, I have to wonder how much Photoshop or similar software was used in his Obama poster.)

With these “techniques” anyone can be an artist. Kinda like dummy-ing down art or maybe “Art for Idiots” or to be less offensive, “Art for the Paint Brush Challenged.”

So, this brings me to Shepard Fairey and his now infamous portrait of Obama.

From the beginning, this guy was a thief. He stole an idea, an image and modeled it with “technique.” That’s all he did. Technique cannot be confused with talent. Anyone can learn a technique, but not everyone has a talent or a gift.

Fairey is a street graffiti artist; in street vernacular, he is a tagger. He is nothing more than that. And now with his latest admission that he lied to his attorneys (in addition to the court and everyone else) that he used another photo rather than the one that the AP claims he used and his admission that he deleted computer files to cover up his lies, he will never be anything more than that. And any art piece he does from this point on will be viewed as suspect.

Anyone can learn the iambic pentameter of a sonnet and write one. But not just anyone can be William Shakespeare or write anything like he did. Anyone can learn the technique of painting on wet plaster (fresco) but not just anyone can do Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.

Look familiar? It's my avatar: the finger of God at the creation of Adam. From the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo.

Anyone can learn Photoshop software and do this:

You guessed it: that's my face, imposed over a Chaplin photo.

But not just anyone can be Charlie Chaplin.

From this point on, Shepard Fairey will be nothing more than a man who learned some techniques and arrived at *almost* the right historical place at the right historical time.

Warhol pulled it off. Fairey never will.

The AP photo and the Fairey rip-off.

More at BigHollywood.com.

Older but interesting perspective from the LA Times.

Doing what he does best

It’s all about the votes.

Doing what he does best. (NYDailyNews)

The same states that Obama targeted to win the White House are seeing an awful lot of the president, Vice President Joe Biden and top Cabinet officials. Only this year, the taxpayers are footing the multimillion-dollar tab for the trips, and Obama officials are delivering wheelbarrows of economic stimulus money – also compliments of taxpayers.

An Associated Press review of administration travel records shows that three of every four official trips Obama and his key lieutenants made in his first seven months in office were to the 28 states Obama won. Add trips to Missouri and Montana – both of which Obama narrowly lost – and almost 80 percent of the administration’s official domestic travel has been concentrated in states likely to be key to Obama’s re-election effort in 2012.

Philip Elliot/AP

He has not governed, he has campaigned. From selling the stimulus package to his world apology tour to his failed bid at the Olympics, TheOne is doing what he knows best: campaigning.

If he were actually governing, he’d have to be at home in the oval office. Instead he’s flying all over – at taxpayer expense – to sell his Marxist agenda to crowds of adoring, fawning crowds. He’s yet to figure our that he’s preaching to his own choir and ignoring the ones who really do need to be won over (see his Fox Feud).  And he’s laying the groundwork for his re-election by pandering to and paying off those states that will be crucial to him in 2012.

Do you get this? He’s campaigning for 2012 on OUR DIME!

Now to be fair, I don’t know what President Bush did during his terms. And it would be interesting to be able to make a comparison. But I do know that this is not the candidate I wanted as president last year and he will not be the candidate of my choice in ’12, so I resent that my tax dollars are paying for this… and other things like flying a pizza chef into DC for lunch (even the UK Daily Mail did a story on that) or flying Oprah to Copenhagen at the taxpayer’s expense or a gratuitous fly-over of Manhattan that scared the crap out of thousands.

Notice how so much of his taxpayer use is for flying? I guess if I had an Air Force One parked in my yard, I’d want to play camping-out in it, too.  Eventually, I expect the novelty to wear off for the Obamas.

What’s most amazing in all this is that the AP is actually doing a story about it.

Obama – the egomaniac – won’t be upstaged

As tens of thousands of concerned citizens flooded Washington, DC today, Obama made every attempt to keep the media and the spotlight off of them. He set up his own rallies because he won’t be upstaged by real Americans with real and true issues.

From the AP today: President Barack Obama assailed critics of his health care initiative Saturday, seeking to grab the megaphone from his opponents and boost momentum in his drive for congressional passage of his chief domestic priority.