Wonkette
Look at their sweet coordinated dance moves! It’s like that “Thriller” video, only at the end, everybody has to give them 39 billion dollars. [NPR]
FUNNY PICTURES
I’ll bet they had to have a negotiation team to just figure out what car they would show up in.
And a negotiation to determine what the negotiation table would look like - e.g., only circular or isoceles triagles are acceptable
Aww! Sara’s lost her mind! So cute!
I’d totally go zombie if brains were made of cookie.
Michael Jackson also got $39 billion, but he had to use it to keep little boys quite.
meant “quiet.”
$39 Billion? I could purchase all of Hummer’s North American business for that. I could also sell sub-prime mortgages in Hell.
Why can’t they rely on the generosity of the American people? We can all make a difference by giving instead of encouraging dependence on the government. I have several electric toothbrushes that are a bit frayed they can use. Also, I have some Halloween decor I was saving for next year that they could probably melt down and turn into an axle or something.
We should definitely get some miles out of any public monies we give these arseheads.
They should all have to work one shift ever week in one of their plants. And be required to have any pensions or retirements tied to their performance OTJ. We can make a reality TeeVee show out of it!
GIVE US MONIES OR WE BK AND UNLEASH OUR CDS ZOMBIES ON THE WORLD
Why did they pull up in a Camry?
I make mistakes, therefore, I am.
Will somebody give me some lovely bail-out cash? Please!
Just shut off the importing of foreign made cars, give these tuckers whatever they need (but no obscene bonuses and shit like that) and tell them to make some gotdamned good cars and make ‘em run on air (no more huge ones, either, just bitty things you don’t even have to put in reverse because you can just pick it up and turn it around) and we’ll be in like Flynn.
What, too radical? No one listens to me. I got great ideas.
They scurry from their cars, protectively cowering against the rain of disgust.
Oh Carrie_Okie, I HEART the reality TV show idea! That is frigging brilliant! 24/7 cameras, like Big Brother, following these guys around EVERYWHERE. “Oh, you got the VENTI latte, eh, so the TALL one isn’t good enough for ya? Had to spend an extra two bucks on the Venti?”
Stuff like that. They’ll commit mass hari-kari in no time. Then I think we should put Britney Spears in charge of All American Car Making and Synthesized Growls and Stuff.
I had too much creamer in my coffee this morning y’all.
WhatTheHeck: It looks like an Olds Mobile to me.
Okay, now that they arrived in an ‘82 Chevy Cavalier or whatever, instead of 3 separate Grumman Gulfstreams, I’m fine with shoveling money at them. What could go wrong? In fact, I think I’ll head over to the Pontiac dealer and see if they have any of those Azteks available.
New business plan: Truck Nutz standard on all new American cars.
It’s like the Dawn of the Dead Industries
Goddammit, I’m sorry, scratch my previous idea about getting rid of all the foreign cars, I love Toyotas! And I just realized they’re Taiwanese or Australian or something!
OK, so who’s going to be the brave filmmaker who turns this into a road movie? I imagine scenes in which:
they hit the Bunny Ranch
they get lost in the “wrong part of town” and lose their hubcaps
car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and Alan Mullaly has to change the fan belt
they pick up a hith-hiker who may or may not be a serial killer
they fight over what radio station to listen to
Rick Wagoner ties Robert Nardelli’s shoes together while he’s sleeping
they dig up an old bottle of “Dom Perignon” they buried in Death Valley 10 years earlier
they go skinny dipping just outside Oram, Utah and someone steals their clothes
they finally arrive in D.C. with a completely changed outlook on life
“Yes, Congressman, we feel we have comprehensive plan to make the most of the $34 billion we’re requesting.”
“Uh, Mr. Waggoner, wasn’t it $25 billion?”
“Two weeks ago, it was. But after we put our heads together and came up with an actual plan, we found that the figure was more like $42 billion.”
“Wait — you just — ”
“And with this $47 billion, we think we can get on a sound footing — for the next three or four months, at least.”
Is this a milestone when the CEOs all rode in one of their products? There was a deeply transformative moment when Wagoner started sniffing the air and said, “Is this what they all smell like?” Nardelli got carsick and Mulally was just annoying the whole time, reading out the signs of failing businesses along the highway as they drove.
SayItWithWookies: Why not? It worked with AIG.
Kev-O-Tron: You’re winning this game, friend.
Serolf Divad: I would also request that they compete in an adolescent spelling competition, go to a Cuban music club, and follow some geese on their “Winged Migration.”
Serolf Divad: I’m cool with all that, just so long as they bring along someone’s really old aunt and when she dies, they tie her to the roof for the rest of the trip.
badmuthagoose:
Ya know, the foreigns buy our crap too.
Serolf Divad: Nah. It’s needs to be a 1970’s style road movie that ends like “Vanishing Point” or “Dirty Mary & Crazy Larry”.
The other day I was feeling a little bit bad for the American auto-industry, mainly the workers who will be unemployed should they fail. Then I saw pictures of the 2010 Honda Insight. Yeah, Detroit. You’re fucked.
lumpenprole: well, that’s ok. They can keep doing that. In my plan, Americans would only be able to buy American cars and Toyotas, because I will only drive a Toyota.
Wait, what crap of ours do they buy?
Wagner: Look, that’s our nation’s capitol!
Nardelli: Let’s sing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall
Mullaly: I have to pee.
Really simple: If rich people wouldn’t want to buy your company than neither do I.
This reminds me precisely of the occaisional surfacing of a cousin of mine after another glorious two year pot binge, asking for a “loan” to help out with some unfortunate financial and legal issues (child support warrants, etc). Only he shows up in a much nicer car. We’d have better odds getting money back from my cousin. Especially seeing as his “business” is much more profitable and better structured that what these guys do.
FYI, the guy on the right isn’t an auto exec, but Rep. Sander Levin.
Go right ahead and give them their billions. The government has already promised to give out eleventy-kajillion zillion dollars, so it’s not like the money is going to have any value for much longer anyway.
Serolf Divad: Pitch it Baby!
Fuck these fuckers in their fucking stupid asses.
badmuthagoose: Well, if you outlaw imports of Toyotas then the value of my 14 year old one would go up and then I could sell it and get a late model Ford Focus… which would probably be even crappier than said old Toyota and I would have to deal with power window and door malfunctions. Never mind let’s just start banning the allowing of ‘Merican cars back in from Canada and Mexico and where ever else they build them these days.
Serolf Divad: I’m thinking more along the lines of Stranger than Paradise, with Sheila Bair playing the part of the distant cousin with the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins fixation, and Wagoner playing Eddie.
“I got a good feelin’ about them dog races, Willie.”
WadISay: Wagner: What do you call these things?
Nardelli: It’s called a car. We make them.
Mullaly: What a piece of shit.
springfield: I’m down with that. Boo to NAFTA. And Toyotas would be our only exception to the outlawing of imports.
Wait, wait, wait. No money for nothing. First, they give us all free cars that run well and get good gas mileage. You know like stimulous checks only cars for free.
SayItWithWookies: How about the road trip sequence in Five Easy Pieces? Waggoner could go apeshit on a waitress at a diner and Nardelli could go on to write the 80’s pop smash “Mickey”.
Don’t cotton with them horseless carriages nor them hot ‘n tot yahoos that sells em, says I!
Now they may understand the pain of a massive repair bill.
“I’m sorry. The repairs are not covered because you haven’t been getting your regularly scheduled oil changes. So, fuck you very much.”
Badmuthagoose: Japanese will pay 25-75K for vintage American 60s lowrider Chevelles and Impalas. I bet if the Big Three sold of their archival fleet, concept cars, vintage cars, and automobilia, they could raise billions.
If these zombies would stop makin Flintstone cars then they wouldn’t need to be on welfare! We need horse power not dinosour!
HEY! NURPLE’S GOT THE ANSWER!
Seriously, why don’t they do that?
How much will Toyota be asking for?
Oh wait. My bad.
obfuscator: And it just occurred to me, the title would have to be The Sure Thing.
badmuthagoose: What crap of ours do they buy? Bonds.
PuffAdder: Ask the Japanese.
SayItWithWookies: Perfect. The music for the trailer would be the intro to “La Grange”, by ZZ Top. Quick camera cuts to each of the three stars straightening their ties, checking their BlackBerrys, etc.
Voice over guy sez: “This December, these three incompetent jackoff CEOs are taking a road trip to Washington D.C… they’ve been promised a sure thing… (crescendo of southern blooze guitars now) but it’s the American taxpayer who’s really going to be fucked!”
Next, another rapid fire montage of congressional hearings, complete with exasperated senators, fingerpointing, and Nardelli leaning over to consult with his buddies while putting his hand over the microphone.
MICHAEL JACKSON JOKE:
Why does Michael Jackson love 27 year-olds?
There are 20 of them.
shortsshortsshorts:
Why does Michael Jackson love sales at the Baby Gap?
Because little kids’ clothes are half off.
4tehlulz:
I would, but given the size and performance of the Toyota US plants I’m more interested in hearing one of our guys talk about it.
obfuscator: This joke is not funny, as it implies that MJ likes little girls. Why would you slander him like that?
Congress, do you see the level at which these men are willing to debase themselves to get at your precious precious money? Driving their own companies’ cars. Eating peasant food at truck stops. Asking for nine billion more then they did the last time. What else must they do to get non-sequential bills placed in a sack with a dollar sign on it?
http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/
badmuthagoose: springfield_meltdown: Um, you guys realize they make Toyotas and other furrin’ cars in the USA nowadays? My wife’s ‘93 Subaru was made in Layfayette, IN, for example. Toyota builds their pickups in TX. Also plenty of ‘murican made BMWs, Volkswagens and (I think) Nissans at various points in recent history.
Banning imports isn’t necessarily going to help GM, Ford, Chrysler.
So, Bear Stearns can use taxpayer money for luxury spas, but the auto execs have to beg, humbly, for some crumbs off IAG’s taxpayer-money-laden table.
Why? Because the Republicans want to destroy the UAW and they’re willing to force millions of people into the unemployment lines (more taxpayer money) and deny them health insurance (more taxpayer money, if the sick poor people don’t die before they hit the emergency room–or die in the emergency room, waiting) just to destroy the UAW, the folks who are making major concessions that the rich fucks rescued on Skid Road Wall Street weren’t required to even speculate about when they were raking in hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. Or rather, money from the People’s Bank of China.
And the economists keep telling us that this isn’t the Great Depression, because UNEMPLOYMENT isn’t high enough to qualify this mess for anything but a recession.
Not to put a fine point on it, but the Republican party is willing to plunge the nation into another depression so they can wipe out the UAW. Whoa–if the Rs hate the union that much, then the UAW must be doing something seriously right.
Then the Rs can get the Steelworkers, the CWA and keep going until they wipe out SEIU and the public sector unions like AFSCME.
And then we will all be hobos living in Republican heaven, James Dobson’s Rapture, right here on earth.
I don’t care how many tire tools the Teamsters might wield–they’re not going to be able to levy the justice these elitist Republican fucks deserve.
On a brighter note, that dumb fuck Libby Dole who is on the teevee right now got her ass whipped and won’t be returning. God does a few things right, once in awhile.
DustBowlBlues: This. I do wonder if shit’s gonna burn if the automakers are allowed to implode while Citi and AIG gets trillions wired to Grand Cayman Island.
Toyota and the others have plants in the south because there are no unions here. They make good money and benefits because the companies don’t want them to unionize. Once the UAW is wiped out, the Republican crackers who so happily freeload off the UAW dues-paying yankees won’t have any protection, so they can kiss their salary, benefits and workers rights, not to mention safety regulations, good-fucking-bye.
I hate deadbeats and would never buy a car made by one.
NEWS BULLETIN
WASHINGTON — The Big Three automobile companies today asked for federal government permission to print their own money.
“It is a fact that private enterprise can do anything better than the government can, so if we have our own printing presses, we can produce our own U.S. dollars,” said CEOs Curly, Larry and Moe in a joint statement. “That way we don’t have to beg you evil people in Washington for anything ever again, or even make good business decisions or depend upon selling cars.”
A White House spokesman said President Bush did not give a shit and just bought a Hummer with Truck Nutz.
SERIES BIZNIZ:
First Congress was like “we don’t know if we can give you that 25 billion,” so the Industry comes back and sez “well how about 39 BILLION INSTEAD? HEENNNGGHH?
This is so fucked up.
There is only oen way to get rid of zombies:
RUN OVER THEIR HEADS WITH A TESLA ROADSTER!
Or a shotgun.
Depends upon your political view, I guess.
But who says you can’t have both.
Personally, I can’t wait to read in the news that there was a drive-by in the neighborhood and the vehicle is not a Cadillac Escalade or a Hummer, but a Fisker Karma. It will be at this moment, I will know that the future is here!
There has got to be an upcoming low budget movie, or SNL skit at least,
titled : “Are We There Yet?”.
Here comes the Ford exec!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGNLVkaMEbE&feature=PlayList&p=9A655C0425350C04&index=0
Aw, come on you congressional tight-asses, hand over the dough. After all, it’s Christmas, the season of giving. As any senior executive would tell you, it’s so much better to give than to receive- Especially if it’s the taxpayer doing the giving, and them doing the receiving.
Besides, do you really want these poor fellows to suffer the indignity of being seen in last year’s corporate jet? Next you’ll be saying that the gold fittings in the Executive Washroom have to go.
Have you no compassion?