Sunday, December 14, 2008

QOTD

Jay Leno interviewed on MSNBC's Keith Olbermann show:
OLBERMANN: The largest buyers of cars in the world, number one is the United States. Number two is China. Number three is you. So how do you feel about the bailout of Detroit and are you eligible to be the car czar? Where is this going to go?

LENO: No. Actually I found out if I buy just two more cars I am eligible for a bailout so I‘m going to Washington to do this. I love the idea of a car czar. Like these idiots in Washington know anything about--You have people who are trillions of dollars in debt yelling at people who are billions of dollars in debt so to me the whole thing is ridiculous. I want Nancy Pelosi designing the new Corvette. I think it will be a very exciting automobile.

OLBERMANN: I think she designed the old one.
(via Planet Gore)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aren't those mean-spirited Republicans on the Hill declining to do for the auto industry what they jumped to do for the financial industry because are sore losers and they want to leave things in the worst possible way for the Democrats? Or is it just because they have a knee-jerk negative reaction to the word "union" without bothering to use their own, current minds to consider what the word "union" means in 2008 and 2009. Maybe some people study too much history. Union people do the actual work of producing goods and services. Financial people move paper around. The people at the top who are the major beneficiaries of the bailouts don't seem to be having the impact on our economy they were supposed to have. Perhaps if we change ownership and the names of the banks that will solve all of our problems.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I like reading Olbermann trying to keep up with Leno's laffs.

Lame.

OBloodyHell said...

> Union people do the actual work of producing goods and services. Financial people move paper around.

Really? If it were that simple, then why was it the continued screwups of the paper pushers in DC kept the Depression going for so long? From what you're saying, the unions should have just gotten together in 1930 and started producing goods and services again...

...Or perhaps those paper pushers actually do something relevant to the whole thing after all? Something more central and critical to the machine running than most people (including you) grasp?

Nahh. Union bosses are simply wonderful, with the way they arbitrarily jack up the cost of doing business without producing anything themselves.

Wait. Who does *that* sound like again? Who else is it that jacks up the price of doing business without actually producing anything?

Progress? No, that's not it.

Ah, yeah, it's the opposite of that!

======

Me, I'm not sure about the financial bailout. You can certainly make arguments that they could not be allowed to fail.

I don't believe the same claim can be made about the Big 3. Not by a long shot.

@nooil4pacifists said...

AVI:

Hey, it was the first mildly funny Olbermann observation since he left ESPN.

Anony and OBH:

There is something to the notion that the financial sector grew too large as compared with the economy as a whole. But unions are hardly the counter-example: the massive autoworker union contracts lock-in huge inefficiencies and legacy costs, resulting in over $600 per-vehicle cost differences as compared with Toyota's US-built cars.