2009, S.E. Alaska halibut and salmon fishing, Expert & Favorite Guide, is Capt. Mark of Yakutat Charter Boat Co.

My friends and Dad and i went to Alaska for years ,,,and had lots of lazy/drunk fishing guide bad experiences in the South East. Then we found Capt. Mark, who is professional, hungry to catch fish and not just wet your lines, and expert with years of boat handling and fishing experience.

So if you want to catch 150-200 lb Halibut, (hint:the big ones hangout with the big ones, and the little ones/'chickens' hang with the little ones,,,so most charter captains take you to 'chicken' roosts,,,) and do it in 80-100 ft of water vs the usual Kenai 200-300 ft (free halibut hint #2:if the halibut is hauled to the surface vs just below it to be shot,,,it will go back to the bottom and you will have to bring that 'barn door' all the way back up again), go to Mark's website, and avoid some really scary operators (heard over the radio on last visit, by big fleet captain "lost in fog just outside harbor,,,can not figure out this gps ,,,") in Yakutat !!

After July 1,,,call Mark for changing season year to year and changing limits,,,you can catch surface fighting silver salmon on light tackle,,,so MUCH FUN !!

Plus , there is the Situk River nearby if you want to fish with grizzly bears and mosquitoes the size of helicopters,,,we caught a bunch of reds/sockeye one year,,,SO DELICIOUS !!,,,on bare big red hooks and chartreuse yarn ! (don't recommend you waste time on pink/humpy salmon,,,or dog/chum salmon,,,as both taste like dogfood !!)

Fly in and out on Alaska Airlines to old ww2 airport, but beware of frequent 'lost fish boxes' on return to lower 48,,,and often misdropped luggage in distant adak, alaska,,,for days,,,without raingear,,,
(free #3,,,Seatac's fisher's freezer on site was not a flash freezer and not nearly cold enough,,,)

Why would the Dept. of Commerce's NOAA National Weather Service,,,"officially report the high in May 2009 in east Santa Cruz at 76F" ,,,20 degrees les

Cherry-picking weather statistics ? Because of global climate change ? Global Warming, maybe ?

This happens a lot and all over, i suspect. Not just 3 days in May at a private house in east Santa Cruz. In early May, the first 3-4 days it rained every day in San Jose, but the DOC-NOAA-NWS says their machine at the San Jose Airport only measured a few tenths of an inch of rain,,,

And the tv and radio wx people just "report"/repeat what they are told by these untrustworthy feds,,,

movie "Summer Catch" 2001,'one star',,but Jessica Biel is in it,,,in a WET T-SHIRT,,,5 STARS !!

Jessica Biel,,,wet t-shirt,,,need we say more? RENT IT,,,

Yes, the dialog is 'high school' as is some of the acting,,,his acting,the 'stars' is worse than hers!! guess the director let him slide, since he did the high school wallflower-prom queen movie,,,and the plot is as predictable as a summer sunburn,,,but, so what ?!

JESSICA BIEL,,, WET T-SHIRT,,,ok acting,,,
and WET T-SHIRT,,,!!

June 2009, tv show "The Crumbling of American "(Infrastructure)

What a shocking public display of decades of state and federal neglect, in funding maintenance of our national infrastructure of Interstate Highways, fresh water main supply lines!!, sewage lines and plants with too much storm drain water when it rains, +35% of bridges in the USA are near failure meaning 1 of 3 bridges you cross,,,you might not cross and live, delta dikes and levees in California built by farmers who did not do it right and now the center of the state in the vast Central Valley is threatened with massive square miles of flooded new luxury homes, luxury cars, and all the luxury furniture inside !!

And the response from the State of California,,,and the Federal Government? California has the lowest and most expensive state bond rating, making for the most expensive loans for its taxpayers,,,and after the Governor Grey Davis fiasco of deregulating energy ,electricity and gas for homes, and the soon to follow Enron scam, along with general fiscal mismanagement by the Republican Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger and the State Legislature,,,California is very near BANKRUPT. Just like we all most were, because of 8 years of Republican rule on a national level, in having a fiscal and economic collapse Greater than the Great Depression and also bringing down the international economy. The Republicans will never admit it or honor up to how close they came to ruining the economy of the USA,,,and there are a lot of people and tv commentators who are choosing to think and look the other way and deny how close we all came to being homeless, jobless, penneyless, and hopelessly out of luck,,,for years!! Even the super-rich might have suffered, a little. God bless the remaining few Middle Income Class !

KKSF, 103.7FM ,,,unfortunately,,,has dropped its popular and unique "smooth jazz" format,,,for the crowded "and more profitable ROCK" format,,,SO SAD

And what about the millions of listeners for all these years?!? In the San Francisco Bay Area, there is not a soft jazz digital HD good alternative yet, that i know of,,,

And the rock market is so crowded, with 98.5FM my FAVORITE BY FAR FOR CLASSIC ROCK,,,then 107.7FM which is my #2 favorite classic rock and roll station in the sf bay area,,,with 'ta-ta tuesdays' and 3 trying comedians. And there is soft rock on 96.5FM and 94.5FM,,,and for the 20? college kids there is 99.7FM and 73.5?FM,,,Seems like an overcrowded "rock" market, since AM is near dead,,,so different from the 50s.

It makes no sense to me that a long established , revered, respected, popular soft jazz station with the popular jazz cruises and popular AIDS cds every year,,,and mostly good djs,,,would make such a risky drastic switch. But then, i'm on the audience's side.

AT&T in its Yellowpages.com and Yellow Pages phone books,,,combines 2 completely different services under one heading:"carpet and rug cleaning" , why?

Carpet cleaning is usually where someone comes to you house or apartment and has a mobile steam cleaning unit, like "Stanley Steemer" , my favorite reliable honest professional and reasonable at $99 special for 2 carpeted rooms and a hallway.

Rug cleaning is where you roll up an area rug and put it in the trunk or back seat, take it to a rug cleaning factory operation, where they clean it on the concrete floor with hoses and brush soap on both sides or put it thru a machine that sprays soapy water on it and then a rinse,,,with both hang drying for 7-10 days. Most rug cleaners will pick up and return your area rugs ,for a fee, say $95 to clean a 7ft x 9ft area rug, with the optional $50-75 fee for pickup and return.

These are two totally different services,,,for two totally different kinds of floor coverings. Yet , AT%T lumps them together. And they have done away with the green pages index,even on the website !! This is not progress. Carpet cleaning,and only carpet cleaning mobile services, belongs under the "c"s,,,and rug cleaning factories belong under the letter "r". Most of America is smart enough to handle that, i hope.

Tennis, Wimbelton, 2009, won't some woman guts up and beat the W. sisters!?

The other day one of the headless female tv commentators said she liked the "intimidation" that was the over weight/fat, out of shape/fitness ,fragile weak ,full of unforced errors, play of Serena Williams. And that is about all she has, "intimidation" ,scary thin bad play and this continuing mesmerization of her skin color.

Watching her sister, Venus W. , play Bondarenko, the servile ,weak-wristed, could have been beaten by anybody with so little self-confidence in her play, which is good at first game, 40-40 and could have won, but she got obsessed with watching Venus instead of the ball and the court. And any beginner can tell you you don't play to your opponent's strengths, you play to their weaknesses, put the ball where they are not, get them moving,,,as they are probably a little nervous too. Venus won 6-3,6-2 to a Bondarenko swimming in fear.

But look back at the first 5 games. Venus hit unforced errors and all these overpaid softsoap female commentators could come up with was,,,(wait for the off subject hype,,,), "Venus won here,,,5 times !!",,,and "Serena won here at Wimbleton,,,2 times." Over and over , these two chicken reporters under-reported, afraid to say anything negative about the W. sister's weak play. Net balls, several long balls, double faults, poor strategy,,,all the the W. sisters faulty play was ignored. Women's tennis worldwide is so weak !!

Leaving the sad and depressing women's side of tennis, let's give a look at the so much stronger men's side of tennis. A big "Congratulations!!" to Robert Kendrick's fantastic no-surrender play against #3 Andy Murray. The tennis rankings are all off on this guy; Kendrick played amazing tennis!! The best match-dog fight i have seen in months. Thank you Robert Kendrick !! Even tho Murray eventually won, it was Kendrick's play that was not only much higher than the tennis wonks expected, it was 'no surrender/quit' gutsy great, high entertainment !! You go, Kendrick !! Great mental and physical strength, Kendrick !!

Congrats!! to Sabine Lisiki,germany, 6-2,7-5,,,over BIG UPSET,,,S.Kuznetsova#5,,,great physical & emotional control, tennis,you GO girl !!
Beautiful , and in control of her nerves/emotions...you can do this,,,stay positive and optimistic !! And do not listen to those tv-radio commentators, as they are sooo old, what do they know about you ??

Also Congrats !! to Melanie Oudin,usa,6-7,7-5,6-2, in HUGE WIN UPSET over J. Jankovic,,,again, a beautiful new face, with physical fitness and more importantly control of her nerves/emotions.
Stay positive, be confident in yourself, don't get deer-in-the-headlights mesmerized by any, ANY, of your opponents,,,Use your head and strategy, like Federer and it looks so easy,,,Good Luck !!

Congratulations to Ana Ivanovic,#13 in win 7-5,6-2 over S.Stosur#18,aussie,,,now that Sharapova has imploded ,you are my hope for a win against the W. sisters, since i tend to prefer brunnettes,,,Please stay positive, use STRATEGY and not just hard tiring hits, you can do this, Beautiful !! Best wishes ladies !!

Why is Andy Roddick,,,still,,,so angry on court?? His play is better, tho still not 100%reliable self-confident,,,Is the stress too much? Doesn't he love the game,,,and love winning? Lives in Austin, has beautiful dedicated wife,,,rich,,,what's the problem? I would be happy-as-Connors with those circumstances,,,

Congratulations to CILIC, who did not win, but played a grueling great match with Hass#24,,,!! Great physical and mental play, kid !!

Hewitt won,,,but it must be sweaty sticky uncomfortable-hot there in London,,,as he seemed to struggle,,,another hard-hitting gun slinger who tires himself, over strategy,,,Good luck.

Here was a weak, hard to watch, women's match, Dulko 6-2,3-6,6-4,,,,barely beating Sharapova, who is yelling too much, needs some Proactiv, is not as strong physically with weak lazy legs, nor mentally with way too many unforced errors and general sloppy play,,,Maria, Maria, Maria, Where has your head gone ???

Venus Williams almost lost today to the today mentally-weak Navarro, who physically was in good shape,,,but just could not get her head around beating Venus,,,6-0,5-4 game at 30-30 and replay that terrible play by Venus, YIKES !! This crappy play, from a "5 time Wimbelton Champion"??!?? Venus' break point conversion was only 5 of 12!!/42%(embarrassing,,,),,and she had 14 !! unforced errors !! (Ladies, Venus is oozing fear, frail play,,,and failure,,,so get in there and beat this weakling!!),,,and Venus' first serve percentage was only 66%, or 2 out of 3,,,weak, weak , weak,,,yes, enough to win, but nothing to brag about. Venus can be beaten , Ladies !! Go for it !! A sixth win at Wimbelton would just show how mentally weak the whole womens side of tennis is,,,

That is all , for Sunday 28 June 2009,,,

Monday morning, 29 june 2009, and the talented, major-winning, and so Beautiful Ana Ivanovic had to pull out of her match with Venus W. with a left thigh injury,,,bum-mer!!!!,,,Ana, please take good care of yourself, you are young and very talented, and you will come back if you want,,,get well and best wishes !

D.Hantuchova,,,too thin like scary bulimia/anexoria thin and weak, and mentally-emotionally not ready,,,lost to S. Williams, 6-3 and 6-1,,,Why isn't Women's Tennis doing a better job of looking out for these mental-emotional basket cases on the Pro Tours that are playing on tv??? Or even Pro Tennis, what the heck are they not doing??

Tennis,French Open,2009:big news is VENUS W. AND SERENA W. both lose

Are you as tired as i am of the "hype" and servile spit-polishing of the W. sisters by the male and female tv commentators?

Here is new evident of how weak the two of them are, noting how terribly weak the whole women's side of tennis is. Serena W. ,,,LOST,,,in the quarterfinals,,,to #7,S. Kuznetsova. And her sister, Venus W. ,,,LOST,,,in the 3rd!!! round !!!,,,to A. Szavay,#29 !!!.

So Mr. Williams looks scary as hell in the bleachers!? Until some woman, almost any woman, can take her eyes of this black skin issue with the sisters and play the ball in the court,,,instead of being mezmerized ,still, by a black skinned woman on a tennis court,,,you can forget about woman's tennis.

The Department of Defense budget is totally out of control, so why doesn't Congress do anything about it ???

Haven't you also heard all the stories about contract fraud and the Iraq semi-war, with millions and millions of tax dollars wasted, according to the OMB and the CBO. But who cares!!, it's the Defense Department, with all the orders for humvees with inadequately protected floors that maimed hundreds of our soldiers going over road bombs. So why, when the President ran on getting us out of Iraq in less than a year, are we going for a long military commitment next door in Afganistan, when there is equally little or no hope of doing more than wasting American taxpayer dollars and American blood, bodyparts, and lives ?? Such cowardice in Congress to confront the necessary difficult choices,,,and not touch the sacred 'cow' of the DOD,,,is the root of why so little gets done in our Federal Government.

Now it is poorly designed troop vehicles, and in VietNam is was army rifles that often jammed in fire fights and Navy jets like the Phantom that did not have fighter guns, and in WW2 it was the too long endured for years acceptance of flawed inoperable torpedo design by the U.S. military, and on and on,,,When, with so many good reasons, are we going to stop worshiping at the altar of unlimited U.S. military spending?

Great Britain is PROUD of its Gays in its Military,,,So what is so very Wrong with the Pentagon??

Even a smart black man and General like Colin Powell is or was against having gays and lesbians in our American armed services,,,yikes, if a smart ,educated, privledged, rich, successful black man can not get the social injustice of it,,,Yikes !!

Not that i am for mandatory service in the military, or even the draft, as i have been 2 years in the Navy, with a bunch of alcoholics, high school dropouts, social misfits and psycho-sickos, court redirects that should have gone to jail, and the sickest 2 social tier society of officers and enlisteds in the ugliest,dumbest-looking hat ever!!, i never want to be a part of again,,,getting back to real life was almost a nervous breakdown going from being treated under the UCMJ like a nigger-slave without any rights of the Constitution,,,to freedom and liberty.

But if you, or a gay or a lesbian, want to so-called SERVE,,,then that should be your right ,unless you are Charles Manson. The military has had to lower its standards so much with little or no p.t. or physical daily training,so lots and lots of fat and obese so-called soldiers are serving, at least in the Navy.

PCH/Publisher's Clearing House,,,uses a pricing system in its offers i find deceptive ,so why do we put up with it !!

Do you get alot of daily contest come-ons and solicitations for junk, with pricing "4 payments each only" in small print so you don't notice possibly that part,,,and "$2.99" in large print, to obviously deceive the gullible and old,senile ?

And this is acceptable,,,in the U.S. of A. ?

Election Fraud, American-style, then and now, 21st Century

Iran is in the news tonight about the Presidental election possibly being stolen by the incumbent over there. Most people here might be saying to themselves 'well it is the intolerant, dictatorial, backward, violent and terrorist-riddled Middle East,,,'

But such city, county, state and federal election corruption,outright buying votes, and other embarrassments are familiar to many American states and the Nation over the years. Florida and Ohio's part in 2 recent Presidential elections were shocking in there obvious dishonesty and disenfranchisement by delay and denial of being registered.

Blacks for decades put up with terrible injustice, even after they won their freedom after the bloodshed of the Civil War, and even after the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s and 70s.

Locally, the s.f. paper had an article about full ballot boxes floating in San Francisco Bay after a recent major election,,,but no one ,especially not the State of California's Attorney General , did anything about it. We americans are use to election abuse and outright , in broad daylight , multiple varieties of election fraud, even today, in the 21st Century.

This will be one of the causes of our national decline.

june 2009,,,When is the new President Obama going to show us how Environmental he was elected to be??

Maybe with the Pebble Mine, in Alaska, that threatens not only most of the state's salmon industry but also most if not all of their crab industry. Since the state leaders up there are too short sighted to care as much as most Americans do, we need much stronger Federal protection of our water, air, food, land, and wild animals,,,not to mention human health from all the toxics the lousy Republicans allowed over their disasterous 8 year rule.

The Feds are pushing the destruction of the dollar and inflation over deflation, which some experts like mr. weiss recommend instead

Do the Feds know what they are doing? What if , in making the dollar near worthless, the world chooses another currency as the world currency? Pretty risky brinkmanship, by a bunch of Free Market-Excess Executive pay-Deregulators. They certainly are not honest about the increase in the national deficit and debt, according to experts like mr. weiss. And most now know the so-called "stress test" was a sham , a con, a weak test so all would pass.

Shareholders now have a voice, only advisory, in executive pay, when as the cash for share paper owners should have a more than advisory say in executive pay. Shareholders, not the usual rubber stamp boards, should control executive pay,,,but that probably won't happen even with the new Democratic President and Democratic Congress,spineless as the Republicans when it comes to doing the right thing vs the easy/nothing.

Besides our shiny new President, all of his subordinate Financial Experts are of the Free Market-Deregulation School,,,and stumbling and fumbling in

trying to re-regulate,,,

Where,,,oh where,,,is the much needed Federal Whistleblower Law ???

Lobbyists own and control Congress, so don't hold your breath,,,

Besides 'banks that are too big to fail' we need to break down the oil companies ,,,who are robbing us blind

Not that our Congress has the spine to do the right thing,,,

Back in the 70s or 80s Congress softened the usury/excessive interest by banks law, so isn't it time to reverse that??

Someone might think that it would be smart to again toughen the usury laws for banks. But ,in spite of all the national and international pain caused by the wreckless and irresponsible banks, that probably will not happen. Not now,,,not next year,,,maybe not for years,,,

June 2009,,,California has been mismanaged for decades,,,and is on the verge of bankruptcy and STATE COLLAPSE !!

Now even the politicians are calling for a state convention to totally re-write a state constitution for California ,so maybe it will work better. Now 'better' for the politicians is not the same as 'better' for democracy or the citizens of California.

We just took away the corrupt ability of the State Legislature to GERRYMANDER/draw it own election district lines , because it was resulting in permanent legislators of the less than best variety, like Tom Lantos. Bet you the state legislature wants that power back, not for good, but for more dark backroom corruption for corporate and special interests.

We now have initiative ,recall and referendum and i bet the state legislature wants to take them away. Yes, we have made mistakes being swayed by marketing money to make some bad initiative measures, like Proposition 13 never should have applied to commercial property but just to residential property, and the supreme protection of the mountain lion has resulted in injury attacks and human deaths because the animal rights nuts equated the wild lion with home cats, and the marriage religion ballots when marriage is a legal contract and what religion you are or are not should not be controlled by the state,,,and there may be a few others. But in the absence of honest responsible open state government, we the public needed to step in and in effect run the state. For 20 years the budget has been late ,,,and there is NO EXCUSE.

The state legislators probably want to take away recall because we recalled the only governor in history , and a lot of other corrupt dishonest and incompetent elected officials, specifically Governor Gray Davis who told us that we should DEREGULATE HOME HEATING GAS AND ELECTRICITY STATE PRICE CONTROLS AND THAT IF WE DID THAT THE MARKET WOULD MAKE THE PRICE OF NATURAL GAS AND ELECTRICITY GO DOWN. It went up and some friends saw their home energy bill quadruple in the first month,,,and then it bankrupted the state of california, with ENRON, just watch the movie dvd.

Unless we get the governor and state legislature to have total political sunshine and zero lobbyist money replaced with state funding of all elections, we will only be opening the door for more corruption, more back room dealings, more elected officials who do not represent their districts nor state interests, just payola special interests.

We have an admired movie star again as Governor and even he can not hire a competent state administrator and political advisor wise enough to win over the slimy corrupt state legislature. Therefore we have one of the worst bond ratings for a state and pay much higher interest to borrow money, which should not be, especially for a Republican Governor when Republicans are always spouting off on how fiscally responsible they are compared to the Democrats. Not one of our Republican Governors in the last 50 years has left us with a big budget surplus, no state debt, and a huge emergency fund,,,not one.

So here we are, going from the 1960s as the 7th largest and richest economy in the world,,,to the laughing stock of the USA, too poor to pay for teachers, or police claiming fat pensions and disability like retiring firemen, and unable to maintain our roads and state infrastructure. The press or media is not honest enough,,,or interested enough until the blood flows down the street,,,to honestly discuss how this happened, what are our options, and what is the best course for the collapsing state of california. Just more 'business as usual'.

On this sacred 65th anniversary of D-Day on the beaches of Normandy ,France, why are we still hiding the secret of the ships that failed to shell that

50 mile stretch of beach,,,resulting in about 10,000 deaths ?? Were they British ships that could not hit the side of a barn with their guns, or French ships,,,or Canadian ships,,,and why was the immediate chain of command broken when the execution was so flawed and no corrective action by the generals and admirals was taken ?? Is it the American Navy-military that can't admit it screwed up big time??

Watch 'Band of Brothers' and all the others to see the incompetence and waste of the military and war.

Past and recent white male Supreme Court justices,C.Thomas too, have shown usually the social empathy of a used smelly high school jock strap

Whether it was their high-minded approval of slavery or their stupidity of allowing Prohibition, most males on the Supreme Court are as out of touch with society as prisoners in the county lockup.

Yikes!, we elect a black President,,,and the ugly undemocratic PATRONAGE sleaze of Congress still rears its ugly head with the 3 appointments of

Ambassadors to Japan, England and France, but big donors instead of professional diplomats.

Guess the bank and other sleazy corporate lobbyists still 'own' and control Congress. And you probably thought that Congress would do the right thing for the public and the usa,,,oh, isn't that just too too trusting and sucker stupid naivety.

new "Royal Pains" tv show(pilot)2009,,,Nothing is more unattractive in a man than WALLOWING IN SELF-PITY,,,

and being STUBBORN-STUPID,,,for more than a day or week, especially for MORE THAN A MONTH, even after loosing a shallow gold-digger girlfriend. Still , the show premise is good. But then, the brother is such an east coast loser, shallow and boring, a real parasite,,,

Hope the lead character grows up faster ,,,than the writers. Otherwise, i/we will not be waiting and watching for long. If the lead is such an idealistic doctor, then why was he working for such a elitist-shit hospital in the first place ,,,and did not do volunteer work at an inner city clinic since ? Ah, hollywood tv fantasy...

Does your city have a WEAK TREE POLICY like SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA ?

My family has lived since the 50s in south Willow Glen, one of the nicest old suburbs of San Jose, California , and i was talking with a neighbor about the drastic decline in city property,city parking strip trees, especially on our street compared to other nearby streets. Houses here still sell for $700,000 to over a $million. We both agreed that more and more trees were dying , being removed, and NOT REPLACED with a city government that did not seem to care, unless you filed an individual complaint. The next block looks so much better and more livable than ours , just because it has most of its parking strip 2 trees per lot. And obviously the residents on the next block appreciate the increase in home and neighborhood real estate value !!

So i called the city Arborist, in the Transportation dept., a strange place to have an Arborist city office. Not very enthusiastic, which is so very sad when we need more oxygen creating, and carbon dioxide absorbing trees here in summer very smogy Silicon Valley, NOT LESS! The city manager's office and the mayor's office were not very encouraging either, basically telling me it was the property owner's responsibility to pay for the removal of dead trees in the parking strip and also the planting of replacement trees.

Now that is a POLICY DESIGNED TO FAIL,,,and notice how many ranch house owners have paved over the city-owned parking strip, with the CITY OF SAN JOSE DOING LITTLE OR NOTHING ABOUT IT !? Isn't it strange that ,i seem to remember, the city winning some kind of a tree award,,,a few years back,,,AND NOW SAN JOSE IS TURNING ITS BACK ON HAVING AS MANY TREES AS POSSIBLE FOR CITY BEAUTIFICATION, OUR COLLECTIVE HEALTH(cough cough tear tear cough cough), AND A BIG INCREASE IN PROPERTY VALUES ??

The ''Big 3" collapsed finally now ,as everyone knows but does ot want to admit, that they REFUSED TO BE COMPETITIVE since the 1960s !!!!!

You can fool yourself by saying this 'was' a big american automobile company,,,or that you bought what 'were' not junk-rated bonds,,,or that you put $70,ooo of your own retirement money in the stock and you 'expect' every stock to be successful expecially when the federal government has been bailing out the big 3 since the 60s or 70s with tax breaks, loans of taxpayer money, and lately $billions in advances on the big 3 designing cutting edge diesel-electric cars but not having to sell a single one. A farce, a tragedy before our very eyes, a collective misplacement of trust.

So you can hide your head in the sand,,,or be 'in denial' ,but we all saw it, the press reported it constantly, and we just got use to GM and Ford and Chrysler being management mediocre and making mediocre cars. The Hummer is a loser on the battlefield because the floor is too close to the ground and can not fit a v-shaped road explosive shield. The GM Citation(a girlfriend had one,,,) was a total piece of crap , like the Chrysler Mercury Capri(my sister had one and the interior ,for one, disintegrated and peeled off like the piece of crap it was).

We americans have been looking the other way at many of our state and national problems , thinking i/we will be ok, but god help the sucker that comes after us !! And that the Feds will always be there to save us, when we now know that this worldwide financial crisis started by the Republican Party basic idea of "deregulation" was what was best for Wall Street and all of us was a big fat known lie and may still ruin the entire international banking system, worse than the so-called 'great depression' that both my parents lived through somehow(one was given away to relatives who could afford to feed him and his sister, imagine,,,).

Will the restructured 'big 3' be able to compete and redesign badly designed and poorly made cars to compete with the japanese and the germans and the other better cars ,since the 60s ? It is extremely doubtful, because creativity is not in a can unlike finance which comes with a off the shelf software program disc. And do you realize how cheap cars are to make?! Ask one of these closed car dealers the big fat industry secret that i learned decades ago that we have been paying luxury retail for years to car companies who lost vision and lost the fire to compete and just stumbled and fumbled along, like the new Camero redesign.

Remember all the VW bugs and VW campers you saw in the 60s all of a sudden, even tho the terrible air cooled pancake engine was notoriously labor intensive like a Porsche and if you did not have/do the dirty valve adjustment job before 3000 miles the engine would blow up, like mine did twice , before i swore never to own an aircooled pancake engine again !

Remember in the 70s, and if you were alive i am sure you do, the huge influx of much better quality and durability and attractive design of the japanese car invasion to the shores of the usa ? i bought a toyota corolla and was amazed that for 10 years it never broke down once,not once!, and only needed its exhaust manifold talken off and filed once, and was much more reliable and more fun to drive and much more fuel efficient ,even tho it was a horrible shade of orange mustard (yikes) and i got it as the last model on the lot at the end of the year at a huge discount because no one else liked the color either. But you could not ignore, unless you were really sick with perceptive denial, that we were being invaded by other,japanese or german, car makers of much better milage cars(the bug and college students) and more attractive cars some or most with better quality and durability,like the old not the new bmw and mb, than most of the crap 'produced in america'.

i laughed at the time,,,and now,,,with the failure of AOL buying TIME-WARNER,,,

What the hell were the supposedly smart people at Time thinking ,allowing themselves to be bought out by a second rate internet provider, a DIAL UP company, like AOL ?!

AOL had a huge ego and lots and lots of moola, but how crazy for a limited company to buy a huge conglomerate !! And Time magazine likes to cultivate an image of being so smart. Yikes.

228-230 people die in an AirFrance jet from Rio to Paris,,,flying below vs above a thunderstorm!!

Didn't they watch the Tom Hank's movie?!! You fly around or above the weather and definitely not through a thunderstorm, unless you have a soccer ball. What the hell was that airline and captain thinkking,,,?!! "Flying blind" is NO LONGER ACCEPTABLE !!!!!

It is bad enough that modern passenger jets do not have radar and have to rely on air traffic coordinators. According to the CNN broadcast this morning, 1 june 2009, the plane did not even have a $100 GPS unit on it ,so it could be tracked by satellite!! No one knows where this large passenger jet is, what happened to it, if there are any survivors, or where in the Atlantic it might be !!

Expect the airline industry to come out with the same propaganda of 'it is the safest mode of mass transit, even safer than getting up out of bed,,,or walking across San Francisco". These are preventable crashes and therefore are UNACCEPTABLE IN THE FUTURE; whether 'human error' or 'part malfunction' we and the industry should have a much higher standard ,than to constantly sacrifice your relatives or you,,,or someone's relatives,,,on the p.r. standard of 'safer than' vs SAFE AS CAN BE.

Have you had enough yet of irresponsible companies and governments running airlines like people and their very lives did not matter ????? Isn't it time for the USA and Europe to lead , leadership, the world into the 21st century with satellite tracking of all airplanes and much safer basic standards for any airplane with a person/people on board ?

Be prepared to hear from United and Delta and all the major airlines that they can not afford such basic safety upgrades 'at this time' ,,,and be prepared to tell them 'now, or we will not longer fly!!' Be prepared for governments to say that during an economic world crisis like now that 'this is not the right time to spend lots and lots of money on basic airline and airport safety',,,and you can tell them 'we would rather spend it on this than those greedy fat-cat irresponsible negligent selfish and despicable bankers!!".