Is This the Sign of a Sustainable Car Company?

Seriously, this does not look good.. at all.

I realize that parts suppliers will have hard times if GM fails, but the reality is that suppliers success is based on public demand for cars. If the public is demanding cars from Company A instead of Company B, then the suppliers need to also be providing parts for Company A.

This is really pathetic:

In its own restructuring plan, GM said Tuesday it would need up to $30 billion from the U.S. Treasury Department, up from a previous estimate of $18 billion and including $13.4 billion it has already received. It also said it would need to cut 47,000 jobs worldwide and close five more U.S. factories. GM said it needed about $6 billion in support from the governments of Canada, Germany, Britain, Sweden and Thailand to provide liquidity for its overseas operations in those countries.

A Sensible Immigration Policy

Fareed Zakaria nails it:

The U.S. currently has a brain-dead immigration system. We issue a small number of work visas and green cards, turning away from our shores thousands of talented students who want to stay and work here. Canada, by contrast, has no limit on the number of skilled migrants who can move to the country. They can apply on their own for a Canadian Skilled Worker Visa, which allows them to become perfectly legal “permanent residents” in Canada—no need for a sponsoring employer, or even a job. Visas are awarded based on education level, work experience, age and language abilities. If a prospective immigrant earns 67 points out of 100 total (holding a Ph.D. is worth 25 points, for instance), he or she can become a full-time, legal resident of Canada.

Companies are noticing. In 2007 Microsoft, frustrated by its inability to hire foreign graduate students in the United States, decided to open a research center in Vancouver. The company’s announcement noted that it would staff the center with “highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S.” So the brightest Chinese and Indian software engineers are attracted to the United States, trained by American universities, then thrown out of the country and picked up by Canada—where most of them will work, innovate and pay taxes for the rest of their lives.

If President Obama is looking for smart government, there is much he, and all of us, could learn from our quiet—OK, sometimes boring—neighbor to the north.

Pope Benedict’s Whacky World

Not off to the best start in the world.

Responding to an extraordinary burst of global outrage, especially in Pope Benedict XVI’s native Germany, the Vatican for the first time on Wednesday called on a recently rehabilitated bishop to take back his statements denying the Holocaust.

Late last month, the pope revoked the excommunications of four schismatic bishops from the ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X, including Bishop Richard Williamson, a Briton, who in an interview broadcast last month denied the existence of the Nazi gas chambers.

In a statement issued Wednesday, the Vatican Secretariat of State said that Bishop Williamson “must absolutely, unequivocally and publicly distance himself from his positions on the Shoah,” or Holocaust, or else he would not be allowed to serve as a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church.

My question is: if this Williamson dude is, as they say, “rehabilitated”, why the hell must he recant now?

Bibi NetanYahoo Rising Again?

Josh Marshall notes a sobering reality even as President-elect Obama nominates a formidable foreign policy team:

And yet in Israel it’s not at all unlikely that by February Bibi Netanyahu could be the Prime Minister again in Israel. I guess there’s always the argument that you need a Nixon to go to China, that you need someone with impeccable security credentials on the Israeli side to make a lasting peace. That’s one of abiding tragedies of Ariel Sharon’s stroke. (It’s ironic that Netanyahu, who’s got a thin national security resume by Israeli standards, should be seen in that light since verbal and policy aggression are his only real calling cards. But that’s another story …) But Netanyahu is not only the voice of Israeli territorial maximalism, albeit in its current more limited form, he’s also fundamentally unreliable person — a charlatan.

For those of us who are heartened to finally have an administration that realizes this issue is as critical as it is, it’s a very disheartening prospect on the horizon.