What "not running GM" Looks Like

Matt Welch | June 2, 2009

Fun/horrible little squib in the Wall Street Journal:

"What we are not doing -- what I have no interest in doing -- is running GM," Mr. Obama said in yesterday's bankruptcy announcement. "When a difficult decision has to be made on matters like where to open a new plant or what type of new car to make, the new GM, not the United States government, will make that decision."

The President is so busy not running GM that he had time the night before to call and reassure Detroit Mayor Dave Bing about the new GM's future location. GM is being courted to move its headquarters to nearby Warren, Michigan. And Mr. Bing told the Detroit News that he had received a call Sunday evening from the President "informing me of his support for GM to stay in the city of Detroit with its headquarters at the Renaissance [Center]."

Obama has been talking out of both sides of his mouth on GM for so long, I imagine it must be hard to keep track after a while.

Link via my favorite blogger at The Corner, Veronique de Rugy.

Comments

|6.2.09 @ 2:51PM|#

Kady dreamed of the dead-meat smell.

Pus oozing from a gangrenous head, rotting limbs left in landfills; these were the smells she dreamed of. But her favorite and most fantastic dream was the one she had experienced this afternoon: The horsehead. In her dream, the horsehead is fresh, never rotten, and the blood is still warm, so warm its iron odor assaults her nose.
She is lying on her back and takes the head by the ears, draws it close to her face. She licks the horsehead's nostrils so they glisten with her saliva and thrusts her tongue deep inside each one, collecting nuggets of dried mucous to swallow.

|6.2.09 @ 3:03PM|#

The President is so busy not running GM that he had time the night before to call and reassure Detroit Mayor Dave Bing about the new GM's future location. GM is being courted to move its headquarters to nearby Warren, Michigan. And Mr. Bing told the Detroit News that he had received a call Sunday evening from the President "informing me of his support for GM to stay in the city of Detroit with its headquarters at the Renaissance [Center]."

Mr. Bing? From Arnie the Doughut? He seems to be too nice to be running a big, grown-up city like Detroit.

creech|6.2.09 @ 3:11PM|#

For crap's sake, read Obamessiah's words.
Is corporate headquarters either a "new plant" or a "new car?" No? Then he didn't tell a lie.

Mike M.|6.2.09 @ 3:18PM|#

By the way, if SUVs are destroying the planet like the left is always telling us they are, why did Obama sell the Hummer division to China instead of just shutting it down completely?

It makes me suspect that even they don't really believe all that B.S.

|6.2.09 @ 3:19PM|#

JW,

The mayor of Detroit Dave Bing ran this company for a living prior to being elected mayor of Detroit.

Before that he did this for a living.

He has been successful in both endeavors. I have serious doubts that he can restore functionality to the city, but am willing to give him a shot before ridiculing him.
___________________________________________________________
And Obama once again shows that he is just another lying power grasping politician who thinks the voters are stupid. He's probably right about the electorate's intelligence.

Xeones|6.2.09 @ 3:29PM|#

Seriously? Shut the fuck up, Barack Obama.

|6.2.09 @ 3:30PM|#

I find Cindy's seeming non sequitur of a first post to be oddly appropriate for this topic.

|6.2.09 @ 3:34PM|#

You elected a guard as your mayor? If you really wanted change, you should have elected a power-forward.

The Extispicator|6.2.09 @ 3:37PM|#

I can't wait until the 2010 auto show, when we will see Obama in a red sequin dress displaying the new GM "Barack" sedan.

Mike Laursen|6.2.09 @ 3:38PM|#

"When a difficult decision has to be made on matters like where to open a new plant or what type of new car to make, the new GM, not the United States government, will make that decision."

So, if GM wants to start building a new SUV in Dongguan, he won't interfere?

Invisible Finger|6.2.09 @ 3:42PM|#

The Bing Group would likely be a candidate for bankruptcy if GM was liquidated.

Detroit, as usual, elects yet another co-dependent as mayor.

Matt Welch|6.2.09 @ 3:53PM|#

I remember seeing a lot of Bing, Bob Lanier & Curtis Rowe as a kid when we had season tickets to the Elmore Smith-era Lakers.

|6.2.09 @ 4:03PM|#

Guess what building the Renaissance Center is near?

|6.2.09 @ 4:08PM|#

Remember Robert Heinlein's Door into Summer. Guy takes the Big Sleep and wakes up in the 21st Century:



But I got along. The job I found was crushing new ground limousines so that they could be shipped back to Pittsburgh as scrap. Cadillacs, Chryslers, Eisenhowers, Lincolns - all sort of great big, new powerful turbobuggies without a kilometer on their clocks. Drive'em between the jaws, then crunch! smash! crash! - scrap iron for blast furnaces.

It hurt me at first since I was riding the ways to work and didn't own so much as a Grav-Jumper. I expressed my opinion of it almost lost my job....until the shift boss remembered I was a Sleeper and really didn't understand.

"It's a simple matter of economics, son. These are surplus cars the government has accepted as security against price-support loans. They're two years old now and then can never be sold....so the government junks them and sells them back to the steel industry.

You can't run a blast furnace just on ore; you have to scrap iron as well. You ought to know that even if you are a Sleeper. Matter of fact with high-grade ore so scarce, there's more and more demand for scrap. The steel industry needs these cars."

"But why build them in the first place if they can't be sold? It seems wasteful."

"It just seems wasteful. You want to throw people out of work? You want to run down their standard of living?"

"Well why not ship them abroad? It seems to me they could get more for them on the open market abroad then they are worth as scrap."

"What! and ruin the export market? Besides, if we started dumping cars abroad everybody we'd get everyone sore at us - Japan, France, Germany, Great Asia, everybody. What are you aiming to do? Start a war?" He sighed and went on in a fatherly tone. "You go down to the public library and draw out some books. You don't have right to opinions on these things until you know something about them."

.....

I raised the subject just once more because I noticed that very few of the price-support cars were really ready to run. The workmanship was sloppy and they often lacked essentials like instrument dials or air conditioners. But when one day I noticed from the way the teeth of the crusher came down on, that it lacked even a power plant, I spoke up about it.

"The shift boss just stared at me. "Great jumping Jupiter, son, surely you don't expect them to put their best workmanship into cars that are just surplus? These cars had price support loans against them before they ever came off the assembly line."

So that time I shut up and stayed shut. I had better stick to engineering; economics is too esoteric for me.



http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345330129/reasonmagazineA/

|6.2.09 @ 4:23PM|#

Kady dreamed of the dead-meat smell.

Pus oozing from a gangrenous head, rotting limbs left in landfills; these were the smells she dreamed of. But her favorite and most fantastic dream was the one she had experienced this afternoon: The horsehead. In her dream, the horsehead is fresh, never rotten, and the blood is still warm, so warm its iron odor assaults her nose.
She is lying on her back and takes the head by the ears, draws it close to her face. She licks the horsehead's nostrils so they glisten with her saliva and thrusts her tongue deep inside each one, collecting nuggets of dried mucous to swallow.

Dadaist art-trolling here. I like it.

|6.2.09 @ 4:25PM|#

What-ever. At least my disgusto-porn is on topic. Pretenders to the throne are not welcome.

|6.2.09 @ 4:44PM|#

We elected one of the NBA's alltime 50 greatest players. Also, guards are more important to a basketball team than forwwards. Everybody under 6'4" knows that. ;-)

JB|6.3.09 @ 1:49PM|#

Obama is a lying liar who lies.