Bailout Chrysler, GM or Ford?  Read this article that was on the front page of Yahoo.com and see if this is joke.

"It's like nature's law: Only the fit survive," said John Berrotto, 50, a security director in New York who drives a Lexus and said he does not support the idea of a bailout. "Sometimes companies just don't make it," he said.

Or this:

"I'm not sure they (the automakers) can be salvaged. Part of me says that if Honda and Toyota can make better cars in the U.S. with American workers, so be it," said Tom Reiter, who was interviewed in Los Angeles and drives a 2001 Jaguar XJ he said was a "big gas guzzler."

The fact is that millions of jobs are at stake and millions of retirees pensions are at stake.

Republican leaders in the Senate want U.S. automakers to fail:

On Sunday, Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl told Fox News American taxpayers should not be burdened with bailing out the auto industry.

For Republicans it is about kicking the American union worker in the teeth and pushing retirees into federal government social programs because corporations did not fund their pension plans as was their financial, legal and moral obligation to do so.

Josh Marshall points out:

In the current economic climate and with the credit markets still out of whack, bankruptcy might actually lead directly to liquidation. That probably means at least a million jobs eliminated at in one fell swoop -- something I don't think we can allow in the current situation.

Remember if there is a bailout of the U.S. auto industry it will be a conditional loan.  The money should be there but with strict oversight and accountability for changing the way the U.S. auto industry does business.  This is not  the "free" money that Paulson and Bernanke have been doing with their trillion dollars or so with the financial players of Wall Street.  The money loaned to automakers will be used to build durable goods that Americans use.  If the Chrysler bailout in 1979 as an example then the loan will be paid back.  The bonus is that the auto industry will be changed in fundamental ways it does business and will be competitive in a green marketplace.