The Studebaker Avanti was a beautiful car. What became of Studebaker? Then there was Nash and Hudson that combined as American Mortors Corporation. All gone. Bankrupt. Out of business. That's been the history of automobile manufacturers in the United States. Once upon a time there were hundreds of such manufacturers. Stutz, Haynes, Hupmobile, Duezenberg, Locomobile, Crosley, Kaiser, Essex and hundreds more.

The government didn't saddle the taxpayers with huge debt to bail out any of these companies, so why do they feel it's the taxpayers responsibility to bail out the big three? Let them declare bankruptcy, reorganize, get rid of some of the excess baggage they've carried around since they had world dominion in the fifties. When the dust settles there may only be a Big One left standing, but that's the nature of the free enterprise system. We can do without an ever increasing socialism in this country.

A Note to the Republican Party

It has been interesting reading all of the Republican soul searching and brow beating. There's this huge scramble to try to figure out how to resurrect the Republican party after such a thorough trouncing at the polls in this 2008 election. Well, I don't know if they want to hear my opinions or not, but here goes.

Briefly, the Republican party professes to represent the conservative base in America. They won a majority in Congress in 1994 by presenting their "Contract With America" to the nation. It was a brilliant guideline for the Republican majority to staunchly support conservative principles. Like so many political promises, it wasn't worth the paper it was written on. The Republican majority went into a spending spree, pork barreling, tax raising frenzy that would be the envy of today's liberal majority in Congress.

This isn't really a Democrat or Republican thing. It's not liberal or conservative. It's Washington DC. A friend of mine, while living in Virginia, told me there was a half-hearted campaign underway to put signs at the beltway around Washington that said "Reality stop here". It doesn't seem to matter what lofty ideals they profess while campaigning, the moment they win a seat in Congress their number one priority becomes getting re-elected. They know they have the best job in town. Work only when they want, great pay, great perks, total medical coverage for life, a great retirement program, and you get to decide what your salary is going to be.

Most people in Congress, Republican or Democrat, have never really produced anything. They've never worked for one moment at a job that contributed to the Gross Domestic Product. They seem to think of the government as the source of all things rather than the actual producers. All they have to do is borrow more money from China, raise taxes, increase the national debt, to create a greater government control over the American people.

We have been moving resolutely toward socialism in this country for most of a century. Conservatives do not see this as anything but negative. Conservatism is based in self reliance, not government dole. Conservatism is based on the individual rights enumerated in the Constitution, not governmental micro-managing. Conservatism is based on individual freedom, not trying to force everyone in the country into group-think sameness.

Republicans today look at the red and blue states on the election map and beat their brow, unable to understand how there is so many blue states. Okay. Here's my suggestion. Ignore the 2008 map and instead study the 1984 map. Republicans, look at what was being done under the administration of President Reagan that made the map look like this in that year. Maybe you will get a clue of where you went wrong in the last 24 years. Just maybe you will get the conservative base behind you once again.