What happens now that the Big 3 Auto Bailout is dead? Often, a look at our own history can shed light on the future…

Let’s take a look back at the turn of the last century, when Teddy Roosevelt tried — but couldn’t quite convince Congress and taxpayers — to hand a billion dollar bailout to the wagon and horse-drawn carriage industry.

Blacksmiths and Equestrian Real Estate Decimated

Without the bailout, thousands of blacksmiths in Cleveland alone were booted out of their shops, into the streets.

While Teddy Roosevelt tried to convince John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil to loan $2 billion to Cleveland’s struggling buggy industry, Rockefeller accused the industry of being short-sighted for too long, and resistant to change:

Everybody saw this coming. Why did not the horse-drawn industry adjust to the changing economic landscape? Because they’re content to be fat, dumb, and happy — resistant to innovation and reluctant to change. If, instead, the bankrupt buggy industry had any responsible leadership, they could have been producing horses that run on gasoline ten years ago!

Without Rockefeller’s support, Roosevelt let the bailout die.

Soon, the demise of horse-drawn carriages rippled through the rest of America. Blacksmiths everywhere closed up shop. Hundreds of thousands of acres of equestrian real estate were sold and turned into parking lots (save for a few counties in Kentucky.)

A Bleak America Without Buggies

In a matter of years, only a few horse-drawn carriage makers remained. With Cleveland’s great buggy assembly lines gone, only a few Amish in Pennsylvania had any horse-drawn vehicles at all. Perhaps a handful of Tennessee Mennonites, too. But, everbody else, my grandparents have told me, was soon left to walking 10 miles in the snow just to get to school.

I’m certain if Teddy Roosevelt could have seen this country’s bleak future without streets filled with horse-drawn buggies, he would have put up a tougher fight to convince the Congress to bailout the wagon and horse-drawn carriage industry. Let’s hope today’s leaders don’t make the same mistake.

Read More: Great Buggy Bailout, Teddy Roosevelt, Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller, horseless carriages, buggies, auto bailout, big 3 auto bailout

10. All future expenditures must be approved by new oversight committee chaired by Dick Cheney and a blue ribbon team of private prison inmates.

9. New “Green Homeland” engines to be imported from Haliburton’s Dubai plant, must get less than 10 miles per gallon, must emit exaust containing excess of 10% birth-defect-causing, good-as-nuclear-fallout, radioactive-for-centuries, depleted uranium dust.

8. Richard Wagoner, CEO of GM, must forfeit the $15 million he took home in 2007 and scrub assembly line latrine with a toothbrush once per week until bailout is returned to taxpayers.

Note: toothbrush must be Wagoner’s own, only toothbrush. Whether he actually brushes his teeth during this period is between Wagoner and his dentist.

7. Alan Mulally of Ford, who earns $21 million, must eat every meal in a local charity soup kitchen. He also must put in 20 hours per week at Detroit’s Georgia Street Community garden until all taxpayer moneys are returned.

6. Robert Nardelli of Chrysler, who received a $210 million severance check from Home Depot last year, must make all future visits to Capitol Hill by flying from Detroit to Washington D.C. on an unaltered, off-the-shelf tricycle.

5. Seventy-five percent of the cars GM produces in 2009 must be of the wildly popular electric plug-in EV1 model that was sabatoged in the 1990s by money-hungry management (service-free cars don’t earn service centers any money), Big Oil (a car that doesn’t need gas?!), and the hydrogen fuel cell industry (if cars don’t need viable hydrogen fuel cell technology, we won’t get paid billions to develop one!)

4. The constitutional rights of all auto workers will be suspended such that their phone conversations can be taped, they may be arrested and denied a fair trial, and they may be tortured to elicit a confession…oh, wait, President Bush already suspended those rights!

3. Only get to blow cash on $3 million 30-second Super Bowl ads if all upper management agrees to have fingernails removed with pliers and a blowtorch.

2. Taxpayer moneys will only be used in a strict sense to streamline user-centric networks, enable best-of-breed architectures, grow rich e-services — all while exploiting turn-key metrics and optimising an efficient bandwidth of booze and women and party golf vacations. Trust us. C’mon…TRUSSSSSST us!

And the number one term of the big three auto bailout is…

1. All financial bonuses replaced by “whack any overpaid executive VP with a rubber mallet” points system.

Read More: auto bailout

Click the play button below, or watch at this link: Young Hillary Clinton.

Tip of the hat to Roadkill Refugee.

Read More: hillary clinton, election 2008

To say that former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, drops a few bombshells on George W. Bush is like saying — well, it’s like saying Hitler’s Luftwaffe dropped a few bombshells on Rotterdam.

McClellan’s harsh exposure of the Bush administration and his disclosures about the world at large keep coming, and coming, and coming, often as many as three and four shocking revelations per page. It took an editorial feat worthy of Edward Scissorhands to trim McClellan’s sensational tidbits to a mere list of ten. But I did, and here they are…

Top 10 Suprises in Scott McClellan’s Book

10. George W. Bush lied America into a war with Iraq.

9. The Earth is not flat. It’s round, like Charlie Brown’s head. Even more surprising, the Earth actually travels around the sun!

8. Paris Hilton is not a virgin.

7. Karl Rove is more crooked than most other traitors can even imagine.

6. Only one country in the Middle East has nuclear weapons, and they won’t sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

5. Halliburton is managed by war profiteers and that includes Dick Cheney.

4. On 9/11 the 47-story WTC7 skyscraper was demolished without being hit by a plane.

3. One and one and one is three.

2. The personal sexual fantasy that Lindsey Lohan would be most embarrassed to have divulged is…uh, give me a break. You think Scott McClellan has this information?

And the number one surprise in Scott McClellan’s book…

1. President Bush has always really, really, really liked oil.

Read More: Scott McClellan, George W. Bush, Iraq War, Karl Rove, WMD, Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, Halliburton, Dick Cheney

Monday was the deadline for former Bush advisor Karl Rove to agree to voluntarily testify under oath about his involvement in sending former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman to prison.

Siegelman, the Democratic Governor of Alabama from 1999 through 2003, was convicted in 2006 on corruption charges. But it’s how he got convicted that’s interesting…

While Siegelman was governor, the U.S. Justice Department targeted him with multiple investigations that went on year after year until, finally, a jury convicted Siegelman of bribery. He was then sentenced to seven years in prison.

Recently, Siegelman was released pending appeal while a House Judiciary Committee investigates the matter. The House Judiciary Committee wants to know whether Karl Rove ordered Siegelman targeted for prosecution in order to kill any chance of the Democratic governor from getting re-elected. The committee has asked Karl Rove to testify under oath.

But anonymous sources have cited 10 Reasons why Karl Rove won’t testify…

Top 10 Reasons Karl Rove Won’t Testify Under Oath

10. He doesn’t have to, because after failing to get a degree at the University of Utah, the University of Texas-Austin, and George Mason University in Virginia, he’s going to enroll again at…wait a minute, that’s Top 10 Ways Karl Rove Dodged the Draft…

9. If he takes the stand, there’s a hundred percent chance he’ll commit perjury, because Karl Rove can’t open his mouth without telling a lie.

8. Doesn’t want to risk revealing the secret reinforced concrete apartment beneath his basement where he worships a huge cache of Nixon memorabilia.

7. Afraid opposing council “fishing” will expose his addiction to freebasing massive quantities of cheese grits.

6. Rove doesn’t want to admit that it was he who swiped Hillary’s fuchsia pumps with the clear heels, and he’s terrified of having to give them back.

5. Justice can wait; Rove has to attend Mariah’s Six Flags wedding reception first.

4. If it doesn’t involve getting soused and rapping, Rove isn’t interested.

3. Rove doesn’t like the way he looks wearing orange, ankle cuffs, and picking up trash along the highway.

2. 1st Rule: You do not talk about what goes on in Bush Club. 2nd Rule: You do NOT talk about what goes on in Bush Club.

And the number one reason Karl Rove won’t be testifying is…

1. Can’t afford to drive over to the courthouse because the price of gas is so freakin’ high!

Read More: Karl Rove, Governor Don Siegelman, House Judiciary Committee, corruption charges, bribery, Justice Department