Mar
23
Daily ICCI – 3/23/09
March 23, 2009 | 1 Comment
- We’re spending trillions of dollars, so naturally the Obama administration has made it a priority to make sure the Treasury Department is fully staffed. Ummm, not exactly.
Barack Obama hasn’t nominated 17 of 18 positions at Treasury needing Senate confirmation after more than two months on the job. The Financial Stability Oversight Board (FINSOB) has yet to meet during his administration despite a legal requirement to do so on at least a monthly basis. Politico now reports that President Obama’s vaunted Presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Board has yet to meet since its inception in early February
It’s a good thing we elected the guy with all that executive experience to be the head of the Executive Branch. Imagine if we had elected that dolt who is governor of the largest (by land mass) state in the Union to be the Vice President. What a mess that would be, huh?
- Punch drunk love : During Obama’s 60-Minutes interview last night, he giggled so much while talking about the dire economic circumstances we’re facing that it led to this exchange:
Steve Kroft: You’re sitting here. And you’re laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, ‘I mean, he’s sitting there just making jokes about money?’ How do you deal with — I mean: explain… Are you punch-drunk?”
Obama: No, no. There’s gotta be a little gallows humor to get you through the day. Sometimes my team talks about the fact that, uh, if you had said a year ago that the least of my problems would have been Iraq — which is still a pretty serious problem — I don’t think anyone would have believed it. But we’ve got a lot on our plate, and a lot of difficult decisions we’re going to have to make.
On the bright side, if he tries to add the giggling pair of Beavis and Butthead to his administration, they wouldn’t be likely to have any tax issues to fret about.
- Another tip o’ the hat to Hot Air on this one. President Obama claimed last week that the Model T got better gas mileage than today’s SUVs. Problem is, they didn’t.
But according to Ford the first Model Ts built in 1908 could go 13 to 21 miles on a gallon, depending on the particular variation. The automaker and Model T clubs say typical Tin Lizzies averaged 15 m.p.g.
What remains unclear is how it makes sense to compare a fabric-roofed, four-seat car to a seven-passenger truck stuffed with high-tech accoutrements.
Those first Model Ts weighed about 1,200 pounds, lacked windows, rode on wood wheels and could ease up to a top speed of 45 miles per hour. A modern SUV tips the scales at 4,600 pounds, hits a top speed of 140 m.p.h. and has to meet a bevy of laws for crashworthiness.
The question is: is that with the tires fully inflated? Because that makes a huuuuuge difference.
Comments
1 Comment so far
Heck yeah. Allow an auto maker to crank out a 1200lb car these days and it would get great mileage. (The tiny SmartCar weighs 1600lbs.)