The latest cause celebre of the GOP is to scuttle the $14 billion auto bailout because of their longstanding disdain for labor unions, and their highly selective application of "free-market" preferences — i.e., they entertain socialist preferences for their fat cat buddies on Wall Street, but "free market" preferences when it comes to the average American.

I think they also have a yearning to show, a month after stinging defeats at the polls, that they can still stick together long enough to deliver one last middle finger to the American people and deliver us all the worst Christmas present since the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.

What their 'no deal' vote on the LOAN to Detroit boils down to is something other than the fancy rationale Republicans put forward on talk shows to save face ("if we bail them out, who is next in line with their hands out?" --oh how odd that this same sentiment does not prevail when 350 billion was just handed over to Wall Street banks and insurance companies).

Do you know why Republicans are so hot to bust the Unions? Because the unions protect workers, but the GOP destroys them, abuses them and beats them down. And politically they are on opposite sides of the aisle from the GOP. Indeed, the Southern Senators' "no" vote boiled down to plain old union busting and protectionism for their foreign car company patrons. They were pleased to sell off Ameriican jobs to repay their benefactors from the foreign car companies who had built their plants all in Southern states. Consider the big issue here which is not emphasized in the mainstream news media.

The Detroit 3 auto makers were asking for a LOAN (they would pay it back), NOT a bailout like the banks received, with no questions asked, which they have no intention of paying back or of submitting to any accoutabiliity or oversight. One hears hardly a word from the mainstream media about this double standard.

I wonder how many Americans remember that if weren't for the labor unions, this whole country would be working for wages similar to those of Mexico, Africa or Bangladesh, with no labor laws, no protections and no minimum wage or 40 hour work week? If we look at the diffence in actual wages between the unionized Detroit auto workers and their non union counterparts in the South, the wages aren't all that different from Toyota, Nissan, BMW and Volkswagen.. What is different were or are the UAW's benefits: benefits which were promised in good faith years ago to these American workers. And since this financial crisis came up, the UAW and its workers have even been willing to cut back their benefits, in spite of being promised. rightly or wrongly, years ago that they would receive them.

Also, look at the fact that the D3 going into Chapter 11 would not even work, contrary to the false pronouncements of the Republicans. The reason is, that these companies don't have the necessary liquidity for Chapter 11. They would be forced into Chapter 7, which would mean that they would have to liquidate their assets and this would mean the end of their existence.

In reality, these health and benefit obligations that cost the big three so much ought, morally, to be be paid in good faith. The workers have planned their retirements and their healthcare around them because they believed they would receive them. If it is anyone's fault, it is the D3's management that is at fault for not planning better.

So the "free market solution" of the Republicans for the auto companies but not for the banks, is excessively harsh.If the Republicans WERE the party of moral values, they would issue the loan, in order to help the D3 companies honor their commitments made before economic conditions got so bad.

Whoever is to blame, the right thing to do is to help these companies restructure and honor their obligations. General Motors can't even pay their parts suppliers as it is now.

Another thing to think about: If the American worker goes down, so will the Japanese car companies, who also use our parts providers for their U.S. plants. The foreign car makers also depend on a healthy American market to sell their cars.

I don't see why it is too exorbitant to help Detroit restructure its business that employs so many people in our country and gives us homegrown manufacturers for our military equipment as well. I thought the Republicans were the party of national security.

In spite of their mistakes (not as bad as the banks made), why shouldn't the D3 be LOANED a relatively paltry 15 billion dollars (not the $45 billion they originally asked for )? They should actually be applauded for trying to honor their commitments to the American worker. And the American people are still unaware of the fact that the cars Detroit produces now are every bit the equal of the vehicles their foreign competitors make. And they have promised to allow government oversight in response to this crisis agreeing to change their way of doing business.

So what the hell is the Republicans' problem? It is plain that "Wall Street corruption is OK, but they will not allow us Americans to drive a Chevrolet!"

There! Try that on for size, since the Republican party loves slogans. Even President Bush and Dick Cheney have come out and just made the comment that "in denying the Detroit loan, the Republican party will be defining itself further as the 'Party of Herbert Hoover."

For the love of Pete, the Republicans' own president and vice president finally advocated doing the right thing, and now a handful of southern, die-hard feudalist reactionaries won't even listen to President Bush or Vice President Cheney. These southerners are yes-men for the foreign auto interests and as such, the spiritual heirs of the old plantation with slaves. They want to bust down the American worker so that we literally become Third World-style impoverished wage slaves with no guarantees of anything.

I still say that Abraham Lincoln made a big mistake bringing the South back into Union. You can't trust neocons. They are esconced in their hillbilly hideouts, and are still just neo-confederate snakes.

It is obvious then, that the GOP, whether at the federal or state level, seems to be intent on only one game plan: block everything and watch the country go down the tubes. They don't offer workable alternatives and they have a huge double standard in what they are for and what they are against.

The Republican Party is the party of two-tiered fat cat pandering, no-strings-attached, to Robber Baron thieves of Wall Street but then for the rest of us, "tough luck" and slave labor and zero favors or help. They're willing to tack almost a trillion dollars onto the already exorbitant bill owed by the American taxpayer, but then they are just as willing to cut the money that kids and old people need to survive, yet they offer nothing reasonable beyond a continual, "No", to anything and everything.

The GOP, while clinging to it's ideologies has proven it is the party of rich white jerks only. Not only has the GOP brought this country to the brink of ruin, they still have the gall to refuse to accept that they've made any mistakes.The Republican party is NOT EVEN ASHAMED of betraying America, putting themselves before country, after putting the USA into the worst financial hole in history...

Apparently, they will not be satisfied until they have finally broken America down so badly that it cannot be fixed. I sometimes think they must secretly work for some evil foreign government or governments, because otherwise why would they be so consistently anti-American in everything they do? We know they're willing to go wherever the money is right for their own greed, but not where it's good for the common wellbeing of Americans.

If the GOPers and their backers don't secretly work for evil foreign government(s), then they just are the most unprincipled thieves that there have ever been in American history. They are obviously out to grab as much as they can for themselves, regardless of what it does to the country, and then they try to justify their behavior by various arguments that all boil down to hypocrisy.

Fiscal conservatism for the main masses in the country but 'grab what you can for yourself" for themselves and their rich patrons. And they're brazenly insulting toward all who don't agree with them. You suddenly become a 'liberal' and a "socialist, America-hating sissy'.

All of this tells me I am correct in asking, "WHY SHOULD WE LISTEN ANYMORE to these hateful, vectoring neocons that go blabbing their distortions around on the daily blogs, spewing out r half-truths, and outright lies, excuses, and their turning things inside out:.... calling black white, and white black....with all of their slander and self-righteous hypocrisy?

They are all of them like cultists who say "don't bother me with the facts, my pea-brain is made up".

WHY should anyone, anymore listen to these hardened scoundrels and scammers who have no shame and no mercy and who are not sorry that they have 'effed' up our country and continue to do so, in such an extreme manner that we may never recover?

Maybe Sarah Palin was right: there are some regions of America that are more "American" than others. Namely The North, and West and East are more American than the South,because we like to support our last major manufacturing industry, the American automakers. I am more American than any neocon because I will fly an American flag on my American car but they and their southern America-betrayers can drive their Republican cars wearing their sweatbands or their berets sewn with the symbol of the old Third Reich, with a rising sun flag on their un-American cars' antenna.

One thing Republicans need to do is learn to shut their ignorant mouths and take a good hard look at themselves and look at the mess they've made of everything. I guess they want China or Japan to also build our military vehicles and our weapons, since they want to run our American businesses into bankruptcy while salvaging destructive Wall Streeters who raped our treasury.

We will, by this vote, never never forget that the Republican Party is the party of feeding the privileged while forcing the rest of us into slave labor...

The outcome of Republican behavior when taken to its logical extreme can already be seen in Third World societies where the wealthy few live in guarded compounds protected by private armies, while the vast majority of the population scrambles for scraps, but the logical outcome of their craven pandering to the rich oligarchs and busting of the average citizen...the outcome either eludes them or doesn't bother them. I think these guys would rather the US be a 3rd world country, than pay ANY taxes toward the common good. They are THAT selfish. They do NOT believe in a common good, only what's good for themselves.The Republican Party is, in the meantime, just trying to find any way it can to shoot down Obama before he even gets into the presidency.

The RNC, sore losers, are just seething in their attempts to connect Barack Obama to Rod Blagojevitch, the disgraced governor of Illinois. They are not able to, but the fact that they are trying so hard just shows that they are not a party that can be reasoned with at all. They need to be sued for slander and character assassination and stomped down.

I say it again, we also need to restore the "fairness doctrine, equal time provision" so that other points of view besides mainstream, right wing media can be aired nationwide.