G.M. Closing 4 Plants in Shift From Trucks Toward Cars

Responding to a consumer shift to more fuel-efficient vehicles, General Motors said Tuesday that it would stop making pickup trucks and big S.U.V.s at four North American assembly plants and would consider selling its Hummer brand.

dear GM: did you think the price of gas was going to go down in the near future? what were you waiting for?

and with a tear in my eye:
Officials: Clinton will concede delegate race to Obama

is this all over yet? wake me up in november.

in other clinton news, this slate piece is probably the dumbest thing i’ve read in a good while.

Hillary and the City: Is Sex and the City our culture’s consolation prize to Hillary Clinton’s supporters?

Does the movie version of Sex and the City owe its success to the failure of Hillary Clinton’s campaign?
…
By weird coincidence, during the same weekend when Sex and the City demonstrated women’s unprecedented consumer clout at the multiplex, Hillary Clinton’s campaign developed its death rattle.
…
By this past weekend, however, it was becoming clear to all but the most delusional Hillary supporters that the game was up. Sisterhood was powerful, but in this case it wouldn’t prevail. That realization left a lot of white women all dolled up with nowhere to go. And so … they went to the movies.

what?! tim noah admits the causation argument is “somewhat glib” (somewhat?!), but basically proves by the end that THIS ARTICLE HAS NO POINT. unless it is to find some contrived reason to make fun of both clinton and sex and the city, all in one fell swoop. white women like hillary! white women like sex and the city! must find a connection beyond coincidental timing.

and slate’s relevance stock continues to fall …

thursday i went to an education blogger summit — there’s nothing much to report except the food was abundant and fabulously good, and i really wanted to run this photo of newtsy.

i idiotically didn’t bring my laptop (to a blogger conference? (wtf, skunk), and i take horrible notes by hand, so here i crib some quotes from other, more effective bloggers.

newt called u.s. public schools a “monopoly of failure,” and quipped, “Given the slow pace of adoption by education bureaucracies, laptop computers will have to come down to $11 before they’re adopted by the Detroit school system.”

his idea to fix it all? clear out the preexisting bureaucracy (just fire EVERYBODY), and replace with some capitalism-esque direct-incentive system. i’m oversimplifying, but so was he. fair game.

newt was quite the charmer, which i assume helps cover up the shades of crazy in his ideas. he’s right that things are terribly broken, but getting rid of the department of education (true story) seems ill-advised. and why do you gotta always bring detroit in all this? don’t we have enough problems? have mercy.

i’m not really interested in debating the implications of obama calling a detroit (woot woot) television reporter “sweetie” (i think it’s a political nonstarter, except for maybe this), but dismissing the whole thing as media hysteria isn’t fair either. since i figured someone else has probably already better articulated my general feeling of “this ain’t right,” i scoured the interwebs for the best defense of “why the sweetie thing is sort of a big deal.”

susan ager from the detroit free press likens his sweetie “bad habit” (his words) to his now-defeated smoking addiction.

This guy can give up nicotine but not silly nicknames for women he doesn’t know? …
You’ve got to wonder where a 46-year-old Harvard-educated attorney picked up such a bad habit and why he has not yet set it aside.

rebecca traister from salon argues it best though. i basically copy/pasted the entire thing, but you should read it yourself anyway.

Surely many women have enjoyed being called sweetie by someone they care about, just as many women have enjoyed being called “honey” or “babe.”

But that does not mean that those same women would enjoy being called any of those things by a presidential candidate, especially one they’d not met before, especially in response to a question about the economic future of the autoworkers, and especially when the word is a fundamental part of a larger professional brushoff.

Yes, there are places in the country where “sweetie” is used to address strangers of both sexes; a waitress, for instance, might call both male and female customers “sweetie,” as a conversational address, rather than an indication of personal familiarity. But that’s pretty clearly not what was happening at the Chrysler plant, in part because the waitress doesn’t often have a power dynamic with her customers that resembles the relationship between a male presidential candidate and a female reporter.

Is it the be all end all? No. Is it the most sexist thing a man could say to a woman? Certainly not.

But one of the odd qualities about the questions applied to this story has been the focus on whether Obama’s intentions were premeditated, or stranger still, malevolent. Surely they were neither. As Goldberg said, the senator likely “meant … no disrespect.” Obama is an excellent candidate on women’s issues, and has won the often controversial support of feminists who might otherwise have fallen in behind Hillary Clinton. But having good intentions, and good policies, does not mean that anyone is incapable of offense, disrespect or condescension.

So it is troubling that ABC’s report was headlined “Obama’s Sweetie: Spontaneous or Sexist?” and “Good Morning America’s” “workplace contributor” Tory Johnson averred that anyone offended by someone’s use of “sweetie” should speak up but “not assume that their intentions are bad.” Johnson went on to warm of the dangers of “policing spontaneity … we should let people be themselves.”

These kinds of arguments suggest that words cannot be both spontaneous and sexist, as they often are. … Also troubling is the perception that “sexist” must equal “ill-willed” if it is to be deemed offensive. … But just because a word is not meant as an offense, does not mean that it isn’t diminishing, paternalistic and disrespectful.

traister also takes issue with the dismissive response that some people (and more frustratingly, women) have had to the whole thing.

As tempting as it is to project the cool-girl post-feminist attitude of not caring at all, it’s also important to note that just because a small exchange doesn’t mean everything, we don’t have to pretend that it doesn’t mean anything.

The point is not that Obama should have, or could have, known Agar’s name. It’s that had her name been Alan, Tom or John, he would not have called her “sweetie.” That is true. It may not be evil or intentional or even that big of a deal. But it is fundamental and true. And what it tells us, in a small way, is that even in the year in which Obama’s most serious competition has come from a woman running for what has historically been a man’s job, gender still matters.

the ending to traister’s argument was a little anticlimactic (nothing new), but it’s worth repeating because it’s one of those things that really gets me going.
and, if by some act of god, you haven’t seen the video yet …

1. you become the mayor.
2. you cheat on your hot wife (left) to have an affair with your chief of staff.
3. you pay off bodyguards to cover it up.
4. in unrelated shadiness, you fire someone, but keep it all hush hush.
5. you voluminously text sexy messages with aforementioned chief of staff, along with proof that you perjured yourself — but do it with city electronics. all that convo gets recorded in the process.
6. the local newspaper nails your ass with a career-ending exposé using those not-so-secret text messages.
7. like a real man, you don’t resign (spitzer who?)
8. you claim racism.
9. to really piss everyone off, you enact “policy to limit access to the city’s text messages.”
10. you remain mayor long enough for people to forget why you were so crappy.
11. you become the stuff of legend.

UPDATE (5/19): for more on kwame’s legacy, check out the recently departed barber college, which likely was a subconscious inspiration.

actually, she spoke years ago, but the adoring public just got access to lots more text messages. and i just spent a good hour of my life reading through 18 pages of court documents.

most of the texts are of the “I love you so much” variety (boring, and kind of gross in a not-over-high-school sort of way), but there are highlights. the documents start off talking about kwame and co.’s unseemly political machinations, but no one really cares about that. onto the juicy stuff (starting on page 9, for you following along at home), from most disgusting to saddest:

beatty: “i really wanted to give you some good head this morning and i didn’t know how to ask you to let me do it. i wanted to since last friday when you asked me at the club”

kilpatrick: damn. i just got out of the shower and looked at my two way. next time, just tell me to sit down, shut up and do your thing! i’m fucked up now!

beatty: i know, i’m sorry. i have done that before and i will do it again. i just didn’t want you to be turned off if you weren’t in the mood.

he asked at the club? she’s done it before? oral sex? or in a public place? these text messages need way more clarity. also, does T9 allow you to write “fucked?” i thought it screened out naughty words.

then you have this message sent from husband to cheating wife:

“how is your day? it’s amazing how you can go out of town, come back refreshed and i immediately piss you off … you had an attitude untill KK came over. then you were smiling. wish you smiled at me like that”

who knows if he did anything to drive this woman away, but at the moment of this text message, you can’t help feeling for him.

at #6 of the “Top 10 Most Useless Jerseys“:

6. Charles Rogers/Mike Williams, Detroit Lions

There’s not much I can say here that hasn’t been said. Both of these high profile wide receivers were drafted early and pretty much did nothing, ever. On one end of the spectrum, there was the injury plagued Rogers, who wasn’t able to bounce back from consecutive season-ending collarbone injuries. And, of course, there’s Williams, who been unable to bounce back from eating too much.

i personally think it’s perfectly acceptable to still wear this charles rogers jersey–which i bought for $15 at TJ maxx midway through his last season.

stay tuned for some rogers action in the CFL? maybe?

Police: Woman lived with dead sister for 1-3 years
Detroit authorities made a gruesome discovery north of Hamtramck tonight. The partially mummified body of a woman was found lying on the kitchen floor about 9:30 p.m. in the 18000 block of Buffalo Street, Detroit Police said.

The woman’s sister was in the home, and police believe she has been living in the house with the body for one to three years, the approximate time it takes for a body to decompose to that extent.
The woman’s body had been at least partially covered with newspapers. Police believe a cat and dog living in the house had eaten some of the remains.

Dozens of dogs and cats, plus a horse, removed from filth
Police rescued more than 60 dogs and puppies, a dozen cats and a horse from the backyard of a Sterling Heights home this afternoon after finding sick, injured animals with lifeless limbs, swollen eyes, open sores, infections and matted hair.

The dogs, some of which may lose their vision because of ulcers in their eyes, were confined to feces-steeped wire cages and surrounded by flies, mice and rats at Lornich Kennels at Mound and 15 Mile. Many of the cats suffered from upper respiratory infections, veterinarians at the scene said. The horse was skinny and filthy.
…
One chihuahua with red, swollen feet was caked in feces and slumped over, his head in a dirty food dish. He struggled to stand up and lift his head when a rescuer approached the cage.

i don’t even like animals and this is terrible. plus it’s 10 miles from my house. i didn’t know we had horses for sale in the suburbs.

miss michigan won the miss america competition (yes, the one with the talent competition), and she is pretty hot.

but this woman is way too tan to be from michigan. it’s january, people.

also, i am absolutely loving this kwame kilpatrick text message scandal. do plan on carrying on an affair with your chief of staff? don’t send a shitton of text messages detailing every room where you’ve done the deed (such as room 311 at the residence inn in madison heights, of all places). i was looking for more hilarious transcripts, but this will have to do

KK: I’m at Laker game. The security doesn’t believe I’m mayor. [not anymore!] Mike is pulling out all kind of shirt to prove it.
CB: And, did you miss me, sexually? [no, just your stunning intellect.]
KK: Hell yeah! You couldn’t tell. I want some more. Don’t sleep! [kwame's hungry ...]

thanks jesse, for the research help.