Bound and gagged by geological corporate thinking, Detroit will produce nothing new. Remember when Japanese cars were a source of bemusement and wonder? I do. No one's laughing any more.

Why didn't Ford come out with the Prius? Do you think that any US automaker will innovate ANYTHING except for more cupholders?

Creative people do not rise in corporate ranks. Which leads to a think strata of soulless corporate suits at the top of virtually every corporation I've ever seen from the inside.

Not just creative people, but people who love cars. When did Detroit roll out anything that spoke to a car lover? The 64 Mustang?

The race is over, and it was over decades ago. Like American steel, American autos are a relic of the past. All we manufacture in this country are rich executives.

A genius engineer friend of mine adapted an aircooled VW engine to run on propane, only to discover that the hoopla around LP-powered vehicles in the late 70s meant that an LP-refueling network was set up for tax purposes but that they really were not interested in selling propane to individual users, and the LP stations that could be found clearly did not want to have anything to do with an individual genius inventor.

Nice.

The best way to keep a relationship healthy and fresh is to NOT MOVE IN TOGETHER. In the situation you describe... well, you didn't really need to even ask, did you? It sounds terrible and I'm glad to see an avalanche of NO! NO! NO! from the letter writers. NO don't do it.

Did McSame just concede the election? How did he find this woman to be VP? Unless this is a setup and Lieberman or some other more likely candidate will step in once Palin is disqualified or otherwise set aside.

And I mean legendary. Word.

That was certainly a fascinating and underreported event after Katrina.

Oh, could you possibly mean not allowing US foreign policy to be dictated by Israel? Would that fit the definition of "isolationism"?

Not invading foreign countries in order to depose their popular leader and steal their oil? Would that be "isolationism"?

The whole land-war-in-southeast-asia thing... also "isolationism"?

Palin's a piffle, but "isolationism" sounds like a bright idea given the insane foreign policy decisions of the past forty or fifty years.

Who ought to be hunted down and buried alive themselves.

Face it: most of the world is as backwards as if populated by trolls. Venal, petty, stupid...

Think it can be fixed? Ever? I don't. Embrace the horror of it all.

Hilarity ensues. Caribou Barbie meets Jews For Jesus? Palin has a "reputation for reform"? Does that include the town she left $22 million in the hole?

[sitting back, popping popcorn]

>Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a prominent GOP activist, spoke.

How interesting. He was also involved with the GOP team that purported vetted Palin.

Grover Norquist... oh, what songs he would sing in Guantanamo, truly an underappreciated hero of the New World Order.

Did the Vietnamese attack us? No, they did not. Communism was perceived as a threat to our trillionaires. And so we went to "war" and hammered a third-world people with all our might.

Heroic? I don't see it that way. And now we're repeating that mistake in Iraq, albeit on a smaller scale. Idiots!

Neither candidate is addressing our severely undermined fiat currency. The dime's worth of difference between them: shall we remain in Iraq for 999 years or 1000 years?

I'll probably cast my absentee ballot for Obama, but (remember FISA?) not a fucking thing will change. It's just sizzle selling a steak. The Democrats will substitute their own form of bloat and corruption for the overt theft of Bush43's two illegitimate terms in office.

McCain, the war hero, can go back to accepting graft for whatever business he conducts in Washington. Don't even get me started on Caribou Barbie and her book-burning backwoods idiocy.

And the GOP Kool-Aid drinkers would rally around that loaf of bread like braindead third-worlders venerating a tortilla with a burned image of Jesus on it.

Book-banning I can believe; reform, no.

That she left some shitty little town in Alaska $22 million in the red I can believe; reform, no.

And are we supposed to bend over and welcome getting shafted for the cost of the "subprime meltdown"?

How about if the lenders who made the dumb loans cough up the cost?

If you want to FIX something, how about dismantling the Federal Reserve and eliminating fiat currency altogether? And how about an actual physical audit of the gold that's supposedly in Fort Knox?

With NFL Network available, ESPN doesn't really matter anymore, especially with their loss of what was their great wrap-up show on Sunday nights.

Why, then, not make a real A-team available for their Monday Night games? That would (obviously) be Ron Jaworski, Tom Jackson and Chris Berman.

It's about that simple. Since the 1973 "gas crisis" (you think US support for Israel had anything to do w the "gas crisis"?) the writing was on the wall.

Why should US automakers get bailed out? So the US can seize their factories and make tanks in them if it needs to? An earlier letter writer had invoked the memory of the heinous "K" cars -- who would want to drive such a piece of shit?

Bloated, poorly-built tanks weak on fit and finish. I've purchased half a dozen new vehicles in my lifetime and I always look at US cars first and they ALWAYS SUCK OUT LOUD, pathetic, behind-the-times attempts which look like pale, sickly weeds compared to Japanese vehicles.

I've worked one-on-one with enough CEOs to realize where the problem is. And it's not on the assembly line.

$50 billion? Forget it. Die, already. You've earned it.