Sometimes I worry about my sanity.

Truly.

Especially after listening to people like Rush Limbaugh and his lemmings.

Do they all live in a different world than I do? Or am I just going senile and living in a skewed reality?

The mindless buzz among the disgruntled conservative Right in this country now centers on how the Obama administration wants to fix General Motors.

Let’s get one thing straight; I am absolutely no fan of the huge bail-outs that we, the taxpayers, are giving to the car companies and to the huge investment firms. Not in the least. I have never agreed with the “too big to fail” ideas that the politicians have been throwing around for the past few months. (And we must remember that these bail-outs are sanctioned by BOTH major political parties. The first bail-outs for A.I.G. and other Wall Street Investment Banks occurred during George W.’s administration with congressional support from both sides of the aisle.)

My theory is and was, let them go bankrupt! Bankruptcy is not the same thing as shutting down or closing their doors forever.

Look what happened to Japan when their over-inflated real estate markets crashed in the 1990’s. The Japanese government poured in billions of dollars to keep everything afloat, and the market NEVER bounced back! (Do you remember the Japanese talking about buying up real estate in this country, including things like The Empire State Building, sports franchises, ski slopes in Utah and the Northeast, large American companies and huge tracts of prime real estate for development?  You don’t hear about that any more, do you?) It has been called Japan’s lost decade.

However, our elected officials, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to fork over billions of dollars to the American car companies to bail them out of their self-imposed financial dilemmas.

That’s right, I said self imposed.  My good friend, Oombutu, who has proven to me a few times that the words Conservative Republican and intelligent are not always mutually exclusive, argues this point with me on Facebook. He claims that the reason for G.M.’s decline was due to the sudden rise in gasoline prices.

I agree with him. However, Toyota, Fiat, BMW, Subaru, Hyundai and number of other foreign car companies had to contend with that same price hike, and none of them are declaring bankruptcy.  They are not doing very well, but they are not threatening to close their doors the way G.M. was.

Why are the foreign car companies not as badly affected? Could it be that their executives saw the handwriting on the wall and moved their companies to rely on the more gas-efficient automobiles like the Prius? The profit margins on such vehicles are lower than the larger vehicles, but they are more appealing to consumers with medium-sized wallets.

And while the foreign car makers were putting the efforts into the smaller vehicles, G.M. was busy cranking out these three-story high SUV’s.

AND, even when their sales began falling off sharply, these same executives kept getting multi-million dollar bonuses, even as they were talking about laying off workers!

(The Japanese automakers work on five-year plans, while the US automakers work on three month plans. Thus, the US automakers are more interested in short term profits rather than long term goals.)

I was briefly listening to Rush Limbaugh yesterday…I do that periodically just to hear what the loyal opposition is whining about now…and he stated that he went out last week and bought two, brand-new, fully loaded SUV’s.

Of course he did!

First of all, the man could almost care about the environment and the state of the world.  (Wouldn’t you think that any true-blue American would buy more gas-efficient cars in order to lessen our dependence on foreign oil?)

Secondly, the man has more money than God thanks to the ditto-heads who lap up everything he has to say as if it were the truth.

Now, Obama wants to cap the salaries of G.M.’s executives, and, since We, The People are now sixty-percent owners in G.M., he wants the government to have a something of a say in how the company is run.

Oombutu has a really hard time with both of these things, as does Rush. They both are quick to point out that not one senator or congressman knows the first thing about running a car company. Perhaps not, but it is obvious that the current executives of G.M. don’t either. The company is, except for the grace of the bail-out, BANKRUPT!

Let me ask you a question; would you hire one of these greedy, short-sighted “executives” to run your business? I know I wouldn’t!

And, even if our elected officials don’t know the first thing about making cars, they have economists and experts that they can turn to for guidance, without worrying about these experts taking bailout money and use it as executive bonus checks.

(Now, I’m not saying that the politicians are not greedy or corrupt. I’m not stupid or blind. However, I DO know that they cannot get their hands on the bailout trillions.)

Well now, I stop there.

Now you tell me, what am I missing? What am I misinterpreting? I do live in the same world as everybody else, right?