Saturday, March 3, 2012

Please, please, please somebody make Barack Obama stay at home

Remember that William H. Macy movie called "The Cooler"? 


Macy plays a degenerate gambler whose luck is so bad that Alec Baldwin, playing a casino owner, actually pays him to sit down next to other gamblers who are on winning streaks.  Macy's mere presence at the table is enough to chase good luck away.   

If Barack Obama ever walks into a casino when I'm playing blackjack, I'm gone. 

First, Obama appeared at solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, praising them and their products for leading the way into the new, green, wholesome, stimulus-funded, just freakin' awesome future.  Solyndra went bankrupt. 

Then came LightSquared.  Obama himself was an early investory in the company.  Now there are nasty allegations that folks at the White House encouraged an Air Force general to change his sworn testimony about the company's finances.  LightSquared isn't bankrupt yet, but it is getting ugly.  If you need the White House to destroy your competitors, you're probably about two laps away from the drain. 

I won't bore you with all the failed "stimulus" boondoggles.  Let's get to the latest financial misadventure of this deluded little man who just happens to have access to your money to your great-grandchildren's credit cards. 

And that would be the Chevy Volt.  The taxpayer subsidy on each of these little go-carts is already set at $10,000.00 each.  We've already had to save G.M. from bankruptcy. 



Here's an enthusiastic video of "The Cooler" at the G.M. Hamtramck plant making a victory lap around a Chevy Golf Cart that needs a new $9,000.00 battery every five years.  (And the old battery is hell to get rid of in an environmentally responsible way.  I'm not a greenie, but I do care about taking care of the earth, avoiding negative externalities, etc.)  A Fresh Coat Of Whitening to Michelle Malkin for the link to this video, BTW. 



Flash forward two years.  Here's the Detroit Freep:

General Motors has told 1,300 employees at its Detroit Hamtramck that they will be temporarily laid off for five weeks as the company halts production of the Chevrolet Volt and its European counterpart, the Opel Ampera.


“Even with sales up in February over January, we are still seeking to align our production with demand,” said GM spokesman Chris Lee.

"Aligning our production with demand".  What a glorious statement.  That was the problem faced by the last buggy-whip manufacturer.  The makers of New Coke also had to deal with aligning production with demand.  Ditto for the producers of Milli Vanilli's last CD.  Kodak recently failed to align production with demand.  When you fail to align production with demand, you go broke.  That's what generally happens when politicians try to "produce" with stolen money.  They have no freakin' clue what consumers "demand".  One thing they don't demand is the Chevy Volt. 

Lee said employees were told Thursday that production would put on hold from March 19 to April 23.


The Chevrolet Volt, an extended-range electric car, is both a political lightning rod and a symbol of the company’s technological capability.


Chevrolet sold 1,023 Volts in the U.S. in February and has sold 1,626 so far this year.


In 2011, Chevrolet sold 7,671 Volts, but fell short of its initial goal of 10,000.


GM had planned to expand production of its Volt plug-in hybrid to 60,000 this year, with 45,000 earmarked for the U.S.

At 1,626 for the year, they're on pace to sell about 9,500.  IF people aren't scared away by the exploding batteries.  Did you know that the batteries explode?  Here's what it looks like when you leave a Volt in your garage unattended for a week:

 
Last fall, the GM and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration spent several weeks trying to explain why two Volts whose batteries were punctured caught on fire after sitting around for at least a week.


NHTSA determined that the range-extended electric Volt is as safe as any gasoline-powered vehicle on the road.


GM said on Jan. 5 that it would improve the structure and battery-coolant system of the Volt sedan to protect it better against fires after crashes.


The incident also was the subject of a congressional hearing in January that included testimony from GM CEO Dan Akerson.


“We did not design the Volt to become a political punching bag and that’s what it’s become,” Akerson told Congress on Jan. 25.

Sorry dude.  The only reason your product exists is politics. 
Now you've been visited by "The Cooler". 
You're doors are going to close. 
Man, I used to love my Chevy pickup.  This is a shame. 

The picture of the Chevy Volt fire came from here.  The cartoon of all the Chevy Volt subsidies came from here.  The propaganda below came from the White House website. 

1 comment:

CenTexTim said...

Aw, man ... You stole my thunder. I had a rough draft of a post pointing out the Newspeak underlying the "align our production with demand" quote and you yanked the rug right out from under me.

I guess great minds do think alike.