$2.8 billion per year down the drain

That's a lot of money and energy being wasted only to keep your PC running. Besides the environmental impact, who really likes to waste money?

Admittedly I don't think much about it at all. I leave my laptop running overnight because I know it'll take five minutes or more to get things going in the morning -- not just booting up, but launching the various apps I start the day with, downloading my overnight email, filtering out the spam, and otherwise "getting settled."

But all the power wasted while computers are sitting idle overnight adds up, and one study has finally tried to measure it. The tally: An estimated $2.8 billion wasted on excess energy costs each year in the U.S. alone.

On a CO2 basis, that's 20 million tons of carbon dioxide, about the amount produced by 4 million cars on the road.

NOTE FROM JOHN: Ever since I bought my own place I've gotten way more conscious about energy use (amazing what paying your own electric bill does to inspire virtue). One thing I noticed - with my Mac laptop, at least, I can set the laptop to "better energy savings," which basically shuts the thing down to a minimum of energy use when I'm away for more than a few minutes. And to start it back up, I hit any key, and the computer is back within seconds. Are there any PC experts out there who can share energy-saving tips for a PC? Another energy-saving tip I learned - lots of appliances, when they're "off," if they're still plugged in, they might be hogging a lot of electricity. Read More......

George Bush's of the world, 2009 is your year

Of course this won't have any impact on students who will need financial assistance. No, not any chance at all. The fact that schools such as Harvard have lost billions won't matter at all. As they always do but even more so in 2009 (and 2010 and probably 2011), the Ivy League schools and other criminally expensive universities in America will be looking for duds to pay full fare to balance the books. What a spectacular system of education for the elite that is usually only matched in the Third World.

Facing fallen endowments and needier students, many colleges are looking more favorably on wealthier applicants as they make their admissions decisions this year.

Institutions that have pledged to admit students regardless of need are finding ways to increase the number of those who pay full fare in ways that allow the colleges to maintain the claim of being need-blind — taking more students from the transfer or waiting lists, for instance, or admitting more foreign students who pay full freight.

Colleges that acknowledge taking financial status into account say they are even more aware of that factor this year.

“If you are a student of means or ability, or both, there has never been a better year,” said Robert A. Sevier, an enrollment consultant to colleges.

Of course this will be the case. Just like all of the US universities who were steering students in the direction of lenders who kicked back money, this one sounds like another example of how the university system is moving in the wrong direction, favoring the elite as opposed to the stupid wealthy.

Then again, if you look at current crisis and the high rate of Harvard MBA's out there - Bush, Stanley O'Neal, John Thain, Fred "the shred" Goodwin, Henry Paulson, Christopher Cox - maybe clogging the supposed elite schools with even more duds will help bring an end to the system. Wishful thinking, but this is supposed to be the year of hope and change. Read More......

Robert Scoble is right

Robert Scoble, who's well-known in tech circles as a former Microsoft employee/guru (he was outspoken in his support of gay Microsoft employees when the company's management went momentarily anti-gay a few years back), and blogger, happened to complain recently about the never-ending stream of bad PR pitches he gets by email. Well, didn't that tick off a number of folks in the PR industry, including this person, who apparently thinks a reasonable counter-argument is to post a shirtless picture of Scoble on their Web site. Ah yes, now there's someone who's an expert at communication.

(As an side, listen to the rather short comments that Scoble made on this issue. He's absolutely right, and the effort to paint his comments as the illiterate words of a madman are just bizarre if you actually bother listening to what he said.)

The brouhaha struck me as interesting, since I've been writing lately, and for a while, about the terrible PR pitches I get by email. It's not just the quality of the pitches, it's the thought behind them (or lack thereof), and the number of them, that's so annoying. Sure, you can argue that we should be flattered that so many PR experts on the Hill and in the public relations industry think we're so important that they spam us all day with really bad pitches on topics none of you would ever in a million years care about. But I prefer to take a less egocentric view, and worry about whether this is happening to a lot of people. About whether this is a sign of the larger corporatization of email - something that is making the entire medium of email increasingly unusable for a growing number of people.

I really believe that people need to exercise more judgment when using email. The same kind of judgment they'd use when picking up a telephone and calling a friend or a business associate. I think it's far too easy to click-and-send an email, so people do it with far too little thought. At the beginning of email, back in the 90s, people would send embarrassingly angry emails, writing things they'd never dare say in person or write by letter, only to quickly regret them once the email was already sent. Nowadays, the thoughtless emailer has gone from angry to insipid. We get jokes. Lots of jokes. Lots of really dumb stupid jokes. And usually ones we've seen before. We get powerpoint files of very beautiful pictures put to very cheesy music. And, those of us with big blogs, and probably a lot of mainstream reporter out there too, get lots of really bad PR pitches that the PR expert in question would probably never in a million years think of pitching us in person.

For example, I complained last week about getting garbage press releases from the staffs of members of Congress. Press releases about how the congressman got some award or something. (Yes, I know, you all really wanted me to report on Congressman Whoever's award - sorry.) Could you imagine the same congressional staff sitting around and having this conversation:

Staffer 1: Hey, the boss just got an award from an organization most people have never heard of.

Staffer 2: Cool. Who do you think we can get to write about it?

Staffer 1: Hey, let's send it to AMERICAblog. They've been focusing a lot lately on the economy, on how the conservatives have taken over the GOP, and about the ongoing struggle for gay rights. I'm sure they'd love to write about some congressman getting an award from an organization no one's ever heard of.

Yeah. I don't think so. The reason we get these irrelevant press releases, the reason I have companies offering dating services ask if I might want to write about them on my blog, is because email has given them the luxury to stop thinking. Once up on a time, they'd actually send the release to someone who cared - perhaps the local press back home in the congressman's district. But now with email, they can blast it to hundreds, or even thousands, of reporters and bloggers in the hopes that maybe one of them will pick it up and run with it. It's the same logic spammers use - if you blast garbage to enough people, one of them may fall for it. But of course, the problem is that the rest of us suffer when the one idiotic email becomes a never-ending torrent of idiotic emails that clog our in-box, and make us start missing emails we actually want (like from our readers who send us tips).

It was suggested by one public relations '"expert," the one who posted the shirtless picture of Scoble, that Scoble deserved the spam he got because he's a successful blogger:

Mr. Scoble needs to realize that he is complaining about the very celebrity that he himself created. You cannot have it both ways.

If you become an A-Lister and make a good living (while many of very good public relations people in this country are being laid off, by the way) it is beyond self-absorption to complain about “stupid-ass pitches” that you receive because of the very notoriety that you sought, built and benefit from.

Now there's a fascinating argument I'd love to see a PR expert make to their client:

PR Expert: I emailed Scoble and Aravosis the latest pitch about the new floor wax our client is selling.

Client: You asked a tech blogger and a political blogger to write about our floor wax? How does it help us get the message out there about our new product by sending it to people who we know, in advance, don't even write about products like ours?

PR Expert: They're A-listers and they wanted the notoriety - they deserve whatever they get!

That'll be $50,000 up front, and $20,000 a month in retainer.

Regardless of whether Scoble, I, or anyone else wanted "the notoriety," I'm not sure how that excuses a PR expert, who is presumably paid a good deal of money to promote their boss or client, from sending a bad pitch to the wrong guy.

Scoble is right, and it would do PR experts well to listen. If the people you're pitching are bitching about your pitches, then you are per se not doing your job. (More on this here.) Read More......

Palin is becoming the next Rush Limbaugh

Oh, Palin became the next Limbaugh the second she stepped up to the national stage and, with the help of the blogs, we discovered and exposed what a nutjob she was. So, before anyone goes ascribing this to the grand Democratic plan (as if we ever had one), Palin was red meat the minute she opened her mouth. And like Limbaugh, she just can't help herself - talk talk talk talk talk. From the Plum Line:

Multiple Democratic strategists say the party plans to increasingly elevate Palin in the same manner it has employed Rush for weeks, using her high-visibility, her social conservatism, and memories of her harsh attacks on Obama during the campaign to tar the GOP as partisan, obstructionist, and backward-looking.

James Carville, a key architect of the Limbaugh strategy, says Dems will be seeking to elevate Palin more and more, because she’s “an identifiable person who has a hook,” unlike GOP leaders like Eric Cantor an

d Mitch McConnell. Read More......

Peugeot CEO also out

Being an auto executive these days is suddenly a tough place to be. It all seemed so dreamy a few years ago when you could easily sack workers or move production to cheap labor locations and watch your salary and stock go up. Peugot's new hire looks like a classic chop-costs-and-sell kind of CEO though selling or merging won't be easy in this climate.

France's biggest carmaker, PSA Peugeot-Citroen, ousted CEO Christian Streiff on Sunday, saying "exceptional difficulties" confronting the auto industry require new management at the top.

Philippe Varin is being brought in from outside the company June 1 to replace Streiff, the company said in a statement. Roland Vardanega, a member of the three-man board of directors at the car company, will preside over the company until then.

Read More......

Palin's Scientologist adviser doesn't talk to her much, unless he does, and he doesn't have much influence, except sometimes he does

Got that? Seems there's trouble in Palin-land, per the Washington Post. And even more trouble reported, from Politico:

The state of confusion is compounded by two separate Palin spheres that don’t communicate with each other, one based in the governor’s office and another based in the D.C.-area, where Palin’s political action committee is located—and the incongruous presence of a high-profile Democratic trial lawyer among her political advisers.

The lawyer, John Coale, is a former supporter of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign who became a Palin confidante as his wife, Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, interviewed the former GOP vice presidential nominee and her family numerous times during and after the election.

Their presence around Palin has become Topic A among many of her allies as well as other Republican insiders who are mystified as to why an anti-abortion rights conservative who ran against Washington elites is now turning to a pair of capital insiders for counsel.

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Obamas to use own cash to redecorate White House

CNN:

The Obamas are using their own money to redecorate the White House residence and Oval Office, the White House confirms, forgoing the $100,000 in federal funds that is traditionally allotted to new presidents for such renovation projects.

The first couple — who made well over $2 million in 2008, largely from book revenues — is also turning down money from the White House Historical Association, the organization that financed a $74,000 set of china for the Bushes.

He's also going to keep Bush's rug. Classy. Read More......

Breaking: Chrysler and Fiat in global alliance

This probably means Chrysler will receive the $6 billion loan from the government (as opposed to the deep pockets of Cerberus Capital Management) but beyond that, details are limited for now. The US auto industry is being forced to change radically or desist. It's unfortunate that so many previous administrations and members of Congress have allowed Big Auto to avoid making tough decisions in the past, but those days are now over. Obama is doing the right thing with Detroit, and hopefully soon with Wall Street as well.

Chrysler LLC and owner Cerberus Capital Management said Monday they entered into a global alliance with Italian auto maker Fiat SPA with the help of the U.S. Treasury. Chrysler said the Fiat alliance will not only help it pay back government loans sooner but strengthens its ability to create and preserve U.S. jobs. The alliance raises the possibility that the U.S. government may invest another $6 billion in Chrysler.

Read More......

GOP Senator from Texas: It's 'World War III' if the winner of the Minnesota Senate race, Al Franken, is seated

Republicans are desperate to keep Al Franken out of the Senate. How desperate? Threatening "World War III" desperate:

Texas Sen. John Cornyn is threatening “World War III” if Democrats try to seat Al Franken in the Senate before Norm Coleman can pursue his case through the federal courts.

Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, acknowledges that a federal challenge to November’s elections could take “years” to resolve. But he’s adamant that Coleman deserves that chance — even if it means Minnesota is short a senator for the duration.

A three-judge panel is expected to rule any day now on legal challenges to the November election.

This is beyond appalling. The Senator from Texas wants to keep the people of Minnesota from being fully represented. The GOP leaders want to delay this as long as possible. They're using every legal trick in the book, which is almost funny since the Republicans are always bashing what they deem to be frivolous lawsuits. The GOP's reason has nothing to do with fairness or counting the votes. It's about political power:

Without Franken in the Senate, the Democrats hold a 58-41 vote advantage over the GOP; getting to 59-41 sooner rather than later would make it easier to move President Barack Obama’s agenda through Congress.

That's it in a nutshell. Someone needs to ask Senator Cornyn just what "World War III" means? Read More......

Obama FIRED the head of GM

UPDATE: I've just added a snap poll on this in the column to the right. You can select multiple answer. Poll closes tonight at 8pm Eastern. Just curious what folks think, since the comments tend to be quite active and mixed.

I don't think Chris' earlier story has quite sunk in. Obama basically just fired the head of GM.

And good for him.

This is the kind of leadership on the economy that people have been demanding. And considering the public's ire over the AIG bonuses, I think Obama will get big props for this one from the American people.

Of course, the Dow just dropped 200 points as a result of Obama's actions. Why? Because Wall Street is now scared to death that President Barack Obama will actually hold them responsible for their actions. I doubt the public will lose a wink of sleep over that one.

But the Republicans? Just wait for the cries of "socialism!" to come screaming from GOP leaders Limbaugh and Palin and Bachmann and Beck. How dare a US president fire the head of a PRIVATE company?! Of course, Obama didn't really "fire" the GM exec - he simply told him that in order to get more bailout money, he needs to go. Same diff.

But do watch the Republicans closely on this one. They dusted off their faux populism during the AIG bonus debate, when only months before their leaders (e.g., McConnell and Cantor) were irate over the notion that the government might try to rein in executive compensation. So get ready for the GOP to attack the notion that the federal government is telling a private business what to do, when just two weeks ago the GOP argued that the federal government should tell a private business what to do.

Obama 1
America 1
GOP 0 Read More......

Gallup: Catholics "are actually more liberal than the non-Catholic population on a number of moral issues"

Catholics share the same views as non-Catholics on the choice and stem cell issues. This isn't a surprise to most mainstream Catholics.

The leaders of the Catholic Church are hypocrites. They always welcomed the war-mongering, death penalty supporting George Bush with open arms. But, some are giving Notre Dame a hard time for inviting Obama. But, Obama shares the views of mainstream Catholics, not the same leaders who protected pedophiles for decades.

From Gallup:

The argument of those who protest the extension of the invitation to Obama is that Catholics have a distinctly conservative position on these moral issues. That is certainly the case as far as official church doctrine is concerned, but not when it comes to average American Catholics. The new Gallup analysis, based on aggregated data from Gallup's 2006-2008 Values and Beliefs surveys, indicates that Catholics in the United States today are actually more liberal than the non-Catholic population on a number of moral issues, and on others, Catholics have generally the same attitudes.

The accompanying chart shows the percentage of Catholics and non-Catholics who find each of nine moral issues morally acceptable. Catholics are at least slightly more liberal than non-Catholics on the issues of gambling (an issue to which the Catholic church is not totally opposed), sex between an unmarried man and woman, homosexual relations, and having a baby out of wedlock. Catholics are essentially tied with non-Catholics on the moral acceptability of abortion, divorce, and stem-cell research using human embryos. Only on the death penalty are Catholics slightly less likely than non-Catholics to find the issue morally acceptable.

This also means the traditional media should never book that bloviating imbecile Bill Donohue, also a homophobe and racist, to speak for Catholics. He doesn't. He's the one out of the mainstream. Read More......

GOP Senate Leader whines that Obama isn't being bipartisan enough

Mitch McConnell is as insincere and duplicitous as they come. When Obama reached out to the Republicans, the Republicans shut him down. So, Obama is moving ahead to pass the agenda of change, which is what the American people want. McConnell doesn't like that:

A leading congressional Republican did not pull any punches Sunday when asked whether President Obama had kept one of his most prominent campaign promises.

“I must say I'm disappointed,” Senate Minority Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “After two months, the president has not governed in the middle as I had hoped he would. But it's not too late. He's only been in office a couple of months. Still before him are the opportunities to deal with us on a truly bipartisan basis,” the Republican told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King.

Seems like Obama is governing from where the American people want him to be. His approval rating is a lot higher than the Republicans in Congress.

Keep in mind, in 2006, there were 55 Republicans Senators. Now, there are 41. The Republicans have lost 25% of their membership. That's because they're out-of-touch and have had nothing to offer the American people. Read More......

Monday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Looks like we'll be hearing a lot of car talk for the next couple days. And, this isn't going to be fun like NPR's "Car Talk." This is going to be intense and will determine the future of the U.S. auto industry. As Chris noted below, it started yesterday with the forced resignation of GM's CEO. That's hard ball. But, the industry needs new thinking -- and it has needed new thinking for decades. (This also shows the Obama administration isn't cowering before the often described "D.C. power couple" of Congressman John Dingell, who has been GM's great protector, and his wife, Debbie, who works for GM.)

Let's get this week rolling... Read More......

GM CEO sacked as part of bailout

Business as usual can only last for so long. It was annoying to see the same (mis)management running the company through the first bailout despite being the failed leader who drove them into the ground but at least this round required change. What is most surprising is that Wall Street has somehow managed to stay the course after the initial changes. Heck, Goldman Sachs is preparing to return their TARP money and pretend as though the AIG gambles have nothing to do with them. And then there's AIG who has implemented some change but their problems never end. CNN:

General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner announced his resignation early Monday -- the latest change for the troubled automaker.

White House and GM sources had told CNN Sunday that Wagoner would resign as part of the federal government's bailout strategy for the troubled automaker.

"On Friday I was in Washington for a meeting with Administration officials. In the course of that meeting, they requested that I 'step aside' as CEO of GM, and so I have," Wagoner said in a statement posted to the GM Web site.

Obama knows how to grade failures and he knows how to fire them. This provides some hope for changes at Treasury. Read More......

Murdoch's MySpace falling behind

Poor Rupert. News Corp has seen falling revenues and his previously brilliant decisions are now being questioned. Now his social networking tool for teenagers is being left behind by the new annoying fad in social networking, Facebook.

Latest figures show that Murdoch is being beaten in the fight for social networks. MySpace suffered a drop in visitor traffic last month and is now less than half the size of its younger rival, Facebook. Three executives recently quit the one-time darling of the internet and there is speculation its co-founders will follow.

MySpace's loss of status as the cool place to be is an object lesson in the notoriously fickle internet, where today's cultural icon is tomorrow's passing fad. From humble origins in 2003, the site led the so-called "Web 2.0" revolution in which users could create their own profile pages and share content with friends. Murdoch's purchase of MySpace for $580m was seen as a masterstroke as membership continued to soar, with celebrities and politicians joining the craze.

But then came Facebook, founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, which soon snowballed with an older and apparently more affluent demographic to steal MySpace's crown. Gradually newspaper coverage of social networks switched from references to "MySpace and Facebook" to "Facebook and MySpace". The rise of Bebo also undermined MySpace's dominance, while Twitter is among the latest novelties eating into users' attention spans.

Read More......

Biodegradeable gum arrives in UK stores

Sidewalks of the world celebrate. The Guardian:

Chicza Rainforest Gum is manufactured in Mexico by Consorcio Chiclero - a consortium of 56 co-operatives employing some 2,000 chicleros (gum farmers) and their families. The workers extract natural gum from the sap of the chicle tree, which is then used to make the product.

Unlike conventional chewing gum, which contains petrochemicals, the organic chewing gum does not stick to clothing or pavements. And once disposed of, it will crumble to dust in about six weeks, dissolving harmlessly in water or being absorbed into the soil.

Chicza comes in lime, mint and spearmint flavours, and is going on sale at Waitrose for £1.39 a packet.

It is costly and difficult to remove conventional chewing gum from public places because of its chemical content, with cleaning typically costing between 10p and 30p per piece. It takes 17 weeks for chewing gum to be removed from the entire length of Oxford Street in London, for example, but only 10 days for it to be littered with gum again.

Read More......

Facebook Users to Flood Vatican with Condoms

Der Spiegel calls it a "prophylactic measure." Apparently they did this on Friday:

Now that anger is being expressed in an unusual way: An Italian group on the social networking Web site Facebook is urging people to post condoms to the pope in protest over his remarks. It expects 60,000 subscribers will send a condom to the Vatican on Friday.

The postal protest is "a peaceful provocation ... a reaction to the pope's absurd words on condoms," wrote the Italian organizers of the Facebook group, which now has more than 26,000 members. It said it represented young people "who are the closest and most interested in this kind of question."

Read More......