GM also has some very interesting Opels and Vauxhalls in Europe but they have not signalled that they intend to bring them here. Odd.

Actually, they are working on just that. They are trying to negotiate an accelerated qualification/compliance certification process as we speak in order to get them on showroom floors sooner.

I wonder if Andrew Card, Bush’s 1st Chief of Staff who came directly from GM to the WH and served 4 years in the WH, is he in on these negotiations with the WH? Who else is in the negotiations? Wagner, Levin and Cheney? Is the UAW negotiating too? Why hasn’t Wagner taken his case to the news makers, the WH and the UAW has. Ford just did, see video above. Where’s Wagner? This I have to have the billions 3 weeks before a new President is it real? Sounds like the 700 billion dollar financial bail out emergency doesn’t it?

KING: Why do you need the line of credit?

larry king is HOW OLD ???

and he doesn’t understand that businesses need a line of credit ???

is this guy competing to be the stupidest guy on the planet or what ???

oh dougie feith, you got competition

and how do all those arguments about a pardoned person refusing to testify survive against the “truth commission” that’s coming down the pike ???

Lame Duck Watch because somebody has to do it.

Rachel: Just in time for Bush team moving day evidence is stacking up that top Bush officials knew about and approved of torture. Last weeks bipartisan report from the Senate Armed Services Committee says quote:

“The abuse of detainees in the U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples” acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States Government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”

If that wasn’t damaging enough, while everyone else, like say Donald Rumsfeld was running around denying or attacking that reports findings. Vice President Cheney, he just went ahead and told ABC news that he not only knew about waterboarding, he thought it was appropriate and he ok’ed it.

So torture. The abandonment of precious world wide moral authority. And while it’s not a midnight lame duck regulation that can be easily reversed by the Obama administration. Is there a chance that the new administration will do the next best thing to going back in time and undoing torture? Will they prosecute? Will they hold American officials accountable for authorizing it?

Joining us now from Washington is Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan. He is of course is Chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee. Senator Levin, thank you so much for coming on the show tonight.

Levin: Great to be with you Rachel.

Rachel: So the Armed Services Committee spent about a year and a half preparing this report on the abuse of prisoners in US military custody. There has been some angry push back from, a seemingly angry push back from former Sec of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. That said, one WH official does not seem to be denying your findings at all. That’s Vice President Dick Cheney who told ABC news this week that he did approve waterboarding as a interrogation technique for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. When you heard that from Dick Cheney, did you feel that confirmed the findings of your report? I mean essentially, did he just admit to condoning torture?

Levin: As far as I’m concerned that’s exactly what he admitted. Now he’ll say that he doesn’t admit supporting torture but the facts are that the policies which were approved, the legal opinions authorized of these harsh techniques, and when the Vice President of the United States says that he believes, and he said that what just a few nights ago, that waterboarding is appropriate. There is no other conclusion that I can reach, other than that. I know it’s a form of torture. It’s been acknowledged as a form of torture I think since the inquisition. Senator McCain who is the subject of torture is absolutely clear on it. But I think every authority on waterboarding and torture and torture will say waterboarding constitutes torture.

Rachel: One of the things that I think has been so I guess challenging to the American debate about this is that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have essentially argued that they have legalized waterboarding, that they have legalized torture. They think the actions of their Justice department made things like waterboarding not war crimes any more. Are they right?

Levin: You can’t just suddenly change some thing that’s illegal into something that is legal by having a lawyer writing an opinion saying that it’s legal. Things can’t work that way or else someone could get a lawyer and say a crime is not a crime and then that would be a defense. It is not a defense. And I was astounded frankly, when I heard the Vice President of the United States sort of just blandly and blindly saying that he thought that was appropriate thing and yes he was involved in discussions about it.

Rachel: Do there need to be prosecutions? You document very clearly that we have eroded the standards by which prisoners are treated in the United States. How do we unerode those standards if the people who authorized the erosion of those standards are essentially immunized from prosecution.

Levin: Well the first thing we have to do is what we did at least for the Department of Defense is to bring to light the facts what happened here. What was the origin of the use of these techniques and that’s what we did. We went back to Guantanamo and showed that as a matter of fact that the highest levels of this government. The President when he said that the Geneva Convention did not apply then the Secretary of Defense when he authorized the use of aggressive techniques and then the way they spread first to Afghanistan and then to Iraq. This is the first step on reconstructing the respect of the world for this country and I’m hoping that the Obama administration will be taking major steps in that direction. We need to have the support of the world in out effort against terrorist.

Rachel: Senator, I do want to press you a little bit on that point about the next steps and what the Obama administration might do? It sounds to me as a layman and concerned citizen in this, it seems to me like when you are assembling these facts and getting access to these documents and putting together this testimony. What you are doing is collecting the facts for an indictment. I know that your not, that’s not the role for a Senate Armed Services Committee. But that’s what it feels like? Do you think there will be prosecutions and will you argue that there should be?

Levin: What I think it is our role to do is to bring out the facts which we have, to state our conclusions which we have, which is where the origin of these techniques were began. And then to turn over to the Justice Dept. of the next administration cause clearly this Justice Dept is not willing to take an objective look and turn over to the next Justice Dept. all the facts that we can and we have put together and get our report, the rest of it, declassified. But then it seems to me that it is appropriate for there to be an outside commission appointed to take this out of politics and it would have the clear subpoena authority to get to the parts of this which are not yet clear. And that is the role of the CIA. We looked at the roll of Dept. of Defense but the roll of the CIA has not yet been looked at. And let an outside commission reach the kind of conclusions which then may or may not lead to indictments or to civil action. But it is not our role it’s not appropriate for us to reach those kind of those kind of conclusions.

Rachel: Senator Carl Levin, Democrat, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Thank you so much for joining us tonight.

Levin: It was great being with you Rachel.

Rachel: You heard the “I” word here. Indictments.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#28286974

Give the TARP money to people who make things.

Stop giving it to people who only make scandal.

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Bush Weighs ‘Orderly’ Bankruptcy for Automakers

WASHINGTON — The White House said on Thursday that an “orderly” bankruptcy was one option being considered to try to rescue General Motors and Chrysler, which are seeking billions of dollars to avoid a shutdown.

…

Rep Brad Sherman from Ca.

The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere. That atmosphere is not justified. Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday, that the sky would fall, the market would drop 2,000 or 3,000 points the first day, another couple thousand the second day and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no. That’s what I call fear mongering. Unjustified. Proven wrong. We’ve got a week, we’ve got two weeks to write a good bill. The only way to right, to pass a bad bill keep the panic pressure on. Now what has the Senate done to this bill?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaG9d_4zij8

We are told GM ( Chrysler is good till Obama gets in) is threatened with bankruptcy any hour if they don’t get their billions. Is this really true or is Wagner working with the WH to destroy the UAW? Is the WH using the auto co’s loans as hostage for the release for the other 350 billion?

I asked many weeks ago how do we know there was all these derivatives gambling going on? Just because we read it in a magazine or newspaper or see it on tv doesn’t make it so. Remember the WMD info from all those same sources were all false. I do not trust this adm. How do we know it wasn’t a crock of bull shit? Why should I believe it if there are no documents to prove it?

Published: December 17, 2008 HONG KONG: Honda cut its full-year forecast for net profit by 62 percent Wednesday, the latest sign of the dramatic drop in demand that has hammered the global car industry and sent U.S. manufacturers scurrying for government aid.

For the fiscal year ending March 31, Honda lowered its net profit forecast to ¥185 billion, or $2.08 billion…. (Yen strengthens, dollar weakens; bad for Honda sales.)
More at the NYT EU edition: http://www.iht.com/articles/20…..s/auto.php

How or why the Plantation Caucus think they can keep their own offshore car industry workers employed is just baffling. They can’t see that their auto policies are ‘a loop’, rather than a straight line?! I still think the UAW is a Bright, Shiny Object being used to hide the CDS holder interests.

Not that I expect Larry King to ever connect those dots 8(
But perhaps Bill Moyers, Rachel Maddow, or KO will… here’s hoping.

Good grief.

Which means that under the guise of ‘protecting’ his non-union Toyota constituents in TN, Corker is helping throw millions of people — plus the taxpayers and national security — under the bus.

It doesn’t appear that any member of the Plantation Caucus grasps Rayne’s point, part of which I think is especially relevant to all industrial sectors:

The paint system supplier has already done most of the engineering for quality on the system for Carmaker A, can focus on adding only the new functionality requested. Carmaker B further beats on cost, by shuffling the bid through different iterations…

And then Carmaker C does the same thing, benefitting from the aggregated engineering and pricing improvements that the previous two carmakers have obtained.

And just to drive home Rayne’s point…

Published: December 17, 2008 HONG KONG: Honda cut its full-year forecast for net profit by 62 percent Wednesday, the latest sign of the dramatic drop in demand that has hammered the global car industry and sent U.S. manufacturers scurrying for government aid.

For the fiscal year ending March 31, Honda lowered its net profit forecast to ¥185 billion, or $2.08 billion…. (Yen strengthens, dollar weakens; bad for Honda sales.)
More at the NYT EU edition: http://www.iht.com/articles/20…..s/auto.php

**”disaster” because in order to move to a green economy rapidly, the US needs to retain control of engineering resources and also of engineering patents. Ford CEO Mulally’s engineering degree is in AA (aeronautics) but he worked at Boeing, heading up the Dreamliner program before Ford nabbed him away. Boeing is definitely a ‘global’ firm, so Mulally had some very relevant experience before heading for Ford. Corker and the Plantation Caucus, OTOH, are clueless. (Even Cheney, from his Halliburton experience, would have a better grasp of the engineering problems than Corker, McConnell, or the rest of those GOP fools. Jeez…!)