Articles by David Roberts

Bill Ford axes a third of his workers, hailed as hero

Despite TIME's fellatial cover story and Wall Street's predictably giddy reaction, it is not in fact good news that Ford Motor Co. is going to sack 30,000 employees. CEO Bill Ford doesn't deserve the lion's share of the blame for this, since the decline has been going on for decades, but it nonetheless seems a little macabre to treat him like a hero. And upper management at Ford deserves a hell of a lot more contempt and pink slips than they seem to be receiving.

Anyway, I was brewing up a long post about all this, but over on Sciencegate, Paul Tullis did it for me. So go read what he said. Particularly this:

Progress Report on energy and the environment

The Center for American Progress sends out a daily email, the Progress Report. Though obviously left-leaning, it's always fact-packed, and a great way to keep up on the day's news.

Progress Report is doing a series on the real state of the union, in advance of the President's speech.

Today's is on energy and the environment. Check it out -- lots of good stuff, familiar to Gristmill readers but nicely crammed into a few short paragraphs.

Al at Sundance

As we all know, Al Gore is at the Sundance film festival as we speak, promoting his new movie.

"But Dave," you're wondering, "what's he wearing?"

I can help: Here are some photos -- set one, set two -- of Al at Sundance. Yeah, that's him ... two over from James Van Der Beek.

(via The Hotline)

Sunday’s West Wing was rather ham-handed with its nuclear critique

I just watched West Wing from this past Sunday. It was, to say the least, overtly anti-nuclear.

(Incidentally, WW is a strange case, TV-wise. It started out great under Sorkin, then declined precipitously once he left, hitting its nadir in last year's season, the sixth. But this season it's come roaring back, with a presidential campaign inserting new blood and pulling the action outside the White House. It's been absolutely top-notch television lately. Naturally, NBC, noting that quality was on the rise, cancelled it. Bastards. Now where was I?)

I have mixed feelings about nuclear myself -- mostly bad -- but I gotta say WW was pretty ham-handed with it. The Republican candidate, Vinnick, had a few lines to make the pro-nuclear case, but on the whole everyone on the show took it as accepted fact that nuclear is not safe to have in populated areas.

They were also pretty ham-handed with the critique of Bush's handling of Katrina. From the moment something goes wrong, President Bartlett is in total control, even micromanaging the personnel and technical details of trying to repair the nuke facility. He asks if enough buses are available to evacuate the area (cough) and prompted to appoint a czar to coordinate the government agencies, says, "You're looking at him" (cough). A little overboard.