Umm, No, subby. It's right in the headline:

Twinkies will keep coming despite bankruptcy

It's chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy, mostly mismanaged pension debt and trying to break union contracts for above going wages.

Pathetic. With the rise of the chair-laden internet generation these guys ought to have made the Fortune 500 easy.

Well then perhaps now would be a good time to brush up.

Here's a good place to start.

Nuclear War Survival Skills

Also, Tunnel Snakes rule!

Too busy playing Skyrim? Is Fallout not getting any love anymore?

Sadly, Twinkie the Kid is back doing gay porn, just to pay the bills.

Our country is in hock 300 years into the future. Won't be long before we can't survive a regular winter.

I have my winter garden in and can eat my llamas if I get hungry enuf...

Wait, it's the death of Twinkies!? Say it's not so!!!

deeply relieved

Lt. Cheese Weasel: [www.rustylime.com image 468x282]

Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?

'Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.'

That some strange love right there.

Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.

I liked how in "The Day After" nuclear winter lasts only about 10 minutes.

Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.

If you saw the movie "Threads", we are pretty much farked during a long nuclear winter.

Mr. President, we must not allow a Twinkie gap.

rjakobi: Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.

Back in early November, one of the funniest image macro mash-ups I saw said:

"Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for an arrow in the knee."

Not so funny now, though...

It's largely that the blue-collar-but-proud people who were invested in brand names ("I'm not poor... Choosy Moms Choose Jif") are now the near-the-margins working poor. Who feed their families the same crap, basically, but buy the Walmart Great Value or Aldi versions. Made in the same factories mostly, but with much lower margins for Hostess and similar companies.

Hey after playing fallout I've come to know I'll never run out of cigarettes so I'm set.

/after a week or two they taste stale...imagine 200 years...blech!
//yah yah, not like they taste 'good' even when fresh

Lawnchair: It's largely that the blue-collar-but-proud people who were invested in brand names ("I'm not poor... Choosy Moms Choose Jif") are now the near-the-margins working poor. Who feed their families the same crap, basically, but buy the Walmart Great Value or Aldi versions. Made in the same factories mostly, but with much lower margins for Hostess and similar companies.

No, it's largely that unions ruin everything. A large chunk of the debt Hostess has is toward pensions. From the article:

The Bakery & Confectionary Union & Industry International Pension Fund has the largest claim, of $994 million.
The next largest claim, of about $12 million, is from Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Plan.

Pensions? Really? For making snack foods? Retire at 60 with pensions and (no doubt) health benefits because you worked making twinkies? That's the damn problem. Not that people are buying off-brand snack foods. Hostess is stuck paying thousands of people who don't work anymore.

WinoRhino: Lawnchair: It's largely that the blue-collar-but-proud people who were invested in brand names ("I'm not poor... Choosy Moms Choose Jif") are now the near-the-margins working poor. Who feed their families the same crap, basically, but buy the Walmart Great Value or Aldi versions. Made in the same factories mostly, but with much lower margins for Hostess and similar companies.

No, it's largely that unions ruin everything. A large chunk of the debt Hostess has is toward pensions. From the article:

The Bakery & Confectionary Union & Industry International Pension Fund has the largest claim, of $994 million.
The next largest claim, of about $12 million, is from Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Plan.

Pensions? Really? For making snack foods? Retire at 60 with pensions and (no doubt) health benefits because you worked making twinkies? That's the damn problem. Not that people are buying off-brand snack foods. Hostess is stuck paying thousands of people who don't work anymore.

Do you respond reflexively to the word "pension" like that all the time? How the hell would you like it if the bank showed up 5 years after you finished paying off your house and said "Well, we've decided letting you keep your house is not in our financial best interest so we'll be repossessing it and selling it for increased margins?" You're response would be "I lived up to my end of the deal, fark off...." but apparently that only works one way.

They agreed to fund a farking pension system and wrote nearly a billion dollars in IOU's instead - now it's time to play the get out of jail free card. Properly funded a pension system can work - but YOU"VE GOT TO ACTUALLY PUT THE DAMN MONEY AWAY. Do you view social security payments as paying someone who isn't working anymore as a similar "crime"? The executives who commited this fraud should be in farking jail.

Fizpez: WinoRhino: Lawnchair: It's largely that the blue-collar-but-proud people who were invested in brand names ("I'm not poor... Choosy Moms Choose Jif") are now the near-the-margins working poor. Who feed their families the same crap, basically, but buy the Walmart Great Value or Aldi versions. Made in the same factories mostly, but with much lower margins for Hostess and similar companies.

No, it's largely that unions ruin everything. A large chunk of the debt Hostess has is toward pensions. From the article:

The Bakery & Confectionary Union & Industry International Pension Fund has the largest claim, of $994 million.
The next largest claim, of about $12 million, is from Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Plan.

Pensions? Really? For making snack foods? Retire at 60 with pensions and (no doubt) health benefits because you worked making twinkies? That's the damn problem. Not that people are buying off-brand snack foods. Hostess is stuck paying thousands of people who don't work anymore.

Do you respond reflexively to the word "pension" like that all the time? How the hell would you like it if the bank showed up 5 years after you finished paying off your house and said "Well, we've decided letting you keep your house is not in our financial best interest so we'll be repossessing it and selling it for increased margins?" You're response would be "I lived up to my end of the deal, fark off...." but apparently that only works one way.

They agreed to fund a farking pension system and wrote nearly a billion dollars in IOU's instead - now it's time to play the get out of jail free card. Properly funded a pension system can work - but YOU"VE GOT TO ACTUALLY PUT THE DAMN MONEY AWAY. Do you view social security payments as paying someone who isn't working anymore as a similar "crime"? The executives who commited this fraud should be in farking jail.

You read that wrong, what the WinoRhino obviously meant was people do such unskilled and unnecessary work should not be able to retire. The only people who get to retire are the really smart and really rich. Those people are just better than the rest of us. We should just make it legal to buy workers and not pay them. Sure you could provide housing and food but beyond that anybody that isn't an engineer, doctor, or in the financial industry should be up for sale.

Fizpez: Do you respond reflexively to the word "pension" like that all the time? How the hell would you like it if the bank showed up 5 years after you finished paying off your house and said "Well, we've decided letting you keep your house is not in our financial best interest so we'll be repossessing it and selling it for increased margins?"

Dumbest. Example. Ever. Apples and oranges. Besides, I never said they didn't owe the money to the pensions, I just think pensions are a bad idea all around. Paying someone not to work? That farking insanity. For example, I work in the private sector. I get a guaranteed return on my retirement contributions annually, regardless of what happens in the market. On top of that, I get a pension when I retire for 80% of my salary. On top of that I earn a good salary. What I should get is a salary, end of story. I should figure out how to save for retirement on my own. That's not my employer's responsibility. It's a completely outdated concept.

AverageJoe77: You read that wrong, what the WinoRhino obviously meant was people do such unskilled and unnecessary work should not be able to retire. The only people who get to retire are the really smart and really rich.

I didn't say that either. I did hint at it, though. Please-- argue with me about how it's a good thing that assembly line workers make more money and retire more easily than, say, teachers.

WinoRhino: Fizpez: Do you respond reflexively to the word "pension" like that all the time? How the hell would you like it if the bank showed up 5 years after you finished paying off your house and said "Well, we've decided letting you keep your house is not in our financial best interest so we'll be repossessing it and selling it for increased margins?"

Dumbest. Example. Ever. Apples and oranges. Besides, I never said they didn't owe the money to the pensions, I just think pensions are a bad idea all around. Paying someone not to work? That farking insanity. For example, I work in the private sector. I get a guaranteed return on my retirement contributions annually, regardless of what happens in the market. On top of that, I get a pension when I retire for 80% of my salary. On top of that I earn a good salary. What I should get is a salary, end of story. I should figure out how to save for retirement on my own. That's not my employer's responsibility. It's a completely outdated concept.

AverageJoe77: You read that wrong, what the WinoRhino obviously meant was people do such unskilled and unnecessary work should not be able to retire. The only people who get to retire are the really smart and really rich.

I didn't say that either. I did hint at it, though. Please-- argue with me about how it's a good thing that assembly line workers make more money and retire more easily than, say, teachers.

Actaully its not apples and oranges at all - a union contract is a legal document, it holds even more legal weight than whatever agreement you have with your employer because the terms of the agreement have been explicitly spelled out - kind of like a mortgage.

I actually agree somewhat with your sentiment that instead of getting x dollars in a paycheck + a pension you should get x+y dollars right now so things like this don't happen but you can't just pretend that because someone worked making twinkies instead of Buicks that what they did isn't deserving of having an agreement legally enforced. A pension is a form of delayed compensation - they did the work, the compensation should be forthcoming.

You CAN make the argument that the agreed contract was too generous. foolish or ill advised but that doesnt change the fact that any number of people worked thier lives away on the assumption that a pension would be forthcoming in their retirement - the fact that the money isn't there is, imho, a crime commited by people who made a hell of a lot more money than these people will ever see to pad their own wallets.

We bailout wallstreet but not twinkies?

Our priorities are screwed.

/given our obesity stats any politician that can pit himself as pro-twinkie and his opponent and anti-twinkie will win every election hands down (may also pick up the crucial "gay dudes with poor reading skills" demographic too).

error 303: Nuclear War Survival Skills

Step 1: Find refrigerator.

The idea of nuclear Winter is a myth as much as the Summer of recovery was.

groppet: Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas Dallas with all that stuff.

My house was built in 1965. My basement was built with a bunker at the bottom of the stairs. Some day I need to figure out just how thick the concrete is, but I'm pretty sure I'll survive.

Raddamant: My house was built in 1965. My basement was built with a bunker at the bottom of the stairs. Some day I need to figure out just how thick the concrete is, but I'm pretty sure I'll survive.

But will you want to?

This is nothing new, Hostess has spent most of its time in bankruptcy the past couple decades. IIRC, they got out of it last time by screwing over their union, which is why the union didn't really feel like cutting its own throat to keep them from going under again. And since a friend of mine who worked for Hostess just lost his job because they outsourced it to India, I'm getting a kick out of this bankruptcy.

erveek:

But will you want to?

Now that is a good question. I'll worry about that when it becomes a problem

WinoRhino: Fizpez: Do you respond reflexively to the word "pension" like that all the time? How the hell would you like it if the bank showed up 5 years after you finished paying off your house and said "Well, we've decided letting you keep your house is not in our financial best interest so we'll be repossessing it and selling it for increased margins?"

Dumbest. Example. Ever. Apples and oranges. Besides, I never said they didn't owe the money to the pensions, I just think pensions are a bad idea all around. Paying someone not to work? That farking insanity. For example, I work in the private sector. I get a guaranteed return on my retirement contributions annually, regardless of what happens in the market. On top of that, I get a pension when I retire for 80% of my salary. On top of that I earn a good salary. What I should get is a salary, end of story. I should figure out how to save for retirement on my own. That's not my employer's responsibility. It's a completely outdated concept.

AverageJoe77: You read that wrong, what the WinoRhino obviously meant was people do such unskilled and unnecessary work should not be able to retire. The only people who get to retire are the really smart and really rich.

I didn't say that either. I did hint at it, though. Please-- argue with me about how it's a good thing that assembly line workers make more money and retire more easily than, say, teachers.

One thing about people that reflexively react to the word "pension" -- people like you -- is that they don't do validation tests to their own reasoning.