Anagram: Addicted To Pain…/…And Diet Taco Dip

     That is a great anagram, dammit.    Election news first.

    Congratulations go out to Saxby Chambliss who has won the Georgia senate seat he was in a fight for with Democratic challenger Jim Martin. With 70% of precincts reporting, Chambliss is leading Mr. Martin by an impressive 227,477 votes out of just short of 1.5 million votes cast as of 9:40pm, for a rather surprisingly large 20 percent lead in this race.  Surprising because Jim Martin had kept it tight in the race with Sen. Chambliss, and was rarely, at least in the polls, out of the margin of error.  CNN had Chambliss with a 9 point lead with a week to go in the race, but that was about the only poll in the last 2 months of the race that had Sen. Chambliss that far ahead.  Even in polling from the last few weeks, Martin was never more than 7 points behind. 

    Martin cannot win, not with that kind of distance to cover and that few precincts to get those votes in.  Voter turnout was low by all accounts, and that, no doubt had a hand in Mr. Martin’s defeat, but he was never ahead at any point, so his defeat here is not really surprising.

      So much for the “Filibuster proof” democratic senate.  That was a pipe dream to begin with.  I am a Dem myself, and I don’t go in for pipe dreams, especially not ones that never had a chance in hell of becoming reality.  Now we can all get back to reality. 

      That’s it for The Georgia Run-off.  Time for Bailou….rescue news.

      That $25,000,000,000 bailou…rescue that was going to save the Auto industry has grown.  It’s now somewhere between 34 billion and 38 billion dollars, depending on what news source you look at.  Both Bloomberg and CNN Money said 34 Bill, while Forbes says 38 Bill.  Here’s the Forbes breakdown.  GM needs $18,000,000,000, Chrysler hasn’t changed it’s tune, it only needs $7,000,000,000, while Ford says they don’t need cash right now, is asking for a JIC (just in case) line of credit of up to $13,000,000,000. 

      Good news from GM, in so far as they are planning a massive scaleback. Here’s the plan from them.  The dumping of several major brands, Saturn, Saab, and Hummer, and a scale back of Pontiac to just a few models.  A reduction of dealers from 6,450 to 4,700, a total drop of 1,750 dealerships nationwide in the next 4 years.  Closing down 9 plants. These are power-train, stamping and assembly plants. The total number of Jobs cut will be somewhere between 22 and 32 thousand total, to somewhere between 65,000 and 75,000 total employees by 2012.  GM is also selling it’s corporate jets.  All of them.  And it’s CEO, Rich Wagoner, said he will cut pay to one dollar a year and forgo bonuses in 2008 and 2009 with other executives taking significant pay cuts.

    All that and they Still need eighteen Bill.  Jeez. 

    Robert Nardelli, Chrysler’s CEO says they need money and they need it now! The company says it only has about 2 and a ½ billion dollars in cash, while it expects to have to pay eleven billion six hundred million dollars in payments during the first ¼ of 2009. 

    What, these guys never heard of structured payment schedules?  Like we normal people use when we pay credit cards?  The Parts guy work for the mob or something, and maybe he’s gonna break nardelli’s legs if they don’t pay?

   Or will the parts companies simply go belly up? Read the Forbes story here.

    Today’s good news.  The DJIA went up 270 points. 

The Bad news.  Futures are down 70 points at the moment.  Just about the same place they were about 4 hours before Monday’s open.  Productivity and costs reports come out tomorrow, revising last months third quarter numbers.  Jobs numbers come out tomorrow as well, both from ADP and the challenger job cut report, which gives monthly corporate layoff numbers.

     That last one should give the market a shudder.  I am also curious to see what the beige book will say. I’ll read as much of it as i can and drop a few words from it on you tomorrow, unless I suddenly become sane or something completely uncalled for like that. 

   That’s it for the news. A short personal aside, then a Viddy and quotes.

if you had to run for your life youd be fast too

     I ran today. 2.84 miles in 23:56.34.   Might not be big news to you, but it sure as hell is to me. I haven’t run in two months.  That’s no good.  When I was running and working out everyday I weighed around 170 pounds, I had energy to spare, and a resting heart rate of around 50 beats per minute.  Before I started working out, basically just getting my body ready for the beginning of the new running regimen that began today, the weight was around 190, I had much less energy than I did, and the heart rate was significantly higher than the usual 50BPM, sometimes over 80 bpm resting.  But I ran today. A New Beginning, painful as that is. I am going to get that energy back.  I am going to get that lower resting BPM back.  Those 20 pounds, or a large portion of them, will disappear in a few weeks. 

    It feels good to be back, even with all the pain involved. 

     Today’s Viddy:  The Four Horsemen, Metallica:

   

    That’s it for me.  Later.

Today’s Nugget, from UV: 

The Farmer and the Snake

    ONE WINTER a Farmer found a Snake stiff and frozen with cold. He had compassion on it, and taking it up, placed it in his bosom. The Snake was quickly revived by the warmth, and resuming its natural instincts, bit its benefactor, inflicting on him a mortal wound. “Oh,” cried the Farmer with his last breath, “I am rightly served for pitying a scoundrel.”

The greatest kindness will not bind the ungrateful.