Cheney defends 8 years in office

This article enrages me to no end! I'll never understand why Dick Cheney & George W.Bush weren't impeached! There's always the hope that they be charged with war crimes at a later date? Wishful thinking on my part, possibly.

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney blamed Congress for failing to bail out the auto industry, saying the White House was forced to step in to save U.S. car companies.

In an interview broadcast Sunday, Cheney said the economy is in such bad shape that the car companies might not have survived without the $17.4 billion in emergency loans that President George W. Bush approved on Friday.

"The president decided specifically that he wanted to try to deal with it and not preside over the collapse of the automobile industry just as he goes out of office," Cheney said in an interview broadcast on "Fox News Sunday."

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The part of the article that caused the above rant by me ;-)

Cheney leaves office Jan. 20 as one of the most powerful, if unpopular, vice presidents in recent history. He played a key role in many of Bush's major policy decisions and, in the interview, was unapologetic in his review of the past eight years.

He staunchly defended the Bush administration's use of executive power in the fight against terrorism and disagreed with calls to limit presidential authority. "If you think about what Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War, what FDR did during World War II. They went far beyond anything we've done in a global war on terror," the vice president contended.

Cheney said he was unconcerned about polls showing him as unpopular, saying that people who spend too much time reading polls "shouldn't serve in these jobs."

U.S. May Give Car Czar Power to Force Bankruptcy

By John Hughes
Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Treasury may adopt a plan that would let a car czar or the Treasury secretary force General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC into bankruptcy if the automakers don’t show they can survive without government aid, a U.S. senator said.
GM and Chrysler would be required to submit viability plans by March 31 or lose any further U.S. support, Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, told reporters in Detroit yesterday. The Treasury plan would resemble a measure passed by the U.S. House last week that was rejected by the Senate.
“I expect that the terms would be similar to the ones that were in the House bill,” Levin said. “The power rests in the hands of either the czar or the Secretary of the Treasury to force bankruptcy by March 31.”
GM and Chrysler are seeking $14 billion to keep operating through the first quarter of next year. Without an infusion of cash, the largest U.S. automaker and No. 3 Chrysler may be only weeks from insolvency.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto declined to speculate on when a plan might be finished, though he said yesterday on Bloomberg Television that the administration wants to make sure taxpayers will get their money back.

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GOP Senators 'not acting as Americans' - Michigan governor

I thought dissent is the highest form of patriotism...
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm expresses her feelings about the Republican Senators who opposed the Detroit bailout. Granholm explains, "They are not acting as Americans. They are acting with their parochial interests, and I think it is astonishing."



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Bush, Hill leaders: Job losses argue for auto help

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush and congressional leaders seized on the latest grim unemployment data Friday to try to fire up lukewarm support on Capitol Hill for bailing out U.S. automakers. But they clashed anew over terms of the rescue plan and the source of any aid.
As the Big Three auto chiefs pressed their case for $34 billion in a second day of hearings, Bush said in the Rose Garden that the loss of 533,000 jobs in November was even more reason to help the companies.
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Goodbye, jets: Ford CEO will make trip to D.C. in a Ford

Forget the corporate jets. When the Big Three automakers come back to Washington for hearings later this week on the proposed auto bailout, Ford CEO Alan Mulally will be making the more than eight-hour trip from Detroit to the Capitol by car, the company said today. The company won’t say yet, however, what kind of car Mulally will take.

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