E.J. Dionne, The Washington Post

February 22, 2009

E.J. Dionne
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street NW
Washington. D.C. 20071

RE: Come with me through the Looking Glass into the Land of Oz – A comment, perhaps too fair a comment, on your Logic and gravity defying column on the travails of the American automobile industry and what is a shibboleth driven modern American Liberal to do when the thought of mass transit for him gets too close. Plus, I’ll say Kaddish for your 15 year old Saturn.

Mr. Dionne,

“Like many Saturn loyalists, I was attracted to an excellent car
made by members of the United Automobile Workers.”

Did your car require gasoline? Where did the oil come from? How many union workers were there on the production rigs in Venezuela? In Nigeria? In Saudi Arabia? In Texas? In Brunei? In Ohio?

Did you ever pick up a Double Low Fat Ventimiglia Arabica Gelato cum Tofu at Starbucks? How many union members picked those coffee beans?

Have you ever bought anyone a diamond? Do think the guy with the pick and shovel one mile underground knows who John Sweeney is? Do you think he’ll have a “card choice” this year?

“This story captures the dilemma confronting the Obama Administration
as it struggles to work on a plan to salvage the unionized car companies
mostly in Detroit.”
Italics mine

If you cut a worker who is not a union member will he not bleed? Is the change we were promised for two years only for those who have union cards? Is the quality of Obama mercy so strained that it does not fall like gentle rain from the heaven? Should Nixon voters be denied Social Security?

Is there any place in the country with more modern American Liberals than Detroit? [Broward County perhaps, but there are no automobile factories here.] They have had control of the place for 50 years. Kabul and Mogadishu look like Geneva and ancient Athens compared to Motown. Whose fault is that? Senator Levin serves one useful purpose. He is the paradigmatic template for wretched excess when it comes to comb overs. His solution, with help from Governor Stabenow and isn’t she a hoot, is classic.


Take from those who have something left and give it to those who have less. [I’ll say this for the Chosen One. He told that to Joe the Plumber, remember? So far he’s kept his word. He did say he wanted to invade Pakistan, remember?] Oh yes, and raise taxes on everybody else.

I belonged to two unions. How many have you belonged to? Don’t count any teachers’ or government employee cabals or cartels. I am talking unions where when you come home from work you have to take a shower. I am talking unions where the blue collar is not from Brooks Brothers.

“But as long as GM stays unionized,
I’ll drive with a clear conscience.”

The Miami Herald printed the above. I guess that means you wrote it. [Is that the ghost of Joe Hill I see? Nope. It’s a community organizer from ACORN.]

It means that you are a horse’s ass of Brobdanaglian proportions. If you have to haul ass, as blue collar guys say, it will take you two, maybe three, trips. You probably should have a wheel barrow and an undocumented worker handy. It’s tough to push a wheel barrow when your intellectually steatyagonous ass is in it.

The above is not harsh. In fact, it is soothingly gentle considering you wrote the following:

“But how hard a bargain will the banks and bondholders drive?”

Earth to E.J. Earth to E.J. Listen up, fool.

Only someone who spent his entire adult life with his head so far up his ass about the real world and such things as making payroll and compensating balances and indentures and amortization schedules and cost above income could say something like that.

The stock is selling at a 75 year low.
Any banker in charge of a GM open line wears brown pants for obvious reasons. He can evacuate his bowel and still have a chance of getting off the floor before any other customers notice.
The bonds are priced above the debt of Zimbabwe but below California.

What “concessions” can they make?

Why not turn the American automobile industry over to the Cook County Democratic Party?




Their more than 50 year run can’t just be luck.

Despite having more public payroll padded perps in jail then we have towel head bomb throwers in Gitmo they keep on ticking. They keep their eye on the prize. Their job is to squeeze the lemon, slice the goose, get the squeal out of the pig, whatever it takes to keep their members working.

They got Michelle Obama a $200,000 annual raise. That’s a $4,000 a week raise. It only cost her husband a $1,000,000 in other people’s money. He got that as soon as he was elected Senator. They got him out of Chicago and into the White House despite having a resume that makes Teddy Kennedy look like Pericles or Pitt [William, not Brad]

This is a “can do” crowd.

Give them a shot.

In hindsight I was too gentle. Your head is so far up your ass you could fix your own teeth without opening your mouth.

I just know, it would be a chalk bet, that you don’t like WAL*MART.

What the sense of being a modern American Liberal unless you’re going to be oh so predictable?







PS – I’m applying for a vacancy at the Department of Commerce. I’ve signed 10Ks. [Ask your accountant] I have actually been a Federal census taker. I was born and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey so I can “tell the buttered side from the dry”. The job I’m applying for is Secretary. My main asset is that in the 1980s I had Federal tax liabilities in excess of $42,000,000. Right. That’s millions. Geithner and Daschle are pikers compared to that number. Can I use you as a reference? Get back to me, OK?