Secretary of State Clinton will be the only bright spot in these coming 4 years

I anticipate her being offered the first available supreme court seat. As the post is for life, Hillary would be out of “O-mighty’s” business for good politically with that move.

My partner, who works with software used by many auto industries, said that if they offer it as standard equipment on every car, they should be able to do it cost effectively as the price of the components will go down, the inventory carrying cost will go down, the supply chain management cost will go down, and efficiency should go up.

And while I am all for Buying American for most things, I have never owned an American car in my life (when people joke that Ford stands for “Fix Or Repair Daily, you know why I’ve always owned foreign cars).

I’m A Linda, Too – Abt Hillary, I know. I feel like she’s the grown up in this whole Admin (I think I said that when she was up for the job). Obama is trying out every little perk he can, using AF 1 as much as possible. Meanwhile, Clinton is the one talking tough to N. Korea.

And I wish I could find the darn video they showed of her greeting Empress Michiko – it was so lovely Clearly, they have great affection for one another. I have seen that look a lot when people are meeting her (on this trip).

I am so sorry to hear abt your mother. Sadly, that is a story being repeated all across the country. I remember when this happened a few years ago, when teachers were especially hard hit. Many who had already retired or who were on the verge had to go back to work because they lost everything.

This is one helluva mess we are in. And while I understand the American car makers employ lots of people, if they cannot run a competitive business, and others CAN, they must change their model.

And while I am generally pro-union, I have seen unions negotiate themselves right out of jobs because they bring down their companies. And frankly, while I feel for them, I do not want to be supplementing THEIR retirements negotiated by their leaders when mine is gone through no fault of my own.

Difficult situation, though, and not a black/white one, either…

I have considered buying a small car for getting about town so that I wouldn’t be using the gas that my Yukon XL does when I don’t need all the space, but I think, environmentally speaking, there is probably more waste in having an extra car than there is in the extra gas.

Many, many people that I know would not be able to make it to work every day here if they didn’t have a four wheel drive vehicle in the winter, and they also have children, hockey bags, etc. that don’t fit in a SMART car or a Prius.

Seriously, the last time I watched Oprah was several years ago when she did a show advocating for a minimum wage of $20/hour. She showed three or four families who were struggling to survive on a minimum wage income. One of the families had four children, a stay at home mom, and a father who worked as a phlebotomist at a hospital for $19,000 a year. The family was really struggling and it was really sad to see the conditions that they lived in. Call me hard hearted if you like, but the point that came through to me from her little exercise was that people need to make better choices — what the heck was this guy doing creating four human beings and choosing a $19,000/year profession? You can’t have it all — if you really love that job then you should probably consider having fewer children, or if you’re really into kids, then you should work toward having a higher paying job, or maybe your wife should take a job, or some combination thereof.

What Oprah doesn’t understand, and what many people don’t understand is that raising the wages of these people wouldn’t, in the end, do anything, other than raise the prices that we pay for everything. If an unskilled nursing home worker had to be paid $20 plus benefits to change sheets and bedpans, then the price to get nursing home care would rise, or fewer people would be employed to do the same amount of work. I would have loved to see Oprah’s message to be, instead, that those who still had choices to make needed to understand the real world and what it takes to live in it. It may be the easier road to screw off in high school and go to work in a factory or something than it would be to work your butt off to get the training or education to do a job that commands the wages that you would like, but, as my husband tells the kids he works with “The harder I work, the luckier I get”.

You can see the power Hillary has just standing there. Secretary of State Clinton will be the only bright spot in these coming 4 years, I believe. If she doesn’t get drowned out by BOberry’s failures.

I hear ya on the retirment funds. As you said, we are all suffering. I fear for my Mom the worst. She has retired and now to have lost a majority of what she had is scary, besides stressful and sad. She only advised me after it happened that she went and put all her savings in the market, unlike the last time we talked about it in 2000 when she had less. Why, I can only guess. The only bright spot is that her house is paid and she rarely spends money on herself anyhow, so I surely don’t give a crap that there’s “less for us kids” now or when she’s gone. She should be able to enjoy her life she worked so hard for, raising 5 kids by herself and having to go back to work full time until she was able to retire. OK, got to stop thinking about it, my heart hurts.

And now, the car thingy. Well, isn’t that just ducky. Heavean forbid they put incentives in the stimulus bill for the people that will actually achieve what it was supposed to. So they stripped out an incentive for write off interst for the PEOPLE to buy cars and instead gave a huge fatty pork 9 course meal to Senator Reid for a choo choo to between Cali and Sin City. And then added a tax write off of up to 10 billion dollars to GM. Again, give it to the businesses and special interests that won’t do d!ck for stimulating the economy as was supposed to and SCREW THE PEOPLE, just make them pay for the politicians dirty dealings.

This man works late every day (and doesn’t get paid overtime for it), travels every other week, leaving his wife to tend to all of the needs of the family for half of the year, again, without extra compensation. Most of these guys are being asked to do their own jobs as well as the jobs of several others who have been let go, again, without extra compensation. I talked to one woman whose husband’s department went from 60 down to 4, and although he will struggle, he is happy to be one of the four left. I am surrounded on all sides by these professionals from all of these companies, and I see an attitude of determination on the part of all of them. They want to see these companies succeed, and they are willing to take lower pay and longer hours to do it. The same thing with the people who work for auto suppliers. Long hours, weeks away from home, sacrifice in benefits, and yet the guys who are in the manufacturing end are seldom asked to make similar sacrifice for the good of the company.

I despair for the companies that I grew up with. I don’t see anything getting better until all the oars are in the water and they’re all rowing in the same direction. Given the hundreds of millions of dollars that our president accepted from the unions with the idea that he will help them to become stronger, I don’t really see it happening.

First, we had to have meetings with the union on how it was going to happen. Obviously, installing computers involves cabling into the network, and plugging them in (among lots of other things). The electrical workers refused to allow us to plug each computer in – tense negotiations ensued and it ended up that they would allow us to do everything except plug them into the electrical outlet. Every computer that got unpacked and set up had to wait for a union member to come and plug it in. It took a long job (for me) and made it exponentially longer. And God forbid that you get frustrated and they perceive that you are frustrated — they might take two or three hours to respond to your request. This is the way all of these companies run.

And then there’s just outright theft from the company:
http://www.clickondetroit.com/video/15908257/index.html

Imagine how many people are doing exactly this, and yet unions will be asked to do absolutely nothing to change this.

Top 5 Most Fuel Efficient American Cars:
Ford Escape Hybrid – 36 mpg city / 31 mpg highway
Chevy Aveo – 26 mpg city / 35 mpg highway
Ford Focus – 26 mpg city / 34 mpg highway
Chevy Cobalt – 25 mpg city / 34 mpg highway
Ford Fusion – 24 mpg city / 32 mpg highway

Top 5 Most Fuel Efficient Japanese Cars:
Honda Insight – 60 mpg city / 66 mpg highway
Toyota Prius – 60 mpg city / 51 mpg highway
Honda Civic Hybrid – 49 mpg city / 51 highway
Toyota Corolla – 32 mpg city / 41 mpg highway
Toyota Matrix – 30 mpg city / 36 mpg highway