!&^%*~? RT @ChuckGrassley: #—
Rob Morris (@robmorris2) November 09, 2012

winning RT @ChuckGrassley: #—
Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) November 09, 2012

@ChuckGrassley DANGIT, how do you get the operator on Twitter CUSTOMER SERVICE CUSTOMER SERVICE—
James Erwin (@jlerwin) November 09, 2012

This retweet IS an endorsement. RT “@ChuckGrassley: #”—
Stephen Kline (@steph3n) November 09, 2012

#FF @ChuckGrassley because he provides a one-of-a-kind twitter experience you just can't get anywhere else—
L.K. (@vshollenius) November 09, 2012

! “@ChuckGrassley: #”—
Scott English (@scott_english) November 09, 2012

@ChuckGrassley I like it, Chuck. You say "#". Very post-modern…—
Henry Harrison (@WhiteWino) November 09, 2012

RT @ChuckGrassley # | Your number's up?—
  (@watertigernyc) November 09, 2012

With thanks to Grassley-watcher @Anthillgoddess.

This week’s American Hero is United States Marine Corps Master Sgt. Travis W. Riddick of Centerville, Iowa.

Riddick was assigned to Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 363, Marine Aircraft Group 24, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.

Tragically, he was killed Jan. 19 in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, when his CH-53D helicopter crashed.

Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa wrote the following upon Riddick’s death:

Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to a fallen son of Iowa, MSgt. Travis Riddick. Master Sergeant Riddick joined the Marine Corps after graduating from high school in Centerville, IA. In doing so, he was following in a laudable family tradition of patriotic service. His father and grandfather were marines, as well as his uncle and cousins. His twin brother recently retired after 21 years in the Navy. Travis Riddick certainly did his family, his State, and his country proud. He was awarded six Air Medals, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, four Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals, seven Marine Corps Good Conduct Medals, two National Defense Service Medals, the Southwest Asia Service Medal, the Afghanistan Campaign Medal, the Iraq Campaign Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Armed Forces Service Medal, the Humanitarian Service Medal, the NATO Medal, the NATO ISAF Medal, and the Kuwait Liberation Medal.

Master Sgt Riddick is remembered as a son, brother, husband and father. Today, we introduce him and forever remember him as an American Hero.

After the cataclysmic explosions and self combustion devastation of the Fisker electric cars because they simply GOT WET in the Hurricane Sandy rain, Panasonic has now, not only, stated that Tesla Lithium batteries will also explode and kill the baby, or dog, or other family member you have in the back seat, but that Tesla also received written warnings, in hard copy documents, in the quotations and shipping MSDS sheets that the Tesla batteries are “guaranteed” to explode if salt, or any other water touches them.

With all of the other lawsuits Tesla now has, they expect to get liability lawsuits from owners, suppliers that they sold battery packs to (without disclosing the danger their engineers knew of) and consumer class action groups.

Panasonic engineers have been retained to examine safety issues with the cars.

Did Elon Musk Mislead Fox About Problems At Tesla?
Skip to comments. Did Elon Musk Mislead Fox About Problems At Tesla? Silicon Beat ^ | September 27, 2012 | Chris O’Brian Posted on 09/29/2012 12:15:31 AM PDT by Cincinatus’ Wife
freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2937867/posts

Tesla reveals serious financial problems – TheEEStory
Tesla plans to issue 5,000,000 shares in an attempt to raise $147 million. But, they have some credibility problems that may spook investors. The 5,000 model S…
theeestory.ning.com/xn/detail/6495062:Comment:38947?xg_sour…

G-O and Bingo was his name-o! “@ChuckGrassley: N”—
Josiah Neeley (@jneeley78) October 04, 2012

"@ChuckGrassley: N" @ChuckGrassley Pretty racist letter. #debate—
GalvestonCounty Dems (@GalvCountyDems) October 04, 2012

…either Romney nor Obama have the answers, bring on Gary Johnson? RT @chuckgrassley: N—
Kevin W. Glass (@KevinWGlass) October 04, 2012

Profound “@ChuckGrassley: N”—
Shawn (@HawkeyeShawn) October 04, 2012

@ChuckGrassley today's #debate brought to you by the letter…—
Andres Jauregui (@dutchvowels) October 04, 2012

wow did @ChuckGrassley just tweet the N word??????????????—
  (@anthonypants) October 04, 2012

This is perhaps the most substanive analysis of the debate to be tendered in the next 24 hours. RT @ChuckGrassley N—
John Anderson (@diymediadotnet) October 04, 2012

obama RT @ChuckGrassley: N—
Gavin Aronsen (@garonsen) October 04, 2012

Which is what makes what happened last week even more surprising.  On Thursday, September 20, the nominations of Baer and a handful of other Executive nominees were put to a vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the critical preliminary step prior to a vote by the entire Senate.  All of the other nominees were confirmed by the Judiciary Committee on the unanimous consent of all Senators present.  Prior to Baer’s confirmation, however, the Committee held a closed-door meeting, after which he was approved on a roll call vote, but with five Senators voting against.

So what happened?

Short answer, nobody knows for sure.  The closed-door session was requested in advance by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and all five Senators who voted against Baer were Republicans.  No public explanation was given by Grassley or the “Nay” voters, but it would have to be one of three reasons:  policy, personal, or political.

• Policy – the least likely of the three.  Baer’s confirmation hearing was non-controversial, nor has there been any buzz suggesting he holds potentially deal-breaking positions.  Having spent the past twelve years as a partner at a law firm, Baer is simply not in the same category as an academic or a judge whose recent advocacy or decisions could be construed politically.  Moreover, if the “Nay” voters objected to Baer for policy reasons, there is no reason they wouldn’t debate those publicly, or at least afford him a chance to respond.
• Personal – there is a possibility, however remote, that the “Nay” voters were concerned about a personal matter of Baer’s, which, as a matter of discretion, they chose not to raise publicly.  Still, it would have to be an issue that no Democrats found objectionable, and that some, but not all, Republicans found objectionable enough to vote against his nomination.
• Political – there are a number of ways politics may have come into play.  During his previous stint as Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition, Baer earned a reputation as a principled, hard-charging enforcer.  In his last two decades of private practice, Baer has represented a host of private corporations, including GE, Intel, Visa, and Cisco.  It’s conceivable that some corporation on the other end of the table from Baer either during his tenure at the FTC or in private practice might have had enough sway with five Republicans to ask them to vote against his confirmation.  If this were the case, it’s understandable why the Senators would have preferred to explain their objections behind closed doors, given the historically low approval rating enjoyed by Congress already.
  Separately, Sen. Grassley threatened earlier in the year to block all DOJ nominees until DOJ was more cooperative with Congress’ investigation into the “Fast and Furious” gun-walking operation.  While it’s true that that investigation has moved along considerably since Grassley’s threat, and the Inspector General’s report has already been issued, Sen. Grassley as recently as last week called for accountability from Attorney General Holder.

So what happens next?

Between now and the election, nothing.  Congress is out of session, and will not come back into session until after the election.

It’s conceivable that Baer’s nomination could be put to a vote on the floor of the Senate during the lame duck session (the short session of Congress after the election and before the end of the year).  This, of course, presumes an Obama victory; should Romney win, he would make his own Executive nominations (with Deborah Garza considered a frontrunner for the AAG position), and there would be little incentive to attempt to confirm someone for only a few weeks’ tenure.

In the event of an Obama victory, then it’s business as usual.  But there remains an open question as to whether the 5 “Nay” voters will be able to persuade more of their colleagues to vote against Baer; clearly, they were able to convince nearly all of their colleagues in the Judiciary Committee to do so.  In the event the Democrats retain control of the Senate, then President Obama may very well re-nominate Baer in the new session of Congress next year; in the event the Republicans take the Senate, President Obama may elect not to have this fight.

The President also has the power to make appointments while the Senate is in recess, but having achieved an uneasy truce with Minority Leader McConnell over the use of that Executive power, it is unclear whether the President would want to start that fight anew.

Elon Musk, after scamming a number of other cities about their factory, bought the NUMMI car factory in Fremont. NUMMI was built by Toyota and General Motors and operated as the premiere showcase car factory in the world. GM was using it to learn how Toyota builds cars so good.

It was built to deliver 500,000 CARS PER YEAR!!

500,000 CARS PER YEAR IS WHAT NUMMI WAS FULLY EQUIPPED TO BUILD!!

NUMMI could rapidly shift from one new car design to the next if people knew what they were doing. NUMMI switched out between the Chevy Nova, The Geo Prizm, The Chevy Prizm, The Hilux, The Voltz, The Vibe, Tacoma Pick-up Trucks, The Matrix and could change up to a whole new car within 19 days.

This was a ready-to-go car factory. There should have been no learning curve, no “build-a-new-car factory” delays, it should have been all up and running per the notarized written assurances Tesla gave to the DOE, In WRITING!

So Musk got it and fired all of the car builders.

Tesla has been trying to get people to buy a non-hand-built version of their car since 2003!!! That is a LONG TIME. GM AND TOYOTA built a ton of new car designs in the same factory in the same time-span!!

SO… after spending HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of YOUR TAX DOLLARS and beating their awful car design for a decade, how many cars have they built?:

255 CARS!!!

They are still hand building the cars. The factory turns out to be almost unused except as a very expensive roof.

In a 500,000 car capacity ready-to-go, state-of-the-art car factory after spending hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars for a factory that GM AND Toyota had already tuned up they find that EVERYBODY thinks their car is a narcissistic Stanford yuppie Sandhill Road rich frat-boy meat-head man-toy! Nobody wants it!!!

NO YOU ARE NOT!

You have gotten hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. taxpayer and institutional pension funds via VC group buddies. Very little of the money you got was from “big private rich people investors”. A track-back on the VC funds shows that the money came from little old ladies pension funds.

There really needs to be a shareholder fraud lawsuit. If we go back and look at the financials before each quarter, the papers you filed with DOE and the “cooked”, errr… “restated” financials, it is clear that the books are cooked, the story to the media is wrong and that you are running a sham deal to hype your ego and to take cash out of loans for your friends giant “service and management fees”.

You have been trying to sell your cars for OVER A DECADE. Only a few yuppie fanboy friends of yours will buy them. Detroit and Japan sell 2000% more cars than you and have introduced whole new lines of cars and sold them out in the same time-frame that you have tried to get people to buy your over-priced, non-innovative, yuppie “statement” of “look how rich I am”. People want their cars, nobody wants yours!

You said, IN WRITING, to the US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (and, hence, The AMERICAN PEOPLE) that if you got a taxpayer free loan at 400% better terms than any American’s mortgage; that YOU would have sold 200,000 cars over a year ago!!
How many of those 200,000 cars will you sell this year? WHAT! only a few to your friends.. hmmmmmmm?????

You took unfair advantage of the system to create a tort interference with your competitors . You could get sued by Bright Automotive or ZAP Motors for abusing the process in order to hurt them. They could win big!

THE DOE PAPERS YOU SUBMITTED HAVE NOW BEEN ACQUIRED BY MANY PARTIES.
Thank heavens for FOIA’s and investigation committees!

You are trying to bury funds in real estate deals for these new “retail outlets” before you go out of business. Everybody sees through that.

Your investors are edging to bank profit on the tax write-offs.

Did you lie or did you just blow it in a fantastic way?

We received this letter from Donald who has been working on the line at Tesla until recently,
he asked us to pass his thoughts along-

” I am getting so sick of reading about how Elon Musk is a ‘god among men’, he is
the ‘living embodiment of Iron Man’, ‘he is the greatest humanitarium the world has ever known…BS! Elon MUsk spends massive amounts of money on two different PR firms
and SEO services with orders to make him look as close to a second Jesus as possible.
His insane ego is beyond words. These PR firms pay editors and writers, with Musks’s money to write this crap.

The backers of Tesla made him go stay in Los Angeles because he is rude, insulting, abusive, paranoid and anal to every employee at Tesla. Tesla has hired great people
but the good ones all left once they got a whiff of Musk madness. He is only allowed up here once a week. Everyone at the company thinks he is the biggest prick in history.

Musk is only where he is because he was lucky enough to get an un-earned windfall from Paypal.

Now he has too much money and even after spending all the money you could possibly imagine on parties, hookers and buying time with celebrities he has too much money
so he told his PR people to buy him an image.

Speaking of image, he and two of his investors have such ego problems that they would rather lie to the public, the media and investors about how broken the cars are, how few people want them and how under-used the most expensive non-functional car factory in the world is! They need to tell people that Tesla is bombing and not let people labor under these wrong
ideas from his PR blitz.

Hitting breakeven as a company would require the ModelS line to generate a profit of around $110Mil/Qtr (a little less in reality – the profits from the drivetrain group help), which would occur at around 23,000 units/annum. If they hit the 30,000/annum mark, mentioned by Musk in the Q2 results call, they’d be seriously profitable (which would be nice considering the deep stockholders’ equity hole they’re currently in), but it is going to take that sort of number. Enterprise breakeven at 8,000/annum is dreaming.

In the latest official Tesla blog post, George Blankenship, Tesla’s vice president of worldwide sales and ownership experience has got some fresh Model S numbers for us. Specifically, the company has now made 100 production Model S vehicles, with 74 of those destined for reservation holders. The rest, Blankenship writes, are “being used for test drive cars, in-store displays, engineering tests and for service team training. We plan to continue to increase production in the upcoming weeks.”

That increased production target for the rest of the year is 5,000, with 20-30,000 in 2013.
To put all these numbers in perspective, in early August, Tesla had only made 50 Model S vehicles, 29 for customers.

Tesla Fremont assembly worker “Tom” says: “The fact is we are hand building the cars and the hundreds of millions of dollars of car factory and car factory equipment we bought in Fremont is entirely going to waste because nobody wants these cars. ‘Hand-building’ means each car has many defects and each has different defects that we can’t automate a fix for. They turn on all the equipment when the press shows up to take pictures or movies but otherwise we are just putting them together by hand. I came here to learn the equipment that we never really use so my career is just screwed!”

It turns out Goldman Sachs put the Tesla deal together for their investor partners just like they did for the Solyndra deal: So they could make money off the management fees and tax write-offs they get when Tesla fails. The profit for them is in the failure of Tesla. DOE staff and Goldman make a profit either way.

The amount of money Tesla has had invested in it VS. the tiny number of cars “REAL” people (Not venture capital shills) are actually buying and putting in their driveways now makes TESLA ne of the most failed and FAKED-UP car companies in the world!

Tesla investors have put in thouands of fake ordrs for cars so that Tesla can flog its fake “waiting list” and try to cook their books sme more but the fact is: NOBODY WANTS A STUPID TESLA 1%, BRIBE-THE-DOE, TAXPAYER RIP-OFF CAR!

The short answer is, “Yes,” but the the more insightful, pragmatic answer is, “No.” It’s confusing, I know, but bear with me while I hash out an explanation.

When President Obama was inaugurated on January 15, 2009 unemployment was at 7.8% . Later, reported at 8.3% for the month. The national debt was at $10.6 trillion. Budget deficits were at $485.2 billion, up from $161 billion the previous year. The American public, along with virtually every other nation in the western world, were in a panic. By mid-year unemployment hit 10% and debt was building up at a rapid pace. Fast forward to the present, national debt has hit $15.9 trillion. There is a budget deficit of $974 billion and unemployment is stubbornly high. Has the economy become worse since inauguration day 2009? Technically, yes it did.

It’s very difficult to look at those figures and not feel distraught. The masses who voted for the President have long since wondered where all that “Hope and Change” ended up. Don’t give up quite yet, though. Remember, the second answer to the question? But how could the economy have improved given all those negatives. Well let’s look a bit closer at the real situation.

Yes, after January 2009, the economy did in fact worsen. If we only looked at that the Republican Party’s criticism is wholly true. However, the first term of the Obama presidency did not exist in an isolated stretch lasting a single year. Taking a page from Ronald Reagan’s 1984 Republican National Convention speech,

“Our opponents began this campaign hoping that America has a poor memory. Well, let’s take them on a little stroll down memory lane.”

Unemployment bottomed out at 10% in the summer of 2009 but it has trended downward ever since reaching 8.2% in 2012, less than Obama’s first year in office. Yes, it did increase slightly, back to 8.3%. The private sector has grown, adding jobs every month for more than two years. Much of that growth has been blunted by losses in the public sector as a result of government cuts. It’s quite possible the unemployment picture would be better if stimulative efforts had continued as they did in past downturns.

Roughly 8.4 million jobs were lost during the recession, most between September 2008 and April 2009. (This despite the supposed 23 million unemployed individuals Mitt Romney has attempted to place on his opponent’s shoulders.) By inauguration day 2009, the economy was hemorrhaging 600,000 plus jobs each month. By the end of it all, the numbers were essentially split down the middle for Bush and Obama. Both presidents had to accept that during the worst part of the recession ~4.2 million jobs were lost under each of their administrations. Since then, we’ve seen 4 million jobs added to the economy over the last 3 years. Given the depths of the recession, gaining back almost half of those lost in a relatively short amount of time hardly speaks to the failed policy the Republican Party seeks to illustrate. Those claims become more erroneous when one considers those 4 million created jobs represent virtually all those lost under President Obama.

Debt has risen under this presidency but while many would like to leave that statement closed right there, “We have the highest debt ever under Obama”, the factors behind that high debt are more consequential than just having that “big government spender” in the White House. First, the current debt we have now is an accumulation of numerous administrations reaching back to Ronald Reagan. Each president’s administration contributed to the current national debt we have, from Reagan to George H.W. Bush to Clinton to George W. Bush to Barrack Obama. Of the total current debt, which sits at $15.9 trillion, almost half (42.7%) was accrued under George W Bush. Debt under President Obama comes in a distant 2^nd place at 16.8%. Reagan is third (13.2%) with Clinton, the first President Bush and all administrations prior to Reagan accounting for the remaining 27.3%.

The primary contributors to the debt under the Obama administration include the three largest contributors to Bush’s debt load, the Bush tax cuts, the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars and the Medicare prescription drug plan,  most of which remained as bills-to-be-paid through the last 4 years. However savings have been achieved through ending of the Iraq War and Medicare provisions included in the Affordable Care Act. Also, as noted previously, 8.4 million jobs were lost during the Great Recession. That in of itself represented a significant reduction in government revenue for state and local governments up through to the federal levels. And last but not least, the Stimulus Bill’s contribution was significant, yet many economists deem the benefits will outweigh the costs in the coming years, as it was credited with placing the US on the path to recovery.

National Republicans point to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as an indicator of the president’s failings. They point to the last two fiscal quarters of 2012 as proof. However, when we look back at GDP’s overall performance during Obama’s first term, the current status of GDP is hardly a critique of this president’s broader fiscal policy. From its depths in the first quarter of 2009, a -8.9% growth rate, GDP has increased under Obama breaking out of the negative zone by late 2009 never to drop out of positive growth rates again. It has experienced ups and downs over that time. A prime example is how it dropped to 0.4% in March of 2011 yet by the end of that year and on into Q1 2012 it rose back to 3%, even amidst double-dip recession predictions which ran rampant across the media landscape 2 months before.

With the 2012 Republican Convention behind us the GOP campaign begins anew. Perhaps feeling the etch-a-sketch has finally been thoroughly shaken out, their candidates and their surrogates are spreading out in force to counter the upcoming Democratic Convention. They will continue to press into voters’ collective consciousnesses that the economy is worse now more than ever. They will latch onto the fine line Democrats are walking when asked, “Is the country better off now”. Paul Ryan has grown fond of saying, this is the worst recovery since the Great Depression. A proper, contextual response  may be, “Well, yes, yes it is. But isn’t that because we are, in fact, recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression.” As yet, it does not appear anyone has confronted Mr. Ryan pointing this out to him.

This may go a long way to explaining why this particular recovery is not progressing as quickly as many would like. The country, and the world, took a tremendous hit with many countries still clamoring to pull themselves out onto stable ground. However, it is worth noting, with Europe taking the austerity route – the same one Republicans promote – the US is just about the only western world nation that is not in a double-dip recession or on the verge of falling into one.

In of itself, is that not proof that the policies of this administration are far from a failure? Amidst all the economic turmoil of the Great Recession, the continued economic battles we’ve seen our world partners struggle to overcome along with the ongoing gridlock of a dysfunctional Congress it is truly astonishing this country was able to recover at all, let alone come out ahead of where we were just 3 short years ago.

Has the economy truly gotten worse under President Obama? After taking that trip down memory lane, the only accurate answer is, “No. No, it hasn’t.”

An OpenSalon.com Editor’s Pick

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