Auto Bailout Fails

Air Force Officer Steven Givler from Perry will join us at 4:00 to talk about life in Saudi Arabia.

 

The bailout of the United Auto Workers failed last night by a vote of 52-36 (60 were needed).  Both Chambliss and Isakson voted against the bailout.  The UAW blames Republicans for killing the bailout (for now), claiming that Republicans were asking too much from the union.  Of course, GM had already planned to take $1 billion from the bailout and invest it in Brazil.  With that plan busted, now GM has hired bankruptcy counsel to help them restructure, even though the board still says that's not a viable option.  It might not matter, because the Bush Administration is considering using the "TARP" money to give a bailout to the Big Three without Congressional approval, which is explicitly illegal according to the original bailout bill.  The UAW is happy about that.  Remember, this thing was always all about them; they caused it, and they were the ones desperate for the bailout.

 

Leave it to Barney Frank to tell us exactly what this bailout bill is:  a welfare program.  Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm called a vote against the bailout "un-American."  So if you put the two together, you get the ultimate liberal answer:  welfare is the ultimate in being an American.

 

A few days ago, when it was revealed that Jesse Jackson, Jr. was "Senate Candidate No. 5," I expressed my belief that Jackson was not involved in any kind of wrongdoing regarding the Senate seat (although I put nothing past his father).  My reasoning was that he is smart enough to know that Blago has been under federal investigation since 2004, and Jesse Jackson Jr. is intelligent enough to avoid anything that could bring him down with Blago.  I guess I shouldn't have been so sure after all, because a number of Jackson allies had a fundraiser last Saturday for Blago.

 

The Federal Reserve still refuses to make public to whom they're loaning our money.  Meanwhile, the price tag for the bailout is up to $8.4 trillion (h/t to Jason Pye).  And that's before the possible use of "TARP" money to bailout the UAW.

 

Senator Tom Coburn has a new report out on the worst waste of the year in Congress.

 

Two members of the price-gouging OPEC cartel says that they will need to make a big cut in oil output to cut the drop of the price of oil.

 

Obama's new energy secretary is a huge global warming fanatic.  Wonderful.

 

Memo to the Messiah, Tom Daschle, Ted Kennedy, and everybody else eager to force Americans to get health insurance:  it's a big loser with voters.  That's ok, go ahead and try it anyway.

 

The state gas tax will drop almost 4 cents in January due to an automatic semiannual tax adjustment.

 

There are Barackians around the world, like in Naples, Italy, where there is a nativity scene featuring Barack and Michelle Obama.  They also have French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his (smoking hot) wife, Carla Bruni, and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.