Note Apple's board includes one "Albert Gore Jr., Former Vice President of the United States": http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/ It's good to have friends in high places.
(Also note the cramdown was a remarkably bad long term idea; most specifically, because it ensures in the future heavily unionized companies in trouble will find it very difficult to pledge their assets for money to get themselves out of it. One of the major reasons Ford didn't have to declare bankruptcy is that its then new CEO, previously a Boeing lifer, in 2006 pledged all the company's assets to borrow $23.6 billion dollars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Mulally#Ford_Motor_Company .)
(It's funny that you begin by assuming I am unfamiliar with such positions. Thinking they are goofy, humorous and exaggerated is very different from never having been exposed to them. It was exactly this exposure that compelled me to write this, even knowing that it would be a target of downvotes and flames.)
PS: I don't think the "good relationships with government" have been established to be causal to the result, beyond vague innuendo.
Why is it so difficult for people to accept that those who disagree with them aren't just trying to antagonize them, and may have actual, legitimate political orientations and views?
Instead of dismissing everyone with whom you disagree and painting them as irrational bigots, why don't you attempt to discuss something with them?
But I would like to make another thing clear: Obama is a center-right politician. Your first line implies that I am a "proponent of [his] administration" but I am considerably to the left of that guy. But a large component of the attitude I am mocking is that many Obama haters really don't care about the details, they just know they're against the guy. Here's a guy who's got a tax plan from George Bush, a health care plan from Dole/Gingrich and implemented by Romney, a more competent wiretapper, assassin, and immigrant-deporter than his predecessor - even if some of these critics previously held similar beliefs as Obama, they don't care about any of that, he's just Satan to them. This includes congresspeople who are now against things they previously sponsored, because it's now an Obama plan. Witness on this thread that the administration is actually blocking "government intrusion in the marketplace", and people are really just finding excuses to find faults with this because of what party it comes from. I'd say on the balance they've proved my initial assertion right, far more than I expected even from the pseudo-libertarians I am accustomed to seeing on HN.
Political debate in a de-facto two party system easily turns into a fight between partisan hacks.
Actually, even left and right aren't clear in real life politics. Is "crony capitalism" right or left?
Creating arbitrary rules that don't apply to businesses who are serving the 'public interest' (politically connected) is only one step away from a planned economy.
My previous experience with Obama-haters and pseudo-libertarians tells me the answer is probably no. But I am open to evidence to the contrary. Absent that I can't just assume an Apple/Obama conspiracy by default.