Wow. You have all been dooped again. The fact that some form of media spoon fed and delivered another picture of blue and red lines just puzzles it right out of you. Divided and Conquered your thoughts are. I know another map of the US that was broken into two colors, and yet here we are over a century later trying still trying to split it up.

And for that matter I hardly think better of the person taking $12 than the one taking $16, I'm getting robbed either way.

The real question here is in the decision to pass this piece along. The map is crappy, there is no description of the number one on it, the star, nor a summation on the smaller states, and there is clearly a legend that would be visible were it not for the common color black being used - which I assume is done to keep this as bluntly simple as possible.

I can't really fault Autoblog for being timely in terms of what's being said in the news, but in this case it's news (USA Today) making news. for* it's part, I would prefer Autoblog to provide a little additional commentary on the piece - a "grain of salt" caution on the dish I'm expected to eat.

Now, about that dude and the $20...**

* I appologize, the key combination for my capital "f" spits fire on my screen.
** I round up now pay up. Yea I'm talking to you buddy. Get out of that rolling vault of precious metals and broken dreams and get back here...

Wow. I need to change my pants.

Yea, so the nice white or silver E71 isn't going to happen is it. Leave it to ATnT to take a distinct looking device and make it look like every other blaqkick on the US market.

And isn't the E71 supposed to be able to tether in 3g? Naw, they wouldn't leave that on there.

Looks like I'll be keeping my vintage 8300 Curve for another few months.

But wait, what's this? Nokia.com thinks my Curve in "Good" condition is worth $50 on trade in for an unlocked E71x... with my choice of colors... and another $1 for a working USB cord...

I have it on a curve - not even listed for the 8300, but it works.

And that's the good part, it works. It doesn't kill the battery as fast I thought it would either. Set up and download were easy and quick. It also runs well as a background program - doesn't seem to slow the rest of the functions down, messaging, calls, camera, etc.

The "needs work" would be the fast forward and pause are a bit clunky in their response. Partly because it runs slow and takes a while to get going.

And then there are the ads (or ad at this point). Unfortunately a bit annoying. I only say that because in the mobile application they are more of a popup box than a clickable background as they are in normal Pandora.

Overall, I think Pandora does about the best job of either being selective or attracting quality ads as any site on the web. I actually don't mind them that much on the normal program, even that pesky Jaguar ad. But on this, one false click and I've passed through a song or even worse clicked on the add for Dockers yet again. I do wear dorkers and have a blackberry, which is besides the point, it gets in the way. And it even appears to happen more than once a song, nasty.

Would also be nice to just have the stations default to being sorted by name, or at least give an option for that.

Overall it's been consistent and it does work, not to mention it's FREE. Pandora as a whole contributes to most of my music lately and it's great to finally have it on my phone.

Between this and the 4.5 update, blackberry probably bought at least a few more months of time with the curve.

Word.

So let me see, "Negotiate with lenders, remove $35.6 billion in debt", plus "GM is asking for a total of $18 billion in loans...

$35,600,000,000.00
+ $18,000,000,000.00
= $53,600,000,000.00

Sounds like $53.6 billion coming out of "somewhere" to me. I'll take my taxpayer sponsered RenCen corner office facing the river please.

People are not buying cars right now. Not just American cars, but all car sales are suffering. This is due to the constrictions on consumer credit and market conditions, which was triggered by the high price of gas.

The big three are in trouble now because in spite of over 100 years of business they've never had to plan for the bad times. They always get bailed out or bought up and bundled together.

Comon' GM didn't just create a handful of brands. A handful should have died off, but were instead mashed together, many years ago.

...wow, you know, wasn't Buick the largest domestic car company in 1904? Wait, like 100 years ago (1910 actually), wasn't GM (bastard child holding co. of Buick) lost to the banks in a distressed market...

Huh, talk about deja vu.

But I digress. To the point, any loan program for $1 or $75B does not make sense unless it spurs sales of cars. To spur the sale of cars, the people buying them would need the money, oh wait excuse me, the credit to do so.

Business Unit sales at the corporate level do nothing to sell more products (if anything they probably hurt it). Sounds like more of a distraction.

And besides, who's buying car companies right now. All those sponsors are hedging on (gulp) "green startups" right now.

The Big 3 will not see the "inspite of themselves" excess in vehicle sales unless the level of excess consumer purchasing power is restored.

Since consumer purchasing power was apparently inflated by false mortgage / credit lending - they should not expect to see those levels of new vehicle sales in the near future.

Has nothing to do with electric cars or irreverent patriotism, has everything to do with the math.

As economic levels constrain, only the strongest product offerings will survive, because only the people with the strongest purchasing power (see earlier reference to "money") are there to buy them.

At this point it's like natural selection, and we all know the General isn't Jesus. That's how this should end.

Since we're not going to learn, and they will get bailed out, why not get the oil companies with their record profits to pitch in. Their "carefully managed" market prices probably caused this anyway.

I'm from Michigan, I work in the Automotive field. I work for a solid, non-O.E. related business that will be here long after these idiots finish robbing the tax payers. Because like any strong healthy company, we actually try to plan for this kind of @#$%.

Peace.

P.S. BTW, what a time to live! Working in the industry for almost 20 years now, I've never seen this much attention cast on it. Like a watching a circus everyday. It's great.

Same goes for living in Michigan. Between the mayor and economy of our neighboring state, Detroit, it certainly is something to watch.