DISQUS

Good article Mike. I'd like to see a complete list of the states and the amount of subsidies they gave to foreign car companies. Many of the same suppliers that sell to GM and Chrysler sell to Honda and Toyota. It's not gonna cheap for them to have to keep their suppliers in business alone. And we all know where those costs will be passed along to.

Kill the Big Three and and any new vehicle will cost more. That's what happens when you destroy competition. And those non union workers in the south? Their wages will go down with hundreds of thousands of unemployed UAW line workers on the market. And what are they gonna do about it, unionize? All those workers may pay taxes but the profits go back to Japan, Korea and Germany. My ancestors didn't move to the USA to work as serfs for foreign companies who are subsidized by their governments. Let's level the playing field by adopting the same government run healthcare plans every other industrialized country has. Take that burden off our manufacturers and they can compete with anyone.

Another unintended consequence of killing the Big Three? Goodbye NASCAR.

“Never pick a fight with somebody who buys ink by the barrel.” is an old, old saying. Some say it goes back to Ben Franklin who as a printer and publisher did indeed buy ink by the barrel.

The US Senate is much more gentile and collegial than the House. There's only 100 members of this exclusive club and if you've ever watched CSPAN you've seen how they address each other with the studied deference that's built into the rules and tradition of the place. McCain can manage that on camera most of the time but as we all know he's infamously lost his temper on a lot of occasions and shown his contempt for others, even other Republican senators.

Part of it is his Napoleon complex, the little man syndrome that he wrote about in one of his books. Always short (he's 5'9"), as a kid he thought it necessary to prove himself by fighting with the first bigger boy who "provoked" him.

But there's more to it than that and it may stem from his upbringing and training. Demonizing your opponent has long been considered necessary in the military. His father and grandfather rose to be admirals by effectively leading men in battle killing Asians. McCain killed many with his bombs.

Now I've never been to war or in the military, but many members of my family have. Killing your follow man is an unnatural act. It goes against everything society and religion teaches us. A poor but useful analogy is football. It too involves unnatural acts, lunging at opposing players to knock them down. When you're young it takes a certain amount of training to sacrifice your body (it's a painful game) before you can even begin to learn the skills required to be good at it. Military training takes these steps far beyond that by necessity.

McCain was brought up demonizing Asians. In referring to North Koreans fairly recently he called them "gooks". When called on using the slur by Asian Americans he refused to apologize citing his POW days and said they'd always be "gooks" to him.

If you're going to break the "thou shall not kill" commandment, commit what is considered murder in civilian life you have to be trained to demonize, dehumanize your opponent. From the day he was born he was indoctrinated in that culture.

Obama is that opponent now. By training McCain has to despise him in order to destroy him. It's all or nothing and anything goes. I think that's why he can't bring himself to look at Barack and is running the most dishonest campaign in US history. In his mind it's not only honorable it's the only way to treat an opponent. To him all's fair in love, war and politics.

Every other object in West VA is named after Byrd because he's gotten federal funding for every other object in West VA..

And it's very simple, lefties would rather see Dick Cheney die for our country than see our country die for Dick Cheney.