What makes you so happy to support crappy business in Detroit instead of supporting good business elsewhere? What gives you the right to insist that I should buy a crappy car to support a failed business model?

Everyone with half a brain has been able to see for 30 years now that Detroit has been going downhill. The union management and the corporate management have conspired to wave the flag and yell "Buy American" without finishing that sentence with the only fitting word, "crap".

I'll be damned if I can see any purpose in saving a crappy section of an industry at the expense of the good section.

The American way is to buy the best, and that hasn't been Detroit for ages. Don't shovel your faux-patriotism at me, buster.

He says the transition team, altho trained in that area, doesn't have the expertise to judge is programs, then wants to talk directly to Obama?

Is he saying that judging NASA requires a constitutional lawyer? Sounds like reason enough to sack him.

Then back it up with actions regarding ALL the constitution, especially including the second amendment, but also the fourth (FISA bill!) and all that other nonsense that politicians like to pick and choose from.

Otherwise I wouldn't accept a leather bound constition. Somebody's got to have principles around here.

Republicans lost because the public was fed up with incompetence and corruption. All the rest is blather.

Republicans need to eject the neocons and religious nuts from control of the party. They need to get rid of nutcases like Palin and become a party of thinking conservatives instead of knee jerk wingnuts. They need to embrace those parts of the constitution they helped Bush stomp on: freedom of speech, press, and assembly, and protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Democrats need to embrace that part of the constitution they have traditionally stepped all over: the right to self-defense as written in the second amendment. The only thing useful in this article is it says 70 of the Democrats are blue dog conservatives and the Republicans need 40 seats to take back a majority. They need to repudiate gun control, whether silently or publicly.

I don't expect the Democrats to take the most obvious step: eliminate the War On Some Drugs. That war creates too many parasitical jobs and converts too many citizens from taxpaying employees into tax spending prisoners, leads to corruption in the police and political scene, and causes most of the crime that amkes so many headlines.

My prognostication is that the Democrats are far too scared to do anything about gun control for at least two years, maybe four, because they remember 1994 and want to keep Obama in office. The Republicans are far too enamored of Palin, and the bullshit about Obama's birth certificate shows them unlikely to repent in time to make any progress in 2010. 2012 is too far off to tell.

Detroit reminds me of life long drunks who have known for years that their drinking is destroying their livers, and when the doctor tells them they have two weeks to live, they suddenly get religion, demand to be put at the head of the transplant queue, and promise to reform only once they have the new liver. Of course that promise is delivered with a bottle in each hand.

Sorry Detroit, UAW. Grow your own liver.

Bankruptcy, go go go! The only way any government investment in them could be justified would be for a complete change of board, CEO, and every one else who sets policy, and that would imply trusting the government to do better. Let bankruptcy court sort it out.

IFF they get government money, they promise they will restructure. Meaning if they don't get government money, they will continue business as usual?

The UAW is only now proposing changes?

The CEOs drove to Washington instead of taking their corporate jets? What about regular commercial flights?

Everything which might happen is a day late and a dollar short. They should have been doing all this restructuring a year ago, 5 years ago.

Go into bankruptcy. The same fools whose brand loyalty has sustained you this far will continue to support you, and the shock just might finally get the restructuring you have so desparately needed for so many years.

The GOP didn't lose because they were too conservative. They lost because they became corrupt and arrogant and greedy and above all else, incompetent. It has nothing to do with conservative or liberal. People were simply sick and tired of corrupt incompetence.

Now whether the GOP recognizes this and whether that recognition is behind this power shuffle, that is the question you should be asking. If you only see it in terms of conservative or liberal, you are out of your depth in political commentary and need to do something else.

How much of that huge drop in September is from Boeing workers on strike and not producing airplanes for export?