Cars!

I've never bought a new car and I'm almost sixty, so I likely won't ever, what with the Big Sleep pointing its witchy finger ever closer to me. It's not out of any super-closely held environmental opinion (although, I must admit, it has always seemed pointless to financially play midwife to yet another new car, when there are so many Volvos out there that don't even have 200K miles yet), but mostly because I'm a poor (true!).

Our local GM plant closed forever yesterday [well, I say forever, though I "heard" through a "friend" that GM refuses to sell the land because they intend to reopen at some point, whether with a new product line, I don't know, but somehow this local operation was always IUE, because the facility used to be Frigidaire and some union-y by-laws made it stay that way and it was the only non-UAW plant in the GM world and it's actually partially some sort of union-busting {shh!} as well as the downturn/dearth of sales], and it will likely mean that sheer anarchy will be loosed upon our streets, or something.

But, as my mind runs in ever tighter conspiratorial circles on this, I wonder if OPEC didn't drive the oil prices through the roof as part of some sort of war action. Logic says that when gas prices are exorbitant no one will buy the gas-quaffing monsters of Detroit, so let's bankrupt the auto industry and do what anthrax envelopes, etc, failed to do: bring a once-proud nation to its knees, or, at least, down to something that resembles destitution.

Mission accomplished!