A Big 3 Band-Aid

With the Bush Administration refusing to deal and the Senate Republicans adamant that the tarp money not be touched, Dems had little choice but to take money from the DOE's $25 billion modernization fund.
.
Thanks guys. Always glad when there's some Republicans around to tell me to go f--k myself.
.
Also, I thought it was TARP. As in an acronym.

.
It is time that Senate Republicans pay the price for their obstructionism. Loud and clear. If Reid can't do that, it's time to replace his azz and get a better Majority Leader.
.

Wait a second! Big oil just finished making billions of dollars in profits on their price hikes (which essentially doomed the auto makers (who themselves had a bone-headed business plan of profiting on gas guzzlers in spite of global warming)). So given that big oil needs cars to continue their own business, why not work with them to bail out the auto makers? (Or do the big oil companies know a bad bail out when they see one?)

On the bright side for the groveling CEOs, talks with Obama will be a lot less public – so the humiliation will be behind closed doors.

does anyone else remember how Obama promised all this 'transparency' stuff when he was running for President? And how that transparency would translate into support for his policies ("we'll put the hearings on CSPAN!")

Every dollar given to the "big" 3 is a dollar up in flames. I'm truly sorry for the workers, but a bailout is a just a postponement of the inevitable.
.
If anything, give the biggest bailout money to the companies that DON'T need it -- as a reward for not being stupid. Give Ford the most, contingent on development of green cars. Give GM less, and for Chrysler, tax the air they breathe.
.
As far as humiliation goes, any bailout that doesn't involve Rick Wagoner and Robert Nardelli rubbing up against each other on C-SPAN in g-strings and pasties is a sell-out.

500,000 jobs lost in November. The only way to top this would be to let GM close up shop and take several suppliers down with it.
.
With 42 days left...can Bush do it?

As usual Jay clouds the real issues by making the blocking of the loans to the Big Three as a game of "chicken" between the Republicans and the Democrats.

This is almost entirely an effort by Shelby, Kyle, McConnell and other Repubs to allow the Big Three to declare bankruptcy so they can shed all their well paying union jobs, and move their factorys to Shelby's "Right To Work" Alabama and hire new labor at low paying rates.

Shelby has been interviewed almost continually these past few weeks (more then any other Senator) and NO ONE ever mentions this huge conflict of interest on his part.

I just watched segments of Snow's interviews of Nixon this morning and it made me realize how far Jay and others have fallen from the ideal of a questioning, challenging media, to a sad state these day... more interested in sucking up to the powerful then in uncovering the painful truth.

And what makes this whole sad game of the "questioning Senators" worse is the hundreds of billions these same politicians handed to the financial sector WITHOUT ANY OVERSIGHT or rules....bah HUMBUG!

Simple Win Win

We shouldn't let the Big 3 fail and bring the economy down for a long, deep recession. On the other hand the market has clearly rejected their product and management. Just as they big 3 did in WWII (where they built tanks instead of cars) they should get a bailout to retool to build solar panels for homes. Why wait and waste money? Be proactive now and use the facilities and skilled labor for what Obama plans to do anyway.

The government should also subsidize the installation of these solar panels on people's homes. That would help boost the housing industry while also increasing the value of homes battered by the real-estate slump and lower household energy costs.