Bush Bus Made in Canada//Kerry Camp Responds

[newsguyatl]

priceless!



The Kerry campaign is commenting on reports the Bush campaign bus the President used in Ohio was made in Canada. Kerry spokesman Phil Singer this evening said, "Seeing the President drive around in this Canadian made luxury bus is just another reminder of George Bush's failed economic policies." A Kerry aide also said, "Going into states that have been very hard hit, particularly manufacturing states" in a bus not made in the U.S. is "insensitive."

[NormanConquest]

1. Could somebody Photoshop * in a car seat?

BTW, what's with the French tricolor he's got his hands over?

[zbdent]

11. or maybe a "VP in Trunk" "baby on board" sign for the front window?

.

[emanymton]

2. Another "Dole" Moment - Love It

Hammer this home.

Bush Lied, People Died

[DAGDA56]

3. You mean to tell me that Rove's brightboys can "fix"...

...the made in China cardboard boxes at a photo-op, but nobody knows where to get a GM logo? Why is this campaign even as close as it is?

[liarliartieonfire]

4. George promotes NAFTA..."Made Outta the USA"

What a dumb-ass. I like the car seat idea too!

Yep, just go ahead and drive that outsourced bus around the midwest you dolt.

Let me know when it gets egged.

Not to worry, george is surrounded by secret service, he's outta harms way. Out tax $$ at work.

By the way, isn't it illegal not to wear your seat belt?

[benburch]

5. I am VERY Surprised...

that the Secret Service allows him to ride around in that bus. Normally, the presidential motorcade has several armored limousines, and the president rides in a random one to make it much less likely that bombing or missile attempt will succeed. A bus is simply a huge target.

I conclude that he must be desperate to restore his image if he is going the "Bus" route, and especially if he is actually riding in the bus.

[newsguyatl]

6. well, when i saw

video of it on the highway yesterday it was surrounded by federal vehicles on all sides.

[doni_georgia]

7. Here's my paint version

[revcarol]

8. When I saw a picture of the bus,

AIR FORCE 1 was behind it.
Bush flew between stops, and then picked up the "show" bus.

[iverglas]

9. uh ... there are reasonable expectations

And then there's jingoism. I think this complaint falls into the latter category.

Canada and the US are long-time trading partners. (The automotive industry, in particular, is essentially integrated cross-border, with the Auto Pact ensuring that each party gets its fair share of the jobs and production.)

Not all imports are evidence of "out-sourcing". There really is such a thing as fair trade, from which both parties benefit. Much trade between Canada and the US at least borders on that status.

In point of fact, Canada has lost jobs under NAFTA ... to the U.S.. Georgia carpet mills don't have unions, y'know; and so Canada doesn't have any carpet mills to speak of anymore -- a loss of jobs that, here, were good industrial jobs. And of course there is Bush's intransigence when it comes to actually abiding by NAFTA in areas that affect Canadian exports, like that softwood lumber stuff on which tribunal after tribunal has ruled for Canada, to little avail.

Do you suppose that USAmerican workers are the only ones hurt by it -- or that Canada and Canadian workers are really the cause of many, if any, of the problems of USAmerican workers?

Because of our geography -- large distances and remote populations -- Canada tends to excel in two particular technologies: transportation and communications. We may not make many CD players, but we do make buses and subway cars and fibreoptic thingies, and breakthroughs in medical communications technologies (like the recent one that allows two surgeons thousands of kilometres apart to both manipulate the robotic surgical instrument being used on a patient in a remote hospital).

Do you really want to cut yourself off from other people's skills and contributions? Can you really not tell the difference between out-sourcing to an underdeveloped economy and trading with a partner?

Bush's bus may be a bit of an unusual and perhaps understandably sensitive case, but it really has virtually nothing to do with his failed economic policies. It has to do with trade. Bashing your biggest trading partner (yup, that's Canada), which is what this feels like, isn't particularly wise.

.

[DAGDA56]

10. I don't think anybody's bashing Canada...

...but when you are given an opportunity like this, you might want to exploit it for what it's worth...the same mentality that wouldn't let Japanese cars park in auto industry parking lots a few years back is still out there. To tell them that Bush is talking about jobs, but can't even get an "American" bus, is the kind of message that might just stick with an unemployed auto worker...one that will be voting in November.

[Iceburg]

14. Lighten up brother .. if it helps to get booosh out of the WH

we can afford a little bashing. The alternative is absolutely frightening to me and I am not a neurologist! The last remark is admittedly a bit criptic but the truth about the man whose finger is on the button will be revealed soon.

Another Canadian POV

[zbdent]

12. The Bush Economic Recovery: "Are we there yet?"

Driver: "No."

[Vickers]

13. Is a chauffeur as bad as a butler?

:shrug:

[AlCzervik]

15. did a quick one for ya.

[WFF]

16. At least it wasn't made in a terrorist nation

like the Bush/Cheney sweatshirts that were made in Burma.

[yankeedem]

17. Payback is a b---- errr, is bad

Hey, isn't Prevost a FRENCH- Canadian name? First he's for American job growth, and then he's against it!

[bigtree]

18. Bush switches buses

[diamond14]

25. ROFL....is that Ken Kesey's electric kool-aid acid bus???

certainly is a beautiful bus....especially if bush* wasn't on it destroying the ambiance....

[bigtree]

26. yep

Bush must have drunk the Kool-Aid. :hippie:

[IndianaGreen]

19. Did you know that UAW has locals in Canada?

UAW Region 1

Covers the following counties in Michigan: Huron, Lapeer, Macomb, Oakland, St. Clair, Sanilac, Tuscola and part of Wayne (including Detroit). Region 1 also includes Canadian UAW local unions.

http://www.uaw.org/about/where/region1.html

In the United States

In the United States, PREVOST maintains parts and service facilities in Lyndhurst, NJ, Mira Loma, CA, Jacksonville, FL, Dallas, TX and Nashville,TN.

There is also a PREVOST Parts facility in Elgin, IL, a suburb of Chicago.

http://www.prevostcar.com/eng/default.htm

Should we now fire those American workers that work for Prevost?

How about firing those Canadian workers that belong to UAW?

Progressives don't divide the working class of one country against another, that's why we are internationalists by nature.

If you are going to attack Bush, do it because he has ruined the economy and pissed the surplus away.

[Tansy_Gold]

27. My take on the whole Canadian bus thing is NOT to bash

our friends across the border, but to bash the hypocrite * and his VRWC goons who bashed Canada, bashed the French, changed the names of foods rather than even speak those nasty words. . . .

And after all that, the dumbf**k shows up in a Canadian bus. A FRENCH Canadian bus. It just shows how superficial he is. How superficial they all are.

And yes, I suppose there is some jingoism in the fact that Kerry rides in a U.S. made bus, but it is, after all, U.S. voters who will elect him in November.

Peace,

Tansy Gold, who would really like Canada but it gets cold there and she is a confirmed desert rat

[iverglas]

28. ta (and Auto Pact info for those interested)

Like I was saying, the North American auto parts industry is cross-border integrated. It has always been named as a *good* example of free trade (long before "free trade") -- one in which the interests of both parties are protected, and both parties, including the workers on both sides of the border, benefit.

http://www.caw.ca/visual&printlibrary/speeches&briefs/speeches/speech14.asp
(1998 speech by Buzz Hargrove, president of the CAW)

How about dispute-settlement? This was supposed to be the greatest innovation of the FTA, and would protect us from arbitrary US policies. Yet the recently-concluded travesty of the battle over Canada’s magazine policy showed dramatically that old-style power politics dominate trade policy as much as ever. What is "rational" or "liberal" about a US threat to punish our steel industry because they don’t like our cultural policies–policies which were supposed to be protected under free trade?

... The fantastic claim that free trade would usher in a new era of stable, rational trade law is now a cruel joke. And I could give you a dozen other examples of this failure: softwood lumber, aerospace subsidies, the new barriers to our defense exports that the US has recently imposed. And the list goes on and on and on.

... And Canada, perversely, was a leader in the whole process: sacrificing our own reputation as a society which recognized the limits of markets, and replacing it with a naive and extreme faith in the virtues of unregulated competition.

... The auto sector accounts for fully one-quarter of the growth in Canada’s exports between 1988 and 1998. And it accounts for more than 100 percent of the improvement in Canada’s trade balance during this same time. In other words, without the auto industry, Canada’s merchandise trade balance would have deteriorated under free trade, not improved.

By 1988, of course, our auto industry was already mostly integrated with the U.S. under the Auto Pact. The Auto Pact was signed more than two decades before the FTA, but with a great deal more real-world foresight and intelligence.

Unlike the FTA and the NAFTA, the Auto Pact provided guarantees of domestic content that went along with the elimination of tariffs. Without those guarantees, we would probably not have an auto assembly industry today. With those guarantees, we have what is perhaps the most developed and sophisticated auto industry in the world, relative to the size of our economy and population. And a decade of incredible investment in the auto industry during the 1990s has cemented our advantages in terms of productivity, quality, and cost.

The principle of managed integration which underlies the Auto Pact is a model of how to capture the productivity and efficiency gains.

The Auto Pact prevented Canada from becoming a colonized market for US-made vehicles -- from having all our auto industry jobs out-sourced to the US. It also contributed to keeping the entire North American auto industry strong, and protecting all the jobs in that industry.

Attacking Bush for riding in a "Canadian-made" bus that undoubtedly contains parts made on both sides of the border under an arrangement that benefits both US workers and workers and consumers in the US's closest ally and biggest trading partner *is* irrational jingoism, and also an expression of ignorance. I'm at a loss to see how that can benefit anyone.

But hey, if it's just dandy to incite USAmerican workers to vote against Bush by misrepresenting managed trade with Canada as out-sourcing "American" jobs and ruining the US economy, well I guess the NDP up here had better sharpen our "anti-American" arrows for the upcoming Cdn election. Saying nasty things about our USAmerican cousins (enough of this Cdn-style "we don't hate you, we hate Bush!" politeness, eh?) is bound to be good for a few votes ...

.

[AlCzervik]

20. idiot

[newsguyatl]

22. LMAO

nice

[Bluebear]

21. Further down the road...

[AlCzervik]

23. very nice

it's photoshop night at DU!

[Bluebear]

24. Likewise, I'm sure!

At least we can still amuse ourselves.

[robbedvoter]

29. Ha!Ha! This is a replay of '92 - check War Room

Carville had discovered that Poppy's campaign ads & stuff had been manufactured in Mexico.
This is the stuff that has to be in commercials. This and the fact thet the gas costs a lot because W's friends will lower it back before elections.

[iverglas]

30. similar problem on this side of the border

Carville had discovered that Poppy's campaign ads & stuff had been manufactured in Mexico.

In an election past, my own NDP, the party of workers and economic justice and all that, was found to have had its campaign ads produced abroad.

In the U.S.

The U.S. just isn't always the victim, y'know? The jobs lost in Canada under FTA/NAFTA have been to the US, as well as to Mexico. The capital flows from where wages are high and labour is strong to where labour is cheap and compliant, and sometimes, comparatively, that's the state of Georgia.

(typo edited)