The strategy being employed by retail outlets, from rolling out the tinsel and sale items to playing every bad Christmas song ever written on their public address systems, seems to be an effort to push severely slacking sales by bringing the orgy of spending which supposedly accompanies the birth of some Jewish guy 2000 years ago (but actually just a co-opting of an old pagan seasonal ritual), a bit earlier than it is supposed to show up.

I think they’re forgetting something very vital in the attempt to buoy their sinking bottom lines … If the glut of spending for the Christmas season occurs earlier … it won’t happen later. It’s pretty basic, since there isn’t any extra money in the economy due to other horrendous, almost unthinkable greed which tanked our global economic institutions. It’ll spread the limited spending this year even thinner, but increase the costs to the stores, some of which will be open 24 hours a day.

In the midst of all of this news, the bastion of horrific worker treatment, Wal-Mart, is coming to the federal government with their hands stretched out, begging for federal bailout funds (as reported by MSNBC). Not that they aren’t already sucking funds out of the government in the form of subsidies, but that awesome example of capitalism can’t seem to keep its beak out of the warm embrace of corporate welfare. Let’s just say that Paulson is fucking us and our grandkids with our pants on.

And the Wal-Mart is also bringing back the concept of layaway, which they had previously abandoned, as they hadn’t required it to push through additional sales. Squeeze ‘em anyway you can, I guess.

The fat guy in the red and white suit, though an amalgum, would be rolling his eyes. My guess is that his haul of cookies and milk would be pretty piss-poor this year. I think homeowners are going to be more worried about rising foreclosures and soaring jobless rates. Maybe the words should be “all I want for Christmas is a federal bailout.”

This is the same GM that has been dumping SUVs on the market in a time when people aren’t buying them. The downturn in demand was reported in *2004*. I can’t honestly believe that there’s an issue with the idiots at GM understanding that, but more that they believe that they don’t have anything to change. They want to keep doing what they’re doing, and probably lay off a load of people who, as taxpayers, would be financing their operation. In case 2004 seems a bit familiar to some people, it was the year that same company unveiled a multi fuel car. Why, you ask, was I unaware of this? Because they did it in *Brazil*. Not here, but *Brazil*.

Much as horse and buggy whip companies fell under the wheels of progress as the automobile came to prominence, so must GM go under. They’re a dinosaur, which needs to be replaced with smaller lither companies which are interested in doing things other than churning out gas-guzzling monsters.

If a company the size of GM moved to electric vehicles, I would think that they would storm the industry and revolutionize American transportation. But that’s not the kind of forward thinking we’re seeing from one of the best paid CEOs in the industry. No, it’s all “stay the course.” I can swear I remember another chief executive saying that, and I don’t think it went too well.

I know Pelosi hasn’t been getting great press, what with Congress’s horrific approval ratings, but feeding money to these guys is just plain *retarded*. I mean, if we’re going to find a company worth saving, I don’t think it would be these guys, especially with their record of CEO Wagoner flaunting his huge salary as being “well earned” while his company lost billions of dollars.

I guess the legacy of the W presidency will be one of giving as much money as possible on the way out. I’m being witness to possibly the largest heist in *history*. These guys are walking off with money after having made horrific decisions, just because Americans can’t live with the idea of a (gasp) Recession, or even (horrors) Depression after we’ve been living off bubbles since Ronnie “Iron Curtain Smashing Cock” Reagan was in office.

It’s kind of funny to watch the fuckers on Bloomberg TV talk about how this is all “in our heads”, and that everything is the fault of skittish investors, as though the actual state of the market has nothing to do with the actual *money* that people have in there. The majority of Americans don’t have money to kick around like that.

Fuck GM. They’ve fucked up in a horrible, horrible way, and are now coming crying to the same people they have been laughing at for years, asking with tears in their eyes and outstretched hands for some of that sweet, sweet money from your unborn grandchildren. Die, GM. It’s about time.

Postscript: For the math…. GM wants 25,000,000,000 USD (25 billion dollars). Estimates range to about 150,000 jobs which would probably be lost if GM went belly up. Assuming that not a single GM car would be sold, they could continue to make payroll for over 3 years if the average pay of an actual GM worker was 50,000 USD a year. I’m sure they’re not getting paid that much, but assuming that … If the Feds mandated a complete changing of the guard in their useless management caste and also forced a new direction towards more fuel efficient vehicles and/or electric vehicles which are affordable for average Americans, there would be a serious chance of real change instead of the status quo. I’m not going to be holding my breath for it, though.

After listening to a few pundits on TV and McCain’s concession speech, I have noticed that everyone keeps harping on Senator Obama’s race. I just find it difficult to believe that we’re so proud of our ability to not trip over our bigotry enough to elect someone who isn’t white. Get over yourselves. We’re supposed to be an *adult* nation, so try to act like one. Don’t boo the winner when you’ve been supporting the loser, even six year olds know better. I’m also amazed that every major news channel made this thing out to be a contest, when it was pretty much decided in the Democratic primary. I mean, I think the Republican brand is dogfood at this point… Strauss should be appropriately spinning in his grave.

On to energy independence and the end of warmongering, perhaps? Perhaps even some universal healthcare. But as Bill Cosby pointed out, it’s not enough for Senator Obama to be a decent president, he’s going to have to be far better and far greater, otherwise it would doom any other non-caucasian presidential hopefuls.

Now, if only I could get one of those sweet “O”-bama hats. I really want one, and now I can’t find one on his store …

Please, America, not the dud.

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Why aren’t we burning people in the streets, right now? I mean, I understand that the bailout passed by an overwhelming majority, but why were we so glad to give such a large amount of money to people that we shouldn’t trust raking manure, let alone running financial institutions?

Personally, I’m not giving a damn cent to investment bankers. They’ve scammed enough money away with the promise of “we’ll increase the amount of money you’ve got.” Screw the stock market. Let the well off people throw their money down that particular rat-hole. These people are off counting their money while our economy burns.

Can *anyone* please justify how we’re actually letting this happen? I can’t think of anyone apart from their MBA-holding compatriots in crime, who are anxiously hoping for some of that sweet, sweet socialized bailout money so they can also own a few chateaus… Fuck ‘em.

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For those enterprising people who would like to use my armv5b-softfloat-linux cross compilation toolchain, I have made it available on mediafire as well. It was compiled with Ubuntu 8.04.1 i386, so that’s the safest bet to use for compilation. I had used the NSLU2 “master makefile” to build it, since the vanilla crosstool had provided me little in terms of usable toolchains for the NSLU2.

Every time I think I’ve heard the most awful thing done by religious people…

In the same day, I’ve heard two stories coming from the Catholic Church. Yes, I know, the guys who did the whole “inquisition” thing. But they’ve been keeping their noses clean since at least the 1950s, so I’ll start this off by pointing out that I don’t have any beef with the modern day Catholic Church. They don’t come knocking on my door like other pointless suit-festooned fuckers or pray for me to go to hell, so we’re on pretty good terms.

But now I get to hear about a twelve time child molester priest, who, despite violating at least twelve children, is still a damn priest, is finally asked by *police* to come in to face charges. What the hell is wrong with the Church on this one? Isn’t shielding a child molester simply fueling accusations that all priests are kiddie-fuckers? I mean, come on, you’re seriously screwing up in the P.R. department on this one. If the guy were a school teacher and was caught with his jimmy in a fifth grader, I would think that he would never work again, and more than likely would have *awful* things happen to him in prison. This guy has been doing this stuff for *years* and just gets moved around. Must be nice to be in J.C.’s posse.

The second point is the whitewashing of Pope Pius XII of any sort of culpability in the holocaust. He didn’t exactly hold open the doors of the gas chamber, but by most accounts he did absolutely nothing. Now, I’m not sure exactly how far the criteria for becoming a Saint has fallen, but I’m sure letting people die isn’t exactly one of the prerequisites for it. I mean, Mother Teresa has had a long road to it, after having spent many years tending to sick people. Pius let a total of between 10 and 26 million people die during the Nazi’s reign — and he gets to be a Saint?

I know Ratzinger was in the Official Hitler Fan Club, but isn’t this a little much? His excuse for not having shot anyone as a Nazi Youth was an “infected finger.” Not that he didn’t want to, not that he objected, that he had a *bad finger*. At least the last guy actually improved things when he was pope, and in fact issued an apology for the exact thing that Ratzinger is trying to promote the sainthood for: doing jack squat during the holocaust… and maybe a little money laundering. Who let this particular joker be pope, anyways?

I think the Vatican kinda needs to get its act together. I’d rather go back to laughing and pointing at stupid sex scandals and child molestation in much lower hanging fruit than having to see a 2000+ year old institution made a laughing stock by poor leadership. Well, Ratzinger, ball’s in your court. Don’t make the Jewish guy on the cross cry any more than you have to.