okay so the skinny jeans didn't work out for me so well …

Thank God President Bush decided to come through in what will most likely be his last shining moment as President. Bail out the auto industry and put an end to all of this talk which is sickening me. All of this self-righteous posturing, pro America; you are unpatriotic if you don’t buy American automobiles and if you don’t think the bailouts are a good idea so yesterday put it to rest.

It’s understandable why the President waited until the midnight hour from a political standpoint it was perhaps the best thing that he has done for his own image in quite a while. It is also understandable why people feel that the Republicans in the South want to destroy the Unions of course they want to destroy the Unions why wouldn’t they. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out. These are Right To Work states where the employee and the employer can part ways at will no hard feelings no love lost. An arrangement of convenience for everyone why burden that with the “welfare” of the North aka Unions get real.

Then you have the president of the UAW, Ron Gettlefinger, who always seems to have indifference on the latest development. First he’s called out the government for not wanting to rescue the automakers now he says the conditions of the new package as being unfair and unrealistic. So now the automakers got about half of the money they had originally shot for and I think Ford simply figured it was better to let GM and Chrysler have at the money I’m not so sure what happened there.

You know the irony in all of this is that if the money was not forthcoming that Gettlefinger would have single handedly had to shoulder the blame in the American media. Everyone had in on this party except for us poor schmucks who could not acquire any credit over the last 5 years. The automakers had all of these legacy costs and should have stepped up and dealt with the UAW if those legacy costs really got in the way. Paying people who hadn’t been working there for quite a while that may never return health care among other things, so it should be no surprise that things are the way that they are now.

Gettlefinger was trying to ride out the current agreements until 2011, when the current contract expires. It doesn’t seem forseable that is likely right now but don’t be so sure. The sad thing in all of this is that the unions were truly needed back in the day when the UAW started. But as in all good things start they began to get out of hand and these days have the appearance of punking and pushing around the management at these corporations than they do of helping workers. As always the truth lies somewhere inbetween. If nothing else these workers jobs should be safe for now but the onus lies on the next administration to truly deal with these corporations if they cannot get themselves back on track with what little Bush’s administration is offering them now. Let’s certainly hope that they can so we can put all of this behind us …