Your history is a little flawed: The Rambler was introduced in the early 50s, but really saved American Motors in the late 50s, when its Nash and Hudson models had faded, but it quickly had domestic competition. Studebaker retooled itself as a small car company (which save it) and then the Big 3 introduced their first compacts in 1960 (Corvair, Valiant, Falcon), with subsequent introduction sin '61 (Pontiac, Buick, Olds, Dodge, Mercury) and '62 (the Chevy II). American Motors could not afford to retool like the Big 3 and was limping along by the mid-60s. American Motors HQ was in Detroit, but its manufacturing base was in Kenosha, WI (between Chicago & Milwaukee) and in Canada. The elder Romney became a Michigan icon in spite of his company's relatively small footprint in the state.

Despite being a rustbelt auto worker's kid, only my 1st car was American (a used '71 Olds Cutlass--part of a series of mid-sized cars that were the last decent vehicles built by GM until they finally paid attention to engineering in the last few years). Since then, it's been VW, Toyota, & Honda. At least the Honda was assembled here, in my home state of Ohio. Detroit never figured out how to make decent small cars (the early ones were lemons and Ramblers wer as bad as Big 3 cars) and make money. The original Ford Mustang--basically a sharp looking Falcon that people filled with options was the closest thing to an inspired small car from Detroit. The engineering of cars got worse, as the imports got better. GM paired small car transmissions with big car engines and made countless other mistakes. Ford continues to mean "fix or repair daily" and still can't make a really smooth automatic transmission. By missing out on small cars, repeatedly, they lost 1st generation buyers (and their subsequent purchases) and the unreliable, poorly engineered big cars ultimately lost countless "mature" buyers. Regulation and efforts to address the environment would enable Detroit to move ahead rather than look backward. The Japanese and Europeans are far ahead with new technology and even with joint ventures, acquisitions, etc. Detroit's management still has not wised up. Labor costs are a problem (and one that should make the Big 3 support health care reform), but decades of management stupidity and poorly engineered cars are the real problem.

Detroit is a sadly backward looking place. Detroiters have never gotten over the 1967 riots, the aftermath of which changed the local landscape more than racial disturbances in other US cities. This sowed the seeds for the GOP's phony race based populism, which has been popular in places like Warren. Detroiters also have never gotten out of the rut that the Big 3 have gotten into since about the mid-60s. Romney's cheesy salesman role may win some votes from its backward looks, but Detroit and the rest of the rustbelt need real vision and I suspect that none of the candidates have it. Some places have found newer, smaller niches, such as the polymer belt around Cleveland and Akron, and the much diversified economy of Chicago. But much as Detroit needs to finally get past the "summer of love" (white Detroiters nickname for the '67 riots) and the self-defeating GOP votes in sowed, it also needs to get past being nice to Detroit and its visionless management class.

A pompous jerk. His email says volumes about him and, if anything, suggests Glenn has gone easy on him. And people wonder why I don't watch CNN.

Although abortion remains a common experience for women of childbearing women, advocacy groups remain on the defensive. Sadly, they trot out the same slogans and fail to engage the mass of women in the US. the same is true of feminism, as a whole. It became a clubby world of in-group infighting (e.g., what to do with lesbianism), rather than the mass movement that women were waiting for. Abortion remains commonplace, but threatened and feminiism and NARAL have no idea how to engage the mass of women who should be supporting abortion rights.

Anti-depressants have been around since the 60s. The first class of antidepressantswere discovered by accident by researchers looking for a new anti-hypertensive. The SSRIs represented the 3rd major generation of anti-dpressants and were an important step forward because they could be tolerated well by many more people than previous generations. The elderly, for example, do much better on these drugs.

The prescription of anti-depresants by family doctors also is not new. The vast majority of anti-depressant prescriptions have been made by GPs, internists, etc. for decades. The SSRIs may have augmented this, but they didn't change the fact most anti-depressants are prescribed by dotors who know little about psychopharmacology or psychiatric disorder. The prescribing of psychoative drugs among children goes back to at least the 60s with Ritalin and various amphetamines in hyperactive children. The use of anti-depressants was less common in those days, but it's still unclear how widespread it is. Anecdotes make compelling reading but aren't data. The aggressive promotion of off-label uses isn't new, but seems more common than in the past. Very little drug testing has been done with children, more often with adoelscents.

Much is known about the various neurotransmitters: their precursors (the proteins that that are synthesized to make them), their relative concentrations in different parts of the brain, their uptake and reuptake, etc, which all effect mood. The degree to which neurotransmitter systems interact is not known and probably important given the varied presentation of depression. OTOH, enough is known that, among SSRIs, there are some which are used to treat depression and others that are used to treat migraines.

"Depression" isn't just one thing; there are variations in etiological events, family history, symptom presnetation, etc. To say that depression is "a biological condition like diabetes" is ridiculous, although I've seen primary care doctors do it.