Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Barack Obama and Sarah Palin Make a Baby
Thanks to a new web promo for Volkswagen minivans, we can see what little America Obama-Palin would look like. Talk about working across the aisle. Anyone care to do a McCain-Biden mixup?
Michigan’s Digital Production Divide
All this looks like small beer compared to the meltdown here on Wall Street this month, but I was back in Michigan over Labor Day and found myself thinking the state’s huge production incentives program isn’t being fully utilized.
Up North, things are particularly bleak. In the town where my parents stay, Boyne City, 95 people started Labor Day weekend with a pink slip, as LexaMar, one of the biggest corporations in the town of 3500 laid them off on Friday. It made small talk everywhere, downtown, strolling past the classic cars on display, at the police-sponsored drag race at the city airstrip, another midsized manufacturer slicing off jobs as the economy expels another ragged breath.
The one point of light in a state with its biggest industry, automobiles, breaking down, is film production. It’s exceptionally cheap to shoot anything in Michigan right now, and that has ushered in the closest thing to a business renaissance the region has seen in years, at least the latest Band-Aid to create an economic buffer around the doomed car business, like Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson’s Automation Alley plan that began about a decade ago.
Read more about Michigan's Film Incentives and digital production
Ain’t no politics like Detroit politics..
…cause in Detroit politics when you talk mess to the mayor, you get canned.
This came in over the email transom today from a friend of a friend…I haven’t asked around to follow up yet, but comes through a pretty reliable source and is interesting either way.
Apparently, this gentleman, who worked in politics, encountered scandal-collecting Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in Reagan National in D.C. and had some words with hizzoner. Read on.
A Super Tuesday Primer
Don’t listen to those public endorsements–check this handy guide to see who donated what to which candidate before you make your Super Tuesday choice.
In the great American political tradition of voting according to the opinions of famous people who know nothing about you and most likely have a terminal disconnect with your entire paradigm, I proudly present a terribly Photoshopped gleaning from about a half an hour putzing around at this campaign donation tracker. Of course, these aren’t actual endorsements, but really they’re better, and maybe offer some real insight into politics if you squint really hard. The celeb nominations are clearly partly motivated by hobnobbing (want that chat with Barack? It’ll cost you at the fundraiser–incidentally Barry Manilow donated to EVERYBODY, I just threw his Paul contrib. up to shore up support for Dr. Ron), but the few normal folks, in this case, self-identified as janitors, feel utterly sincere. Seriously, the guy cleaning up at El Azteco II donating $459 to Ron Paul? I’ve been to the original El Azteco, in East Lansing. Friends used to sling frijoles there in college. You can practically see Mr. Darling licking the envelope after saving up tips for a month.


