Wonkette
Remember how Barack Obama doesn’t want to own all these companies, and he’s so tired of having to be CEO of basically everything, and really he just wants to have his wars and play basketball? Well, today is a new day, and Obama is now making Chrysler go bankrupt. But it’s not Chrysler’s fault! It’s not the unions’ fault. Like every bad thing, it is the fault of speculators, stock-jobbers, and other “hedge funds.” Let’s liveblog his speech!
12:09 PM — “It’s been a pillar of our industrial economy. Sadly, it is a pillar of terrible salt.”
12:09 PM — Barack was eight minutes late, make a note of it.
12:09 PM — We cannot keep this shitty company afloat forever with tax dollars, which need to go to, say, investment banks.
12:10 PM — The reason Obama has changed his plan from last month is because both Chrysler and its creditors (and Fiat, probably) all suck.
12:11 PM — They all had 30 days to make an agreement that would please America’s CEO, Barack Obama.
12:11 PM — Most of the players agreed to make special sacrifices (children).
12:12 PM — Fiat will now make Chrysler magic, and that will save 30,000 jobs.
12:12 PM — FIAT? Weren’t they run out of America a decade or two ago, for also sucking?
12:14 PM — Motherfucking hedge funds wouldn’t accept a deal. “I don’t stand with them,” Obama snarls. “I don’t stand with those who held out when everybody else made sacrifices.”
12:15 PM — Meaning, Obama has erased those debts. The hedge funds get NOTHING.
12:16 PM — And the managers of those hedge funds will suffer the indignity of televised anal crucifixion.
12:16 PM — Ha, Obama really snarls when he says “speculators.” The anal crucifixion will be lengthy, but it will also end in humiliating death.
12:18 PM — Oh hooray, Barack Obama will honor your editor’s Chrysler warranty. (Yes your editor has a Town & Country. He is 6′4″ and has many children and dogs and cannot fit in the better Toyota and Honda vans. Oh and really does it matter if Obama honors the warranty? No, because the motherfucking dealerships will always find a way to NOT honor the warranty, because in your case and ONLY in your case, this piece of shit that broke is not covered because … swine flu?)
12:20 PM — The government is going to buy hella Chryslers.
12:21 PM — Hey wait didn’t this happen to Chrysler in the 1980s?
“12:12 PM — FIAT? Weren’t they run out of America a decade or two ago, for also sucking?”
Yes, but Chrysler sucks worse.
Today, we are all Lee Iacocca…
the sweet valley high twins drove a fiat spider, so fiat has to be good!
How’s that fine corinthian leather now, hedge funds?
I SO SO SO want that Chrysler in the ad! Oh my god! Two tone car! Holy Schmoly.
I’m trying to picture an anal crucifixion, but my imagination just isn’t up to it.
Terry: Think Cinquecento — very cool retro car, made Fiat healthy again after a near-death experience in 2004:
http://img2.scoop.co.nz/stories/images/0711/16d13bfcf0768d32cf8a.jpeg
Granted, cars that echo the cool ones of the past are not as good as cars people in the future will think we’re cool, but what’s Chrysler got?
montresor:
I want that woman’s hat.
As a daughter of the Motor City, this is the start of a big ol’ sad for moi, and it’s gettin’ bigger for ol’ Generous, where a fambly member has toiled for nearly 30 years and continues to do so at what I still think of as the Ren Cen……
Fix I Again, Tony.
Fix IT, Again Tony! dammit.
What is it with these damned “workers” who want to eat their cake and have it, too. Someone needs to explain to them that they can’t have it all.
Job, Health Insurance, Family: pick two.
Bronkers: Travis burger. Or Lafayette Coney after the bars shut down.
Oh, sure. Show a pic from a time when Chrysler actually made a decent car. In fact, I think they’re still driving those cars in Havana.
The question “Is it right to buy a Chrysler?” finally gains some legitimate ethical oomph.
(”Yes! For great is the car with power steering and dynaflow suspension!”)
Man, I’d buy a shiny new Chrysler just hear Hopey read Ken’s interpretation of this shit, up to and including “anal crucifixion”…
Advocatus_Diaboli: The Corinthian leather was rich, never fine. Ricardo Montalban did not sound so mellifluously stentorian saying “fine” as when he said “rich.”
Jeepers Chrys! Mistakes were made, there’s just no dodging that.
televised anal crucifixion
Is that footage from a stoplight camera in Florida?
Will noone do honor to the memory of the Dodge Dart of the 60s? It was un-killable. They had to stop making it, once someone bought one they never needed a new car again.
Tommmcatt: View the Rubgy picture from a few threads back.
Meaning, Obama has erased those debts. The hedge funds get NOTHING.
Wait, is that for real? I’m not watching this, but if that’s true, that’s pretty awesome (and also probably illegal - here come the lawsuits!)
“Yes your editor has a Town & Country. He is 6′4″ and has many children and dogs and cannot fit in the better Toyota and Honda vans”
Try pushing the seat all the way back and slightly reclining the seat. You can at least upgrade to a Chevy or Ford.
Tommy Says Soooo, Jugdish!: Yikes, my absence is showing… Travis burger? I’ve not been resident for a long time, though I visit several (usually) times a year. Lafayette coneys… ah, dem were th’ days. Yeah, and Faygo and Vernors.
The dealership out here in The Evil East where I bought my Pontiac Vibe bought it two weeks ago… man, who would have thought this would transpire?
Theh again, I have the vaguest memories of the NASH plant on Jefferson Avenue back 50 years ago.
Tommmcatt: well either they think they made it up, or it’s this thing from central europe (serbia-ish) where you snip someone’s perineum, then slowly nail a spiked pole up their ass, through their torso, and out again. if you do it right, you miss the vital organs, and they live, hanging their for days in horrible pain before finally dying. true story!
I’ve noticed that all the car ads that used to be on during Mariners’ games have been replaced with mini-burger ads, so there’s an all-American industry that can reemploy all those workers.
On the other hand, what would a Detroit-made mini-burger look like?
Prommie: “But of course!”
Socialist Kenyans At The Gate.
Terry: Ford & Chevy make even SHITTIER vans. Do they even still sell vans?
Anyway I am replacing it with another Murano.
Accordion-o-rama: Eminem’s ex-wife.
cranky: Thank you for the courage to say what I was thinking…but too embarassed to say out loud…
Accordion-o-rama: It would use a lot of oil, and fall apart before you were finished with it.
I rented a Fiat in Milan. It was a nice little car. very cool.
.
Prommie: the Dodge Dart! Now that was a great little car, too…
Ken Layne: Chevy makes no vans, which is why they wanted a GM-Chrysler hookup. You could look into that Buick crossover which, anomalously, got good marks. However, you would be characterized as an old effin’ dork for drivinug a BUICK.
God I feel like a loser. I totally love my Pacifica and my Ram: It’s got a Hemi! The power totally goes to my head.
Ken Layne: Get a BRAIN, Murano!
sati demise: “the Dodge Dart! Now that was a great little car, too.”
It was so great, Chrysler built it twice and called the other one, “Plymouth Valiant”. An early example of marketing idiocy.
“So big, so new, so smart” was Obama’s second choice for the election campaign slogan.
She woke up and took me by the hand.
We made love in my Chevy van
And that’s all right with me
In an area where people drive trucks way more expensive than the houses they live in, we get sympathetic looks at our 1993 Ford Ranger. The only vehicle parked in front of any Chamber of Commerce office (where my spouse is manager) that displays a Proud to Be Union bumper sticker in the back window.
Fuck the bondholders, the hedge funds, the people who have spread the bullshit I just heard repeated about the UAW salaries being $70.00 an hour. Fuck all of them. Power to the people!
magic titty: I have family moving back to the States from Kenya today, so you are prescient, rafiki. Their at the boarding gate at Jomo Kenyatta International, but why quibble?
Terry: And its a sad day when an Italian auto-maker looks good compared to you.
Ken Layne: No Ken, NO! Replace your van with a REAL Town & Country. It’ll go 110 with nine kids and one adult in it. (Well, it will with my dad driving it, anyway.)
I’ve got 210,000 miles on my Miata. Chrysler can bite me.
bitchincamaro: “the Dodge Dart! Now that was a great little car, too.”
It was so great, Chrysler built it twice and called the other one, “Plymouth Valiant”. An early example of marketing idiocy.
Um…
Firebird/Camaro
Mustang/Cougar (late 60’s)
Mustang/Capri (80’s)
Mercury Marquis/Ford LTD/Ford Victoria
Taurus/Sable
Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix
There are others.
The whole same-car-badged-under-two-names has worked pretty darn well over time.
The real question with Fiat is: do we get Italian drivers too? Because that’s basically a Mad Max scenario (read:amazing).
Lascauxcaveman: Don’t forget Plymouth Laser/Mitsubishi Eclipse
Oh, Chrysler on a crutch!
Prommie: I remember a Plymouth valiant that was bought used. uncomfortable as hell, but nothing kept it from running. Even when it got flooded (not the engine — the whole car).
bitchincamaro: don’t forget the scamp, all the same car just as most gm products have been identical except for cosmetics for quite some time now (the mustang…a comet /falcon with a hip new body) let’s not forget detroits greatest contribution to automotive historty..the opera window.
engulfedinflames: I get your point but I am partial to the reclining driver’s seat since it provided more space between you and the steering wheel if you went out with the right girl.
Ken Layne: 6′4″? Damn you are large. I (6′3″) fit just fine in my almost 4-year-old Honda Element, but we have no children.
You must really love flying.
cranky: Ah, impalement. Vlad Dracula’s favorite method of execution. He was Romanian (Wallachian), not Serbian, but I think that impalement was used all over. FUN TIMES, the medieval years, FUN TIMES!
Let’s invent a time machine and send the hedge fund managers back??
Lascauxcaveman: I once had a gay tenant who drove a Ford Probe. Worst. name. ever.
Obama is the Anti-Chrysler.
Does this mean that Obama told Cerberus to eat a three-headed dick?
The Helvetica Scenario: +1.
Does this mean that all PT Cruiser owners will be forced to get gay married? Because, OK, if it helps teh economies.
Tommy Says Soooo, Jugdish!: AHHHHH the nash/rambler which became rambler then american motors then amc then gave us the gremlin then went away forever.
The Helvetica Scenario: win!
I new this was going to happen since I went to the Car Show last winter - Ford had a big spread of their stuff, GM had a sightly smaller spread of their plastic crap (I was sitting in a new Hummer wondering how anyone would pay retail for this plastic piece of shit), and Chrysler was waaaaaay in the back in a dark corner, hidden behind KIA, no floor-people, no visitors, no hope, no future…. but maybe the Gubbmit could turn Chrysler into a munitions plant or a light-rain manufacturer or something…
Maybe NOW L. Brooks Patterson’s head will explode. I’d pay to watch that.
Crazybroad: Our local version of Hannity being waterboarded. +1.
averyspecialjoedonbakerxmas: Your name wins, no comment necessary! Good work Joe!
bitchincamaro: Heh, that’s funny and appropriate.
(Also Ford Probe/Mazda 626. Also)
Tommy Says Soooo, Jugdish!: FTW!
Is there a Wikipedia on Anal Crusifiction yet? Can someone get right on that?
Jesus, Ken. How many kids and dogs do you have to not be able to fit in a Toyota or Honda van? I can get all 4 of my kids in the Nissan, but then I don’t have dogs. Are you doing the Mormon thing with 30 kids and 4 wives? Do they all have awesome beards or just you?
Also, how badly scarred are your kids from all the talking about buttsecks and Trucknutz?
Prommie: I had one of those. But if the oil pump goes and you continue to drive at 90 miles an hour eventually they sometimes throw a rod. I was 17 and stupid…
Lascauxcaveman: Hyundai Excell and Mistubishi Precis.
Most GM cars in the 70s, 80s and 90s were the same across Chevy, Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile and Cadillac. Nicer interiors as you moved upscale. A little sportier on the Pontiacs.
Now you even have a Cadillac “Corvette”.
Toyotas and Lexuses or Nissans and Infinitis are the same cars and everyone talks about how good they are.
Porsches, Volkswagens and Audis. Even if Porsche isn’t a common ownership.
Why single out American cars for what everyone does.
PineyWoodster: 210,000? Thats all? I had over 300,000 on my Chevy S10; passed it along still running to a step-daughter.
Had similar mileages on Dodges.
Car ownerships are religions. Every one likes their maker better than all those gawdawful cars made by any other company.
I’ve had people tell me how Toyotas never need fixing - while I was holding a wrench or screwdriver fixing that very Toyota with them watching because they didn’t know how to fix it.
My car is better than your car threads suck. And not the good kind of suck.
ignatius_riley: if we are using the time machine, can i go back use the correct “there”? kee-rist.
and vlad didn’t invent it, just enjoyed it a good deal.
montresor: Yep, if Chryslers still looked like that, I would buy one. I already have the hat. Eat your heart out, Tommmcatt.
Prommie: Ah, the Dodge Dart. There was a time you could but one off the lot, just with parts ordered from the factory and you could literally blow the doors off anything on the street. Friend of mine had one and we would drive the streets of chicago, just two polish kids out having fun, your right it was indestructible. Forgot about that car, thanks for bringing it back up