Enough

Okay, what, don’t you guys like me anymore? I’ve been commenting all week and nobody has responded much at all.

I need attention, dammit.

@Tommmcatt Floats:
*Pats head*

It’s okay. We see you. Been there, too.

@Tommmcatt Floats: At least you get to hide in the brush. Zero-comment posts hang out for all to mock.

@Tommmcatt Floats:
Nobody puts Tommy in the corner, dammit! You know I love you, but I wasn’t sure how to respond to your comment about hot gay Asian porn. Still working on a witty response to you there.

@ManchuCandidate: @nojo: @SanFranLefty:

I knew I could count on you guys!

@nojo: That only happens when I post a Top Gear video.

@Tommmcatt Floats:

How’s Thor?

Hey is that Paradise City by G ‘n R in the video?

Makes me wanna rip my shirt off and wash my car in the driveway. Fuck yeah.

@SanFranLefty:

There’s only one response to hot gay Asian porn: More please.

@blogenfreude: I like the Top Gear posts. It’s a great show, fills all my vicarious high-carbon pursuit needs.

@IanJ: The post of my dreams would be Stormy Daniels as the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car.

@blogenfreude:

Like Stormy on the hood of a Corolla, hair blowing around Whitesnake-style?

@Original Andrew:
This Stormy?
http://content.ytmnd.com/content/2/d/4/2d4a84879038006b1773105d135035b5.jpg

Not this one:
http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/dailyloaf/files/2009/07/stormy-daniels.jpg

@blogenfreude: Here is Sir Michael Gambon as the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car.

No Project Runway post?

@mellbell: I have never watched a minute of it. Similarly, I have never seen a minute of American Idol. Does this make me a bad person?

I have to threadjack on Cars for Clunkers. Its been my life for the last month, every day at work all day. Trying to be the liaison between dealers and NHTSA, which administers (in theory) the program.

Here is the story in a nutshell, they budgeted a billion, and set up a system to process claims based on the idea the billion would be doled out over 3 months. The public response far exceeded all expectations. The car dealers booked enough purchases in the first 5 days to exhaust the entire billion dollars budgeted. The NHTSA system set up to process claims was completely swamped, its all online, and the system was absolutely overwhelmed, I was advising dealers to schedule people for the hours between midnight and 5 AM so they could try to input claims during slow hours, still it was overwhelmed. NHTSA had no idea how many purchases were in the pipeline until the NADA did a scientific survey and advised NHTSA that the billion was long gone, before NHTSA’s system had been able to accept one-tenth that in applications.

That resulted in the emergency legislation to put $2 billion more into the program.

For the last 2 weeks I have suspected that this new funding was already gone, too, and I have been screaming about it, like a voice in the wilderness. NHTSA’s processing system remained locked up and essentially non-operational. Dealers had and have enormous backlogs of claims that they simply cannot get submitted because the online internet system NHTSA set up remained overwhelmed.

To date, NHTSA’s system has been able to accept applications which total a little more than half of the $3 billion, they are closing the program down only because the NADA again did a survey and discovered what I have known from my work every day, that the backlog of not-yet-submitted applications is as large or larger than the backlog of submitted, but not yet processed applications.

What DOT and NHTSA did today, setting a deadling of 8 PM Monday for the dealers to get all the applications in, is going to result in a massive clusterfuck.

Here is the deal. The NHTSA system has been completely overwhelmed and has managed, in 25 days, to accept only about 55% of all applications pending. Not process them, mind you, just to allow the applications to be submitted, the volume has been constantly crashing the system.

Now, DOT has set a deadline for the dealers to submit the remaining 45% of the applications in the next 4 days.

The system cannot handle this. It was not able to handle 55% of the applications in 25 days, it simply will not be able to handle the remaining 45% of the applications in 4 days. Impossible.

This program is failing because it has been wildly succesful. It has been credited for boosting July GDP by .5%, all by itself. Ford and Chevy have re-opened factories to meet demand.

And remember, to get the $4,500 credit, you have to trade in an old gas guzzler for a car that gets at least 10 MPG better mileage, and that old gas guzzler must be destroyed and removed forever from the roads. Its a win for the economy and the environment. Its done more for the economy than the trillions given to the financial sector. It has removed something like 400,000 older, inefficient, polluting autos from the roads, and replaced them with vehicles that get 10 MPG better mileage. The stats show that what it has done is it has gotten SUVs off the roads, and replaced them with efficient passenger cars. The single most common clunker traded in is the Ford Explorer, the first wildly succesful SUV, the one that started the trend.

They should throw $5 billion more into it, and sweeten the pot and give more if you buy a super-efficient car.

Its the only stimulus program that is bottom-up, which gives the benefit directly to individual consumers, and it has worked, the economic impact has been real and substantial.

But the horrendous failure in the way they have administered it, is going to allow the general perception of it to be that it was a failure.

Its sad.

Rant over. Tomorrow, I go back to trying to teach dealers how to deal with the overwhelmed NHTSA system. Now that they have a deadline, which leaves them holding the bag if they don’t meet it.

@Original Andrew: GNR is the worst rock band in the history of the world. They took all the riffs and style of Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith, most notably, combined with a few other lame 70s hard rock bands, put it in a blender, and served forth the disgusting, derivative crap that resulted.

They couldn’t even write an entire song, none of their songs ever has an end, none of them finish, they wrote the first half of a song, and with nothing to close with, just made some noise towards the end to cover up the fact that after having stolen a riff or two and come up with a hook, they really didn’t even have an entire song to offer, as derivative and lame as it would have been even if they did finish it.

They suck. Their suckitude is their only area of truly notable achievement, noone sucks as much as they suck. Anvil does not suck that bad.

They came to prominence during the time when alternative and punk were entering their highest creative moment, they were a reactionary return to the braindead heavy metal that punk and alternative rebelled against. They were contemporaries of such bands as the Replacements and Husker Du, and many others, that so surpass them in real artistic merit and sheer genuine, as opposed to contrived and emulative, rock and roll emotional joy and sheer squawk factor, that its a sin that their success held rock and roll back for 5 years. They suck, suck, suck.

I hate them. They are the favorite band of every conservative who fancies himself hip that I know. They suck.

Programming note: Jon Stewart is feasting on Death Panel originator Betsy McCoy for dinner.

@Promnight: Meh. All music is derivative of something. GnR was fine when Axel wasn’t throwing his mic stand into the audience during a bipolar meltdown. Love “Welcome to the Jungle.”

ADD: There’s some really shitty GnR tribute band out there. Saw them on the tube.

OMG! Poor kitty!

@JNOV: I am sure that cat got up, gave everyone an “I meant to do that” look, and went off to have a nap.

@blogenfreude: Or did it again!

@JNOV: If they had a camera set up, it wasn’t the first time.

@nojo: Exactly!

TJ/ Article on Guns at Town Halls by my friend, Brian Levin.

@Promnight: I was going to say something pithy against intergenerational band feuding, but then I found out that Axl Rose was born February 6, 1962. Fire away!

@Original Andrew:

He’s good, thanks. He’s gotten big. We have gotten past the naughty, chew on everything stage and as long as I keep him tuckered out we don’t have too much trouble. Incidentally, we got him a cage that he actually likes to be in, and I have to agree with everybody- crate training really helps. Gives him a place to take a time out if he needs to.

@nojo: Heh.

TJ/Again: Brian Levin on Tweety.

@Promnight:

“this program is failing because it became wildly successful”

just like the species homosapien!
scheduled for extinction, just like that elk species that disappeared for surviving by growing enormous antlers. so big, they had no competition, and ruled their world til the antlers outgrew their ability to hold up their godamn stupid heads and they all dropped dead.
we’re bad stupid animals and The Earth will rid itself of us for sure.
i’m cheery today, aren’t i?

@baked: Hey darlin’! Good morning to you! I got banned from NYT comments because I kept railing against over-breeding by homosapiens.

whoops.

apparently not politically correct.

My bad.

When can I visit you in the Caribbean? Or will you come to DC in November for the east coast Stinque up?

@Promnight:

I’m more of a Poison fan, myself.

@Tommmcatt Floats:
I guess it true that in teh internets no one can hear you lurk.

@Tommmcatt Floats: Oh, shit! How did I miss this? TOMMMCATT, My Love! My Darling!

@Original Andrew: I can’t believe you passed this one by.

@Jebediah: Excellent.

@Tommmcatt Floats: See now, we steered you right with the crate.

@blogenfreude: No.

@Original Andrew: AMEN, brother.

@JNOV:

I knew you would never abandon me, darling.

@Tommmcatt Floats: Nevahhhh!

@baked: I just finished reading Bozo Sapiens, which is lots of fun, very well-written, witty, and wise. I’m sure you’d love it.