SoCalCTS

agree to disagree. Libertarians are ok in my book. I suppose you guys have suffered as much as the liberals have during the last 8 years.

I think you just made that argument because your conservative minds work that way. Who can we kill? What animals can we hurt? How can we deport foreigners? How can we screw gay people out of their rights? Passing a law about food safety, gun safety or environmental protection IS not the same as creating an arbitrary law like baseball bat registration or dog murder or other twisted ideas that have crossed your mind. So you make the case that the government does not have the right to ban assisted suicide or medicinal marijuana.

And if they wanted to do any of those silly things they could because they arent in the constitution and neither is the supposed right to own unregulated weapons.

GM to Cut Output at 3 Plants, Affecting 1,500 Workers (Update2) By Greg Bensinger Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp., the largest U.S. automaker, plans to reduce production at two Michigan factories and one in Delaware by Feb. 2 because of declining sales, affecting about 1,500 workers. The cuts are in Wilmington, Delaware, involving 400 workers; Hamtramck, Michigan, with about the same number affected; and Pontiac, Michigan, with about 700 employees, GM spokesman Tony Sapienza said today in an interview. The plants build full-size pickup trucks, large sedans and sports cars that have lost U.S. sales this year through September as GM's total has declined 18 percent. Industrywide sales tumbled 27 percent last month, the sharpest drop since 1991, as reduced availability of loans pinched automakers already hurt by gasoline prices that rose to a record in July. The Wilmington plant will eliminate one shift as of Dec. 8, Sapienza said. The factory makes Pontiac Solstice, Saturn Sky and Opel Roadster sports cars. At Hamtramck, hourly output is set to drop to 38 vehicles an hour from 56 effective Jan. 12. The plant produces Cadillac DTS and Buick Lucerne sedans. In Pontiac, which builds Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups, production is scheduled to fall to 24 trucks an hour from 55 starting Feb. 2. Detroit-based GM notified affected workers on Sept. 29. Ford Motor Co. said today that it will idle a St. Paul, Minnesota, factory that makes the Ranger small pickup for all of December. The shutdown will help match production to demand, Angie Kozleski, a spokeswoman for the Dearborn, Michigan-based company, said in an interview. The plant has about 760 employees. GM gained 18 cents to $6.40 at 4:01 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Ford fell 3 cents to $2.27. To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Bensinger in New York at [email protected] Last Updated: October 16, 2008 16:11 EDT

Discipline means: orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior - therfore regulation. This redundancy claim is a stretch at best. Republicans have led us down the path to a police state by passing laws like the Patriot Act, Domestic Spying, and appointing judges that don't repect our rights to privacy. I doubt there is a Democrat alive that wants to ban all guns. We just need to control and regulate them. We need federal licensing. We need a national registry Like they do for sex offenders. You should be able to know who has guns and how many so you can keep your kids out of their houses. They should have to license guns like they do cars and pay a registration fee annually. There are so many things that can be done.

"according to the discipline prescribed by Congress" establishes that Congress can put limits on gun ownership. "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." - just affirms the right of the people to establish and keep the army. It does not establish that the people are the ones keeping guns at their homes. This interpretation will come to pass soon enough. Supreme Court appointments are essential in order to preserve our freedom and nation and take back our nation from the armed criminals.

Funny how people that support your views are not terrorists or extremists but there are two sides to every coin. Your fringe radical groups are our pro-constitution groups and vice-versa. And as for the second ammendment, we are just one justice away from it being interpreted correctly. The militia has the right to bear arms. Not individuals.

Don't you think the same could be said about McCain? He has the support of extreme right wing organizations like the NRA! Also, the pro-life abortion clinic bomber crowd, vigilante groups like the minutemen and other qausi-terrorist groups.

For most of us, there is NO difference between Bush and McCain. They agree on 95% of everything. In essence McCain is Bush but older and slower.

Yes, where was the category for least liked Hybrid? I'm sure the goofy Honda hybrid would have made the list.

John McCain is a liar! Here's the proof Meet 'Joe the Plumber' Joe the plumber (aka Sam Joe Wurzelbacher) doesn't make anywhere near $250,000 a year. John McCain's whole arguements were based on something that John McCain just made up in his head!!!

McCain just got creamed by Obama's response to the Ayers/Acorn allegations.

This debate sucks. These questions are baloney. Is this a marriage counseling session or a debate?

Maybe that is why McCain is being schooled right now.

McCain is losing so badly. Joe the plumber who makes $250,000 dollars a year!!?!?!? are you f@#$ing kidding me? If you make $250K a year, you have nothing in common with the middle class. I'm glad this fool Joe can't afford to buy another business. Is he providing healthcare for his employees? John McCain please get a clue. McCain is just ranting and being incoherent. Poor old man. Must be dementia.

There's evidence of aliens but no evidence of WMD's or a next terror attack. Its time to slash the military budgets, Halliburton, Blackwater, CIA black-projects, domestic spying and all of the other paranoid pork in the budget.

Forbes Times are so difficult for the auto industry that even Toyota and Honda have now experienced the kinds of double-digit sales dips that have been plaguing American auto giants General Motors and Ford all year. Sales for the entire industry were down 26.6% collectively in September as consumers grew skittish about making big-ticket purchases. In good economic times and bad alike, however, there are some vehicles that American consumers seem to abhor outright. And they're not just the big, gas-guzzling SUVs that are currently out of favor. It turns out, the cars American consumers hate the most come in many different shapes and sizes, and they're disliked for a wide array of reasons. In Depth: Ten Cars Americans Hate "Buyers make the same choices and buy the safe brand," says Jessica Caldwell, manager of pricing and industry analysis at Edmunds.com, an automotive consumer information Web site. "They are not thinking outside the box and buying something that may stand out as an odd purchase." In other words, the cars Americans seem to hate aren't necessarily bad cars. In fact, the industry underdogs are, for the most part, solid quality cars, according to J.D. Power and Associates ratings on quality, design and performance. There are usually just one or two elements or features that throw consumers off, as is the case with the Dodge Magnum, which is a wagon (American buyers gave up wagons for minivans a long time ago, then gave up minivans for SUVs); the Audi A3, which is a hatchback (consumers never cared much for them in the first place); and the Acura RL, which is just plain, vanilla-looking, says Stephanie Brinley, auto analyst at AutoPacific, Inc., an automotive marketing and product consulting firm Car buyers are rightfully picky. From models that have quality issues (real or perceived) to simple design elements that lack aesthetic appeal, in each major vehicle class there's at least one car U.S. consumers tend to steer clear of. Behind The Numbers To generate our list of the cars Americans hate, we looked at sales data for the 10 major vehicle segments defined by market research firm J.D. Power and Associates. The sales data, provided by Automotive News, a trade publication, spans 2006, 2007 and the first nine months of 2008. The vehicles with the lowest sales in their class made the list. We then looked at J.D. Power's consumer ratings in two studies. The 2008 Initial Quality study reports buyer satisfaction with a vehicle in the first 90 days of ownership in terms of mechanical defects and malfunctions, as well as ease of using a particular feature. The 2008 Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout (APEAL) study measures owner delight with vehicle design, content, layout and performance following the first 90 days of ownership. In both studies, a ring rating is used with five rings as the highest and two rings for the lowest. Some vehicles that earned five rings made the list, meaning not all high-quality cars are instant hits with consumers. Quite the opposite, in fact. In the subcompact car segment, the Kia Rio earned five rings in both J.D. Power studies, but only 92,087 were sold in the measured period. The Rio even earns better quality ratings than the segment sales-leading Toyota Yaris, which saw sales of 243,602 in the same time frame. Why the snub? The major reason could be that Hyundai models suffered from quality issues with the engine and transmission in the late 1990s (Kia, a relatively new brand to the U.S., is owned by Hyundai), yet those problems were overcome slowly but surely. Today the company even offers a 10-year/100,000-mile limited powertrain warranty to back up its improved-quality claim. Nevertheless, some consumers still view a car like the Kia Rio as a risk. The Kia brand as a whole only earned two rings in the J.D. Power 2008 overall dependability study. Stiff Competition In some segments, like the midsize car, the competition is so fierce that very good cars wind up getting almost completely ignored. The Honda Accord (1.37 million sales in the aforementioned time period) and Toyota Camry (1.27 million sales) dominate the segment. Sales of the slightly cheaper Mitsubishi Galant were a mere blip (75,089 sales) in that segment. The Galant gets slightly worse gas mileage than the Accord, 21 mpg versus 25 mpg, but according to J.D. Power, Galant owners (five rings in each study) liked their cars more than Accord owners (three rings in each study). "The problem with the Galant and cars like it is that no one knows the brand," says Caldwell. "You pull up and people ask, 'What's this?' and then they want to know, 'Why did you buy it?' There just isn't a lot of brand recognition." What car do you well and truly hate? Why? Weigh in. Share your experiences in the Reader Comments section below. But then there's well-earned hatred, particularly due to quality issues, which is the case with the Jaguar XJ, of which only 10,852 were sold (the leader in the segment, the Cadillac DTS, saw sales above 135,000). The Jaguar brand was sold last year to Indian company Tata Motors (nyse: TTM - news - people ), and when Jaguar lost its British edge it also lost favor with American buyers, says Caldwell. Even though the quality problems of Jaguars, to that point, had been well-known among consumers, the idea of having a British car parked in the driveway was, for a long time, enough to attract loyal American buyers. And that's what's missing in vehicle purchases today in general, says Brinley. The sheer emotion that persuades some buyers to choose a car they love over one that's generally acceptable to the masses. In other words, the overall driving experience probably isn't all that different from car to car within a segment. But all it takes is one design quirk or one long-since-overcome quality issue for consumers to develop a negative perception of a car. Taking a risk on an overlooked model within a segment may be a better choice, but consumers make logical, safe purchases rather than ones that might be more fun and stand out a little. "Many car buyers are still buying cars like they buy appliances," says Brinley. "They buy a car that fits their life needs but they are not purchasing it for the design or style. There's no emotional attachment to it."

I don't want more government. Cut the military by 1/3, cut Homeland Security by 1/3 and take the number employees and transfer them to the FDA, EPA, SEC, NOAA, NASA, etc.

The Republicans in congress have had their say long enough. They tried to impeach Clinton over a BJ, they cried "Don't make us use the NUCLEAR option" over Bush appointees. They shouted for the minority to shut up when we tried to prevent the war in Iraq. Well guess what Republicans in congress... It's your turn to sit down and shut up! Don't make us use the "Nuclear Option" to quell your dissent.

Also, McCain's largest contributors also started the foundation that "terrorist" Ayers worked for. McCain is so knee deep in his own b.s.!

We might actually swing back to the middle once Obama wins. This country has been tipped too heavily to the Republican side since the end of the Clinton presidency. Hopefully, we can get supermajorities in the house and senate and start to return the government to a more centrist viewpoint. All the conservatives, will be screaming, "the sky is falling" but the truth is that there is no plan to take the country to the far left. We just need to undo the damage of the past 8 years.

Obama seems to be sincere but so many questions have arisen regarding his past that while I feel he is honest, I feel Hillary is more honest.

We should ban divorce. As a Catholic, divorce offends me deeply. You Protestants are playing with fire. Your whole religion is based on the fact that some fat king wanted to get a divorce and ruin the sanctity of marriage. The hypocrisy of it all makes me sick to my stomach and makes me realize how many false religions are out there.

I also wish Hillary was the candidate. She is the most honest, sincere and intelligent candidate ever. She's religious without being hateful. She's tolerant and not at all elitist. She will be president some day.

I would love to see Volkswagen and Chrysler merge! Wasn't the great little Dodge Omni a collaboration with Volkswagen?