Here is the problem…

General Motors, these companies are not that big anymore.

Do you know that in terms of stock price, Bed, Bath and Beyond has a larger market cap than General Motors?

The automobile industry is not going to go under because the United Auto Workers will not be allowed to go under.

What’s going to happen is the UAW is going to end up owning it.

After the government invests and nationalizes the auto industry, the Obama administration, out of a sense of compassion, will transfer ownership — free of charge, just transfer the deed — to the United Auto Workers.

It’s a shame. But however there are a lot of people like myself who are still madly in love with the American automobile companies and what they have given us through the years.

This notion that General Motors is making cars that nobody wants and is making cars that are worthless is simply absurd.

They have revitalized the Cadillac line, and they’re getting no credit whatsoever for it. They have remade that whole brand.

I wish ’em luck in doing the same thing with other brands. There are some fascinating Chevrolets out there. You wouldn’t think they’re Chevrolets based on what they looked like ten, 15, 20 years ago. To say that they’re making cars that nobody wants is crazy.

If people had the money, they would keep buying those SUVs and pickup trucks. There are all kinds of cars General Motors is making that people want.

But they’re being forced to make cars that people don’t want with all these ridiculous CAFE standards.

General Motors has 96,000 direct employees and over a million retired people being paid by General Motors. They’re former employees, and GM is paying their health benefits.

Now, at some point, it’s gonna implode. It doesn’t matter how quality your cars are.

It’s a mysterious business. I think, basically, General Motors and Ford and Chrysler have become retirement homes; and they have a subsidiary business, which is manufacturing cars.

That’s how Mark Steyn characterized it in a column on Friday. It makes total sense when you look at it.

We’ve even had Rick Wagoner. He said,

“I didn’t know when I took the CEO job here that I was gonna become an expert in health care.”

But it is what it is. All these mandated standards — requirements, emissions, mileage — all this crap put on by a bunch of lug heads like Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi who haven’t the slightest clue what they’re doing, other than to punish successful American corporations.

When it comes to health care, it borders on the criminal what has happened in the health care, the artificial elevation in price versus value.There’s no way a Band-Aid costs $300 bucks in a hospital, that’s what it’s going to cost you because somebody else is paying the bill and there are a lot of people that go to the hospital that don’t pay so those who do pay have to pick it up.

The point I’m trying to make here about all this is that all of this debt that people have taken on, the government, financial institution, banks, all these with high leverages, 30-to-1 debt ratio, I mean it’s absurd to have only one dollar on hand for every 30 dollars you owe, that’s going to come home to roost someday, it elevates the price of houses, it elevates the price of every good and service.

When you go buy a car, you’re really not buying a $35,000 car, you’re buying whatever monthly payment you could afford. When you buy a house, you’re not buying a $250,000 house, you’re buying a mortgage with the monthly rate you can afford, and the house is not yours for 25 or 30 years, depending on the length of the mortgage.

If everything was priced in such a way that you could only buy it if you paid the full price, I guarantee you the price of everything would be lowered. Now, there are exceptions, obviously. People cannot go out and buy houses by writing a check, and most people can’t go out and buy cars.

Debt’s a good thing. I mean it’s using other people’s money for development, to increase the quality of life is fine, but when debt extends to buying debt to buy more debt so that with that debt you can buy more so-called securities, which, the last thing they are these days is secure, this just has a rollover yo-yo effect here that elevates the price of everything, so that when you do break your leg or you do have something catastrophic, you’re out of luck, there’s no way you can pay for it.

But 50 years ago people could.

Forty years ago people could, before the government got involved.

The problem here is not insurance companies. The problem is people who don’t pay and government who makes up for it by taxing everybody else and hospitals who have to raise their prices.

Basically, I’m a pick ’em up by the bootstraps kinda person, and you think you hear me say “let everybody fend for themselves come hell or high water”?

No. Quite the opposite. I think that those in this country who are capable should be left alone to reach whatever height they choose.

If you want to have a life where your income is $20,000 a year, that’s your business and fine. Don’t blame anybody else when you don’t earn $30 or $40 if you’re satisfied with $20.

At the same time, I think that the notion here that people’s lives are improved, their self-love, their self-appreciation is enhanced by their achievements. If you just give capable people things, they’re not going to achieve it, they’re going to come to expect it and they’re going to reach a comfort level at some point that will limit them further in working on their own behalf, but they’re also going to resent the fact that a lot of people have more than they do because they think the system is rigged when it isn’t.

There are plenty of people in our society who are sick, who are, for whatever reason, incapable of helping themselves. We’re a compassionate people, and I and a whole lot of other Americans will go out of our way to help our fellow citizens who literally can’t help themselves.

What bugs a lot of people is to see entirely capable people give up on life and decide to become dependent on whatever their elected official or government can do for them, because we look at that, and I look at the people in government as helping to destroy those people’s lives.

See, I believe we all only get one life. We all only get one chance. And it’s so precious. We’re so busy living our lives, we don’t stop to think how fortunate we are to be alive and what that means. We’re too busy.

We live our lives in the greatest country on earth, a country that offers and has since its interception, more opportunity, more freedom, more prosperity than human beings in history, any human beings in history have ever known. It is simply unnecessary for Americans to check out. It is unnecessary for capable Americans to give up. It is unnecessary for capable Americans to feel down on their luck as Americans because everybody has bad luck.

But if there’s one place on this planet where bad luck can be turned to good fortune with a little action, it’s the United States of America. Be thankful you don’t live in Cuba, be thankful you don’t live in Venezuela, be thankful you don’t live in Russia, be thankful you don’t live in the Middle East.

You live in the best place on earth. Genuine achievement through work is one of the most self-rewarding things. It is where many people really take their identities, from their work, what they accomplish, their passions, their desires, what it is they do and go out and do it, and they make things for other people, they invent things for other people. They perform services for other people. And they try to do it, those that really succeed, to the best of their ability.

Now, I don’t have resentment for those who aren’t trying. I have pity. And I also don’t entirely blame them. Many of them have been told by Democrat liberal politicians for decades that the deck is stacked against them in this country because they’re either black or they’re women or they’re some kind of minority or what have you, and that evil, rich Republicans and white people or whatever other kind of successful people you’re talking about, are preventing them from getting where they want to go. This country will permit anybody to get where he wants to go if that person has stick-to-itiveness, has a little dose of realism and understands it isn’t going to be easy and there’s going to be a lot of unfairness along the way, but there are going to be tremendous rewards, too.

But if you believe in a political philosophy that says your chances are nil, you really don’t have any hope, the country’s best days are behind it, and the only way we can make things fair is to take from those who have unfairly achieved more than others. They’re asking you to be made happy by the suffering of others, not by your own success and good fortune.

I think it’s a crying shame, but it’s reality.

It’s a crying shame we’ve gotten to the point where. For example, you have a car wreck, and you break your leg, and you have to go to the hospital and you have to stay there for a couple days or weeks depending on how bad it is, that you can’t afford it, but there is insurance for it now, the insurance is high priced, as we all know. Most employers, people think, are paying for it, but you have to realize you’re paying for everything you get. You just don’t see a lot of it. You’re paying for your benefits package at work. You just never see it. I’ve long contended that if people were given the full boat of what they’re paid in the form of salary, then you go buy your health care and then you go buy this and whatever the company is providing for you, I guarantee you that happening in mass nationwide, all that competition for services, prices would come down.

We’re going the wrong direction here. We’re talking about nationalizing health care. Obama wants to make sure that everybody’s ensured and that everybody gets coverage, with the illusion that nobody’s going to be paying for it.

You are going to be paying for it and so am I.

But despite this recession, we’ve got more opportunity than 99% of people in the world here.

California residents are getting an early Christmas present, my friends!

Democrats plan to eliminate the state’s 18-cent-per-gallon gasoline excise tax, as well as an 8-cent-per-gallon sales tax on gasoline. So it’s celebration time!

Except that it’s not.

You see, Democrats want to wipe out the taxes… but replace them with a 39-cent-per-gallon “highway user fee.”

The end result? Despite having a “tax cut,” California drivers are going to get whacked with a massive increase at the pump.

Now, this is all part of California Democrats’ new strategy to freeze Republicans out of the budget process. Until now, tax increases required a two-thirds vote in the legislature. Republicans weren’t going to go along with the massive tax increases the Democrats wanted to impose to close their ever-growing budget deficits.

So instead, Democrats are simply changing the name: Tax increases are now going to be called “user fees.” Democrats have the numbers to pass those with a simple majority vote.

It’s not just gasoline, either. Under other names, the state sales tax is going up. There will also be an income tax surcharge and other increases that will further drive business and people out of the state. But don’t call the new tax hikes, “tax hikes”.

Like their counterparts in New York and Michigan and elsewhere, California Democrats have only one answer for governing: Whack the residents with taxes, and keep whacking them until they either die or leave. And if they die, by the way, you keep whacking ’em over and over again, anyway.

It never stops.

You may have seen this. This week, a lot of your local newspapers ran an AP story about glaciers that deserves a second look — especially if you can read between the lines.

The story begins with the assertion that “global warming is shrinking glaciers all over the world.” But then, the article describes a “rare exception” on California’s Mount Shasta.

Long story short: As a result of more moist air from the Pacific bringing more snow, “the seven tongues of ice creeping down Mount Shasta’s flanks” are actually growing.

While claiming this is a rare event, AP mentions another “exception”: a small glacier on Mount St. Helens, which is also growing. And similar conditions have also caused glaciers to grow in Norway, Sweden, Pakistan and New Zealand.

Then comes this little line that would slip by most readers:

“Glaciologists say most glaciers in Alaska and Canada are retreating, too, but there are too many to study them all.”

Well, how classic. Let me translate this for you:

“There are too many glaciers for scientists to study, and some are retreating while others are growing — something that has happened since glaciers were created.”

Yet we’re supposed to live in constant fear and re-order our society based on something we have absolutely no control over; we never have, and we never will. (Go try to melt a glacial tomorrow, if you think you can!)

It means you can’t trust a word that comes out of the mouths of these global warming alarmists posing as scientists… or reporters. Trust none of ’em.

I read a classic, Media, gloom-and-doom story from AP; it’s a collection of sob stories from around the country to justify their assertion that America is in a “bad mood.” The article’s message is that only by embracing “change” will we relieve our supposed “bad mood” — and, of course, Obama (if you have not heard) is the messiah who can change our mood.

Now, I’m not going to repeat the whining complaints from AP’s designated hopeless Americans because, frankly, what emanates from people invested in bad moods is drivel; it doesn’t interest me.

This is not the first time the dollar has weakened, it’s not the first time oil prices have risen sharply; not the first time the economy has slowed or real estate values fallen… and it won’t be the last.

But for every person the Media produce with a sob story, I can find you 100 who are not whining and moaning their way through life, wallowing in misery, waiting for somebody else to come along and wave a magic wand.

All these economic trends are cyclical, and I guarantee you our economy will rebound and it’ll grow stronger than ever. And contrary to what some of you believe the less action from Washington politicians — Democrat or Republican — the faster that rebound will come.

To improve your mood, open your eyes.

You have everything you need to make your life better because you have liberty — you’re an American. You own the power to unlock your own potential, no matter what is going on in the economy. You can drive the economy back… all by yourselves, working together.