Nov 17 2008
Porn music?
I was scheduled to “do lunch” with a friend of mine this afternoon. I arrived at his downtown office a little early. CNN was on in the background as we passed time discussing the state of the world. During a lull in the conversation, we heard the anchors discussing the pending General Motors bankruptcy and a video that GM had posted to YouTube in defense of their case for a government bailout. We decided to have a look at the video in question.
As we were watching the GM video, one of his employees (a young fellow I would guess is probably in his mid twenties) walked by the open door. He stopped, looked into the office and asked “Are you guys watching porn in there?”
My friend, somewhat taken aback by this, inquired “Why would you ask such a thing?”
The young man replied “That sounds like porn music.”
I, of course, have no earthly clue what porn music sounds like (wipe that smirk off your face!) so I’ll ask you: Does the soundtrack to this General Motors video sound like porn music?
That was a sneaky, underhanded way to get you to watch the video, wasn’t it? But I’ll admit to being a bit perplexed by this question of whether or not the government should bail out the big three American auto manufacturers as they are the big banks and insurance companies. You see, I am a Democrat who believes in the free market. Businesses, like people, should stand or fall on their own merits. However, I think you have to concede that a bankruptcy on the part of any one (or more) of these three companies would be a big punch in the gut to an economy that probably cannot withstand many more punches.
I just don’t know which side of the fence to stand on here. Do you?
8 Responses to “Porn music?”
It does sound like porno music LOL!
no it doesn’t and don’t ask me how i would know.
it sounds like presentation music.
I reluctantly agreed with the bank bailout just because the world as we know probably would have collapsed if we didn’t but I just can’t agree with this auto industry bailout. I know the consequences will be scary and a lot of people will lose their jobs but I feel like in the end it will work itself out.
Instead of a straight bailout for the Big Three automakers, I’d like to see a bailout contingent on switching production over to 21st-century options like what the folks at Tesla Motors are doing.
If a boutique auto company can produce an all-electric roadster that gets 240+ miles per charge, and does 0-60 in 3.9 seconds, and can sell that car for $109,000 — imagine what could be done with the mass production abilities of the Big Three.
Oh, and that’s clearly NOT porno music. It’s more like downtempo chillout, if you ask me. Porno music generally serves us funk and jazz undertones. The requisites are wah-wah and chicken-scratch guitar sounds, fuzzed-out basslines and lazy flute and piano soloing.
@Mark Bruno : Thanks. It was good to hear from a connoisseur of porn music.
With regard to the rest of your comment, I think you’re pretty much in tune with what President-Elect Obama is proposing and hoping for. He has said that we should help the auto makers, but that we should not be writing them a blank check. He hasn’t really come out (to my knowledge) and stated the conditions upon which assistance should be based, but I think they are probably close to what you said.
Well, I would be totally against any bailout, except for the fact that if the American auto industry goes under, it would result in pretty much millions of jobs instantly lost, and most of the car-industry towns going under, too. So obviously, they need something — but not something that rewards the stupidity they’ve been practicing since the 1970s.
It seems to me that bailout money tagged with incentives for 100% conversion to hybrids or electrics would not only help auto makers, but also end up creating jobs. We also might want to think about handing out bigger tax breaks to consumers for buying American made hybrids or electric autos.
In the long term the companies have to become competitive. In the short term, if they collapse, we are officially in a new Great Depression with unemployment of over 10%. One economist estimated that when you count all the people who’ll become unemployed overall, the collapse would cost 15 million jobs. That would automatically qualify us for new Great Depression status, since that would put the unemployment rate somewhere between 15% and 20%.
So in the short term, we have to bail’em out. In the long term, we have to let them slowly collapse the way they’ve been doing for the past 30 years, or arrange mergers with more competitive automakers (I wonder whether Toyota would be interested in taking over GM? Hmm….).
- Badtux the Practical Penguin
FYI Ford closed a plant in Canada. Toyota bought out the closed building and equipment, are now making more cars and better cars and employ more people than Ford ever did.
Good businesses survive because they practice good business….what kind of business have the American auto makers been practicing?