Mark Steyn: We're in the fast lane to Bailoutistan

Orange County Register ^ | 12/19/08 | Mark Steyn

[tips up]

General Motors now has a market valuation about a third of Bed, Bath & Beyond, and no one says your Swash 700 Elongated Biscuit Toilet Seat Bidet is too big to fail. GM has a market capitalization of about $2.4 billion. For purposes of comparison, Toyota's market cap is $100 billion and change (the change being bigger than the whole of GM). General Motors, like the other two geezers of the Old Three, is a vast retirement home with a small money-losing auto subsidiary. The UAW is AARP in an Edsel: It has three times as many retirees and widows as "workers" (I use the term loosely). GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people.

[GOPJ]

And when Gov. Girlyman has run out of state taxpayers to fleece for his ever-more-bloated bureaucracy, he'll go to Washington to plead for a federal bailout of Cantaffordya.

What Steyn does isn't writing - it's art - melting clocks art.

[MeekOneGOP]

General Motors now has a market valuation about a third of Bed, Bath & Beyond, and no one says your Swash 700 Elongated Biscuit Toilet Seat Bidet is too big to fail. GM has a market capitalization of about $2.4 billion. For purposes of comparison, Toyota's market cap is $100 billion and change (the change being bigger than the whole of GM). General Motors, like the other two geezers of the Old Three, is a vast retirement home with a small money-losing auto subsidiary. The UAW is AARP in an Edsel: It has three times as many retirees and widows as "workers" (I use the term loosely). GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people.

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Classic Mark Steyn!!!

Ping! Ping! Ping!

[hoosiermama]

Ad Hoosiermama to that list please.

[dixiechick2000]

What a great piece by Steyn!

Of course, that's not unexpected. ;o)

"The UAW is AARP in an Edsel: It has three times as many retirees and widows as "workers" (I use the term loosely). GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people."

Nail...meet head.

[MeekOneGOP]

Yes! That is EXACTLY the line that grabbed me too!!

Steyn is GREAT!!!

Well ... time to head out for the day.

Have a super day! :^D

[Cinnamon Girl]

Does anyone else hear Mark Steyn’s voice when reading his work? Followed by “It’s a Marshmallow World”?

[FBD]

good read!
thanks for the ping

[GVnana]

Here’s a little piece of heaven. Duet by Dinah Shore and Ella Fitzgerald, from the Dinah Shore Show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skth17Ky-HA

[MeekOneGOP]

You bet!

Thank YOU. :^D

[Slip18]

Thank you for the ping, Meek!

Ping, ping, ping for Mark Steyn!

[MeekOneGOP]

Thank you!

I love this guy.

I am a talk show junkie. When the Dallas Stars pre-empt
Laura Ingraham or Mark Levin on WBAP, I click over to
local 660AM KSKY radio and listen to Hugh Hewitt and
Dennis Miller. Hugh Hewitt has Steyn on his show a LOT,
and he is as good on the air waves as he is to read let
me tell you !!!!

:^D

[MeekOneGOP]

WBAP 820AM, of course!

http://www.wbap.com/

[PhilDragoo]

Steyn's on-air banter contains more thunderous artillery and crackling small arms fire than the entire Ken Burn's Civil War series.

[MeekOneGOP]

Amen! Yesssssssirrreeee !!

[Smokin' Joe]

GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people.

Makes it pretty obvious who really is behind the push for Gubmint (Socialized) Health care.

On that alone, they'd save a fortune. I wonder how many other industries are in similar straits?

[andy58-in-nh]

I laughed too as I read this article, intoxicated by Mark Steyn's brilliant wit, but also felt like crying a bit, sobered by the thorny realities embedded within his florid prose. We are in great trouble as a nation, and Mark Steyn, our greatest living writer, lays it out plainly for all to see.

Is it still possible to satirize that which is not merely absurd, but quite literally insane? Granted, Folly is funny. Human beings do possess a great capacity for self-delusion, the mockery of which has provided artists many fertile fields to work over the centuries. But what happens when an entire culture falls prey to reckless behavior and short-sightedness? When willful fantasy becomes the dominant path and reality only an inconvenient detour?

It is only human to laugh at our own foibles, but at some point the joke is, and will be, on us.

[mewzilla]

BTTT for anyone who missed it.