DUCATI GRANDSTAND ON TOUR DURING THE 2008 MotoGP CHAMPIONSHIP

Tickets are now on sale for the Mugello Grandstand. This year the Ducati Grandstand Tour will take in 9 international MotoGP races.

Following the success of the Ducati Grandstand at Italian rounds last year, Ducati has decided to use the same formula at other MotoGP rounds around the world.
It will now be possible to follow your heroes trackside at the Italian circuits of Mugello and Misano, but also at the European rounds of Le Mans, Sachsenring and Valencia, as well as at the international events at Laguna Seca and Indianapolis (U.S.A.), Phillip Island (Australia) and Motegi (Japan).

On 1st June 2008, the Ducati MotoGP Team will take to the track, more revved up than ever and ready to take part in the first of two Italian MotoGP world championship rounds, at Mugello, one of the hallowed grounds of international motorcycling.

Last year, more than 3000 Ducati fans were lucky enough to witness the qualifying practice and races from one of the most spectacular sections of the Tuscan track: the Correntaio curve. This spot has now earned a special place in the hearts of the Ducatisti and is famous for its action-packed racing.

This year, Ducati is once more offering its fans the chance to experience the excitement of live Mugello MotoGP, surrounded by fellow fanatics. Ticket holders will be able to join in with the official fan club members, who in previous years have ‘painted’ Mugello red with their unstoppable passion for the Borgo Panigale machines.
Entertainment in the Ducati grandstand will be arranged as usual by the Desmodromiclub of Rome.

As well as making it possible to watch your heroes race around from one of its most strategic points, the famous “Correntaio” curve. The ticket will also entitle you to a ‘goodie bag’ full of exclusive gifts. And so that you don’t miss any of the action, a 33m2 giant screen will be positioned next to the grandstand. Last but not least, there is the convenience of a reserved parking space for your bike and a free cloakroom service to store your gear.

Tickets are valid for the qualifying sessions, held on 30th and 31st May 2008, and for the race on Sunday 1st June. In addition to access to the Ducati grandstand, in which you can choose your own seat, tickets act as a pass to most viewing areas around the racetrack. The ‘Pedonale Provinciale’ pedestrian entrance to the racetrack (located next to the Palagio entrance) is recommended for access to the grandstand.

The big difference this year is that it is possible to book tickets well in advance, at a special price. Through the official Ducati Store network, if purchased between 19th March and 15th April, tickets cost just 190 Euros, while from 16th April until stocks last, the price is 220 Euros and the tickets are available exclusively via the website www.ducati.com.

Further information and all the latest news is available on http://www.ducati.com/news/08/news004/news004.jhtml as well as the national Ducati websites of the participating countries.

SOCIALIZE LOSSES, PRIVATIZE PROFITS.

In a post from last August, “CAPITALISM WITHOUT FINANCIAL FAILURE IS NOT CAPITALISM AT ALL, BUT A KIND OF SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH”, the Author noted the following:

There is a phrase circulating in moderate to liberal economic circles that the last twenty years, especially the last seven years, have been a period where the government privatizes profits and socializes losses. Crony capitalism is endemic to the Bush administration and the Bush war in Iraq. And the taxpayer takes the hindmost. Odd, isn’t it, that the Author, an economic conservative and a social liberal/radical is attacking a far right administration from the right.

WALL STREET WELFARE

E.J. Dionne writes in yesterday’s Washington Post, in “The Street on Welfare”:

Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries and how government should keep its hands off the private economy.

The Wall Street titans have turned into a bunch of welfare clients. They are desperate to be bailed out by government from their own incompetence, and from the deregulatory regime for which they lobbied so hard. They have lost "confidence" in each other, you see, because none of these oh-so-wise captains of the universe have any idea what kinds of devalued securities sit in one another's portfolios.

IF YOU CANNOT FAIL, OR IF THE TAXPAYERS WILL SUBSIDIZE YOUR FAILURES, YOU WILL NOT CARE.

And this from the author’s post from January 19, 2005, “The Importance of Being Wrong Occasionally”:

IF YOU CAN AFFORD YOUR MISTAKES, CAN YOU EVER BE WRONG?

But there are some in this world that continually make mistakes with few if any consequences. Paris Hilton comes promptly to mind. Two such people from the cannon of American literature also come to mind. Tom and Daisy Buchanan of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” are the prototypical scions of the idle rich. Remember what Nick Carraway said near the end of the book and the 1974 movie of the same title of Tom and Daisy?

“Careless people [Tom and Daisy]… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together…”

But in the end, it was their money that gave them retreat. It paid for their vast carelessness. It was the Faustian bargain they struck. The money was the unspoken “whatever” that kept them together.

This is a rhetorical question, to be sure. Someone usually pays when a mistake is made. Nearly always the one in error and usually a bystander, or two, or two hundred. Or two hundred thousand. But when someone can retreat into their money, their family connections, their networks of sycophants and cronies, can such a person ever make a mistake? Will that lesson never taught produce a pupil never schooled? Probably so.

“ANYONE ELSE, I’D SAY THIS WOULD BE A LESSON”

In the classic film “Citizen Kane”, political boss Jim Gettys threatens to expose Kane’s tryst with his lover unless Kane drops out of the race for New York Governor. Kane refuses and Gettys goes public with the story of Kane’s extramarital affair. Gettys tells Kane “Anyone else, I’d say this would be a lesson”.

Kane goes on to loose the election, divorce his wife and marry his lover. But Charles Foster Kane is not just “anyone else”. Kane kept his vast wealth and control over a financial empire built in the Gilded Age and large enough to ride out the impending Great Depression.

THEY LOSE IT LIKE THEY STOLE IT. LIKELY THEY DID. BUT NOT FROM THE DESERT OF THE REAL!