Auto Industry October Stats Show Economy in Deep Crisis Mode

If the crisis in the American auto industry is any indication of the financial concern Americans will take into the voting booth tomorrow, a McCain (party in control) win would be a major miracle. The New York Times says today,

Vehicle sales in the United States tumbled to multi-decade lows in
October as tightened credit markets and an economic slowdown kept consumers away from dealerships.

General Motors on Monday reported an incredible 45 percent decline
in its sales, and Chrysler said its sales were down 35 percent. The Ford
Motor Company said it sold 30.2 percent fewer cars and trucks.
Toyota Motor said its sales were 23 percent lower, despite
offering no-interest financing and large discounts on many models. Sales were down 33 percent at Nissan and 25.2 percent at Honda. NYTimes

This is evidence of a generalized meltdown, not just of the American auto industry (Japanese car sales are only slightly better), but this is a meltdown of America's confidence in the economy and the ability to obtain credit to buy a car.

“If you adjust for population growth, this is probably the worst
industry sales month in the post-World War II era,” Mark LaNeve, G.M.’s vice president for sales in North America, said in a statement. “We believe there is considerable pent-up demand from the last three years, but until the credit markets open up and consumer confidence improves, the entire U.S. economy, and any industry like autos that relies on financing, will suffer.” NYTimes

John McCain is talking a lot about the "American Dream" on the campaign trail, but perhaps the first part of the American dream that any of us achieves, even before a high school diploma, is a drivers license and access to the family car. Even when we cannot afford to own a home, we can be proud of our cars and delight in the freedom they give us to move from place to place.

When Americans are doing all of that 40% less than they were last year, that's evidence of an economic crisis that goes far beyond the auto industry. One Ford executive cited in the above article describes the current Republican-led economic crisis as "similar to what we’ve seen after a natural disaster."

McCain Implicitly and Tacitly Concedes He's Unprepared for Oval Office

John McCain's campaign has been telling audiences and America that Barack Obama's preparations for the the Oval Office are presumptuous. If McCain really believes this, then he must also believe that it would be presumptuous for McCain himself to make preparations for the Oval Office. If so, we can assume that McCain hasn't made any preparations and would take the country on a misguided seat-of-its-pants roller coaster ride, much like McCain's own disjointed and lousy presidential campaign.

Are we really supposed to believe that McCain has made no preparations to take office? Yes, because McCain is so unlikely to win. Aside from promising plum ambassadorships to political contributors based on the amount of their contributions and bundling, John McCain is probably being entirely honest when he implicitly declaims having made any preparations for a transition. McCain is just as unprepared as his criticisms of Obama's preparations imply.

The Insanity of John McCain on Meet the Press - A YouTube Video

Hat Tips to Calitejano and Firedoglake.

When you see how incoherent John McCain is in the above Meet the Press interview, you realize that:

1. Interviews are far more useful than debates in showing how the candidate thinks (and fails to think);
2. John McCain cannot explain his decision to nominate Sarah Palin, because it is inexplicable in terms of the traditional purposes of selecting a running mate, and the polls are showing that most people agree.
3. If a man as incoherent as John McCain becomes the leader of the free world (or God forbid he has an aneurism and Sarah Palin takes control), America would be in for a biblical-sized time of self-immolation and implosion, even bigger than the Bush economic meltdown America is now suffering.
   

John McCain Voted With Bush 90% of the Time

In John McCain's own words

John McCain Boycotts Family Reunions with the Black McCains of Slavery

In the United States, we are so used to assuming that there is a solid line between white and Black people that we are surprised to learn that there are Blacks in the American South who are direct descendants of the descendants of John McCain who is now running for president. Eve though we know that whites owned Black slaves and that white men sired children with Black slave women, yet there remains a deep denial and fear of acknowledging the obvious fact that many whites alive now have Black relatives whom they need to acknowledge and invite to their family reunions. The fact that they are Black is no reason to ignore them, because "blood is thicker than skin color."

And yet, although John McCain's brother Joe goes to family reunions with his Black relatives who are McCain's, the Republican presidential nominee boycotts these reunions, having no apparent interest in meeting with those of his relatives whose skin is brown. This says something very bitter and shameful about the character of John Sydney McCain. Watch the videos below for more documentary information:

The New Republic Doubts the "Maverick" McCain "Ever Existed"

1972 Maverick,
a Rust Bucket Bottom of the Line Piece of Crap

McCain says he's a "maverick" and that's why he should be president of the United States. But, what is a "maverick", anyway?" It's a 1957 television series about the Wild West. But, 1957 is fifty years ago, and Americans like me, who are not yet retired, may well feel the need for a serious politics for our country based solidly in the 21st Century, rather than a politics co-opted from a 51 years old Hollywood script about cowboys and Indians.

A lot has changed since 1957, like the Internet, color television, DVD's space flight . . . John Sydney McCain says he's a "maverick", and that's why we should elect him president. But, what does being a "maverick" have to do with being the leader of the free globalized and nuclear-tipped world? John McCain may be trying to recapture his youth, but he's about half a century too old and too late to play the Maverick he remembers from the 1950's.

We still need pioneers in the sciences, but let's face it: McCain's no pioneer in politics; he's a derivative from Republican cookie factory, mass produced and "branded" just like the old Ford Maverick of which he constantly reminds us.

Maverick is also the name of a very basic car that Ford offered from 1969 to 1978, from the time he John McCain was 31 years old until he was thirty nine years old, thus, the nostalgia.

Is that all "maverick" means? Merriam Websters Dictionary, offers a definition that may get to the heart of John McCain's adolescence:

Main Entry: ¹mav·er·ick

Pronunciation: \ˈmav-rik, ˈma-və-\

Function: noun

Etymology: Samuel A. Maverick †1870 American pioneer who did not brand his calves

Date: 1867

1: an unbranded range animal ; especially : a motherless calf

2: an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party

So, the first "maverick", Samuel A. Maverick, was a bit of an anarchist, refusing to participate in the system that had been established for knowing whose cows were whose, while undoubtedly shooting someone if he believed they had usurped one of his cows by accident or on purpose. That hardly seems like a model for the complex world in which we live.

One definition of "maverick" is "unbranded range animal"and John McCain's campaign of late certainly seems unbranded as well as un-house-trained. That hardly seems like a model for a complex society in which the failures of one economy to act respsonsibly have caused an international meltdown, and now require intense diplomacy to put the interconnected system back together again.

The other definition of a "maverick" is "independent individual who does not go along with a group or party". In 1992, we were inclined to believe this image, even though McCain had gone along with other US Senators in the Savings and Loan payoff scandal that cost the US Treasury Billions of dollars to resolve, just like the current mess only on a smaller scale.

But now, after seen George W. Bush reach historic lows in his public approval ratings while John McCain has voted with Bush 90% of the time, McCain even in the most recent debate found it impossible to name any significant instances where he had broken with meaningfully with his party. He opposed torture, but the torture continued under his party. He urged that the war in Iraq be expanded for as many as a hundred years and voilá! The war continues unabated.

He urged that health care be deregulated and that individual states be forbidden by federal law from implementing any consumer protections that the US Congress would not approve. In this way, our medical care could benefit from the same unbridled competition and speculation that has led to an international meltdown of the banking and insurance system, to be followed by a bailout of the very same insurance companies - the most irresponsible bad actors - that got us into the mess in the first place.

If John McCain had ever been a conscientious "maverick" with a different moral compass than Republicans like George W. Bush, then McCain wouldn't have been photographed having a birthday party for himself, holding a cake with Bush, during the very day that New Orleans was inundated with water.

The editors of the New Republic online magazine have endorsed Barack Obama but, equally importantly, have pointed out some essential truths about John McCain, "the maverick": above all, that he never really existed. Recent history has shown that the "maverick" personality was always more hype than hope.

If the John McCain of 2001 or 2002 were running, this might be a far closer call. At that time, this magazine considered McCain a truly great political figure. During the 2000 primaries, we endorsed Al Gore and John McCain, an unorthodox step for us. Better than anyone in Washington, McCain made the case against creeping income inequality and political corruption. Oftentimes, we found ourselves wishing that his Democratic counterparts spoke with such clarity. Indeed, a cover story we ran urged him to switch parties. We didn't expect that he would listen, but we didn't expect that he would transform himself into a Sean Hannity conservative, either. And we certainly failed to appreciate how his impulsiveness could lead him to such spectacularly bad decisions (Sarah Palin) and such a spectacularly incoherent campaign. The implosion of the old McCain, if he ever truly existed as we imagined, saddens us, not least because the candidate he's become is so poorly suited to the challenges of the moment.

So, there are two fundamental problems with John McCain's Maverick schtick for 2008:

1) The intervening years since his first presidential run have proven that he never was a maverick, just an impostor of 1950's movie characters and relic automobiles, and

2) Mavericks (be they unbranded cows, elderly actors or long-discontinued car models, are irrelevant to the complex problems of governance that our economy and our nation faces in the 21st Century.

Lies McCain Told in the Last Debate

Hat Tip to Agent X.