ehaase

Anyone who does not wish to see CAFE standards increased should also lobby their Congressman and Senator to allow more drilling in Alaska and offshore and to allow more construction of refineries. If Americans are to continue driving trucks, SUV's, and larger cars, the oil has to come from somewhere.

If BPG dealers can successfully sell both the Enclave and Acadia, then perhaps there is an argument for giving Buick a version of the upcoming GMC replacement for the Pontiac Torrent and perhaps a smaller car, like the rumored Chinese Skylark. But as the article states, I have long believed that Buick's future depends upon a Chrysler 300 competitor.

He was well known in Southern Baptist (which I am) and Independent Fundamentalist Baptist circles, but he was more respected in the 1960's and 1970's before getting involved in politics. His church was very innovative and grew very quickly in those days. Many lost respect for him after his positive comments about Billy Graham and the Pope in the 1980's. Charismatics, and I presume you are one attending a Calvary church, dislike him for his involvement in the downfall of PTL and Jim and Tammy Bakker.

You young fellows need to learn to be gracious like your elders who also disagreed with Jerry Falwell's views. Just because you dislike what a person says doesn't mean you have to be nasty, as many posts in this thread have been. Larry Flynt: My friend, Jerry Falwell How the pornographer found himself in the embrace of the reverend who sued him. By Larry Flynt, LARRY FLYNT is the publisher of Hustler magazine and the author of "Sex, Lies and Politics." May 20, 2007 THE FIRST TIME the Rev. Jerry Falwell put his hands on me, I was stunned. Not only had we been archenemies for 15 years, his beliefs and mine traveling in different solar systems, and not only had he sued me for $50 million (a case I lost repeatedly yet eventually won in the Supreme Court), but now he was hugging me in front of millions on the Larry King show. It was 1997. My autobiography, "An Unseemly Man," had just been published, describing my life as a publisher of pornography. The film "The People vs. Larry Flynt" had recently come out, and the country was well aware of the battle that Falwell and I had fought: a battle that had changed the laws governing what the American public can see and hear in the media and that had dramatically strengthened our right to free speech. King was conducting the interview. It was the first time since the infamous 1988 trial that the reverend and I had been in the same room together, and the thought of even breathing the same air with him made me sick. I disagreed with Falwell (who died last week) on absolutely everything he preached, and he looked at me as symbolic of all the social ills that a society can possibly have. But I'd do anything to sell the book and the film, and Falwell would do anything to preach, so King's audience of 8 million viewers was all the incentive either of us needed to bring us together. But let's start at the beginning and flash back to the late 1970s, when the battle between Falwell, the leader of the Moral Majority, and I first began. I was publishing Hustler magazine, which most people know has been pushing the envelope of taste from the very beginning, and Falwell was blasting me every chance he had. He would talk about how I was a slime dealer responsible for the decay of all morals. He called me every terrible name he could think of — names as bad, in my opinion, as any language used in my magazine. After several years of listening to him bash me and reading his insults, I decided it was time to start poking some fun at him. So we ran a parody ad in Hustler — a takeoff on the then-current Campari ads in which people were interviewed describing "their first time." In the ads, it ultimately became clear that the interviewees were describing their first time sipping Campari. But not in our parody. We had Falwell describing his "first time" as having been with his mother, "drunk off our God-fearing asses," in an outhouse. Apparently, the reverend didn't find the joke funny. He sued us for libel in federal court in Virginia, claiming that the magazine had inflicted emotional stress on him. It was a long and tedious fight, beginning in 1983 and ending in 1988, but Hustler Magazine Inc. vs. Jerry Falwell was without question my most important battle. We lost in our initial jury trial, and we lost again in federal appeals court. After spending a fortune, everyone's advice to me was to just settle the case and be done, but I wasn't listening; I wasn't about to pay Falwell $200,000 for hurting his feelings or, as his lawyers called it, "intentional infliction of emotional distress." We appealed to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, and I lost for a third time. Everyone was certain this was the end. We never thought the U.S. Supreme Court would agree to hear the case. But it did, and though I felt doomed throughout the trial and was convinced that I was going to lose, we never gave up. As we had moved up the judicial ladder, this case had become much more than just a personal battle between a pornographer and a preacher, because the 1st Amendment was so much at the heart of the case. To my amazement, we won. It wasn't until after I won the case and read the justices' unanimous decision in my favor that I realized fully the significance of what had happened. The justices held that a parody of a public figure was protected under the 1st Amendment even if it was outrageous, even if it was "doubtless gross and repugnant," as they put it, and even if it was designed to inflict emotional distress. In a unanimous decision — written by, of all people, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist — the court reasoned that if it supported Falwell's lower-court victory, no one would ever have to prove something was false and libelous to win a judgment. All anyone would have to prove is that "he upset me" or "she made me feel bad." The lawsuits would be endless, and that would be the end of free speech. Everyone was shocked at our victory — and no one more so than Falwell, who on the day of the decision called me a "sleaze merchant" hiding behind the 1st Amendment. Still, over time, Falwell was forced to publicly come to grips with the reality that this is America, where you can make fun of anyone you want. That hadn't been absolutely clear before our case, but now it's being taught in law schools all over the country, and our case is being hailed as one of the most important free-speech cases of the 20th century. No wonder that when he started hugging me and smooching me on television 10 years later, I was a bit confused. I hadn't seen him since we'd been in court together, and that night I didn't see him until I came out on the stage. I was expecting (and looking for) a fight, but instead he was putting his hands all over me. I remember thinking, "I spent $3 million taking that case to the Supreme Court, and now this guy wants to put his hand on my leg?" Soon after that episode, I was in my office in Beverly Hills, and out of nowhere my secretary buzzes me, saying, "Jerry Falwell is here to see you." I was shocked, but I said, "Send him in." We talked for two hours, with the latest issues of Hustler neatly stacked on my desk in front of him. He suggested that we go around the country debating, and I agreed. We went to colleges, debating moral issues and 1st Amendment issues — what's "proper," what's not and why. In the years that followed and up until his death, he'd come to see me every time he was in California. We'd have interesting philosophical conversations. We'd exchange personal Christmas cards. He'd show me pictures of his grandchildren. I was with him in Florida once when he complained about his health and his weight, so I suggested that he go on a diet that had worked for me. I faxed a copy to his wife when I got back home. The truth is, the reverend and I had a lot in common. He was from Virginia, and I was from Kentucky. His father had been a bootlegger, and I had been one too in my 20s before I went into the Navy. We steered our conversations away from politics, but religion was within bounds. He wanted to save me and was determined to get me out of "the business." My mother always told me that no matter how repugnant you find a person, when you meet them face to face you will always find something about them to like. The more I got to know Falwell, the more I began to see that his public portrayals were caricatures of himself. There was a dichotomy between the real Falwell and the one he showed the public. He was definitely selling brimstone religion and would do anything to add another member to his mailing list. But in the end, I knew what he was selling, and he knew what I was selling, and we found a way to communicate. I always kicked his ass about his crazy ideas and the things he said. Every time I'd call him, I'd get put right through, and he'd let me berate him about his views. When he was getting blasted for his ridiculous homophobic comments after he wrote his "Tinky Winky" article cautioning parents that the purple Teletubby character was in fact gay, I called him in Florida and yelled at him to "leave the Tinky Winkies alone." When he referred to Ellen Degeneres in print as Ellen "Degenerate," I called him and said, "What are you doing? You don't need to poison the whole lake with your venom." I could hear him mumbling out of the side of his mouth, "These lesbians just drive me crazy." I'm sure I never changed his mind about anything, just as he never changed mine. I'll never admire him for his views or his opinions. To this day, I'm not sure if his television embrace was meant to mend fences, to show himself to the public as a generous and forgiving preacher or merely to make me uneasy, but the ultimate result was one I never expected and was just as shocking a turn to me as was winning that famous Supreme Court case: We became friends.

Melinda was by far the best singer. I think she's brilliant. However, she is 29 years old and looks older. The teenagers went for Jordin and Blake, and that's why they won.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-alter/do...html?view=print Don't Believe the Falwell Hype I mean no disrespect to the dead, but I take the British view of obituaries, which is to try to capture the true public significance of the person who died, not just his good qualities. The truth about the Rev. Jerry Falwell is that he was a character assassin and hype artist who left little positive impact on the United States -- and little negative impact either, for that matter. Besides founding Liberty University, he won't be remembered as nearly as influential as he's made out to be. First, his real legacy: Falwell built the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia from scratch into a mega-church with a 6,000-seat auditorium. And he built Liberty University into a formidable institution that attracts over 20,000 students from around the world and a qualified faculty. Last year, Liberty's debate team won the national championship. It's not easy to create a university and Falwell deserves credit as an institution-builder. He will also be remembered through a famous Supreme Court case he lost, Hustler vs. Falwell, which established that public figures cannot recover damages when depicted in parodies. (The story of the lawsuit is told in the film, The People vs. Larry Flynt). In that sense, he inadvertently helped bolster the First Amendment. But Falwell's political legacy is much less impressive. He started out as a segregationist who harshly attacked Martin Luther King through the 1960s and later called Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa a phony. He was a strong supporter of Israel but openly anti-Semitic, announcing on many occasions that the anti-Christ would return as a Jew. On September 13, 2001, Falwell said this on Pat Robertson's show, The 700 Club: "The enemies of America give us probably what we deserve." When asked to elaborate, Falwell added, "When we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'you helped this happen.'" Robertson replied, "Well, I totally concur." Falwell later apologized, unconvincingly, for offending anyone. It was fitting that this was said on Robertson's program, not Falwell's. That's because Falwell never had great success as a broadcaster or televangelist. His Old Time Gospel Hour was never the most popular religious program. While he claimed 20 million viewers, the real number was a tiny fraction of that, usually below one ratings point. In the November, 1980 Nielsen ratings, for instance, Old Time Gospel Hour was watched by 1.21 million people -- well behind not just Oral Roberts and Jimmy Swaggert but Rex Humbard and James Robison. According to lore (and much of the coverage of his death), November, 1980 found Falwell at the peak of his powers. That was the month Ronald Reagan was elected president, after having met with Falwell and other members of his brilliantly-named organization, "The Moral Majority." While Falwell might have contributed slightly to Reagan's margin of victory, he was not even close to being instrumental in his election. With incumbent Jimmy Carter bogged down with the Iranian hostage crisis and double-digit inflation and interest rates, Reagan won with 57 percent of the vote -- a huge landslide. At best, the Moral Majority added a point or two to Reagan's totals. More likely, it contributed nothing. Exit polls showed that Carter bested Reagan among Southern Baptists, 50-46 percent. And abortion ranked well behind foreign policy and economics among issues that mattered most to voters that year. The Moral Majority claimed to have registered eight million new voters but could never provide any hard figures, and many smaller evangelical organizations said they operated independently of Falwell. (In fact, there was considerable tension within the religious right). The real political muscle was provided by Robertson and his protégé, Ralph Reed. Their Christian Coalition was far more powerful than the Moral Majority, whose voter guides were never credited with winning any particular election. From the 1980s on, Falwell existed mostly as a media creation, not a real player in national politics. He missed the cable TV revolution, which deprived him of a platform. He took over Jimmy and Tammy Faye Bakker's PTL after it collapsed in scandal, but by then its revenues were a modest $13 million. The related theme park, Heritage USA, went into Chapter 11. His monthly magazine, National Liberty Journal, became a modest success, with an unaudited circulation of 250,000. Falwell's power was hyped not just by him but by a media establishment that needed a consistently conservative voice -- not to mention a "guest" who could usually be counted on to show up at the studio on time and say something provocative. On shows like Nightline and Larry King Live, Falwell became a spokesman for the religious right and "good TV." Who can forget when he claimed that the Teletubbies character Tinky Winky was actually a hidden symbol of the homosexual agenda? Ironically, he may have loomed larger among secular audiences than religious ones. In 1994, Falwell paid for a documentary called The Clinton Chronicles that supposedly implicated Bill Clinton, Vincent Foster, Ron Brown and Jim McDougal in a cocaine-smuggling operation. A man shown in the film in silhouette claimed that President Clinton ordered several of his critics killed. Falwell never repudiated the film, though he later admitted "I do not know the accuracy" of it. Some of the characters featured in the film became involved in the Paula Jones lawsuit that led to Clinton's impeachment, though Falwell was not central to that story either. The rise of the religious right was an important development in late-20th Century American history. Falwell's name is among those associated with the movement. But just because someone is famous doesn't make him significant. Jerry Falwell wasn't.

I sure don't understand all this uproar on this board over Jerry Falwell's death. Since he first became involved in politics in 1979, abortion is still legal, there is still no prayer in the schools, pornography is available for anyone who wants it, people are much more tolerant of homosexuals. In 2004, 34 percent of the population believed that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, today only 28 percent do. Attendance at 70 percent of Baptist churches is declining. Falwell and the religious right have lost, and those of you who oppose everything he stood for are winning.

Please stick to posting information and pictures of future cars. Your posts in this thread are despicable and immature.

With 35 mpg CAFE, both V6 and V8 engines will be rare. Most cars will have sub 2.0L 4 cylinders, many with hybrids. I read that Ford of Europe may have to replace the 2.0 and 2.3L in the Mondeo with a 1.6L turbo because of CO2 regulations.

GiulianiI favor Ron Paul myself, as he was one of only two GOP congressmen to support withdrawal from Iraq.

Daniel Howes Big Three can't play defense anymore Sen. Barack Obama's finger-wagging lecture this week to Detroit's automakers shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's paying attention. It's the future if maligned Motown doesn't start playing aggressive offense. Doesn't matter that an Illinois Democrat from the industrial Midwest, a man who would be president, shows scant understanding of the technology, market realities and human limitations of his remedies -- and then jumps on the campaign plane. It's the formula: Whack Detroit, ignore details and draw praise from most any corner outside of, say, three Great Lakes cities, meaning Obama understands very well the times in which he's running for the nomination. Judging by the climatic grandstanding so common now in Washington, he's not alone. Be it Republican or Democrat, be it a vote in Congress or a position on the campaign trail, the times are ripe for policies purported to slow climate change and improve national energy security. Play offense, not defense And if they undermine companies struggling to survive? That's our problem. The path of least resistance runs right through Detroit's weakened automakers and over the United Auto Workers, presumed to back Democrats no matter how inimical their proposed policies may be to the union's future. Doesn't matter that the union and its members are stalwarts of the Democrats. Doesn't matter that Rep. John Dingell, D-Dearborn, remains the industry's protector on Capitol Hill. Doesn't matter how communities could be impacted, most of them Midwest backwaters to party elites. None of it much matters because big, bad Detroit isn't so big or bad anymore. General Motors Co., Ford Motor Corp., Chrysler Group and even Toyota Motor Corp. cannot play defense in Washington on fuel economy, climate change and energy security. It won't work. Viewed from the crumbling ruins of industrial America, Washington has reached an inflection point: There will be political movement on climate change and fuel economy, as the Senate Commerce Committee votes Tuesday on tougher federal fuel economy rules showed. Step on the gas Change will come quickly, too, even if some of it makes little sense. Take Obama's suggestion to pick up 10 percent of Detroit's crushing retiree health care costs, provided that fully half of the annual federal spending goes into improving fuel efficiency. For DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group, which spends $1.56 billion on retiree health care, the federal help would amount to $78 million a year or $29 per vehicle, according to company calculations. Yippee. Put aside the political risk of using taxpayer money to bail out GM, Ford and Chrysler, never a popular play in the "Detroit-is-for-losers" zeitgeist. The dough is piddling, proving how poorly politicians understand the enormity of the burden Detroit is shouldering. It's past time for Detroit to step on the gas in Washington. Tired of Toyota getting all the props for being so fuel-efficient when its V-8 trucks are anything but? Then help drive the debate on fuel-efficiency, or it will drive you. Worried that Democrats in Congress will stall a comprehensive environmental package to wait for a Democrat in the White House? Push for a broad deal now, as some of Detroit's automakers are doing, while Dingell is active, Detroit's balance sheets are iffy and you've got a decent technology story to tell. Convinced that a 4 percent annual improvement in fuel economy starting in 2011 cannot be achieved? Start lining up your bankruptcy counsel; write the surrender-and-blame speeches; and remind the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (and their friends in Congress) just how massive your pension obligations are -- and how heavily they'd weigh on American taxpayers. Doesn't need to end that way, or Obama's way. But doing nothing and hoping is not an option. Daniel Howes' column runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at (313) 222-2106, [email protected] or http://info.detnews.com/danielhowesblog. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Return to regular web page

No credible person has said that there will be a SWB Lambda, although some here wish for it. A SWB Lambda would be barely bigger, but probably much heavier, than an Equinox, so I don't see the point. As far as the suggestion for buying a Roadmaster Estate, unless the purchaser has excellent mechanical skills, why would anyone recommend buying an 11 year old car?

I'm old enough (43) to have believed 20 or 30 years ago that Japan Inc was going to be a serious threat to Detroit.

It's hip and stylish to buy Japanese or European, so no logic will change will people's minds. I know plenty of people who had wonderful service out of their prior Ford or Chevrolet but change to Toyota for no good reason.

Chazman says Sandles is credible, so I believe it. I have a lot of respect for Chazman's posts on all the boards.

Hopefully, but I don't look for more than a modest increase over the Five Hundred.

Possibly some adjustments are being made to the program. http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic.../705030373/1148

I think the bright spots are the Impala, the big full size SUV's (Suburban, ESV, Yukon XL), the Avalanche, and the Lambdas. I guess fuel prices aren't affecting buyers of the largest SUV's. Chazman's website said that the Zeta Impala has been delayed for a year, so I can see why GM wants to keep the W body Impala around another year.

90 percent of Ford's sales decline was due to dropping the old Taurus and Freestar and to the decline in the F-150. Everything else was basically a wash.

The STS looks fine, but the CTS is much better. Who does Cadillac think will buy the STS?

I do not understand why the Canadian parts supplier or a private equity group or even Kirk Kerkorian would want to purchase this mess. The 300C or Charger R/T are the only products that remotely interest me.

I don't think you're representative of most RWD fans.

Yes, but isn't the main reason most of us want RWD is for the powerful V8 engines that are feasible with RWD?

It doesn't, but a 34 mpg CAFE will mean drastically fewer V6 and V8 engines and many more hybrids and sub-2.0L four cylinder engines. Many automakers still seem to have difficulty meeting emission controls with diesel. Easier use of high powered engines are the main reason many have been looking forward to more RWD.

Truck CAFE will probably be increased as well. I think full size truck sales will be a fraction of what they are now, mostly diesel powered heavy duty trucks for those who really need them for business purposes. Full size SUV's will become very exclusive, low volume vehicles. Even larger crossovers like the Lambdas, which are quite heavy, could be in danger.I don't think that using corn ethanol is an answer. According to page 102 of this month's MT., growing irrigated corn to produce one gallon of ethanol requires over 900 gallons of water. The experts say that a better solution is cellulosic ethanol.