Don't worry: likelihood of two ballistic-missle submarines colliding is slim

Military experts in Britain and France told Pulitzer prize-winning NYT correspondent John F. Burns the chance of a collision of submarines carrying nuclear-weapons is "a million to one."

Boy, lucky the odds aren't, say, 999,999 to one or there would be crashes every other day.

Why do the experts always say things like that after, the odds are just met? In this case, two submarines carrying nuclear weapons, one British, the other French, actually did collide in the middle of the Atlantic? Or somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. A terrific reporter like Burns wouldn't leave it there, however, noting in his report:

"But military experts said the episode raised troubling questions about the safety of ballistic-missle submarines patrolling the ocean while hiding their whereabouts even from NATO allies."

I'll say.

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GM and their retired workforce

The latest forecasts look dire, I know: GM will have to cut 47,000 jobs.

Like everybody else, that recent headline on the Toronto Star website gives me chills. The only thing that isn't horrible about the story is  there's no mention of cutting retiree benefits in this latest leak about the contents of GM's economic plan for the Obama administration.

Probably that shoe will drop too.

To penalize retired workers who laboured for years - sometimes for the better part of a lifetime - for a company, only to have their benefits slashed when they are older and less able to fight back is  unconscionable. In weekend reports about GM's pending plan, officials close to the talks suggested just such cuts are in the works (as well as slashing jobs).

We'll know soon enough exactly what GM is proposing, but hitting seniors is the lowest of the low - especially when I doubt all the best perks will be taken from executives at the top of the GM food chain. After all, they only sidelined their private jets after everybody started talking about how Big 3 corporate types flew them to Washington to plead with Congress for a bailout. Tacky, tacky.

(BTW, I don't really think the best solution for the Big Three would be to euthanize their retired work force as a recent Political Decoder  bit of satire suggested. I must say it was a shock to see some readers took it literally. Wouldn't that make me a rather nasty piece of work?)