Obama suggests some auto execs should lose jobs

One cheer for Obama! The spineless and complacent business-school theorists who failed to stand up to the unions and thus destroyed great American companies certainly need to "move on". I would prosecute them for dereliction of duty myself. And maybe abolish all business schools too. The only business school that is worth anything is starting up your own business and trying to make a go of it. You really learn fast that way. It was entrepreneurs like that who created the auto companies in the first place. I am more pleased by Obama's remarks below than I ever expected to be. He may turn out OK yet

President-elect Barack Obama pledged to work for the survival of the auto industry, but accused car company executives of a persistent "head in the sand approach" and suggested some should lose their jobs. One leading Democrat in Congress, Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, was far blunter. Rick Wagoner, the chief executive of General Motors Corp. (GM), "has to move on," he said Sunday.

The criticism of industry leaders deepened as negotiators for the White House and Congress narrowed their differences over a plan to extend roughly $15 billion in short-term loans to any of the Detroit automakers that need it. Analysts say General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, in particular, are at risk for running out of money in the next few weeks, and that Ford Motor Co. (F) may need help if the economy deteriorates further. Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, whose state is ground zero for the battered industry, said he was confident an agreement would emerge within the next day.

Democratic leaders have said they hope to pass the measure this week. While Levin declined to predict its approval, support among rank-and-file lawmakers presumably would improve dramatically if the White House and Obama were to signal their backing.

In an interview broadcast Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press," the president-elect said, "The last thing I want to see happen is for the auto industry to disappear, but I'm also concerned that we don't put $10 billion or $20 billion or $30 billion or whatever billion dollars into an industry, and then, six months to a year later, they come back hat in hand and say, 'Give me more.'" Obama, who takes office Jan. 20, has drawn some criticism from Democrats who want him to become more involved in efforts to save the industry. The president-elect said his aides are monitoring developments and considering longer-term plans. He expressed no support for calls to allow the big carmakers to enter bankruptcy and said, "We don't want government to run companies."

Instead, he said, "if taxpayer money is at stake - which it appears may be the case - we want to make sure that it is conditioned on an auto industry emerging at the end of the process that actually works, that actually functions. "Taxpayers, I think are fed up. They're going through extraordinarily difficult times right now."

Obama did not single out any individual executive by name for criticism and said there had been incremental progress in the past 15 years toward a more competitive line of products. "What we haven't seen is a sense of urgency and the willingness to make tough decisions. And what we still see are executive compensation packages for the auto industry that are out of line compared to their competitors, their Japanese competitors, who are doing a lot better," Obama said in the interview, taped Saturday in Chicago.

Asked whether the top executives should remain in the jobs, he said, "Here's what I'll say, that it may not be the same for all the companies. But what I think we have to put an end to is the head-in-the-sand approach to the auto industry that has been prevalent for decades now."

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ELSEWHERE

UN: Iran anti-nuclear efforts 'failed': "The head of the UN nuclear watchdog has said international efforts to halt Iranian nuclear activity have been a failure. "We haven't really moved one inch toward addressing the issues," said Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in the Los Angeles Times. "I think so far the policy has been a failure." Iran has faced three sets of UN security council sanctions over its refusal to freeze uranium enrichment activities, but over the past five years Tehran has pressed on with its controversial nuclear work. The United States and other western powers suspect the Islamic republic's nuclear program is a cover for an atomic weapons-making program".

Remember the Holodomor : "This year marks the 75th anniversary of one of the most horrific chapters in the history of the Soviet Union: the great famine the Ukrainians call Holodomor, `murder by starvation.' This catastrophe, which killed an estimated 6 to 10 million people in 1932-33, was largely the product of deliberate Soviet policies. Inevitably, then, its history is fodder for acrimonious disputes. Ukraine - which, with Canada and a few other countries, observed Holodomor Remembrance Day on November 23 - seeks international recognition for a Ukrainian `genocide.' Russia denounces that demand as political exploitation of a wider tragedy. Some Russian human rights activists are skeptical of both positions. Meanwhile, the famine remains little known in the West, despite efforts by the Ukrainian diaspora. Indeed, the West has its own inglorious history with regard to the famine, starting with the deliberate cover-up by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty."

Reparations, R.I.P.: "Just a few years ago, at roughly the turn of the millennium, slavery reparations seemed the coming thing. A June 2001 New York Times article reported that the movement to obtain compensation for slaves' descendants had "taken on substantial force" and was "gaining steam" both in the nation's universities, abuzz with rallies and study committees, and in the black community generally. All the major black organizations had signed on, including the NAACP, the Urban League, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Randall Robinson's The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks had hit bestseller lists in 2000, announcing in impassioned tones the need to rectify "America's crime against us," a "black holocaust" that was "far and away the most heinous human rights crime visited upon any group of people in the world over the last five hundred years." True, whites outside the campus remained heavily opposed, but after the United Church of Christ became the first big multi! racial denomination to endorse the notion and the Philadelphia Inquirer called for the creation of a national reparations committee, it was only a matter of time before more whites came on board. Many state and local Democratic politicians started to talk up the idea. Then: nothing. Today, reparations seem to have completely disappeared from the national agenda. Few mention them any more. What happened?"

A Hebrew lesson: "In this holiday season, Americans hear lots of talk about "Hanukkah" but most Christians-and most Jews, for that matter-don't know what that word actually means. No, Hanukkah doesn't mean "Festival of Lights," or "Festival of Tolerance" - the Hebrew word means, simply, "dedication." It refers to the re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem in 165 B.C., after its desecration by Hellenists who worshipped Greek Gods in the shape of men. The holiday calls for our re-dedication to resisting secularism and assimilation, and recommitting to God's commandments. The word "Hanukah" has the same root as "Hinukh" -education-emphasizing that there's no meaningful education without dedication to divine truth. At the darkest time of each year, the glowing candles of Hanukkah signal dedication to bring light to a world that too often worships men, instead of God."

Jewish ancestry for Thomas Jefferson? "Was Thomas Jefferson the first Jewish president? Researchers studying Jefferson's Y chromosome have found it belongs to a lineage that is rare in Europe but common in the Middle East, raising the possibility that the third president of the United States had a Jewish ancestor many generations ago. No biological samples of Jefferson remain, but his Y chromosome, the genetic element that determines maleness, is assumed to be the same as that carried by living descendants of Field Jefferson, his paternal uncle. These relatives donated cells for an inquiry into whether Jefferson had fathered a hidden family with his slave Sally Hemings, a possibility that most historians had scoffed at. ... Michael Hammer, a geneticist at the University of Arizona, said he had compared the Jefferson Y chromosome with those in his database of Y chromosomes and found close matches with four other individuals. There was a perfect match to the Y chromosome of a Moroccan Jew, and matches that differed by two mutations from another Moroccan Jew, a Kurdish Jew and an Egyptian. Dr. Hammer said he would "hazard a guess at Sephardic Jewish ancestry" for Jefferson, although any such interpretation was highly tentative."

A previous citizenship fraud: "Chester Arthur perpetrated a fraud as to his eligibility to be Vice President by spreading various lies about his parents' heritage. President Arthur's father, William Arthur, became a United States citizen in August 1843. But Chester Arthur was born in 1829. Therefore, he was a British Citizen by descent, and a dual citizen at birth, if not his whole life. He wasn't a "natural born citizen" and he knew it."

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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