BloggeRhythms

While the story of top automaker Volkswagen’s problems continue to emerge, the cause of the company’s woes indicate that the situation may be only the tip of a worldwide iceberg for countless other manufacturers and other types of products. 

That’s because the issue stems from a business not being able to meet governement requirements far too stringent, costly, or both, which eventually caused them to either cheat or risk losing billions in sales.

As far as the details go, Andreas Cremer @reuters.com writes that; “Volkswagen said previously about 11 million vehicles were fitted with software capable of cheating emissions tests, including 5 million at its VW brand, 2.1 million at luxury brand Audi, 1.2 million at Skoda and 1.8 million light commercial vehicles.”

The company’s new chief executive, Matthias Mueller, said VW will tell customers they’ll need to have diesel vehicles with illegal software refitted, which some analysts have said could cost more than $6.5 billion. The company said last week it would set aside 6.5 billion euros ($7.3 billion) to help cover the cost of the crisis.

VW's 10.1 million vehicle sales for the year ranked second behind Toyota’s 10.23 million sold in 2014. Thus, for VW, the 11 million affected auto’s equate to more than last year’s total sales.

At the same time, each day brings additional news of how significantly the lowering price of oil is harming Russia, Iran, Middle-East cartels and even hostile South American nations. Which means that, if the U.S. did all it could to keep increasing production, open the Keystone pipeline, and sell oil at continually decreasing prices, within a reasonably short time major enemies would be substantially curtailed, if not economically crippled completely.  

However, not only won’t those in the totally misguided administration apply every day common sense to the nation's advantage, for political purposes they'll  sit back and watch as enemy’s gain in financial strength and major international manufacturer’s face collapse. All based on environmental projections that haven’t been correct for the past eighteen years, and surely won’t be for at least the next 10 years due to planetary cooling caused by the Polar Vortex.   

On another matter, Chris Stirewalt comes across as a pretty bright guy, and his daily column  @foxnews.com, usually contains some accurate and timely information. However today he wrote a paragraph that makes little sense at all. As follows:

Chris wrote: “No doubt (Rand) Paul has been hurt by the merciless taunts of Donald Trump, but frontrunners in 2008 and 2012 did the same to Paul’s dad and it didn’t seem to hurt him with core voters. It may have even helped him by calling attention.”

So, which point applies here? Because careful reading implies that taunting by front-running candidates is very harmful, except for when it helps.

Which brings us to today’s update on Bill Clinton’s wife.  

 

According to WashEx via Chris Stirewalt: “Clinton Foundation officials courted a Russian billionaire to join a 2012 meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, seeking the advice of State Department staff about the invitation. The well-connected charity wanted to invite Viktor Vekselberg, founder of major Russian conglomerate Renova Group, to attend the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York City that year. Amitabh Desai, the foundation’s director of foreign policy, asked a top aide to Hillary Clinton if the State Department would be troubled by the invitation, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. 

 

“Vekselberg, a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been involved in multiple corruption investigations spawned from his far-reaching commercial activities in oil, aluminum and investments. Renova Group has donated as much as $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation, donor records show.”

So, here we have another case of Clinton coordinated extortion. Something that seems to arise on  a daily basis. In fact, it’s become so routine it’s becoming quite boring and therefore, has to be watched even closer. Because, if familiarity with the subject inures voters into becoming comfortable and complacent with that kind of behavior, it’s possible that some of them might even vote for Bill’s wife anyway.

Which leads to the continuing question: Joe Biden, Mayor Bloomberg, and Starbuck’s chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz, are you reading this? 

That’s it for today folks.

Adios