The Usual Suspects

The Fourth Branch of Government continues to let the liberals do the heavy lifting the conservatives couldn't do alone:

WASHINGTON — The chief executives of America’s foundering automobile manufacturers returned to Capitol Hill on Thursday and found themselves confronting years of pent-up anger, the harsh politics of a recession and the realization that even their strongest supporters might not be able to muster the votes to save them.

Fiscal hawks are worried that taxpayers will lose billions. Pro-labor lawmakers are furious that union workers are being blamed for causing the automakers’ problems, even as tens of thousands face layoffs. Environmentalists like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are fed up after years of battles over fuel-efficiency rules. And Congress, as a whole, is suffering from acute bailout fatigue...

Yes, environmentalists like Nancy Pelosi.

Here's the scam. Yes, there are $6 trillion dollars of bad derivatives out there. Even with gas a dollar a gallon, most people can't afford to buy a Hummer, much less fuel it. If you haven't already lost your job and/or your house, you realize how close you're shaving it. You'd like to be able to tell someone you're mad as hell, and you're not going to take it anymore, but the big guys tell you the best way to deal with your rape is to relax and enjoy it. Or lose everything.

They're not kidding.

So for refusing to give the big 3 a fraction of what they gave just one of the big banks, one out of ten Americans is about to be thrown out of work.

At Christmas.

This is a raft poised to go over Niagra. Over Angel Falls. The economy is about to go into free fall if this happen.

It doesn't have to happen this way. Like Moore says, the Feds could just say to Detroit: we'll bail you out, but You have to build high mileage, high durability vehicles with high emission standards. Or else. You gotta hire all these people to do this with the money too. Or else.

Something like that happened at the onset of WWII, when Detroit instantly retooled to build all the hardware to win the Great War, overrunning Hitler's Germany in Europe and Hirohito's Japan in Asia in three years.

It could be done. That and a jobs infrastructure program would keep America earning a paycheck until the banks could be regulated. That won't happen.

Obama would be a dead man within days if he tried that. But he won't. Instead, he fills his goverment with Company shills like Robert Gates.

Oh yeah, Mr. Preznit-$elect: if we had wanted a pro-Empire, Republican, ex-Head of the CIA in charge of the D.o'D., we'd have simply given Poppy Bu$h a second term in office.

The results would be pretty much the same as what we about to get anyway.