Nancy Pelosi -- Should she maintain a leadership position for the dems?

What's your point Cicerone ?

Seven Republican Senators voted FOR Sotomayor: while ZERO Democrats voted against her.

Which Party is being doctrinaire and intransigent? Which group exhibits some ability to cross the line?

Think about it for a moment.

voting on confirming a SC judge isn't at all representative of overall patterns of intransigence, as I'm sure you know.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

voting on confirming a SC judge isn't at all representative of overall patterns of intransigence, as I'm sure you know.

I don't know that, and I profoundly disagree.

However, unlike Ciceone, I don't think there is much difference between the behaivors of the two parties on these matters - except that Sotomayor got generally better treatment from Republicans than Thomas got from Democrats..

This is factually incorrect

The sale will also help the government claw back at least 11.7 billion dollars of the 50 billion taxpayer bailout given to GM.

Professional economists disagree with you on this issue; it is perfectly clear that jobs were saved by this action.

The government's decision to sponsor bankruptcy and to refinance GM were predicated on the belief that it would be liquidated in bankruptcy, with a loss of a million jobs, the resultant collapse of U.S. auto-parts companies and a downward spiral for the U.S. to economic depression.

An equally logical case can be made that a bankruptcy without government intervention might have attracted investors, creditors or other car companies to bid on the the Chevrolet division, its Chinese operations, GM Europe and many other valuable assets. Weak suppliers might have merged to form stronger units.

But we'll never know. The mythology, per Rattner's telling, is borne out by the fact that the administration's policy to prop up GM directly worked. In a sense he can't be refuted because GM is operating profitably and is back on its feet, albeit with government ownership.

Rattner's argument, however, doesn't prove that a liquidation and restructuring couldn't have "worked," too. GM might have looked quite different than it does today.

Let's not forget that the new GM is still a young company with an uncertain future. If it remains solidly profitable and hangs on to its share of the market, we'll be able to praise the U.S. for the GM bailout with much more credibility than we can today.

You don't seem to recall the actual events of spring 2009 - at all. The markets were still mostly frozen with a liquidity crisis and it isn't as if there were buyers clamoring to take over GM.

OK - Democrats are just as fair with Republican appointees as are Republicans with those of the Democrats - except when they aren't.

You seem to be ignorant of the fact that had this been done under bankruptcy law that a judge would have been running GMC for several years, intil such time as the assets could be sold at a good price. The market condidtions spring 2009 dont mean a thing.

In fact the normal Chapter 11 process is fairly efficient and not historically as disruptive as was claimed. Several U. S. airlines wenth through it with minimal effect on their market shares and most recovered nicely. GM was indeed somewhat of a special case, and I have no argument with the Administration's intervention in the matter. Indeed I strongly suspect that if we had a Republican President and Congress we would have seen a roughly similar approach.

I do object to the arbitrary payoff to the UAW - one of the chief causes of the demise of the industry - involved in an otherwise well constructed restructuring. This is precisely the sort of thing on the part of the current administration that is contributing to our very slow recovery from a cyclic recession.

I don't understand why it is contributing to the slow recovery. We currently face a DEMAND problem in our economy; how does the UAW deal contribute to that at all?

Cycloptichorn

As I've said all along, our government should pay for the repair/maintenance/construction of our infrastruture such as our roads, bridges, parks, rail system, and buildings. Getting some people back to work will have a multiplying effect on our economy; it can't get done with more tax cuts.

That's exactly the strategy Japan applied to their definitive economic crisis of the 1990s. All it accomplished was permanent economic stagnation; no growth

That's true: and while this was going on they "primed" the economy by building lots of bridges they didn't need. The process corrupted the banks, the companies and finally the government.

The process corrupted the banks, the companies and finally the government.

Re: Japan's lost decade, their unemployment in that time never went above 6% and their people suffered little hardship due to it. Sounds just terrible. Good thing we don't have to deal with problems like that.

Cycloptichorn