No, really, I couldn't make this shit up if I tried!
So...should we still bail them out?
Looks like there was an agreement today to give them a $25 Bil retooling package under this admin. and any help beyond that (which will be needed as sure as I'm sitting here typing this) will be up to Obama's administration. That will be interesting because we will have seen what they did with the first $25 billion and if they turn out to have used it to keep flying on private jets, giving bonuses to execs, buying Viagra and producing Hummers, they won't get any more cause most Americans, including those who make Hondas and Toyotas in this country, and those who have lost jobs without getting much except foodstamps, will be outraged.
GM Spends $17 Million Per Year on ViagraLifestyle drugs -- chiefly Viagra -- are costing General Motors $17 million dollars a year and the cost is passed along to car, truck and SUV consumers. The blue pill is covered under GM's labor agreement with United Auto Workers, as well as benefit plans for salaried employees.
GM executives estimate health care adds $1,500 to the price of each vehicle but they do not break out how much of the premium is caused by erectile dysfunction expenses. GM provides health care for 1.1 million employees, retirees and dependents and is the world's largest private purchaser of Viagra.
GM recently raised the co-pay for erectile dysfunction drugs to $18 under a new agreement with the UAW and the company has also pared benefits for salaried workers.
The automaker spends almost $5.6 billion each year on health care. While lifestyle drugs are a small fraction of the total medical bill, every health care expense is added into the price of every new vehicle and is a drag on the struggling goliath's earnings.
Given the large number of aging autoworkers in the U.S., the industry�s Viagra tab and bill for other erectile dysfunction drugs is certain to continue rising.
Neither Ford nor Chrysler will disclose the amount spent on erectile dysfunction drugs.
While many government and company health plans have eliminated impotence drugs from coverage plans, GM has more than two retirees for every active worker on its rolls and must negotiate eliminating the drugs from the union health plan with the UAW.
I guess BUILDING Hummers isn't as boner-inducing as driving them.
/sarcasm
Sorry, can't help myself. As one who'll be paying $40 co-pays starting in January, and who can't get her B12 shots covered AT ALL (despite the fact that without them I would slowly grow senile, paralyzed and then DIE years before my time), I'm not taking this news that well (and yes, I know this is 2006 info, but it just came out again today in the hearings on Capitol Hill and I had found a brand new way to be pissed off at GM for their whiny demands for "help").
Woot! Now if you go to the link in the post below, you'll see an apology to Moms like me who wear their babies (and LIKE it).
So if you were wondering what the ad said, here it is (as was).
That will teach them!
This ad made me angry. I mean viscerally annoyed, from my core outward, slowly but increasingly to the point where--if I were not allergic--I would never buy the Motrin brand if my life depended on it.
Aside from the fact that they are WRONG (only wearing your baby IMPROPERLY will give you all that pain), and aside from the snarky "This ad brought to you by people who not only don't have kids, they don't respect those who do and who actually LOVE THEM" tone, what's the alternative for those who don't want the pain to begin with? Leave their kids lying on their backs all day and night crying with fever, or just crying, or just being lonely?
And what does Motrin make for flat-head syndrome eh?
Others have summed up how I feel pretty nicely:
So Obama won. It's not the end of the world. Everybody chill out.1) It's hardly a popular vote blowout. McCain kept it close in a tough anti-republican climate, and there's a still a significant proportion of the population that's with us, nearly 50%, in fact.
2) If Barack does win, he do so only by pretending to be a centrist and a tax-cutter. And that lie is going to be exposed riki-tik. By 2010, the entire country will know just how liberal Obama is, and the pendulum will swing. It'll be up to us to see that it swings far enough.
3) It's important to remember that we're conservatives, not liberals, or "progressives" or whatever they're calling themselves this week.
Politics isn't our life, and if we lose an election cycle, we're still going to be happier as a group then they will ever be, even after they've won this one.
Like they always do, hardcore liberal voters have placed all their hopes and dreams into one, terribly flawed, terribly human basket. And without doubt they will be terribly disappointed, especially when they learn they've still got to pay their own mortgage and buy their own gas.
Their Messiah, ain't one, which will become painfully apparent to them soon enough.
Meanwhile, here on the right, we have low expectations of human nature and even lower expectations of government. It's hard to disappoint us.
And unlike the liberals, all of our hopes and dreams are in exactly the same place they were yesterday, in our family, our friends, our local community, in our work, in our religious faith, and in our country. Those are the great constants, always there for us even when we suffer the greatest of setbacks.
Yep, tough times are ahead, and we're going to have to fight like somsabitches to keep Obama and the Congress from screwing things up too much in the next two years. But, we've been there before, and we've prevailed before.
4) Don't give the fucktards on the left the satisfaction of seeing you all act like a bunch of hysterical schoolgirls. They're the ones who can't take defeat. We can take our lumps, get up, and keep fighting. We should be Happy Warriors. whose proper response to this is mockery, good humor, and hard work. We lost and elction, but we're still right, and they're still wrong.Anyway, it's time to cowboy up, and get ready for the next go round.
Seriously folks, there's neither time for nor point in whining about this outcome. To a large degree "we" did it to ourselves. By we of course I don't mean you and I, I mean "we"the GOP party, the people allegedly representing our POV. If you think about it, they haven't been FOR YEARS. I think the nail went in that coffin the day Bush signed that Medicare Prescription Drug Plan and began an eight year odyssey of spending like a drunken Kennedy. I don't think it was even the war that did us in! I think it was the perception that we offered nothing different, that we had no solutions, and worse, that we weren't even aware of what was happening to the economy even though we were (allegedly) in charge of it for six of the past eight years.
SURE, you and I know how much blame ought to be heaped on the Democrats, but guess what? So do average Americans--witness Congress's approval rating (lower than Bush's!). What these same average Americans don't know is why they should trust us to do anything to fix it when we were in a position to stop the Dems for so long and didn't! Bush "tried" to rein in Fannie and Freddie, but did he? Really??? Did he call up the networks and say "Gimme 30 min, I need to talk to the people dammit!" Did he tell us to stop borrowing money like there was no tomorrow and it grew on trees if there was? Did he tell us he was being thwarted by the Dems and why that was bad? Did he in any way enlist the help of the electorate, even as his own party was getting flushed down the toilet during midterms?? If he did, I sure missed it!
So people are onto Congress, and Congress will overinterpret this as a mandate at their own peril! They don't get a bump or a pass on performance just b/c their new leader is one of them, on the contrary! I think now the people will say "Git-er-done a-holes! No excuses now!"
And really, isn't that the refrain we should be singing? For them, and for the GOP? The Dems, the black community, the whiners and complainers and other liberals of all stripes now hold the power to do what they think they want, if they get stopped it will be because they realized what they wanted to do was STOOPID, or because they were too chicken-shit to do it. They can't blame Bush, they can't blame the GOP led Congress obstructing them, they can't blame race or class or any of it. What little "woe is us" card have they got left really??
I hate to go all Spiderman on them, but with great power comes great responsibility, let's see how they do!
And by the same token, the conservative side has no more excuses either. They can't say "Oh well, we went along to get along....We had to cave because we had to appeal to the electorate..." and call it "bipartisanship." Work out well for ya did it? *snort!*
These bastids need to take a long look in the mirror and remember what it is to BE conservative. It's NOT about just getting reelected, or about tit-for-tat, it's about believing in something bigger than that, it's about defending freedom and the Constitution (as written) and about NOT caving to partisan pressure! Y'all got your clocks cleaned and GOOD that you did! Now it's time to take a step back and figure out what you stand for--what WE stand for--and if we keep thinking it's guns, God and kicking the Gays, we're gonna KEEP LOSING b/c those wedge issues are LUXURIES we can't afford to obsess over when we aren't sure how we're gonna pay the mortgage, or put food on the table, or find a job! Rush says saving the Polar Bears is an issue that has no place in an economy like this, well newsflash conservatives, SO IS BANNING GAY MARRIAGE, and worrying about abortion and who's more Christian than someone else. WHO GIVES A SHIT?! Seriously??? How does that protect my payheck from socialism? How does that protect my healthcare from government takeover? How does that keep the military from losing its funding or keep us from sitting down with dictators for tea? REALLY? Is that what we're about??? Peyton Place Values?
If we don't go back to being the party of IDEAS, if we devolve and become the knuckle-dragging divisionists the liberals paint us to be, we're REALLY fucked.
So let's not do that, OKAY? Let's start today coming up with a way to package and sell what we've got going on! Let's figure out a way to explain to the dumbed down American population why the free market is NOT to blame for the FUBAR situation we're in, why it was government intervention IN IT that screwed the pooch. We haven't even TRIED to do that yet. So let's, shall we? And let's leave the whining and complaining to the liberals who expect their mortgage to be paid off by our new President. We are better than that.