All Politics Is Local: Teabagger Edition

National teabaggers try to stage a protest at the Detroit Auto show to protest government intervention in the car industry.

Michigan teabaggers who would have been most affected if the auto industry had gone under say TO HELL WITH THAT!

See government spending is bad, unless it is helping THEM.


Don't you just love that smell of hypocrisy in the morning?

Carmageddon

Jon Stewart on President Obama's announcement about the auto bailouts.

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Carmageddon '09 - Lemon Aid
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Will someone forward this to Tucker Carlson please?

But What About Haircuts?

Just watching Morning Joe again today and listening to Scarborough harp about how President Obama is "naive" to try to limit the compensation of executives at financial institutions who take TARP money to $500,000 a year. According to old Scar, with an assist from Mikaborg, its necessary to pay Wall Street execs enormous bonuses even after they come to the government for a bailout. Now setting aside for a moment that this is a 180 from just yesterday when he was cheering the idea of cutting executive pay on when it was Claire McCaskill's idea, but doesn't anyone else remember all the talk about haircuts when it came to bailing out the Big 3 auto workers? I remember Mika and Scar vividly. "Ohhhh the union workers have to take a haircut to get this money". So a person making say $30 or $40 an hour actually making something in this country, THEY need to take a paycut. But some fatcat big wig who has lot people's money and has in many cases lied to their clients, THEY should continue getting paid out the ass in Mika and Scar's world. Do these people know ANY regular Americans at all? Their ears aren't tin at this point, they are aluminum.

A Rare Moment For Me

I would like to take the opportunity to say thank you to President George W. Bush

The US government has said it will provide $17.4bn (£11.6bn) in loans to help troubled carmakers General Motors and Chrysler to survive.

President George W Bush said allowing the US car industry to fail would not be "a responsible course of action".

Ford has said it hoped to get by without government help.

The government will use part of the $700bn originally pledged to rescue US banks. It has set a deadline of 31 March for the firms to become viable.

General Motors will get $9.4 billion and Chrysler $4 billion before the end of the year. A further $4bn will be provided later.

GM chief executive Rick Wagoner said his company would quickly start to restructure itself.

"Our focus now turns to fully and rapidly implementing the restructuring plan that we reviewed with Congress earlier this month in conjunction with all of our key partners," he told a news conference.

Congratulations Corker!

Senator Bob Corker did it yall. He actually pulled it off. By torpedoing the auto bailout negotiations he has finally started the dominoes a tumbling. News comes from the New York Times that Chrysler will now shutter ALL of its plants for at least a month starting next week. Thats 46,000 blue collar American workers who are going to have to go a month without pay. I wonder what that will do to their ability to pay their mortgages since it has been pointed out many many times that the nexus of the financial crisis is the foreclosure crisis. Wait what am I thinking, who cares about all that? I mean as Andrew Sullivan so aptly put it, if they lose their houses that just proves they were either "greedy" or "stupid" and if they and their families get thrown out in the streets then obviously its because they deserve it. So take a bow Senator Corker, you have fucked up the American dream for 46,000 families just in time for Christmas! You must be so proud.


Asshole.

A Note to the GOP

I am sure that the Republicans in Congress are used to the go along to get along Democratic counter parts taking all their attacks and derision laying down, but someone should have slipped them a note letting them know that messing with blue collar union workers is a different kind of animal.

"I don't know what Sen. Vitter has against GM or the United Auto Workers or the entire domestic auto industry; whatever it is, whatever he thinks we've done, it's time for him to forgive us, just like Sen. Vitter has asked the citizens of Louisiana to forgive him, " said Johnson, president of Local 2166. Otherwise, Johnson said of Vitter, it would appear, "He'd rather pay a prostitute than pay auto workers."

Now that's GANGSTA!

I think that last little bit should be used like McCain's "I would rather lose an election than lose a war" as a sound bite against Senator Vitter in his next re-election bid. Can't you just imagine the slogan"He'd rather pay a prostitute than pay auto workers" in an attack ad? Kinda has a nice ring to it doesn't it?

Union workers aren't bound by Congressional courtesy and I believe this is just one off the first of many shots that will be fired against the Republicans in the coming months and rightly so.


And how about UAW President Ron Gettelfinger representing yesterday after the Republican's killed the auto bailout. I wish Mr. Gettlefinger would run for office, honestly. Why can't we get Harry Reid to put in this kind of work at a press conference?



Last but not least we have the document in question confirmed by MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" detailing the "reasons" for Republican opposition to a bill that didn't even exist at the time of the memo being circulated. I think this shows unequivocally that the GOP didn't care about the economy, working class people or the tax payers one iota. As the memo says they just saw blocking the auto bailout as an opportunity to "their first shot against organized labor". Hopefully all of the blue collar union workers around the country will remember this the next time they hear a Republican say they are for the little guy. Where is Joe the Plumber, Tito the Builder or Sarah the Teacher for a reaction when you really need them? I expect this to be a core issue in 2010 and 2012 and if it isn't it should be.