Stellantis

Driving a Stellantis?

   “Good morning neighbor.  What do you think of my new Stellantis?”  You children out there will soon be asking that question.  As a person having The Wisdom of The Aged, you will never hear that question pass my lips.  My first car was a 1940 Mercury.  Most of you reading this think of mercury as the red stuff in a thermometer.  Some have never heard of a thermometer.  Times change, but in this lifetime I will not own a Stellantis (unless someone purchases it for me when I am in assisted living).  “Never say never.”

   So, what the hell is Stellantis?  It sounds like a civilization from the past, or a name for a new lizard like monster starring in a Japanese block buster film (an AI creation).  But no, it is the name of a new conglomeration of automotive corporate enterprises.  What great automobiles have joined it, becoming icons of the past?  Abarth (no one ever heard of them anyway), Alfa Romeo (story to follow), Chrysler (I have a 2006 PT Cruiser now), Citroen (ugliest car in history), Dodge, DS Automobiles (never heard of them either), FIAT (fix it again Tony), Jeep (!), Lancia, Maserati, Opel, Peugeot, Ram (Dodge), Vauxhall.  Many of these iconic names will not be missed, but many are an important part of our shared heritage.  Are you ready to attend a NASCAR race and root for Stellantis?  My friend, I am not.

   My story of Alpha Romero was that my first love went to Berkley and dated (later married) a guy that drove an Alpha.  Cars were not expensive then so I went out and bought a used Alpha Spider, thinking “it was the car.”  Cars were important to me at the time so I wrongly assumed that they were equally important to her.  I obviously still have this illusion and that explains this blog post.

   Corporate mergers always mean less competition, more profit and higher costs to the public.  They are an integral part of The Free Market System that we all love and respect.  Medicare presently pays one hundred and ninety-five thousand dollars a year for my meds to AbbVie, thanks to our Free Market Economy (see Golden Goose Economics elsewhere in this blog).

   The public relations justification for Stellantis is concentration of transportation development based in renewable energy (sun power) versus fossil (dinosaur) fuel.   That sounds like a good idea, but read the fine print.  All corporate action is motivated by profit, not public good.

  Don’t let Stellantis take away your identity.

Cheers, Old Buz, a Ram (Dodge Truck) lover

Iambloggerbuz.blogspot.com

“Beware of corporations bearing gifts.” – Tros, the Founder of Troy, 3,000 BC

You Tomorrow

 Forty years ago I was waiting at a crosswalk for an elderly man to struggle across the  street.  There were a couple of young men, in their thirties, laughing it up in the car next to me and wanting me to join in the gayety at the elderly man's expense.  I simply said to them, "That's you tomorrow."  It stopped their laughter.  I suspect that most of you are under sixty years of age and might not fully understand the humor in these quotes, but keep them around for tomorrow.

Wisdom of The Aged:

"To get back to my youth I would do anything in the world, except exercise, get up early, or be respectable."

Oscar Wilde

 

"The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for."

 Will Rogers

 

"We must recognize that, as we grow older, we become like old cars –more and more repairs and replacements are necessary."

 C.S. Lewis

 

"Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you are aboard there is nothing you can do about it."

Golda Meir

 

"I’m so old that my blood type is discontinued." 

Bill Dane

 

"The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.

Mark Twain

 

"Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes, age just shows up all by itself."

Tom Wilson

 

 "Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your retirement home."

Phyllis Diller

 

"I don’t plan to grow old gracefully. I plan to have face-lifts until my ears meet."

Rita Rudner

 

"I’m at that age where my back goes out more than I do."

 Phyllis Diller

 

"Nice to be here? At my age, it’s nice to be anywhere." 

 George Burns

 

"Don't let aging get you down. It's too hard to get backup" 

John Wagner

 

"First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down."

 Leo Rosenberg

 

“Aging seems to be the only available way to live a long life.” 

 Kitty O’Neill Collins

 

“Old people shouldn’t eat health foods. They need all the preservatives they can get.” 

 Robert Orben

 

"It’s important to have a twinkle in your wrinkle." 

Unknown

 

"At my age, flowers scare me." 

George Burns

 

“I have successfully completed the thirty-year transition from wanting to stay up late to just wanting to go to bed."

 Unknown

 

"At age 20, we worry about what others think of us… at age 40, we don’t care what they think of us… at age 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking of us at all."

Ann Landers

 

"When I was young, I was called a rugged individualist. 

When I was in my fifties, I was considered eccentric. 

Here I am doing and saying the same things I did then, and I’m labeled senile."

George Burns

 

"I complain that the years fly past, but then I look in a mirror and see that very few of them actually got past."

 Robert Brault

 

"The important thing to remember is that I’m probably going to forget."

 Unknown

 

"As you get older three things happen. The first is your memory goes, and I can't remember the other two."

Sir Norman Wisdom

 

“It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.”

Andy Rooney

 

“Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest.”

 Larry Lorenzon

 

“The older I get, the better I used to be.” 

Lee Trevino

 

"You know you’re getting old when you can pinch an inch on your forehead."

John Mendoza

 

"I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me—they’re cramming for their final exam."

 George Carlin

 

"I don’t feel old. I don’t feel anything until noon. Then it’s time for my nap."

Bob Hope

 

"I’m 59 and people call me middle-aged. How many 118-year-old men do you know?"

Barry Cryer

 

"I don't do alcohol anymore—I get the same effect just standing up fast."

 Anonymous

 

“By the time you’re 80 years old you’ve learned everything.  Then, you only have to remember it.”

George Burns

 

“Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.” 

 Maurice Chevalier

 

"Getting older. I used to be able to run a 4-minute mile, bench press 380pounds, and tell the truth."

Conan O’Brien

 

"I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don’t have to."

 Albert Einstein

 

"Grand children don’t make a man feel old, it’s the knowledge that he’s married to a grandmother that does."

J. Norman Collie

 

"You know you are getting old when everything hurts, and what doesn’t hurt doesn’t work."

 Hy Gardner

 

"When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old."

 Mark Twain

 

"You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks."

Joel Plaskett

 

"There’s one advantage to being 102, there’s no peer pressure."

Dennis Wolfberg

 

"I've never known a person who lives to be 110 who is remarkable for anything else."

Josh Billings

 

"At my age ‘getting lucky’ means walking into a room and remembering what I came in for."

Unknown

 

"Old age is when you resent the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated because there are fewer articles to read."

 George Burns

 

"The idea is to die young as late as possible." 

 Ashley Montagu

 

“You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.”

George Burns

 

"People ask me what I’d most appreciate getting for my eighty-seventh birthday. I tell them, a paternity suit."

George Burns  

 

"Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician." 

Anonymous

Cheers, Old Buz (qualified @ age 82)         08/21/2023

"If you find little humor in life, you are missing most of it." - Old Buz

UPS, AI & U

 UPS, AI & U

   “United Parcel Service, Artificial Intelligence and You”  Yesterday I was treated to a glimpse of this future reality.  A package was delivered intended for me at 717 on my street, rather than my address of 617 (a driver human error).  The address on the package was 617 (correct).  The package was clearly marked, “SIGNATURE REQUIRED”.  This is probably the case, since Medicare is being charged fifteen Thousand dollars for each monthly delivery of the drugs.  As is standard UPS delivery procedure, the driver did not ring the bell, received no signature. used his or her own signature, laid the package on the porch and was on their way.  My neighbor later picked up the package ($15,000 in drugs), thought it was a newspaper and was about to discard it, when she noticed it was not addressed to her, but was addressed to me, a hundred numbers down the street.  She was nice enough to call me and I went down the street to pick up the package.

   I called UPS customer service at 1-800-742-5877 to report the incident and was greeted by a robot (AI) that asked several questions, not allowing me to describe the transaction, but unwilling to transfer me to a human.  I was told to go to a web site, also with no human contact or comprehension.  On the fourth attempt to get past the robot recording I was able to travel the maze and be transferred to a human.  She was in the Orient and English was her second language, so we were able to communicate, but not efficiently.  This is another customer assistance program, designed to save money, not serve the public.  The young woman informed me that I had signed for the package at 12:30.  So, had my neighbor tossed the $15,000 package in her trash, according to UPS records, I had signed for receiving it and was responsible for the loss.  When UPS was founded the “S” stood for service.  That was a long time ago.  As recently as the 1970’s I dealt with UPS as a customer and was treated as one.  Today the “customer” is a single digit profit source and is dealt with by a machine and treated as less than a machine.

   Was I given the opportunity yesterday to get a glimpse into the future, or was I merely made aware of the present.  UPS is aware that the drivers are forging delivery signatures.  They are willfully blind to it.  Morality and customer care is not an issue.  It saves the corporation time and money and time is money.  Artificial Intelligence is replacing human interaction.  This may not be good for humanity, but it is certainly good in the short term for CEO’s.

Cheers, Old Buz          08/18/2023

Iambloggerbuz.blogspot.com

CEOs: “Camel riders in route to attempt passage through the eye of a needle.”       – Old Buz

It's about balance

 

Balance

   The bodies of The Universe move through time and space relying on balance.  Our planet travels about our sun with an orbit guided by a balance of gravity and inertia.  Without that balance our planet Earth would either be pulled into the sun or be flung out into space.  Humans have little or nothing to do with maintaining that balance and it is a good thing.  We live in an atmosphere that supplies us with a balance of carbon and oxygen and most would agree that we can and do affect that balance.  Animals take in oxygen and exhaust carbon, while green plants take in carbon and exhaust oxygen.  This might be an oversimplification, but the basic theory is correct.    

   So balance is a basic of long term survival.  Most would agree that what the atmosphere is composed of is the major factor in climate change.  We see that an abundance of tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, droughts and forest fires are tied to climate change due to an overbalance of carbon in our atmosphere.  We humans are on the carbon team.  We take in oxygen and exhaust carbon.  We heat our homes, fuel our cars, cool our homes and run our industries primarily by burning fossil fuel.  Burning fossil fuel uses oxygen and produces carbon.  Our prime energy source needs to shift to renewables and it can’t happen too soon.  We humans reproduce with little or no concern for overpopulation.

   The oil and coal industries concern themselves primarily with quarterly profits, not long term survival.  This is pretty much true of any corporation.  So you cannot reliably place your faith solely in the free market.  It needs some intelligent guidance.  Our gas and oil companies are actually a utility and should be owned and operated in that design.  More and more in our nation, the few benefit from the many (our increasing wealth gap). When government is controlled by the wealthy, as ours presently is, the nation suffers.  Healthcare costs become prohibitive.  Higher education becomes affordable only to the wealthy.  Housing costs go out of reach for the general public. 

   A good example of pure income driven action is the cutting down of the rain forest of South America.  Timber is a profitable industry as is corporate farming and those are powerful market driven excuses used to cut down the forest.  The problem is that forest is a major balancing force for our planet keeping the atmosphere’s oxygen/carbon ratio in line.  What is a solution to the problem?  You take our eight hundred billion dollar annual military budget (larger than the next ten nations combined) and cut it back to five hundred billion (still larger than the next five nations combined).  Take that three hundred billion annually you just saved and proceed to buy back the rain forest.  Replant the forest.  Let the world pay annual fees (for maintenance plus a profit) to the nations that house the forest for the oxygen produced.  When you have restored the rain forest start building desalinization plants to cure the drought in the Southwest and plant forests there on land owned by the government (in the case of Arizona it is 80% of the land).  Go after the cost of higher education next.  Start using a nation of the people, by the people … for the people.

Cheers, Old Buz          08/09/2023

Iambloggerbuz.blogspot.com

 

“With deeper understanding comes simplicity.” – Old Buz

"That's The Way It Is!"

 

“That’s The Way It Is!”

   When stupidity is accepted as unquestioned reality, we have a problem.  I’m sorry but when the present ineffective rules of government are accepted as unalterable reality we are being cowed.  “That’s the way it is Buz, accept it.”  It isn’t working, but accept it.  No, I intend to praise the positive, but rail against what doesn’t work.  And, to me, more and more of government isn’t working.  Are we being cowed?

   When a single member of The US Senate can hold up the ceremonial promotion of our military leadership, it is no longer just a harmless senate show.  It is very real.  By what insane rule of the Senate, is one member given the ultimate control of the other 99?  Is it just the way it is?  Moo.

   When over seventy percent of our nation’s citizens would like to see better regulation of the tools of death, can a majority leader of the Senate or the House not allow a motion of this intent to the floor for discussion and vote?  Well, yes he or she can.  It’s the rule.  We don’t have the right to see our children and ourselves safe from mass murder.  It’s the rule.  Moo.

   Medicare is being charged one hundred and ninety five thousand dollars a year for a lifesaving drug, by Abbvie Pharmaceuticals, to keep me and a couple hundred thousand others alive (that is, $195K/per year/per patient).   The justification for the pricing is that the company paid twenty one billion dollars for the government enforced patent protection.  Paid, not to the government, but to the previous owner of those rights.  The original developer of the drug, Celera Pharmaceuticals, sold the patent rights for three million dollars.  So, through the bidding up of the patent rights price, through time and transactions, the cost of the drug has been increased by a factor of seven thousand times (not with a test tube & a microscope but with a pen).  Well, that’s the way it is.  Moo.

   When our annual military budget is greater than the next ten militaries in the world combined, our government adds twenty to thirty billion per year with a bipartisan vote of eighty to ninety per cent of our representatives for the increase.  Could we use some of these nearly trillion dollars annually for climate change defense, or universal healthcare, or education or infrastructure?  Well, that’s the way it is.  Not a hell of a lot we can do about it.  Moo.

   When your government tells you that they are burying the evidence from the Kennedy assassination in the archives for fifty years (to be increased by another twenty-five years, before the release) is it just the way it is?  When we carefully observe the three buildings falling to the ground on 9/11 and our government tells us that no demolition was involved, is that really the way it was?  (I don’t wish to insult cattle here.)  Cluck, cluck.

   Are we as a nation being cowed into accepting the absurd by: “It’s the law?”  “It’s the way it has always been.”  “That’s the way we (Democrats or Republicans) see it.”  “I’m only one person.  What can I do?”  Moo.

   When women were not allowed to vote, “It’s the law” wasn’t an adequate answer.  Neither did that answer suffice when our nation turned a blind eye to slavery.  When one senator can stop the promotion of hundreds of military officers, “It’s a rule in our senate” isn’t an adequate position.  When one of the most important trials in the history of our nation is about to take place, don’t tell me there are no television cameras allowed in a federal courtroom.  It is my country.  I am a citizen.  Do not treat me like a mushroom.  I will see.  I will speak my mind.  Do not sluff me off with, “That’s the way it is.”  Put on your God Damn cape and take to the sky.  Grr.

Cheers, Old Buz      8/5/2023

Iambloggerbuz.blogspot.com

“All living things base their conscious actions on their knowledge*. The difference in their effectiveness is the quality of their knowledge and their skill.” – Old Buz

*”The essence of knowledge is an ongoing search for accurate awareness”

TV or Not TV?

 

TV or Not TV?

   That is the question.  Whether to watch the trial of a former President tried, in real time, or receive the editorial opinion of a biased reporter.  That is the choice.  The choice will not be made by you, the citizens of The United States, but by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a man who leads a small group of Supreme Justices, who have no firm legal guidelines and like it that way.  The right to receiving bribery is embraced by our Supreme Court.

   What would be the advantage of giving each citizen of our nation the opportunity of witnessing firsthand the criminal trial of an ex-president of The United States?  It would move the nation toward fact driven public opinion.  Public opinion today is largely driven by partisan news sources.  We have the technical ability, with TV coverage, to offer reality rather than opinion of a historic event.  This TV coverage would not be magic.  We would still watch the coverage through our own bias, but at least the incoming data would be true.   

   I watch Left Wing news (MSNBC & CNN).  I find their political propaganda less insulting to my intelligence than the Right Wing (Fox) propaganda.  The spin coverage by either source will not be enlightening.  Long ago we were able to watch The Watergate Hearings.   In fairness, it was not a trial, but a legislative hearing.   They were re-broadcast in the evening, so that working people could witness them.  That was a better day.  Moving downward we experienced the evidence from the Kennedy Assassination being locked in the archives for 50 years.  As folks started to live longer, another 25 years were added.  The time for the full release of the events of the assassination of John Kennedy … is never!  Folks who tried to understand that event are called Conspiracy Theorists.  To me, it was the birth of The Gullible Nation.  Seventy-five years in the archives (and then some) equals no cameras in the courtroom.

   We live in a world now where a woman could vote for a man who would say that if a woman is attractive to him he, as a star, would just grab her by the pussy.  Or, “I wouldn’t rape her.  She isn’t my type.”  Woe unto those women who are his type.  We are a nation of political loyalists,  a nation of the Willfully Blind.  But we can claw our way back up the slippery slide.  We can demand to see the greatest event in our nation’s history, un-politicized.   Televise the trial in its entirety.  Let truth back into freedom.

   And what of the argument for not televising the trial?  Certainly there must be one.  A MAGA Republican (a fool) might argue that the nation would be better served with politicized knowledge only.  “The loyalists follow the under tail scent of the lemmings in front of them.”   Or that this man who places his name in large letters on his aircraft, or sleeps with porn stars while his wife delivers his child is entitled to his privacy.  This man did not enter the political arena with privacy in mind.   I apologize.  I am presenting an ad homonym argument against the man, not the precedent.  “Any action taken against the public good needs to be exposed without bias to the public.”  Let unedited television ring.

Cheers, Old Buz          8/03/2023

“If you have nothing to hide … you have nothing to hide.” – Old Buz

 

P.S. I am obviously a loyalist, but I am lucky enough to be right on this particular issue.  Truth and knowledge should not be a political hurdle.