Bloodthirsty Liberal

“This little number is only 232 years old, and was driven only on Sundays by a little old lady.”

The Obama administration gave General Motors and Chrysler LLC failing grades Monday for their turnaround efforts and promised a sweeping overhaul of the troubled companies. The government plans to give the automakers more money, but it is also holding out the threat of a “structured bankruptcy.”

The federal government will provide operating funds for both automakers for several weeks, during which time the companies will have to undergo significant restructuring, administration officials said late Sunday night.

At GM, part of that restructuring began early Monday when CEO Rick Wagoner announced his resignation, which he said came at the request of the Obama administration.

Good for President Obama for saying there are conditions tied to bailout money.

Bad for President Obama (very bad) for demanding the head of a private corporation. That’s not his job, no matter how much state money they receive. Unless he’s nationalized the industry like a skinnier Hugo Chavez (who called Obama an “ignoramus”), the CEO reports to the Board of Directors. I don’t care if Obama was channeling the spirit of Lee Iacocca (who’s very much alive, I understand), hiring and firing is not the job of the president. Especially a president who can’t even staff his own administration.

But, of course, he’s not Lee Iacocca. He’s not even Edsel Ford. This guy hasn’t run an organization larger than the Chicago South Side chapter of Communists for Kelly Clarkson.

PS: Michelle Malkin thinks he’s just posing:

But the bottom line is, despite their threats to withhold the funds, the feds will eventually give them the billions of dollars in taxpayer money they need to prop up their failing businesses.
In other words: KABUKI!

Kabuki is kind of like mime, right? Can’t we stick Obama in one of those invisible boxes that only street mimes seem to fall into? Without his teleprompter?

PPS: Ed Morrissey reports that the president’s even going to process your repair claims!

PPPS: Mark Steyn on such public/private partnerships:

The first quid pro quo for the government giving you money (or “investing”, as President Obama and David Brooks say) is that it gets to regulate your behavior. Not just who sits on your board or (see Sarkozy last week) where your factory has to be. When the government “pays” for your health care, it reserves the right to deny (as in parts of Britain) heart disease treatment for smokers or hip replacement for the obese. Why be surprised? When the state’s “paying” for your health, your lifestyle directly impacts its “investment.”

The next stage is that, having gotten you used to having your behavior regulated, the state advances to approving not just what you do but what you’re allowed to read, see, hear, think: See the “Canadian Content” regulations up north, and the enforcers of the “human rights” commissions. Or Britain’s recent criminalization of “homophobic jokes.”

You’d be surprised how painlessly and smoothly once-free peoples slip from government “investing” to government control.