As America celebrates President Barack Obama's birth certificate as well as Osama bin Laden's new eye hole, one bit of news managed to get by that will likely have a bigger effect on the U.S. - Chrysler announced a profit:

Chrysler has posted its first quarterly net profit since declaring bankruptcy almost two years ago, Reuters reports.  

The Fiat-controlled brand's first quarter net income came to $116 million, with a total increase in revenue of around 35 percent to $13.1 billion.  

The company's success can be traced partially to several redesigned vehicles, including the Jeep Grand Cherokee. Additionally, the overall vehicle price rose to $28,300 in the first quart, from $27,300 a year ago.  

Chrysler has been posting operational profits, but the cost of high interest on loans the company owes from its 2009 bailout have damaged its ability to post a net profit.

For those of you struggling to recall, the bailout of Chrysler - according to Republicans - was more or less going to be the end of capitalism, if not the world in general.

"Just giving them $25 billion doesn't change anything. It just puts off for six months or so the day of reckoning." -- Sen. Jon Kyl.

"[The bailout] was all about the unions. The unions didn't want to have their very generous contracts renegotiated so we put $80 billion into both General Motors and Chrysler, and anybody believes that Chrysler is going to survive, I'd like to meet them." -- Sen. John McCain.

"We gave $14-$15 billion to General Motors and Chrysler, and both of them probably will end up filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy." -- Rep. Dan Burton

"The government has forced taxpayers to buy these failing companies without any plausible plan for profitability.” - Sen. Jim Demint.

 “This is an unprecedented takeover from the private sector by this administration…It is totally unconstitutional, it’s totally against freedom, it’s totally unprecedented, and it’s exactly the same thing that Hugo Chávez is doing down in Venezuela.” -- Rep. Paul Braun.

What did Obama have to say about it?

"For the auto industry to completely collapse would be a disaster in this kind of environment," Obama said. "So my hope is that over the course of the next week, between the White House and Congress, the discussions are shaped around providing assistance but making sure that that assistance is conditioned on labor, management, suppliers, lenders, all of the stakeholders coming together with a plan — what does a sustainable U.S. auto industry look like?"

It seems we may be starting to see what a sustainable U.S. auto industry looks like. Regardless, this has been what we pundit types like to call "A really good week for Obama."

--WKW

Crossposted at William K. Wolfrum Chronicles