General Motors and Karma

I'm having a hard time feeling any sympathy for General Motors, and here's why.

Years ago, GM dedicated itself to producing vehicles that created their own obsolescence. The gas-guzzling, larger-than-life cars and trucks they stubbornly pushed onto the American consumer ultimately were rendered powerless by the amount of precious mideast fuel they swilled. The decision to make these vehicles came from top management, and the workers and retirees will pay for this decision while top management continues to make more money every year than many of us will see in a lifetime.

And years ago, GM decided to purchase and destroy the electric car-making technology that would have AVOIDED most of the financial crisis we experience today (because this mess started with fuel prices, not the "subprime mortgage meltdown" as the government would have you believe). General Motors single-handedly and knowingly killed the electric car, and for that, they should go down. What's too bad is all the regular people who must suffer for the havoc created by those fat bastards in management.

http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/?detectflash=false&

The Case for Empathy

I can understand why the Republican'ts are so terrified by the prospect of a Supreme Court justice who has empathy. As defined by Merriam Webster online, empathy is:

"1: the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it

2: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner ; also : the capacity for this".

Clearly, having the capacity for understanding anything is beyond the scope of the Republican't party.

Detainee Photos

I agree with President Obama's recent decision to not release anymore detainee photos. Most of the people who will see them are not trying to understand the theoretical and legal implications of those pictures, nor will they try to understand the psychological harm that was inflicted by the activities they depict. These photos run the risk of sensationalism at best, and downright disrespect (to those photographed) at the worst.