It’s never needed one as far as I’m concerned, but the point about the sad way too many Americans take some pretty remarkable things for granted — freedom, the Constitution, the legacy bequeathed us by our forefathers and our military — is one we’ve made pretty often around here, so it fits:

Here’s the thing–a lot of those complaints have merit. Today’s cars do have their downsides–particularly environmentally. After all, cars take a lot of energy and materials to build. To make them run you need a variety of toxic fluids, any of which can contaminate water and ground, and most of which need to be extracted from land situated in a politically volatile part of the world. Gasoline, the most central of these, adds a nasty pollution cocktail to the atmosphere when burned. 

This all true, but I think it misses the larger point. Cars cause problems because there are just so many of them–their impact is multiplied by the sheer, staggering scale of their ubiquity. They are everywhere, and that’s because they’re fantastic at mobilizing us and giving us the freedom of movement. Today’s car and its gasoline-powered internal combustion engine is essentially a miracle with some rough edges; and while we should acknowledge and work towards removing those rough edges, I want to take some time to recognize the miracle.

This quote from some comedian or other is good too:

I was on an airplane recently and there was high-speed Internet on the airplane. That’s the newest thing that I know exists. And I’m sitting on the plane, and they go ‘Open up your laptop and you can go on the Internet.’ and it’s fast, and I’m watching YouTube clips–it’s amazing, I’m in an airplane! And then it breaks down, and they apologize. The guy next to me goes “Psshhhh. This is bull****.” Like how quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only ten seconds ago!…

Flying is the worst one because people people come back from flights, and they tell you their story. And it’s like a horror story. It’s–they act like their flight was like a cattle car in Germany in the ’40s: that’s how bad they make it sound. They’re like “it was the worst day of my life…first of all, we didn’t board for twenty minutes, and then we get on the plane, and they made us sit there! On the runway! For forty minutes! We had to sit there.” Oh, really? What happened next? Did you fly through the air incredibly, like a bird? Did you you partake in the miracle of human flight, you non-contributing zero? That you got to FLY?? YOU’RE FLYING! It’s amazing! Everybody on every plane should just constantly be going, “OH MY GOD! WOW!” You’re flying! You’re sitting in a chair in the sky.

“But (the chair) doesn’t–it doesn’t go back a lot…and the chair’s really…” You know, here’s the thing: people might say there’s delays on flights. Delays? Really? New York to California in five hours. That used to take 30 years to do that. And a bunch of you would die on the way there and have a baby. You’d be a whole different group of people by the time you got there. Now you watch a movie and you take a dump and you’re home.

Read it all, natch.

But it’d have to be one hell of a stocking:

750 horsepower, 0-120 in six seconds flat. The title of the post says “DeathwishMobile with a Bullet.” “With,” hell; it IS a friggin’ bullet. A bullet big enough to ride on top of.

(Big ol’ hat tip to Andrew)

If this tale of lead-sled debauchery don’t move ya, I have to wonder what the hell you’re doing here in the first place.

…and, as hideous as it might sound, I have our old friend Andrew to thank for it, since he’s the one that hipped me to this wonderful madness:

Go lookee. Note well how beefy the steering dampener (visible in the second vid at the link, for just a moment) is. I’d guess it has to be.

Our bud Bubba says this needs to be on CF, and he couldn’t be righter:

Yep, it needs to be on CF…like that slice of two-wheeled heaven needs to be in my garage. Go here for more info on — and to buy tickets for — a raffle supporting the worthiest of causes.

The Clampetts, from….Missouri? No. Hell no. No way. Be sure to read the comments for some back and forth on this outlandish proposition.

Gasoline and ice cream update! Ahhh, cruise night. Nothing like it but more of it. That Camaro mirror slogan is perfect.

OG FOR SENATE!

In primitive societies, when tribesmen encounter a smoke-belching machine and wish to kill it in order to appease their Weather God, the hunter/gatherers simply beat it to death with sticks and rocks.

However, in our advanced society, when we wish to appease the Weather God, we have senators and congressmen beat an engine to death with rules and regulations.

But first, we borrow $3 billion from the Chinese. With interest.

I forget–which society is the superstitous and ignorant one?

UPDATE: Come to think of it, if you spend all day digging holes and filling them back in, the chief will not pretend you have increased the wealth of the tribe and pay you 4,500 extra grubs. In fact, he will probably beat Og about the head and neck with goat entrails for wasting valuable effort.

I told Og not to go to college and read Marx.

Nice, nice stuff here. Never have had a whole lot of interest in the Studes; I know they did many technically interesting things over the years, particularly with the Avanti, but they just never were my bag. But take a gander at these pics and tell me you wouldn’t kill for that gorgeous screaming-yellow (!) Commander. Never thought I’d declare myself stunned by the overwhelming classiness of any car painted yellow, but just the same, here we are. I wouldn’t exactly turn up my nose at the GT Hawk, either.

Now, the Conestoga you can keep. I mostly prefer my horsepower to have nothing to do with actual horses, thanks.

I never did get it either, but hey, I’m a Ford guy anyway:

How beloved are these cars? There is an urban legend that claims that after the newly-styled ‘58 Chevrolets were introduced, a renegade group of GM employees continued building unauthorized copies of the ’57s in a secret factory for another ten years out of sheer unadulterated car lust. That didn’t really happen, at least not the way legend has it, but if you want a new 1957-design Chevrolet Bel Air with all zeroes on the odometer, you can get one–there is enough demand for them that exact replicas are being manufactured today, some using NOS parts for that extra measure of authenticity.

Personally, I just don’t get what all the fuss is about.

Before you form a mob and drag me off to be burned at the stake for heresy, let me say in my defense that I don’t dislike ‘57 Chevys. I have nothing against them or their fans, but I just don’t feel the love myself. I’ve never cared for the styling of most cars from this period–the typical mid-to-late-1950s flat front end makes the car look like a loaf of bread with headlights (examples here, here, here, here, and here) and I don’t like the overstated chrome gewgaws (including the his-and-hers hood ornaments) that were so hot and trendy back then. That doesn’t make the ‘57 Chevy an object of car disgust, it just means that it’s not my cup of motor oil–and I fully realize that makes me an outlier among car fans.

Shit-ton of links not transcribed due to author laziness. Personally, I always liked the ’58s better. The ’57s are like assholes and opinions: everybody’s got one. For me, there ain’t but one ‘57 that matters: this one:

Come to papa, baby. Now THAT’S what a car’s supposed to look like. Classy, tasteful, well-put-together, not gaudy and ostentatious like the Chevys. It’s like a Mozart piano concerto: not a piece or part out of place, every one essential to the perfect whole. Be sure to click on the pic and check out the gorgeous interior, too. Wonder how long it’ll be before our shitheel pResident bans them outright?

Oh, and anyone wanting to excoriate me for hypocrisy because of the pic below is welcome to have at it; I can make no excuses for this outrage against decency.

Photo taken for our first CD cover back in ‘90 or ‘91, I guess, at the ol’ Belmont Drive-In, known locally as the Belmont Passion Pit. It’s still there, believe it or not. And damn, look at that; we all have HAIR! And it isn’t grey! Can’t make any excuses for that frilly shirt either; kinda goes with the car, I think.

Update! I have no doubt that he’s right about this:

That said, if I were running GM, I’d have someone working on a crash project to design the 2010 Bel Air Classic. It would probably best be built on the Impala platform–the current-generation Impala’s length and width is almost exactly the same as the ’57’s. (The fact that it’s FWD may offend the purists, but employing a modern drivetrain didn’t hurt the New Beetle.) Give it styling that picks up all the major visual cues of its illustrious predecessor, including a retro interior with a CD/MP3 player and an iPod adapter cleverly hidden in what looks like a tube radio. Offer it in vivid two-tone colors, and make the upper trim level a “Cruiser” version with a V-8 and side pipes, accessory fuzzy dice and available “flame job” appearance package.

The 2010 Bel Air Classic would have a distinctive, all-American personality combined with competent modern engineering. It would be interesting in a way that far too many contemporary cars are not. So what if it’s not quite the “little green car” that all the experts in D.C. are promising us? Build a version with a plug-in hybrid drive train (in exclusive “Ecology Green” two-tone paint with “Rainforest” organic cloth upholstery!) if that’s what it takes to placate the tree-huggers and the politicians.

Go for it, GM. You’ll sell a million of ‘em. Maybe even a million and a half.

Now wouldn’t that be something. A radical idea nowadays: build a car based not on what the God-Emperor wants to force us all to drive, but on good, esthetically-pleasing design; functionality not as a tool in the phony war against Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly “the weather”) but as a damned car; and what people might actually like. And there’s no chance whatsoever that it’ll ever happen again. Not in the USSSA.

How small we’ve become. Stilted, pinched, tight-assed liberal constipation has sucked the soul right out of us.

From my cold dead hands redux:

DAVE (whispering)
Van Nuys, California. This is the home of our ‘mark,’ Scott Mumford. In the garage out back: Scott’s Matador Red 1957 Chevy Bel Air 2-door hardtop. Inherited from his grandfather, this tired old Tri-Five has been Scott’s baby for over 25 years. What he doesn’t know is that it’s about to get pimped [growl] D.C. Garage style! [/growl] Watch what happens next from our hidden camera.

SCOTT (sprinting out the back door)
Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing?

DAVE (flashing badge)
Officer Burge of the Federal Automotive Task Force. Is this your car, sir?

SCOTT
Yeah, I’ve had it since high school. I can show you the title and registration…

DAVE
No need for that, sir. What sort of engine is in this vehicle?

SCOTT
It’s an original 283, with a numbers-matching Rochester fuelie…

DAVE (writing on clipboard)
Then I’m afraid we have a problem, sir. There is no way on Mother Earth that this vehicle meets EPA emissions standards. It also appears to violate federal safety guidelines and CAFE mileage targets.

SCOTT
But this was my grandpa’s car! He bought it new!

DAVE
That’s what they all say, sir. Send us his address and we’ll mail him a copy of the citation. In the interest of public safety and economic recovery, I am hereby condemning this vehicle and ordering it turned over to the custody of the United States of America. Back up the tow truck, boys!

TOW TRUCK
BEEK BEEK BEEK

SCOTT
Hey wait! Stop, you bastards!

DAVE
Please step aside, sir. The salvage yard closes at 5 pm. In recognition of your sacrifice, please accept this stimulus coupon good for $750 towards your next purchase of a new General Motors or Chrysler product.

“Stop, you bastards!” says it all, I think — as long as it’s followed by the heart-warming shh-CLACK of a shit-smeared flechette round being shucked into one of these, pointed at center mass of the usurping government weasel who only thinks he’s running the show.

For a palate cleanser, lay your bloodshot orbs on the vid embedded here. Gott-damn if that ain’t one fine, lumpy-ass idle. For a damn Mopar, I mean.

From my cold, dead hands, cocksucker:

In his speech about the GM bankruptcy yesterday, President Barack Obama (from the New York Times) said:

And that’s why I’m calling on Congress to pass fleet modernization legislation that can provide a credit to consumers who turn in old cars and purchase cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars. (emphasis added)

Turn in old cars. It’s long been a talking point of liberals and environmentalists that cars older than a given age should be removed from the highways. The usual mantra goes “The government should buy all cars older than X and pay the owner $750. Then the owner could go out and buy a newer, cleaner, more efficient car.” The advocates for this position either fail or refuse to understand that the owners will not be able to find a car to buy with their $750. Basic economics.

President Obama used the words “turn in” not “trade in.” He will give folks a credit – I suppose that means an income tax credit – for doing this. This sounds like the used cars will go to the government and be removed from the market. No more used cars. You either buy an expensive putt-putt new car, or you go without.

And no more vintage ones, either. Like I’d ever willingly trade a ‘56 Fairlane for 750 measly, devalued dollars so I can tool around in some pathetic, embarrassing, and hideously overpriced green-weenie wagon. But it ain’t as if Obama ever gave a damn about that “willingly” part anyway, and he ain’t about to start now. Indulging his and his flock’s deluded religious fantasies is JUST TOO IMPORTANT, see. They’re in a war against climate-change agnostics, and, despite their hysterics over the moral turpitude of fighting an actual war against an actual enemy, no measure is too far-reaching, restrictive, or unConstitutional for them to implement in pursuit of their illusory “victory.”

Anyone who didn’t see this coming ought to finally stop kidding themselves about what the God-Emperor really is. It’s looking more and more as if we’re going to have to fight, really fight, the commie bastards before it’s all said and done.

(Via Althouse)

PJ O’Rourke gets it. Boy, does he ever.

The phrase “bankrupt General Motors,” which we expect to hear uttered on Monday, leaves Americans my age in economic shock. The words are as melodramatic as “Mom’s nude photos.” And, indeed, if we want to understand what doomed the American automobile, we should give up on economics and turn to melodrama.

Politicians, journalists, financial analysts and other purveyors of banality have been looking at cars as if a convertible were a business. Fire the MBAs and hire a poet. The fate of Detroit isn’t a matter of financial crisis, foreign competition, corporate greed, union intransigence, energy costs or measuring the shoe size of the footprints in the carbon. It’s a tragic romance—unleashed passions, titanic clashes, lost love and wild horses.

Foremost are the horses. Cars can’t be comprehended without them. A hundred and some years ago Rudyard Kipling wrote “The Ballad of the King’s Jest,” in which an Afghan tribesman avers: Four things greater than all things are,—Women and Horses and Power and War.

Insert another “power” after the horse and the verse was as true in the suburbs of my 1950s boyhood as it was in the Khyber Pass.

In 1970 a Pontiac GTO (may the brand name rest in peace) had horsepower to the number of 370. In the time of one minute, for the space of one foot, it could move 12,210,000 pounds. And it could move those pounds down every foot of every mile of all the roads to the ends of the earth for every minute of every hour until the driver nodded off at the wheel. Forty years ago the pimply kid down the block, using $3,500 in saved-up soda-jerking money, procured might and main beyond the wildest dreams of Genghis Khan, whose hordes went forth to pillage mounted upon less oomph than is in a modern leaf blower.

Okay, that ought to be enough to convince you; I insist — nay, demand — that you read all of it. Sad, dreary times we live in indeed. American dreams are now pinched and stilted, swaddled as they are in the drab, unisex tunic of the progressivist Grey Man.

Maybe one day we can find a way to “thank” the Lefty killjoys as they truly deserve. For everything.

VROOOM!

I just purchased a cherry-red Corvette convertible.

Or rather, it was purchased for me. You see, I figure that as a taxpayer, I now own a zillionth-part of a new Corvette since the Gummint is taking over GM. I figure that I am entitled to at least a Corvette lug nut.

Only last week, I also purchased a windshield wiper on a powder blue Dodge Viper and I’m headed down to the drag strip right now. I’m going to race my Viper against my ‘Vette for pink slips–just like Government Motors/GM is going to compete against Government Motors/Chrysler! Either way, you lose.

For those of you who think that Government Motors will be an endless money pit, well, that’s why I never bought a sports car in the first place–until now. I can now see how wrong I was.

If you combine the money-making dynamos of management, unions and politicians–how could it be anything other than a profit bonanza? After all, every program passed by Congress in the last quarter-century was going to “pay-for-itself”! That’s why Washington has oodles of extra money just laying around!

I only hope the Government isn’t too distracted from its main job of building cars to defend us from our enemies. No–not North Korea; I mean our enemies at Ford Motor Company. Daddy needs a bumble-bee yellow Shelby GT Mustang! Or the antenna, anyway.

See you at the the drag-strip–and bring your pink slips! It’s ON, motorheads!

That’s what SteveF says, and boy, is he ever right. If you have even trace elements of gearhead in your soul or any grease under your fingernails at all, this would have to rank as just about the Coolest. Vid. EVER.

Too bad Steve is right about the rest of it, too.

The best one ever, I mean. By way of the Batmobile. ‘Nuff said.

Oh, but this is just juicy:

Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid. We’ve been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you’re easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days.

So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place.

So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.

…And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.

So you’re sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you’re doing only 23mph because that’s about the top speed, and you’re thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit.

But wait, there’s more! Which is curious, because I had assumed that political correctness had taken hold so completely in Britain by now that this guy would have been strung up by his thumbs almost immediately; apparently, and happily, I was a bit hasty on that:

Hmmm. I would not accuse Honda of telling porkies. That would be foolish. But I cannot see how making a car with two motors costs the same in terms of resources as making a car with one.

The nickel for the battery has to come from somewhere. Canada, usually. It has to be shipped to Japan, not on a sailing boat, I presume. And then it must be converted, not in a tree house, into a battery, and then that battery must be transported, not on an ox cart, to the Insight production plant in Suzuka. And then the finished car has to be shipped, not by Thor Heyerdahl, to Britain, where it can be transported, not by wind, to the home of a man with a beard who thinks he’s doing the world a favour.

Why doesn’t he just buy a Range Rover, which is made from local components, just down the road? No, really — weird-beards buy locally produced meat and vegetables for eco-reasons. So why not apply the same logic to cars?

At this point you will probably dismiss what I’m saying as the rantings of a petrolhead, and think that I have my head in the sand.

That’s not true. While I have yet to be convinced that man’s 3% contribution to the planet’s greenhouse gases affects the climate, I do recognise that oil is a finite resource and that as it becomes more scarce, the political ramifications could well be dire. I therefore absolutely accept the urgent need for alternative fuels.

But let me be clear that hybrid cars are designed solely to milk the guilt genes of the smug and the foolish. And that pure electric cars, such as the G-Wiz and the Tesla, don’t work at all because they are just too inconvenient.

Regarding this and other electric-powered abortion on wheels’ prospects with the folks here Stateside, I haven’t seen much speculation yet on what’s gonna happen when everyone in America is required by the Obama regime to drive these pieces of shit, and they all plug the things in at night for the necessary recharge, and the electric grid — powered mostly by coal, which Obama has promised to do away with, by the way — is overwhelmed by the demand. No speculation, either, on how exactly that’s gonna help Gaia. But I don’t suppose it’s reasonable to expect either logic or foresight from these mewling idiots. They’ve shown absolutely no aptitude for either to date.

Iowahawk’s, that is:

Program financial highlights:

• Federal bailout funds used: $0.00
• Federal stimulus funds used: $0.00
• Executive bonuses paid out: $0.00
• Manufacturing jobs created: 2
• Lawyers, politicians, lobbyists and bureaucrats involved: 0
• Dealerships closed: 0
• Bondholders screwed: 0

Vehicle specs:

• Recycled materials used: 100%
• Domestic manufacturing content: 100%
• Parts sourced from all of the US Big Four manufacturers (Ford, GM, Chrysler, and Studebaker)
• Solid lifter 327 hybrid drive – will burn gasoline and rubber!
• Meets all 1932 federal mileage, emissions and safety standards

A ton of work left, but I’ll post progress reports as justified. What’s good for Iowahawk Motors is good for America!

He didn’t bring up the economic boost received by local beer and skin-rag distributors brought on by essential late-night runs to replenish the garage supply, but it’s bound to be substantial. It’s a bounteous windfall that benefits the true backbone of America: greaser hotrod enthusiasts, as opposed to effete urban eggheads who wouldn’t know a shift-knob from a corncob.

Update! Compare, contrast:

You would think that Rattner, who is insistent that Americans must have smaller cars whether they want them or not, would do to himself as he is doing to others. You would be wrong.

Like the Soviet bureaucrats who forced Russian families into one bedroom apartments with 4 kids and grandparents all piled up together, while the bureaucrats fled to palatial dachas on the weekend in the Crimea, Steve Rattner is downsizing us while building himself a huge mansion in Martha’s Vineyard.

This is rather typical of the Obama administration in general. They demand Americans downsize while they live it up themselves. While Americans everywhere are being asked to make cutbacks by the President, Wednesday night is party night in the White House.

While Steve Rattner insists we all do our part for the environment by buying cars too small for our families to fit in safely, he builds a 15,000 sq. ft. mansion his neighbors are opposed to.

Just another Obama Czar who could do with a good, solid dose of People’s Revolt.

Ford outsells GM for the first time in 80 years, leading Captain Ed to ask a very pertinent question:

Ford wasn’t all that far behind GM last year, but the marketplace has shifted in Ford’s favor. While a number of factors may play into that, could buyers have more confidence in Ford and its staying power for having opted out of the bailout? And could this also be a signal from consumers that they will punish GM and potentially Chrysler as well for taking taxpayer money, especially since bankruptcy will occur anyway?

From what I hear from my circle of friends, most of whom aren’t Ford guys like I always have been, the answer is a resounding yes. But another thing I’m hearing ought to cause American manufacturers some real concern: most of these same people, while they’d far prefer a Ford over anything put out by Government Motors (a wholly owned subsidiary of Obamacorp™), are taking a serious look at the Japanese makes, which heretofore was anathema for most of these folks. It seems that they’d much prefer buying from a non-union shop if possible than ever see another thin dime of their hard-earned go to the UAW. There’s even a former UAW guy or two in that group, too.

TO GIVE YOU EVERYTHING

will eventually give you a ticket for parking in your own driveway. I’ve heard of toll roads before, but not toll driveways.

If you don’t like it, for only a few thousand dollars per year they’ll graciously allow you lease your own driveway from them.

Yeah–it’s DC.

“Statehood?” Hell, they’re not even ready for hunting and gathering, let alone the tollbooth keys to the Senatorial HOV-lane on the Driveway to Serfdom.

Maybe having the government take them over wasn’t such a bad idea after all:

General Motors Corp. is teaming with Segway Inc., maker of the upright, self-balancing scooters, to build a new type of two-wheeled vehicle designed to move easily through congested urban streets.

The machine, which GM says it aims to develop by 2012, would run on batteries and use wireless technology to avoid traffic backups and navigate cities.

The struggling auto maker, surviving on a government lifeline, is looking to generate enthusiasm for its increasingly uncertain future ahead of the New York auto show this week.

Yeah, a motorized wheelchair with a glorified umbrella on it oughta do it. Although the thought of heckling weedy, effete pseudo-hippies trundling around the Lower East Side on/in these things does have great appeal, I admit.

I gotta say, I have never been happier to be a diehard Ford guy in my life.

Equal time update! Can’t remember where I ran across this one for a “Via” link, but: Oh, good God, no.

We’re way, way ahead of this guy here.

MOTOWN NO MO’

“Workin in the fillin station – too many tasks.
Wipe the windows – check the tires – check the oil – nine-dollar gas!
Too much monkey business. too much monkey business.
Too much monkey business for the Feds to be involved in!”–Chuck Berry, “Too Much Monkey Business”

The fugitive one-armed economist Mark Steyn:

Notwithstanding the Treasury secretary’s protestations that the Yes/No prompt buttons of Turbo Tax were too complex for a simple soul such as himself, it’s no reflection on the hapless Geithner that he’s unable to fix the planet. When the Bolsheviks chose to introduce Russians to the blessings of a “command economy” 90 years ago, they were dealing with a relatively simple agricultural society largely contained within national borders. Obama and Geithner are trying to do it with a sophisticated global economy in which North American consumers, European bankers, Asian suppliers, Saudi investors and Chinese debt-holders are more tangled than an octopuses’ orgy. Even with “global oversight” – with the Toxic Tims of Germany, Argentina and India all agreeing on how to fix the game – it can’t be done.

Barack Obama, even when he’s not yukking it up on “60 Minutes,” barely disguises his indifference to economic matters. He is not an economist, a political philosopher, a geopolitical strategist. He is the President as social engineer, the Community-Organizer-in-Chief. His plan to reduce tax deductions for charitable giving, for example, is not intended primarily to raise revenue, but to advance government as the distributor of largesse and diminish alternative sources of societal organization, such as civic groups. Likewise, his big plans for socialized health care, a green economy, universal college education: they’re about extending the reach of the state.

The president of the United States just fired the president of General Motors. Think about that for a minute–in English, not in Russian.

Obama:

“Because starting today, the United States government will stand behind your warrantee.”

Thank you, President Goodwrench. Next week, Joe Biden will be appearing as the Shell Answer Man.

And, yes, Bush fired the CEO of AIG. But there was misfeasance at AIG with the default swaps. All GM did was comply with government regulations and union demands. Furthermore, Bush claims he abandoned free market principles to save them. Obama doesn’t want them saved and yet claims that his policies are consistent with free market principles. If that’s true, then looting is also a free market principle.

To his credit, the CEO of Ford hasn’t asked for bailouts. but, counter-intuitively, he has plugged higher gas taxes, to push up the price as high as $9.00 per gallon. Why? Because the new CAFE standards are fiction and nobody is even buying the hybrids that the government already twisted his arm to make. In other words, he wants more government interference to mitigate the previous government interference.

I’m sensing a pattern here.

I’m old enough to remember the era when presidents HIRED General Motor execs, such as the time Ike chose “Engine Charlie” Wilson to serve as SecDef.

The Detroit Free Press:

Sen. Robert Hendrickson, R-N.J., asked [Wilson] whether, given his investments in GM, he could make a decision that would hurt the company. Because the hearing was closed, reporters relied on secondhand descriptions from senators and staffers of what Wilson said.
“His answer, as quoted by one senator, was ‘Certainly. What’s good for General Motors is good for the country,’ ” the Free Press reported a few days later.
Opponents jumped on the comment as a sign of Wilson’s — and GM’s — hubris. The committee released a transcript of the hearing several days later, but the phrase already had lodged itself in the national mind. By September, former President Harry Truman was using it as part of his speech to Detroit’s Labor Day festivities.
Wilson’s actual reply, in full:
“I cannot conceive of one, because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country.” …
He would go on to make other verbal gaffes, spurring cartoonist Al Capp to base a character in his Li’l Abner strip on him named General Bullmoose. He was fond of saying “What’s good for General Bullmoose is good for the U.S.A.!”

Today, what’s “good” for General Motors is bad for America…but very good for Obama and his plans for a Command Economy. In fact, this is a two-fer; he gets to expand government and also bailout the autoworkers union, the true intended beneficiary.

Steyn closes:

In their first two months, Obama and Geithner have done nothing but vaporize your wealth, and your children’s future. What began as an economic crisis is now principally a political usurpation. And, to return to the president’s “false choice,” that “chaotic and unforgiving capitalism” is exactly what we need right now. It’s the quickest, cheapest, fairest, most efficient route to economic stabilization and renewal. A regimented and eternally forgiving global command economy with no moral hazard will destroy us all.

Let me help explain what Mr. Steyn means:

By “regimented”, he means that government will suck all the life and growth out of the economy and base decisions on favoritism and ideology, not sound business practices.
By “eternally forgiving”, he means bailouts today, tomorrow and forever.
By “command economy” he means Washington chooses, not you-ses.
By “no moral hazard”, he means there will be no consequences for bad decisions so bad decisions will multiply, such as privatizing gain and socializing risk. That means they are gambling with your money–but if they win, it’s theirs. If they lose, it’s yours.
By “will destroy us all”, he means “will destroy us all”.

It’s funny; I always thought of myself as a cultural and national security conservative, not as an economic conservative. But I do now.

Thanks, President Goodwrench.

Say–could ya top off the wiper fluid before you go to the G-20?

I gotta admit, he makes a pretty darn good case.

Update! Okay, I just can’t resist excerpting this:

The pre-Truckster Griswold had arranged to buy what sounded like a neat car–the aforementioned Super Sports wagon. Even after his introduction to the Truckster, Griswold displayed his previous smarts and backbone in refusing to fall for the obvious bait-and-switch and threatening to walk out if he didn’t get the car he wanted. In fact, we see Griswold walk out–only to find that his old car had been crushed. The fact that Griswold relented and bought the Truckster and did not sue the dealership for destruction of his property indicates the fact that the Truckster’s influence was already beginning to work on him. By the time he reached home, Griswold was completely in the Truckster’s thrall–he had already rationalized his purchase and defended the car to his surprised wife.

From that point on, we see Griswold’s decision-making and good fortune begin to crumble. By the end of the movie, Griswold is almost unrecognizable from his pre-movie state–he had descended into a plane of irrationality, immorality, and rationalizing reminiscent of, say, a serious drug user. Again, the One Ring’s slow, deleterious effects on its bearers can serve as an example. While the Truckster’s effects appear to be similar to the Ring’s, the Truckster actually appears to be much more powerful. The Ring took years to twist its bearers, but the Truckster ruined Griswold’s life within a week and left an elderly woman and a dog dead in its wake.

Unfortunately, judging by the subsequent Vacation movies, the Truckster’s influence was permanent.

If you aren’t signed up for Amazon’s Daily Blogs feature, well, you oughta be. They don’t post near often enough to suit me — or at least not in the particular categories I signed up for — but it’s always solid, entertaining stuff when they do.

Another absorbing triumph from our good bud Burge. Don’t make me say it. But before you head over, make sure you have time enough to truly luxuriate in the Jacuzzi of Cool you’ll be immersing yourself in.

Man, a cigarette would sure go along nice with this one. Fucking asshole socialist busybodies.

In the course of telling you everything you ever wanted to know about Edsels, Cookie The Dog’s Owner (hey — I’m Cookie The Dog’s owner too!) tosses off another pearl of plain-spoken wisdom the Obamanauts are going to blithely ignore:

This, to me, is the enduring lesson of the Edsel. Advertising can get your products attention, but if there’s any disagreement between the ad men and the customers over what the customers want or need, the customers are going to win the argument every time, just as they did in the fall of 1957. The teaser ads and the ponies and Bob Hope got customers into the showroom, but when they got there, they took one look at the impact ring and the goofy transmission and the sticker price and concluded that the Edsel just wasn’t the car for them.

As we enter what may prove to be a brave new world of bailouts and quasi-nationalization, those who would commend the future of the automobile industry to the alleged wisdom of “car czars,” Congressional committees, or Presidential task forces should remember the Edsel. If the new Utopian Turtletop you experts think we should all be driving isn’t really what we the people want or need, if it fails as a product, all the advertising and speechmaking in the world won’t save it.

Conventional wisdom among those superior-being Democrats who wish to herd and stampede us is that we proles are a slight notch below cattle in terms of our intelligence and discernment. They’re wrong — which is why the only way the upcoming Pelosimobile — soon to be foisted on GM and Chrysler as payback for the bailouts– can succeed is if both building and buying it is made mandatory. Which, naturally, it will be…because US AutoCorp (d/b/a as Congressional Motors, Inc) is too big to fail.