Strike!

I wonder how Ron Gettelfinger sleeps at night. I know the UAW members deserve to be paid for the work they do, but do they have to shut down GM in the process? And what of Ford and Chrysler? It's been practice for decades to rape the healthiest auto company in contract talks and then force the same terms down the throats of the other two, regardless of their ability to meet them.

I was hoping the UAW would go after Chrysler this year because I could see the PE owners walking away from their investment, trashing the entire thing to break the union. The UAW would go on record as shutting down one of the hands that feeds them, and that would be the end of of the UAW's reign of terror. Ironically I think that the PE guys would get their money back as the Big Two would need those plants to fill the demand that would build after the mess was cleaned up. Going after GM is from that old hardball playbook. It's time for GM to use some old school rules, too. Shut down. Shut down hard enough to hurt everyone they can touch. Don't make it easy for the UAW - their members have mortgages and summer homes and Harley-Davidsons on the line here. Make it hard for Michigan, make it hard for OH. Make it hard for every Tier supplier out there. Make it clear that it is in the best interests of the country for GM (and Ford and Chrysler) to make cars on the same terms as its competitors.

I hate dealing with strikes; they screw up my life, too. The D will be a mess, Michigan will suffer, and all sorts of bad crap will happen. But it's time for the UAW to wake up to today's realities in cost accounting and the automotive manufacturing process. We'll see who's been hitting the snooze bar at 11AM today.

Mixed marriages

A friend dropped by my driveway yesterday to chat and the subject turned toward a young lady he was hoping to date. His concern was that she wouldn't appreciate his rather time-consuming exotic car habit. We laughed about his ex-GF, who left him because of it, and about my spouse, who endures my falling-apart-car habit with grace and a bizarre form of sponsorship known as letting me drive his car when both of mine are out of commission.

I put some thought into it, and really, it's bad to mix car people with not car people. Not car people just don't appreciate the amount of joy cars bring to car people. The worst kind of not car people are the ones with life-consuming habits of their own, ones that they claim are "different" than the habits of car people. Fail. Fail. Fail. Cars are no more money-sucking or time-consuming than, say, quilting, Longaberger baskets ($300 for a basket? Hello?), or your garden-variety landscaping and gardening project. In fact, when done with even remote care, the car habit produces peace in a marriage. What other habit has the spouse never venturing father than the garage on any night of the week, and provides a built-in focus for all complaints? It's important to be careful to make your matches well.

This is timely because my co-host here at VPB is doing the binding thing next week. The same thing I did a rather long time ago. We both have had the good sense to pick mates who can live with our greasy selves. My mom appreciated the car thing in my dad, and my in-laws, well, the not car people do seem to eventually find each other, thank God. That leaves more car guys for us car girls. The way it should be.