(image courtesy of LeftLaneNews.com)
That means, "Germany go to hell".
Chrysler Group's CVT has been calibrated to delight customers with pleasing engine response, precise ratio control and an AutoStick® feature that allowsThe whole point of a CVT is to optimize engine performance, smooth out torque delivery, and save gas by removing discrete gear ratios.
for manual control and the simulation of six stepped gears, said Ridenour.
Kucinich said he would be meeting with union leaders and other officials to develop plans aimed at saving manufacturing jobs and letting Congress know about the need to do something.
"This is about our children and grandchildren," he said. "We have to get the word out - 'Buy American.' This is a matter of our allegiance to our own communities, our belief in each other, our commitment to each other."
While Ohio has about 16,000 workers building Honda automobiles, engines and transmissions, Kucinich later said he defined "American" as being made by a union. The UAW has failed in its effort to organize the Honda plants.
So all you "working people" who have chosen not to join a labor union, you're un-American. And you silly consumers, you may think that the 70% domestic parts content on that Honda Civic means you are supporting American jobs, but you aren't.
Jessica Sandy Booth, 18, was arrested over the weekend and remains in jail with bond set at $1 million on four charges of attempted murder and four counts of soliciting a murder.
According to police, Booth was in the Memphis home of the four intended victims last week when she mistook a block of queso fresco cheese for cocaine — inspiring the idea to hire someone to break into the home, take the drugs, and kill the men.
Read the story here.
This only makes sense--why would Progressive pay the development costs for a new data logger when off-the-shelf stuff is available?
Here's an example of the fun stuff you get:Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, today, along with Senators McCain, Lieberman, Hutchison and twenty-three other Senators, I am sending a letter to the President to express our concern over Iraq's actions and urging the President `after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.'What's that? Our own Senator Carl Levin calling for military strikes against Iraq? Was Levin a liar?
Make your car sound like any car you want.Now you don't even have to bother with the coffee can tailpipe.
Let'’s face it: you'’re probably not going to get that souped up hot rod you always wanted. But at least your current car can sound like the muscle car of your dreams.
VroomBox utilizes a powerful microprocessor to digitally recreate the sound of 15 different cars and fantasy vehicles, and play them through speakers under the car. It even includes special effects such as screeching tires and turbo blow-off valves that trigger automatically. And you can download more cars and effects from the web. Sounds and effects are controlled from a small faceplate with a backlit display that fits neatly on or under the dash.
The Lincoln LS was not on the list because it is known to be going away, but it is also a turkey.
I see a few patterns here: upscale brands (Land Rover, Jaguar) going down-market fail. More mid-market brands (VW) going up-market fail. Re-badged mediocre products fail. And, expensive cars that don't get redesigned ot keep up with the brutal competition also fail.
It is disturbing that so many of these belong to Ford. Someone needs to go throw some rocks at The Glass House.
Automotive pundits and the enthusiast press were skeptical of the Phaeton from the beginning, and rightly so. Phaeton simply didn't meet the brand image of the VolksWagen, the "people's car". If they wanted to make an ultra-luxury large sedan, it should have had an Audi logo on the front of it.
Volkswagen will pull the Phaeton out of the world's largest market, where it never met sales targets, by September 2006, said Hans-Gerd Bode, a spokesman at the Wolfsburg, Germany-based automaker. The model's 10-month U.S. sales totaled 686 cars. The original goal was to sell 10,000 Phaetons in the U.S. by 2004.
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Steel, airlines, and autos. Different industries. Similar painful transformations.
What these three industries have in common is an implied social contract that has evolved over the past half century between oligopolistic competitors, in capital-intensive businesses, and fostered by workforces organized by strong centralized labor unions. With the enormous leverage inherent in the threat of prohibitively expensive work stoppages, unions in these industries were able to elevate their workforces above the standards enjoyed by most other Americans, while their employers passed along the costs to customers.
Elaborate defined benefit retirement programs, spurred on by favorable tax treatment, saddled future managers with growing burdens. Back in the days when you worked for one employer until age 65 and then died at age 70, and when health care was comparatively less sophisticated and inexpensive, the implied social contract inherent in these defined benefit programs perhaps made some economic sense. It no longer works in today's economy.
In the steel industry, we were being run off the road, not so much by imports, but by domestic competitors such as Nucor and Steel Dynamics. They paid equally good wages, but needed half the labor hours per ton to do the same job. You may have seen the fine article in last Saturday's NYTimes about Bethlehem Steel. Now part of Mittal Group, there are 8,000 well paid workers producing the same tonnage that 12,000 workers did just three years ago. How can that be? The elimination of antiquated work rules and job classifications is the biggest part of the answer.
In the airline industry, Delta and Northwest were shot down by Jet Blue and Southwest, not Air India or Air China. Worker productivity is a big part of the difference.
And in the auto industry, Toyota, Nissan, and Honda are competing from assembly plants in our back yard, but without the crippling work rules and social costs embedded in Big Three labor contracts. In each case, the old oligopoly has crumbled, not so much from globalization, but from upstart domestic competition.
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In the midst of these trends, the unions in the traditional steel companies and the traditional auto companies successfully bargained for 'thirty-and-out'. The theory was, create more jobs by retiring people sooner. And isn't working thirty years in a factory enough? What this means is that people can start work at age 20, retire at age 50, and expect full pensions and health care until age 90 or so. In real terms, this idea says that you will enjoy the fruits of your labor for more years than you were actually at labor. As a society, somebody has to pay. And to the shock of the Big Three automakers, they've found that consumers won't pick up these costs when they have choices. As someone said, buy a Hyundai and get a satellite radio as an option. Buy a Chevy, and social welfare comes as standard equipment!
I saw a link to this somewhere and had to look. The "Burka Project" is a series of photographs taken in Paris, and other locales, of three models wearing not much but colorful burkas, exposing their bodies but not their faces. The nearly nonsensical tagline for the series is"The new freedom of woman by using the Burka as a means of showing all while hiding the essential."I have a few problems with this "art", if you want to call it that.
That's soothing BS. Any large organization, like any military or government, tries to look ahead and plan for possible scenarios. Somewhere in GM's most secret filing cabinet, at the very top of the Renaissance Center, is a stack of paper marked "bankruptcy Plan".Wagoner said unlike the airline industry, where some bankruptcy filings haven't had a big affect on business, even speculating about bankruptcy hurts the auto business.
"When you're buying a car it's a very different thing," Wagoner said. "It's a massive financial commitment. You expect to own it for a long time, and (bankruptcy) is something that's going to have an impact in the consumer's mind."
Does Yahoo know something?
FORD MOTOR CREDIT (NYSE:F) Delayed quote data
Last Trade: 8.75 Trade Time: 1:14PM ET Change: 0.04 (0.46%)
Prev Close: 8.71 Open: 8.75 Bid: N/A Ask: N/A 1y Target Est: 10.33
Day's Range: 8.65 - 8.84 52wk Range: 8.70 - 15.00 Volume: 13,755,200 Avg Vol (3m): 11,142,800 Market Cap: 16.21B P/E (ttm): 7.36 EPS (ttm): 1.189 Div & Yield: 0.40 (4.50%)
It is intended as the keystone of a fund-raising drive by Unicef's Belgian arm, to raise £70,000 for the rehabilitation of former child soldiers in Burundi.Now, I am all for blowing up Smurfs, and stuff, but let me ask one question:
Delphi shares are scheduled to be removed from the S&P 500 Index after
the close of market trading today, and replaced by Patterson Companies Inc., a
distributor of dental products and veterinary supplies.
So it’s uncomfortable, cramped and feels like it’s made entirely from melted Lego. And it costs more than £30,000. Admittedly, you get lots of standard equipment for that, including a heater that works like American foreign policy, blowing either very hot or very cold but incapable of getting the temperature just right. You also get three headrests for your deformed rear passengers, the middle one of which obliterates all traffic in the rear-view mirror.Melted Lego! Heh.
The construction of this potentiometer is obviously not suitable for the application. Considering that in the life of the car there will be multiple millions of cycles of the throttle, the action of the hard metallic finger tips riding on the soft thick film carbon resistor element is a designed-in shortcoming that will result in an estimated 100% or more, failure rate in the life of the Volvo automobile.I am glad that I drive a throttle-by-cable car!
GM's vice chairman set out to set the record straight on a variety of issues following the Opel reveal on Tuesday. For one thing, he told reporters, the automaker's new rear-drive Zeta platform "is not dead or cancelled." Well, not exactly. The original version was, indeed, scrapped a few months back because "we did a lot of not-smart things…that didn't make business sense. We accepted the delay." As originally planned, GM's Australian subsidiary, Holden, will play the lead in developing the revised Zeta platform. But it is less and less likely that it will be able to export cars based on Zeta, at least to the United States. The Australian dollar's gain on the U.S. dollar "pretty much cancels your profits margin," Lutz lamented, so "exports to the U.S. don't look real promising at this point." But there will still be opportunities for Holden to ship product to other markets, such as the Middle East .
The City of New Orleans will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas. Those evacuated will be directed to temporary sheltering and feeding facilities as needed. When specific routes of progress are required, evacuees will be directed to those routes. Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves or who require specific life saving assistance. Additional personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedures as needed.The mayor of New Orleans is ranting that George Bush, FEMA, and the military didn't do enough. But according to his own plan, New Orleans officials were supposed to arrange for emergency transportation for "special needs" persons--such as hospital patients, the mentally ill, and the elderly.
Slow developing weather conditions (primarily hurricane) will create increased readiness culminating in an evacuation order 24 hours (12 daylight hours) prior to predicted landfall. Disabled vehicles and debris will be removed from highways so as not to impede evacuation. In local evacuations involving more than fifty (50) families (i.e. 50 single dwelling units), staging areas may be established at the closest available public area outside the threatened area. Upon arrival at the staging area, evacuees will be directed to the appropriate shelter facility. Evacuees will be encouraged to stay with friends or relatives in non-threatened areas whenever possible. Security measures will be employed to protect the evacuated area(s) in accordance with established procedures and situations.
The use of travel-trailers, campers, motorcycles, bicycles, etc., during the evacuation will be allowed so long as the situation permits it. Public information broadcasts will include any prohibitions on their use. Transportation will be provided to those persons requiring public transportation from the area. (See Special Needs Transportation, ESF-1). An orderly return to the evacuated areas will be provided after the Mayor determines the threat to be terminated. Transportation back to the evacuated area after threat termination will be provided as available.
