“We need to have new leadership. That’s what we would do if we had this kind of failure on a football field.”

and he’s skilled with cliches, too!

mayer_ray_nagin: “Congress should be fired first.” We have a mechanism for doing that, but not the guts.

hateful83: “I’m tired of these tuff-guy politicians.” Yeah, especially the phony ones.

procrastinate now: 10 trillion in debt? who should be talking to whom about proper money management?

Lionwithoutpride: If you want to elect someone to clean up the Congress, stay away from the Republicrats!

bwilliams: “So we can bail out some BANKS and some WALL STREET instuitions to the tune of over a TRILLION dollars, but the BIG 3 CEO’s catch HELL over 25 billion in low interest loans…” Maybe his donor records will reveal something.

Need More Money for GM: Don’t confuse “Germans” with “Nazis.” I’ll bet your Cobalt will outlast a Corolla or Civic, though. Problem is, not as many people buy Cobalts.

oldraven: “Did the CEOs of the bailed out Banks get fired? No, I don’t think so. BS double standards as usual.” See my response to bwilliams.

$1 a year for congressmen would mean only independently wealthy folks could run … last thing we need.

bcjohnso99: “The gov needs to make unions illegal.” That’s an incredibly dumb comment. Maybe you want the minimum wage gone, too? The government needs to make universal default and the BCS illegal.

On another note, I’d like to blame Donald Petersen and Jacques Nasser for getting FORD into their current mess with acquiring the PREMIUM EUROPEAN brands (Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin, and Volvo), which all turned out to be money pits. I’d also like to throw William Clay Ford II under the bus, this guy didn’t have enough insight to pull the company out of a downward spiral after 5 YEARS. In my humble opinion, Mulally has been the best CEO in 20+ years…

@ Inline6: “Mulally has TOTALLY taken a company that was headed for the sky in 2006 under Bill Ford, Jr.’s command, and driven it into the dust in just 2 years!”

Are you kidding me? Please tell me what amazing cars Ford came out with under his leadership? And don’t say the Five Hundred… or the Montego (J Mays DISASTERS). If he was so great, and so intuitive, then why didn’t he have the insight to bring a Hybrid to the market to compete with the Prius, and I don’t want to hear anything about the Escape hybrid…

If the future of Congress were up to me, Clyburn would be fired before he could say “Duh”.

Also, let’s not cloud the feelings of people richer than you losing their jobs with facts:

Wagoner came to the helm of GM in 2000. And the products that GM has released since then (starting in 2005, which would be the first products designed completely under Wagoner’s tenure) have been quantum leaps forward, many class-leading, and most of them with fuel economy superior to their (Japanese) competition. Yeah, his head should totally roll for investing the company in the pantheon of fuel-saving and alternative fuel technologies, all the while negotiating a far better labor contract, globalizing GM’s vehicle development, and hiring “car people” to be in charge of GM products again. He should TOTALLY lose his job for helming a company in the midst of massive restructuring, while bad energy policy, foreign policy, and fiscal policy created a market so bad that the only vehicles GM could make money on because of the legacy costs, were no longer in demand, and short-sellers drove the stock into the dust, creating the liquidity issues you see today. OFF WITH HIS HEAD!

While we’re at it, let’s do the same thing for Ford CEO Alan Mulally, who arrived at Ford way, way back in September 2006 from Boeing, and has managed Ford in such a way that its need for the bailout isn’t as immediate. Not to mention that, under his watch, Ford’s vehicle quality has improved so much that it’s at parity with Toyota’s. Mulally has TOTALLY taken a company that was headed for the sky in 2006 under Bill Ford, Jr.’s command, and driven it into the dust in just 2 years! OFF WITH HIS HEAD, TOO!

And then there’s Bob Nardelli, who came to Chrysler from Home Depot at the antebellum date of January 2007. He should lose his job, too, because Deter Zetsche (sp?) left Chrysler in SUCH a strong state when Cerberus took over. I mean, Chrysler’s products were world-class in every way until the Hound of Hell put Nardelli in charge. And now they’re a suckfest. And it’s all because of Bob Nardelli, who has been at Chrysler just long enough to find the copy paper. OFF WITH HIS HEAD, TOO!

Folks, the decisions that were made with regard to the unions and product mix were made by the former leadership teams…the ones that aren’t there anymore. Focusing on CEOs getting fired is ridiculous while the current teams have been doing their level best to turn things around and do it all sustainably for the future.

Fired them all !

…and for the rest of you Ford supporters, if Ford has such good product in the pipeline, they shouldn’t be asking for money then.

IDIOTS!

Also, in politics there are three simple rules:
1. Follow the money.
2. All politics are local.
3. Every vote matters.
In Clyburn’s case, BMW and Honda have plants in his district. Guess who pays his bills?

that being said. Politicians should really just shut up for the next 8 years and HOPE TO GOD the country turns around because the dems have been talking a big game since mid term of Bush term No.1 and they keep missing the target and digging themselves deeper and deeper, and they seem to think hot air will save rather than hard work and a little sense. Let’s hope they figure out that the people in america want actual leadership not posturing and rhetoric.

By the way, at the L.A. Auto Show, Ford’s exhibit was really abuzz. Lots of traffic. For sure, a lot of people were there to see the 2010 Mustang, but they generated more interest than the GM area (sort of quiet) and Chrslyer’s (sort of dark due to the lack of any money spent on lighting).

Why?

Ford has done better job then either GM and Chrysler, all the new Ford new 2010 are totally different then what American will do. When you put both European and American design together you got GOLD, and that’s what Ford is doing right now.

No, actually, it IS Congress that went below 20%. And the best part is? The Democrats who were elected in 2006 to clean up the Congress have done all of squat and have now managed to beat the previous low of 18% (this is only the fourth Congress in history to be below 20%). President Bush cannot claim much better with an approval rating that often ties President Truman’s record low. So, zeeck, the point stands that one unpopular group has a lot of nerve to be making statements about the ineffectuality of other groups.

I am really pulling for the Big 3; but, I do not view Ford as much stronger. Yes, they have more cash on hand; but, as has been noted, it was at the cost of leveraging everything. If Ford does not have a win on practically everything they do then they are going to be just as desperate for a bailout within months. Mullally is still relatively new and whether the clean-up truly began before his arrival or not is unclear. As for Wagoner and Lutz, well, they have made some drastic moves in recent years (albeit while still earning too much) and there are lots of good vehicles in their product lineups and coming up as well (Malibu, Cruze, Volt, etc.), so we cannot say that Ford is the only American company successfully revamping its lineup.

Some of you may have forgotten, but back when Ford mortgaged everything the Leftlane threads were filled with dire predictions of the end for Ford. Sometimes, your bets pay off. Either way, to me at least, the issue is not so much the leadership as their compensation. The real story is that, as CNN noted, the top 32 Toyota executives make less than Mullally and Wagoner combined. There is no excuse for that. If Ford and GM survive (you will all note that I have not been touching on Chrysler) then all those execs will have earned some big bonuses; however, that is looking way too far into the future. For now, we al know that if the government does have to give Detroit a bailout/loans (depending on your perspective) then the government will have a right to reduce compensation. I just do not believe that the leadership has proven to be any worse than that in Congress and yet we all fawn over our own representative and senators. So, again, to me, the pot should quit calling the kettle black, though it may have a right to reduce the kettle’s compensation.