Parody alert, “GM: The Deadbeat of America” ad

LOL…instead of “Like A Rock”, it’s “Now We’re Soft”!  😆

Felony charges filed in Michigan against Democrat vote fraudsters

Democrats…vote fraud?  The heck you say!  From MI:

Two former leaders of the Oakland County Democratic Party are facing a total of nine felonies for allegedly forging election paperwork to get fake Tea Party candidates on November’s ballot. …

Former Oakland County Democratic Chair Mike McGuinness and former Democratic Operations Director Jason Bauer face up to 14 years in prison if convicted.

“Some of the people didn’t even know they were on the ballot till they began receiving delinquency notices of filings that were required as a candidate,” said Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard.

The sheriff says 23 statewide races had questionable Tea Party candidates on the ballot and the investigation may go beyond Oakland County.

You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that Democrats like to cheat when it comes to elections!  If I didn’t know any better, that is.

Job-hemorrhaging former Michigan governor tapped by UC Berkeley to lecture about…job creation?

Any wonder this school is called Berserkley?  From Politico:

Now that she’s left office, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm plans to write a book, teach at Berkeley and stay in the public eye as a speaker and commentator.

The 51-year-old two-term Democrat told POLITICO in an interview that her new work will revolve around the interrelated themes she emphasized as governor: creating jobs, reviving American manufacturing and expanding the clean energy economy.

What’s next?  Getting Bill Clinton as a guest lecturer on the joys of marital monogamy?  Maybe Howard Dean can lecture on anger management?

MI just elected a Republican governor after enduring years of Granholm’s disastrous economic policies.  MI is one of the worst states in the nation in terms of unemployment numbers.  So naturally, Californiastan thinks Granholm would make a fine addition to their faculty.

It’s official: Obama sucks at running car companies

Considering that ObaMao hasn’t ever run so much as a lemonade stand, this comes as no real surprise:

President Obama’s auto task force pressed General Motors and Chrysler to close scores of dealerships without adequately considering the jobs that would be lost or having a firm idea of the cost savings that would be achieved, an audit of the process has concluded.

The report by Neil M. Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program of the Treasury Department, said both carmakers needed to shut down some underperforming dealerships. But it questioned whether the cuts should have been made so quickly, particularly during a recession. The report, released on Sunday, estimated that tens of thousands of jobs were lost as a result.

“It is not at all clear that the greatly accelerated pace of the dealership closings during one of the most severe economic downturns in our nation’s history was either necessary for the sake of the companies’ economic survival or prudent for the sake of the nation’s economic recovery,” the report said.

What kind of authority figures did President Kicking-Businesses’-#ss appoint?  These kinds:

Barack Obama put Steve Rattner in charge of running his auto bailout program, a man who had just as much experience in the auto industry as Obama did: he drove a few cars.  Rattner had to make a quick exit after just a few months when it became known that he was the target of a federal probe into questionable activities regarding the New York pension fund — and his replacement had just as much experience in the auto industry as Rattner did.

What was the main entry on Ron Bloom’s resume?  He was a union negotiator.

Wow.  It’s as if the government doesn’t know anything about business and stuff!

Quote of the day, “Conyers’ constitutional ignorance” edition

Too bad it was his wife that went to prison.  After all, she’s not the one wreaking havoc on the entire nation.  Quoth the Detroit dolt:

During an interview Capitol Hill Friday, CNSNews.com asked Rep. Conyers, “The individual mandate in the bill requires individuals to purchase health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has said that never before in the history of the United States has the federal government required any one to purchase any good or service. What part of the Constitution do you think gives Congress the authority to mandate individuals to purchase health insurance?”
 
Conyers said: “Under several clauses, the good and welfare clause and a couple others. All the scholars, the constitutional scholars that I know — I’m chairman of the Judiciary committee, as you know — they all say that there’s nothing unconstitutional in this bill and if there were, I would have tried to correct it if I thought there were.”

There’s just one small problem with conyers’ explanation:

The word “good” only appears once in the Constitution, in Article 3, Section 1, which deals with the Judicial Branch, not the powers of Congress. Article 3, Section 1 says in part: “The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.”

As far as “nothing unconstitutional”?

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), however, the federal government has never before mandated that Americans buy any good or service. In 1994, when Congress was considering a universal health care plan formulated by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, the CBO studied the plan’s provision that would have forced individuals to buy health insurance and determined it was an unprecedented act.

The CBO stated: “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”

This dude is Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and he doesn’t even know the law of the land?  Wonderful.

Quote of the day, “Conyers on legislative responsibilities” edition

Un. Friggin’. Believable.  From CNS News:

During his speech at a National Press Club luncheon, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Democratic Congressman John Conyers (D-Mich.), questioned the point of lawmakers reading the health care bill. 

“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers.

“What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

Detroit, you must be proud!

Bailouts are merely “postponing reality”

This is an absolutely excellent column by Thomas Sowell on the effect that liberals’ denying reality has had on this country, manifesting itself in the form of an union “auto industry” bailout.  Intro:

Some of us were raised to believe that reality is inescapable. But that just shows how far behind the times we are. Today, reality is optional. At the very least, it can be postponed.

Kids in school are not learning? Not a problem. Just promote them on to the next grade anyway. Call it “compassion,” so as not to hurt their “self-esteem.”

Can’t meet college admissions standards after they graduate from high school? Denounce those standards as just arbitrary barriers to favor the privileged, and demand that exceptions be made.

Can’t do math or science after they are in college? Denounce those courses for their rigidity and insensitivity, and create softer courses that the students can pass to get their degrees.

Once they are out in the real world, people with diplomas and degrees– but with no real education– can hit a wall. But by then the day of reckoning has been postponed for 15 or more years. Of course, the reckoning itself can last the rest of their lives.

Yep.  Eventually, reality does hit you in the mouth.  But by the time you have been subjected to a young lifetime of liberal indoctrination, it is too late.  Those of us who live in the real world have been properly prepared for it.  Continuing:

The current bailout extravaganza is applying the postponement of reality democratically– to the rich as well as the poor, to the irresponsible as well as to the responsible, to the inefficient as well as to the efficient. It is a triumph of the non-judgmental philosophy that we have heard so much about in high-toned circles.

We are told that the collapse of the Big Three automakers in Detroit would have repercussions across the country, causing mass layoffs among firms that supply the automobile makers with parts, and shutting down automobile dealerships from coast to coast.
…
Detroit and Michigan have followed classic liberal policies of treating businesses as prey, rather than as assets. They have helped kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. So have the unions. So have managements that have gone along to get along.

Toyota, Honda and other foreign automakers are not heading for Detroit, even though there are lots of experienced automobile workers there. They are avoiding the rust belts and the policies that have made those places rust belts.

A bailout of Detroit’s Big Three would be only the latest in the postponements of reality. As for automobile dealers, they can probably sell Toyotas just as easily as they sold Chevvies. And Toyotas will require just as many tires per car, as well as other parts from automobile parts suppliers.

Read the rest of it.  Sowell, as usual, is brilliant and right on the money.  For those of you on the left, “money” is the stuff that you earn from that thing called “work”.

Detroit wants a bailout, and Barney Frank agrees

The Big Three automakers flew in on their private jets yesterday to complain to Congress as to how broke they are.  Predictably, they want a piece of the taxpayer-funded bailout pie.  They have a friend in Barney Frank, who is ready to toss Detroit a $100 billion life preserver.

Yes indeed, when Barney Frank isn’t busy stockpiling cases of petroleum jelly, he likes to spend his time sodomizing (resisting cheap shot here, folks!) the taxpayers by subsidizing failure.  And why shouldn’t we listen to him?  I mean, he did just a bang-up job subsidizing high risk mortgages, didn’t he?  Yet the left loves its losers, so they keep this buttclown in charge of matters of finance.  Brilliant.

This is harsh, but it needs to be said: Detroit must be allowed to fail, all the way to the end.  Ace has a great post about it, but here are some excerpts:

And any “bailout” (really a permanent taxpayer subsidy of far too high UAW wages) simply goes to keeping nonsense like this in place.

And don’t say their wages are “far too high” as some sort of judgment about the value of their work. I say they’re far too high based on the objective fact that they cannot produce a competitive product at those rates. And add in that non-union plants in the South and other areas of the country pay their workers $43.00 per hour in total benefits — a pretty decent wage for manufacturing work requiring little previous skill — while the UAW insists on $73.00 per hour.

You get almost double what other workers are willing to work for why, exactly? I can’t imagine any moral claim to such rates.
…
From a 2005 article:

Ken Pool is making good money. On weekdays, he shows up at 7 a.m. at Ford Motor Co.’s Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne, signs in, and then starts working — on a crossword puzzle.

Pool hates the monotony, but the pay is good: more than $31 an hour, plus benefits.”We just go in and play crossword puzzles, watch videos that someone brings in or read the newspaper,” he says. “Otherwise, I’ve just sat.”

Pool is one of more than 12,000 American autoworkers who, instead of installing windshields or bending sheet metal, spend their days counting the hours in a jobs bank set up by Detroit automakers and Delphi Corp. as part of an extraordinary job security agreement with the United Auto Workers union.

The jobs bank programs were the price the industry paid in the 1980s to win UAW support for controversial efforts to boost productivity through increased automation and more flexible manufacturing.

As part of its restructuring under bankruptcy, Delphi is actively pressing the union to give up the program.

With Wall Street wondering how automakers can afford to pay thousands of workers to do nothing as their market share withers, the union is likely to hear a similar message from the Big Three when their contracts with the UAW expire in 2007 — if not sooner.

“It’s an albatross around their necks,” said Steven Szakaly, an economist with the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor. “It’s a huge number of workers doing nothing. That has a very large effect on their future earnings outlook.” …  

Bailing out Detroit simply guarantees that the unions that have destroyed Motown will continue their cannibalism…but will drag down the rest of the country with them.