So threatening to withhold federal money is getting into private business, but giving it out freely is not?

I mean, the private business could always refuse the federal money and try to make do on its own, but when someone is giving you a handout they are well within their right to give certain stipulations. 

If you give a friend money to pay the rent, you're going to pissed when he blows it on coke and hookers.  This is just a way to make sure the auto companies don't blow their money on coke and hookers.

~Zoo

You may have a point, but often times when a guy says "I can't see how it can be worse," later on he ends up saying, "Oh, so that's how."

It's hard to imagine any individual less competent (in the sense of qualified) to run a large company than BO.  He's had zero executive experience, and it shows in his floundering in trying to run the largest bureaucratic organization in the world.  I think it's all part of the obfuscation effort, though - keep the focus away from the really big stuff.  All he really cares about is getting his government growth agenda achieved.  All this other stuff is nothing but covering fire.

At least Bush had actually run a company.  Good or bad doesn't matter, at least he'd been there.

It's not hard...I can think of quite a few people: cracked out homeless guy drenched in his own urine, crazy guy who think aliens have implanted a machine up his ass, the people currently running the companies that got us into this clusterfuck.

~Zoo

So incompetence is a resume-enhancer now.

And I beg to differ about who, exactly, 'got us into this clusterfuck' - the social engineers got us 'into' this clusterfuck.  The people running the companies did what the (government-distorted) market wanted.

that's likely to happen when the guy who spent 8 years as moron-in-chief encouraged, aided & abetted private business to push joe the plumber (only like a real guy named joe who actually is a plumber or anything else as opposed to pretending to practice a trade) into the shitpile. 

i really oughta waste whatever time it would require to go back a couple years when yall were whining about not being able to invest your social security withholdings in the market.

into the ground.  literally.

i highly doubt he himself had the good sense to sell his stake just before it tanked.  and let's don't forget who helped him bail out in time.  i've personally witnessed several businesses fail. amazingly, none of their owners--men and women who for one reason or another found themselves on the wrong end of a balance sheet--wound up intact financially thanks to the largesse of family friends or associates.  

if he, like nearly any of the rest of us, had to do withou the benefit of family connections, i'm willing to bet the 'ranch' woulda been on the block years ago.  there's notta whole lotta ranches that remain solvent solely by clearing brush.  according to former mexican president vincente fox, w is afraid of horses. 

there's one area in which government alone can do a great deal as far as helping what's left of american industry--the kind that actually makes products--become globally competitive again, presuming those who run our government have the balls and that would be a complete reinvention of healthcare.  i'm beginning to have my doubts that obama will stop playing centrist and do what needs to be done, but if and when it happens, american businesses could be free to play on the same field as every other first world industrial power.   our national debt just might begin to turn around and the costs associated with medicare and medicaid would almost certainly be massively mitigated.  

i remember when the standard argument against universal health care was "i want to be able to choose my own doctor".  we no longer have that option anyway thanks to hmos.  how's that workin for anyone--physicians or patients?

No, I was just listing people who were worse than Obama at running a company.  You said it was hard, I disagreed.

~Zoo

If anybody wants to make a real difference in the auto industry, get rid of the unions. 

I say let Obama do what he wants. Our world has survived worse things, just let him do his thing and let those who believe in him see the results of their choice. We can not always avoid natural disasters and all we can do is rebuild afterwards; we may as well do the same with Obama. Perhaps a major change in the way things are done is what we need to open our eyes and and realize that the real change we need is to get rid of this current set of useless people we call politicians and get ourselves some real deal people who can truly make a difference for the better.

So that's it?  Just blindly blame Bush while BO enables the destruction of capitalism and turns us into Europe?  You're reduced to saying anything BO does is justified because you think Bush was a moron?  Wow.

BTW, I would have happily put 5% of my SS withholding in the market, which was what Bush proposed.  Woulda been fine but for the likes of Barney Frank & Chris Dodd.  You think the SS withholding the feds have stolen from us is worth squat?  It's not just down in value, it's Monopoly money.  Good luck collecting on that once Generation Fucked wakes up to the scam.

This is another "we told you so".  Many of us said it was just a matter of time before the government starts helping people with their car payments.

Alright, what's left?

Bush spending for 8 years is nothing compared to Obama's first 3 months.