YOU ARE ALL RICH SO STOP COMPLAINING: The economy grew at a 3.5% pace last quarter, with cash-for-clunkers helping boost durable good spending 22.3% and a federal tax credit for homebuyers increasing housing spending 23.4%. Now that members of the upper-middle class all have new cars and homes, the dough should be trickling down to the rest of us any day. [NYT]

PRESIDENT OBAMA WON’T BE BUYING CARS FOR YOU WELFARE QUEENS ANYMORE: The “Cash for Clunkers” program is going to expire any day now, so you will just have to pay for your new Honda Fit all by yourself, like a man. This disastrously popular program just goes to show you why the government should not interfere in private industry — because Americans are just too addicted to free shit to bother paying for anything themselves anymore. [CBS News]

Hey so what ever happened to that hilarious Big Hollywood thing, about how all the motion pictures these days are gay? Ah, it’s still there and, uh… lookin’ good. “Dear Mr. President, Please Don’t Kill My Kids.” Ha ha, Jesus. “Soon my children will be driving and buying cars of their own. Mr. President, will you allow them to have freedom of choice or will you doom them to take their chances in a 21st century AMC Gremlin?” DOOM, DOOM! [Big Hollywood]

Reader “Emily” sends us this mysterious photo from Chicago, which appears to be a Paultard car, only without the R at the beginning of Dr. Paul’s famous slogan. “I still really couldn’t believe this was a thing,” she writes. So, question: IS THIS A THING?

Wow it’s morning so that means Barack Obama is giving televised remarks about the latest failed giant business he’s buying us for Ramadan. General Motors! “The collapse of these companies would’ve been devastating to America,” etc., yes we know, “and it would be good for American workers and American manufacturing and good for America’s economy” if, heh heh, GM didn’t have to pay all its debts. Let’s live-blog this by liveblogging, now! MORE »

Think respected conservative intellectual George “Dungaree” Will’s biweekly phlegm-hocks for the Washington Post are bad, but maybe not quite Richard-Cohen-bad? Well they are, and so are his Newsweek columns! Maybe. His most recent one tackles Transportation Reform. Will chastises Republican Ray LaHood, the Transportation secretary, for “wanting” to “fix” America’s “infrastructure” problems, which is his “job.” Will truly despises anyone who walks or bikes or takes a train anywhere, and he wants them to die, DIE DIE DIE, in a ditch, in Portland. MORE »

Do you own some terrible old car? Probably not! But you might be making payments on some terrible old car. Communist Premier Nobama and his Duma-Politburo (the House and Senate) have got a great deal for you: Just trade in your gas-guzzling sticker-covered crapmobilie full of McDonald’s bags for a shiny new better-mileage-getting Automobile of the Future, and you’ll get $4,500. That is, what, equal to about a year’s worth of unemployment? MORE »

It’s the post you’ve been waiting for, the one where we point out that the acronym for a certain fanciful robot-car for lazy urban dorks is the same as the acronym for bitterly disenfranchised Hillary Clinton voters, har! Mark Penn is obviously behind this microtrend, called “Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility,” or “Party Unity My Ass,” for short. MORE »

By the Comics Curmudgeon
If you asked the average American in olden times (1960) what glories would await them, auto-wise, in the Mysterious Future Year of 2009, they would be all like “flying cars” and “nuclear-powered cars” and “cars operated by intelligent ro-bots.” They certainly would not say “cars made in Japan, because American automakers have entered creative, moral, and actual bankruptcy (in that order).” MORE »

Drat that Sky News, with their lack of embed function on their videos! Anyway, here is the most exciting thing you will see all day: President Obama’s driver trying to execute a three-point turn in front of the British Prime Minister’s house. A lady fixes her hair while a man directs the car into its parking spot! It is pretty goddamn thrilling compared to pretty much anything else that’s going on today. [Times Online]

Hmm, so this auto bailout problem, is it a good thing or a bad thing? Good, because the government should continue to withhold money from GM and Chrysler until they get their acts together. Bad, because GM and Chrysler cannot get their acts together without money, plus the demise of the manufacturing sector etc. President Obama assures us, however, that no matter what happens “we will not let our auto industry simply vanish.” This is liberal socialist code for “we will raise taxes on the wealthy and give everyone a free Geo Metro.” [Washington Post]