Quarter Sales Numbers

Again, shame a you don't get the European Mondeo. Highly praised, well-selling in the UK.

DAS

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We got the previous one (Ford Contour, Mercury Mystique). Didn't sell well -- too small inside for its price range, too conservative in its styling. Since the Focus has the same, or more, interior room, Ford decided to drop it in the US.

So you don't mind that the top CEO's of Hyundai are getting nailed one after the other for funnelling hundreds of millions (possibly billions - see how much more turns up) to the government of North Korea?

Lloyd Parker wrote:

Hyundai is quite reliable now -- check the CR data. Kia lags,

And you'd conclude that lemmings are thus the most intelligent living beings on the planet... :-D

I drove one for 1500Km in Germany and Austria. Exactly the same POS as in the US. Not a difference whatsoever.

It looks very nice indeed and said to be much better than its pitiful predecessor.

On basis do you make your judgment?

I had a Ghia version. Quite well appointed and well screwed together. As it was the booted version (i.e. with trunk) I found it very boring to look at. I refer the hatchback.

DAS

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No more than Ken Lay funnelling millions to himself and his Republican benefactors.

And very nice looking as well.

I thought Ford was going to bring it back over to this side of the pond, but haven't heard anything about it in awhile.

My father-in-law is still driving the 1985 Jeep Comanche that I bought new in the winter of 1984. So don't tell me that Chrysler products don't hold up ... although I think this Jeep MAY have been built right before Chrysler took over Jeep.

Matt

So the fraud Ken Lay has taken over from the felon Ollie North as the "hero" of the far right?

Aahh, so the poor quality comes from Chrysler, not Daimler-Benz...

;-) DAS

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Heh heh, I'm on my way over to Miramar to have Ollie sign my copy of his new book!! I'll tell him you said he was a felon. And if you run into my good friend Jason Fisk (freshman) on campus, you better be nice to him and not punish him if his views are to the right of yours (not hard to do). I told him to thank you for voting for Reagan back in the 80's.

agricultural

What your ignoring is that there's 2 sides to the equation. You have to have jobs for the consumers to get money so they can go save money on the cheaper foreign goods to begin with. If your economic policy isn't creating jobs, then your just creating a society full of poor people who can't buy anything, topped by an upper crust that is ridiculously wealthy. That's already happened in a large number of countries in the world.

While it can be argued that the farmers are getting oversubsidized, I noticed that the steel companies are getting subsidized as well and the people bitching about the farm subsidizes aren't saying boo about steel.

And your also conveniently ignoring the fact that some industries simply cannot go overseas - like medical. It's impractical to move every patients overseas for treatment. As a result that consumers have been mostly barred by default from seeking cheaper overseas medical care. According to your logic and the logic of a lot of economists, this should be costing the economy trillions of dollars in wasted medical expenses. Yet, the health care industry is being touted as one of the major industries that is powering the economic recovery and is producing huge numbers of jobs.

People like you who resort to labels like "Jingoism" are just pulling the old scam of your all pro free trade when YOU benefit, but if you see your own ox being gored by the free trade, your just as projectionist as anyone else. Both the major political parties in the United States take this exact same stance as well - they are pro-projectionist for their constituents industries, and pro-free-trade for their opponent's constituents industries. Neither is pro free trade for everything. (Thank God for that, or there wouldn't be any jobs at all left)

Ted

See below.

DAS

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Well, Dori - for being such a great country, many Americans are not any smarter than the communists - maybe even dumber because at least an idiot can learn from observing the mistakes of others (i.e., collapse of communist economies). There's a move afoot in the U.S. even as we write these things, to pass a Consititutional amendment to guarantee every American a job. An employer would have to pay someone a wage based on the number of children they have. Of course subsidized by the gov't (kind of like our old welfare system of rewarding irresponsible people for having children they can't afford - all in the name of equality). I guess to some people, equality doesn't mean giving opportunity to everyone, but instead means that everyone is forced down to the same level of misery. On top of that, even today, judges in CA ruled the re-call of Gov. Davis illegal because of - you guessed it - the chad-type ballots. Allow an entire state to go under to protect people too dumb to vote. Recall delayed indefinitely. What you wanna bet the CA legislature passes a tax increase under Gov. Davis in their next session to try to fix their problems. Talk about a system collapsing under its own weight! I guess the fact that CA has those awful punch type ballots must be George Bush's, or Jeb Bush's, or some other Republican's fault. Wonder why Davis didn't get rid of them - after all

- everyone knows how awful and unfair those ballots are. 8^)

Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")

PS. but at least there seem to be fewer people about (in Calif) who are large in the equator department...

;-) DAS

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You never know. Lots of times, these things are put out as feelers by fringe groups to see if the public is ready to accept the "next logical step" for the country - and you never know who is really behind the feeler. I'm sure if resistance dropped enough, certain political factions would push it as hard as they could. Has to fit with the overall agenda.

Yeah - that's true, but unfortunately, that one state is something like

1/5th of our national economy - I think that's the figure I heard. Definitely a scary state (in both senses of the word).

Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")

Yes, and it's in some very significant position in the global economy as well, outranking most countries. Can't remember the figure but it's remarkably low (i.e. high up the economic league table). If Bill Gates's li'l business and that aeroplane maker were in it no doubt California would be bigger than Britain and Italy put together... :-)

DAS

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