GM’s sales figures for last month were the best since 2008 , up 16% for the month of June. YIPPEE! Well, wait just a minute. It seems that those rosey sales figures are due primarily to a 79% increase in fleet sales to the U.S.government in June. That’s right. Our tax dollars are being used to pump up GM’s sales figures ahead of next month’s quarterly report so that Dear Leader can point to Government Motors as a huge success. The incestuous relationship between GM, the UAW and the Regime has never been more glaringly apparent. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. GM is unsustainable without government subsidies and will ultimately go bust again, taking billions of taxpayer dollars down with it.
It looks like General Motors will be throwing everything in but the kitchen sink to help fluff its second quarter earnings numbers. Taxpayers continue to help with the cause as President Obama campaigns on the “success” of GM following the manipulated bankruptcy process that cost taxpayers $50 billion and another $45 billion of tax credits gifted to GM to help protect powerful UAW interests. We now learn that government purchases of GM vehicles rose a whopping 79% in June.
The discovery of the pick-up in government fleet purchases at the taxpayers’ expense comes just weeks before GM announces its second quarter earnings. Overall fleet sales (which are typically less profitable than retail sales) at Government Motors rose a full 36% for the month, helping to drive decent sales improvements year over year.
GM is also massaging their sales figures in the way they count their sales of inventory:
The upcoming earnings announcement by GM is, politically, the most important to date. The pressure is on Government Motors to appear financially strong as this may be the last earnings report before November elections and sets the stage for how “successful” GM is. One of GM’s past tricks to help fudge earnings numbers has been to stuff truck inventory channels. Old habits die hard at GM. According to a Bloomberg report, “GM said inventory of its full-size pickups, which will be refreshed next year, climbed to 238,194 at the end of June, a 135 days supply, up from 116 days at the end of May.” 135 days supply is huge, the accepted norm is a 60 day supply. The trick here is that GM records revenue when vehicles go into dealership inventories, not when actually sold to consumers.
Please read the entire article here.
criminal
(imho)
General Motors will likely be a major target for the Romney campaign. As an aside, I read where “the most American car” is not made by GM or Ford- it’s actually a Toyota.
We shoulda let ‘em crash and burn, irresponsibility on the part of management and the unions should have come with a price.
Sadly, the average voter will never hear about any of this.
They actually believe that Obama rescued GM, GM paid back the money they “borrowed” (with interest), and that they’re now profitable.
MacDuff wrote:
Exactly right! If lame duck Bush would have let them go into bankruptcy, all of those union contracts would have been abrogated and could have been re-written from scratch. The legacy costs of retirement and health care are unsustainable by any stretch. It’s only a matter of time before GM crashes again; unless, of course, Barry gets a second term.
lobo91 wrote:
Any news on the job front?
@ MacDuff:
Not yet.
Unfortunately, I’m not a UAW member…
Just what the American taxpayer needs- an even larger fleet of vehicles operated by Uncle Sam, when most of the cars they have now sit idle most of the time.
I read something in Human Events (IIRC) a few years ago which said most federally operated vehicles are used far less than the average privately owned car, and are sold after a much shorter lifespan. Wasn’t able to find the article, but I did find this which had the info I was thinking of.
Barakolypse Now…
@ mfhorn:
You should see how many vehicles we have sitting around here at Arifjan.
lobo91 wrote:
Are they GM?
@ lobo91:
I probably don’t want to!
@ huckfunn:
The American ones are.
@ MacDuff:
Ah, that Cars.com listing. That’s a weird listing and puts in several different factors meant to represent how many American jobs are involved, which naturally includes total number of units sold. So far as percentage of American/Candian parts goes, last listing I saw had Lincoln and Ford at the top. Hell, the wife’s 2011 Outback has 55% American/Canadian (they don’t differentiate, in case you’re wondering) parts and was bolted together in Indianna.
lobo91 wrote:
I guess they won’t buy Ford because Ford didn’t sell their souls to the gub’mint.
MacDuff wrote:
Obama moved bond holders behind unsecured creditiors.
The whole idea of bonds is security. You don’t have
expectations of higher returns like a stock Holder,
but you are in front o the line, except in obamanomics.
@ RIX:
And you know who owned a lot of those bonds?
Public employee union pension funds.
why was this even on the docket?
The Presbyterian Church (USA) on Friday did not approve a proposed constitutional amendment to change the church’s definition of marriage from between “a man and a woman” to between “two people.” The vote was 308 in favor, 338 against, and 0 abstentions.
the govt would never misuse drones. certainly not
@ lobo91:
That is an irony.
coldwarrior wrote:
Apparently it was on the docket because almost half of the voters seem to think that gay marriage is OK. The Presbyterian Church (USA) is quite liberal. My denomination, Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) split from those folks decades ago.
Rasmussen: Obama/Romney tied at 45%, Romney currently trending down
coldwarrior wrote:
The MSM makes Obama sound like Rambo for the drone program.
There is collateral damge & even US citizens have been
tatgeted.
If this was Bush, they would be screaming “War Criminal!”
The part that kills me is that dead men don’t talk.
We need intel.
@ mfhorn:
Too many Conservatives think they have this election in the bag. They don’t realize the cultural phenomenon that is behind Obama.
@ coldwarrior:
@ RIX:
I’ll have to remember that I’m a target the next time I drive on Highway 70 between Alamogordo and Las Cruces. That is undoubtedly where the drone pilot trainees target civilian cars.
@ huckfunn:
I thjink that I will avoid that stretch of highway.
@ huckfunn:
religion has dogma
it inst to be voted on
Rodan wrote:
And voter intimidation & outright fraud.
They will pull out all of the stops without fear
of prosecution.
After Holder gave the New Black Panthers a pass, it’s
carte blanche.
@ huckfunn:
free fire zone.
RIX wrote:
When I lived there, there were times when we were driving to or from Las Cruces and Highway 70 would be closed while they were conducting missile tests. They’d fire the missiles into White Sands Proving Range from Elgin AFB in FL or Green River in Wyoming. We would just have to sit in our cars or turn around until the test was over.
@ huckfunn:
Yup, I’m off of Highway 70.
Later fun seekers!
coldwarrior wrote:
I think the folks living in the area are used to the military goings on and don’t worry about. The drones used for training are unarmed. Now this is interesting. Go to Google Maps and search for Holloman AFB. Switch to “satellite view”. When you find Holloman, go SW on Highway 70 until you see White Sands National Monument. About halfway between Holloman and White Sands you’ll see a road heading due south. If you zoom in, you’ll see that the road is WsmrS-Rt 200. The Wsmr stands for White Sands Missile Range. Continue on that road until you come to a peak. In the 1980′s, the Air Force built a “Star Wars” array on top of that peak. All of that land is on the ranch of a good friend of mine, 60 sections in all. Some is fee and some is BLM. You can see the ranch complex about halfway between the highway and the peak. They took down the Star Wars array in the mid 90′s.
RIX wrote:
I thought you lived in the Chicago area.
coldwarrior wrote:
Because management is management, not religion. Because people who think that religion is a purely personal matter think that what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom isn’t anyone else business. But mostly because the Presbyterian Church (USA) has put the theology of Christianity in the back seat and put brand name market-share and revenue receipts in the drivers seat.
Little by little they have taken the offensive parts out of Christianity until they have nothing left but a whitewashed sepulcher filled with dead man’s bones.
huckfunn wrote:
Is that ever an understatement.
doriangrey wrote:
A good example of lib lefties co-opting an entire denomination.
huckfunn wrote:
With the exact same tactics the Marxists used to take over academia, the legal profession, hollyweird and politics. Get your people in upper management level positions and then slowly squeeze out everyone who isn’t one of you. Once you control upper management, you just lie to those under you and claim that, x is what the majority think/feel.
heysoos wrote:
good one.
isn’t this modern fascism? (don’t know if i spelled that right).
dorian, read your comment on the previous thread about orion. the folks working on a project are, naturally, more excited about it. like me. my job helps to build the best attack helicoptor currently known (‘cuz we don’t know what all improvements the Israelis make to theirs) and I couldn’t take it more seriously.
Kirly wrote:
Likewise you probably understand that the more complex any system becomes, the longer it takes to build. It quite literally isn’t the 60′s anymore. You simply cannot design something as complex as Orion today, build it tomorrow and launch it on Monday. When I was working for Vanguard Space Systems we were literally on the bleeding edge of materials design.
We were attempting to work out the practical manufacturing processes for brand new carbon/boron carbide composite materials which were invented for the Orion Project. For those of us involved, this was terribly exciting. But obviously nothing like the excitement of watching a vehicle being launched.
I was trying to explain that to MikeC, I don’t know if I succeeded in getting that across though. Even when Orion finally does launch, their is still going to be a 18 month wait before it finally arrives at Mars. It’s just plain impossible to hold your breath that long.
Hey heres an idea… lets require all UN personnel to buy/drive Chevy Volts or leave the country in 48 hours. Win-win I say.
@ doriangrey:
agreed. i used to work in commercial avionics. it takes YEARS To design an aircraft and it’s many components and then YEARS to build it and all it’s mechanical systems and to design, implement, and debug the software. i imagine a craft designed for space flight would take quite a bit longer just to figure out how to protect all that sensitive equipment from the different operating conditions. and i imagine a space craft that has to also sustain human life will take even longer than that.
brookly red wrote:
Better yet, let’s require all UN personal to buy Chevy Volts, and then leave the country in 48 hours taking their Chevy volts with them…
brookly red wrote:
perfect. and aren’t they haven’t power outages in the area? even more perfect.
Rodan wrote:
I certainly don’t think this election is in the bad by no means. I don’t underestimate anything in this election. Especially with obama in it.
Kirly wrote:
No we have plenty of juice in NYC… air conditioning is a civil right you know.
Lily wrote:
I was in Union Sq. Park about an hour ago. There is a working families party (formerly known as ACORN) booth in the park (which is public property last I checked) registering tourists to vote. That is all I got to say on the matter.
@ Kirly:
Yep and the heat has already killed many people…just wait till they close the coal plants.
brookly red wrote:
And they have to take the damn Volts with them when they leave…
brookly red wrote:
Can anyone say voter fraud???
Da_Beerfreak wrote:
I suppose we could use them for military purposes…
they would make a pretty big bang if dropped from 40,000 feet.
@ Lily:
I expect Baby Doc will steal a second term. There’s no one in DC Town with the guts to stop him and he knows it…
Lily wrote:
raaaacist!
Da_Beerfreak wrote:
how does the saying go? … once the camels ass is in the tent
Kirly wrote:
The design cycle is mind numbingly brutal, imagine that you are a design engineer on project Orion, you’re 35 years old, and the designs you inherited when hired to work on the project, they were first drafted when you were in elementary school. You can’t call up the original design engineer to get clarification on something, because he retired 10 years ago.
Think about all the revisions that take place as technology constantly keeps surpassing what was standard practice when the project first started. For example, the original computer processing capabilities and power requirement specifications.
When the Orion was first laid-out it was designed with 1990′s processor capacity and power requirements specifications. Today, the average Smart Phone rivals the processor capabilities at a fraction of the power consumption first included in the Orion designs.
Back in the 1990′s Carbon/Boron Carbide composite materials didn’t exist yet. Carbon/Boron Carbide composite materials are like going from Steel (the original carbon composite material) to Aluminum (The new Carbon/Boron Carbide composite materials) in weight to strength ratio’s. Now suddenly all of your weight to thrust calculations have to be recalculated because the new materials just reduced your vehicles overall weight by 20%.
That is the risk of actually trying to design and build something in our modern technologically advancing world, that you know before even starting is going to take 40 or 50 years to complete. Your original design in technologically obsolete less than a quarter of the way through the project.
Well Afganistain is back to their old ways…The Taliban is still strong and our president wants to have peace talks with them??
Brutal, pitiless, and retarded.
http://weaselzippers.us/2012/07/07/afghanistan-taliban-publically-execute-woman-accused-of-adultery-five-bullets-to-her-head/
@ brookly red:
Again back to re-education camp…it just doesn’t seem to be working on me.
brookly red wrote:
“… Things start to smell really bad… ”
Da_Beerfreak wrote:
I can only hope this will not happen..but I don’t really have high hopes. But I refuse to give in yet.
Lily wrote:
5 megatons of Bottled Sunshine could reach them with a comment.
@ doriangrey:
Yet our president thinks we can have peace talks with these bruts.
Lily wrote:
Sorry, I do not believe that he thinks that for one single second. What I believe is, that just like getting all those poor innocent Mexican Citizens killed with his Operation “Fast and Furious” he has zero moral or ethical objections or compunctions about killing hundreds or even thousands of people to achieve his political and ideological goals.
@ mfhorn:
So, make that work for you. Get on the GSA bidders list, and start entering bids on government-surplus vehicles that are being sold off. If you are lucky, you can get a low-mileage vehicle for very little money.
Here in Canada, I am on the bidders list for vehicles, tools, and what not in my region. Two years ago, I bought a ’97 3/4 ton Suburban, 350 Vortec V8, 4 wheel drive, for $2001. And it had only about 60,000 miles on it. Bumpers were rusted right through, but the body is fine. I could easily sell it right now for $3000 or more. I’ve already installed a set of decent used bumpers on it.
Learn to work the surplus system, and let the Government take the big depreciation hit.
Lily wrote:
After delivering a couple of cases of Bottled Sunshine™ on their sorry asses I’ll bet having peace talks would be a piece of cake.
Well, color me shocked to find such blatant dishonesty within the Zero regime.
doriangrey wrote:
We’ll I can’t disagree with this at all…but he does want to put on a show about talking peace with these disgusting Taliban.
@ Flyovercountry:
We all know by now (or should) that the only honesty within Baby Doc’s regime is dishonesty.
Da_Beerfreak wrote:
The bombing will continue until moral improves… BWAHAHAHAH….
Lily wrote:
Sad part is if they went along with it they could probably get everything they want plus food stamps.
brookly red wrote:
Huh? I think they already have gotten everything they wanted plus food stamps…
brookly red wrote:
Yep and even money for wind farms. Spending our money like water goes through your hand.
http://weaselzippers.us/2012/07/07/betting-on-america-obama-regime-to-invest-20-million-in-wind-farms-and-solar-panels-for-africa/
@ Lily:
Bush fights AIDS and cervical cancer in Africa…Obama pushes a green agenda. Night and day.
Lily wrote:
well it kinda makes sense… how else will they recharge their Volts?
coldwarrior wrote:
It is disturbing that this failed by only 30 votes. In a Christian church body.
doriangrey wrote:
Nope there is always more.
NoThreat2U wrote:
Green. It’s the new Red.
NoThreat2U wrote:
It’s insane.
AZfederalist wrote:
/wait till they find the box of “uncounted ballots” that got misplaced behind the usher’s station…
coldwarrior wrote:
Sorry, that use of drone imagery and training is no big deal. It’s just using available assets and real-world and readily accessible scenarios. That’s been done for ages, tracking power plants with FLIRs and other systems under tests. In the case of the drones flown in the US, they are not armed, this is merely training exercises. Saves money by not requiring range time or range assets.
Really, there’s lots of stuff to get outraged about, like the EPA using drones to collect imagery on private ranches, but this is not one of those things.
@ brookly red:
@ Lily:
It really is. If any country that we send tons of money to shows no progress, cut off the money. Maybe then their own people will rise up and demand what is theirs. Right now we just fork it over with no oversight whatsoever, therefore they still do without.
@ NoThreat2U:
Yes when the money needs to be here for own country….I hear we are trillions in debt yet we are shoveling money to these countries…
huckfunn wrote:
As one person put it, First, advocates of false doctrine just want to be heard. They merely ask for the opportunity to speak and not be censored for it. After that, they then demand equal footing and equal time. Once that is achieved, they then demand that their doctrine be viewed as superior to that which they want to supplant. Finally, they shut out all opposition to their false doctrine and suppress anyone who expressed opposition.
Sound like anything else as well?
@ Lily:
Even though we may be charged with being our brother’s keeper, there comes a point when your brother needs to stand up for himself. As a prosperous nation we are expected to police the world, facilitate peace among enemies, and feed and clothe their populace. Who has our back?
NoThreat2U wrote:
Why Achmed the terrorist does, and he’s busy wiring a bomb to our backside even as we speak…
@ doriangrey:
After all we did for him by trying to drag him out of the 7th century. Ingrate.
@ NoThreat2U:
The thing is we have our back. As much good we do we are still viewed we the most horrible nation on the earth. That gets old. I’m tired of giving money and food to people who don’t even use it on their own people …they basically use what we give to hurt their own people.
subSaharan Africa could have all the power and water they if the AEC licensing buttheads would move on getting the small Hyperion power plants on line….western greed kills more Africans than Africans do
@ Lily:
Maybe it is the mother in me that makes me think the way I do. If my kid comes to me for money, tell me what you need it for. If you lie and don’t spend it on what you said, no more money for you. lol I really could run this country the way I run my household.
Well shows how much Israel trusts us…according to K….
http://weaselzippers.us/2012/07/07/krauthammer-israel-will-bomb-iran-if-they-think-obama-will-win-a-second-term/
NoThreat2U wrote:
That is simple common sense. If my kids did that too…I would do the same …cut them off.
@ Lily:
might just as well….force BO’s hand and make him deliver the goods…they probably would have already if they knew BO had their back, but his policy toward Israel is a fucked up mess….he’s forcing them to gamble time against our support and that is no way to treat your friends
@ Lily:
See! lol That is what is lacking in today’s world….common friggin’ sense.
@ heysoos:
Israel certainly knows obama doesn’t have their back..he has shown it and made it perfectly clear to them.
NoThreat2U wrote:
Which is so lacking in todays world lately. Common Sense.
heysoos wrote:
Bullshit. Africa’s power and water needs ARE NOT the West’s responsibility.
@ doriangrey:
I read an account of a sociology prof blaming American
policies for the poverty of African Americans in Africa.
The author was in the class & pointed out that African
Americans live in America.
@ RIX:
Good heavens. That professor STUPID.
Well, GM sales up 79% thanks to our tax dollars. Where is the outrage from the American taxpayers? This discriminates against all the other automakers & American workers.
Just need to read a great book out about Americans who finally take a stand against federal tyranny from a small town in America. It’s about each of us & finally take a stand. I recommend it to others cause it’s so real.
http://www.booksbyoliver.com
Are we here for the government convenience (our tax dollars)….or is the government here for our convenience. We need solidarity & stop letting our own govt. dividing us.
@ doriangrey:
I didn’t make that claim did I?…Hyperions are a bargain for what you get and African nations can buy them….if they ever get to production
Lily wrote:
As they say, thems that can do, thems that can’t teach.
If there are any teachers here, not you.
You’re swell.
@ RIX:
How can you teach someone how to do something if you yourself can’t do it?
RIX wrote:
The United States of America has absolutely ZERO moral or ethical responsibility to provide for the welfare or safety of any other country than the United States of America. Period, end of Story. to believe otherwise, is to have been indoctrinated into Marxism.
The West likewise has no moral or ethical responsibility to provide, power, water, food, fuel, or personal safety to anyone other than their own citizens. If and when the West chooses to make such intervention in Africa, the Middle East or Asia, or anywhere else for that matter, it is not out of responsibility or obligation, but out of the inherent altruistic nature of the individual citizens of the various Western nations.
NoThreat2U wrote:
That is the conodrum, but such teachers get raises
in Chicago.
Later folks.
@ doriangrey:
America has no obligation, that’s true…but individuals feel obligated to share and that hardly makes them Marxists…more like Mr Rogers, nothing wrong with that I presume
heysoos wrote:
Yes, actually you did.
If and when Gen4 ever gets into full production, has ZERO to do with western greed killing Africans. Africans are killing Africans, western greed has little to nothing to do with it. What you implied was pretty straight forward that Africans were dying because the West, i.e. American government is not allowing Gen4 to sell their SMR to African Countries, and that suggestion is complete and total bullshit.
It is the responsibility of the various African nations and absolutely no one else to provide adequate power, water, food and personal security of their citizens.
anyway, as for the Hyperion nuke generator, the greed is deciding who gets a cut of what, the possibility of private ownership, big federal dollars subsidizing our nuclear power, green energy, politics…all that has held up licensing this cool machine….when they go into production I expect them to fly off the shelves….electricity by the boatload…pump water from deep aquifers, desalinate, irrigation
@ doriangrey:
okay, that line was over the top….feel better?
heysoos wrote:
There is nothing wrong with altruism, provided that one understands the difference between charity and responsibility. There is no such things as charity or altruism under Marxism, “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs“ leaves absolutely no room for charity or compassion.
@ doriangrey:
whatever, I’m talking capitalism here, not Marxism or ethics or morality…we have a resource here that all nations could benefit from, including the America
dig a hole, drop a Hyperion in it, bury it, wire it to the grid and presto!…power…you don’t need a $2b power plant to desalinate water
heysoos wrote:
Nope, sorry, wrong again. I worked in the Nuclear Industry back in the late 70′s early 80′s. The problem Gen4 is facing isn’t greed. It’s Watermelon Environmentalists who have used lawfare to shut the Nuclear Power Industry here in America down for the last 40 years.
It’s why I got out of the Nuclear Industry, I could see way back in 1981 that there wasn’t going to be a new Nuclear Power Facility built in America during my lifetime.
heysoos wrote:
How much do you think a Gen4 SMR is going to cost?
@ doriangrey:
greed isn’t always about money…it’s about turf, influence and power as well…as for the cost, I don’t think anybody knows since they have not been allowed to be manufactured yet…and I think Mitsubishi and some others have pinched the idea and are hot on the trail now too…there will be profit as there should be