Hammer Mill Days

Sing along with me (to the tune of Jingle Bells)... Oooooh! Christmas freak, Christmas freak, flying through the sun! Burn your charges to a crisp, your work is almost done... Oh! Hi, folks. Just celebrating the holiday the best way we know how... gasping for breath as our maniac pilot drives our sub-standard spacecraft through the center of a blue-hot star. Sure, I know what you're thinking - that's not the kind of Christmas I remember, right? Not the kind you used to know back home in Sheboygan. Well, I'm with you on that, as it happens. I just mean that we're celebrating as best we can under the circumstances... specifically, those of flying headlong through a burning sun. We try to think of it as a slightly hotter version of "'over the river and through the woods" ... though Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is quick to remind me that that is, in fact, a Thanksgiving song, and Thanksgiving was a month ago. Right again, Marvin. Where would we be wi...

Hi again, campers. Back to the Obama to-do list. Since the guy's on vacation, I imagine he might even be able to find the time to read this one. Pull it up on your blackberry while you're sitting on the beach. That's http://www.hammermilldays.com/ , Mr. President-Elect. There's a good chap. This week, domestic policy. Auto bailout. This is indeed a miserable business. The Bush administration has made such a muddle of the economy that it actually makes some of his other monumental failures pale in comparison. And yet when he came forward with the terms of his proposal, he did so in a somewhat self-righteous way, as if to lecture the industry on its failings. There are plenty of failures to take note of, that's for sure... but Bush is in no position to criticize, quite frankly. (It's a bit like Bernie Madoff giving advice on prudent investing.) What is particularly maddening is his focus on the auto workers. In what appears an attempt to throw his fellow Herbert ...