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Making a little 250 mile round trip for turkey today, so here's to a safe trip for everyone on the road today! And for your insignificant fact of the day... Did you realize that there hasn't been an automotive-themed balloon in the Macy's parade, and today is the 81st annual parade!..

Dear Dub, In all the hub bub in the stock market recently and bailout deals and all that, the bailout of the automakers seems kind of lost in the shuffle. With all the money that the government is getting ready to throw around, do you think we should bailout Detroit? One of the Undecided Dark days in Detroit Their sales are way down Smug smiles of the past Have turned to a frown They didn't adapt to the changing game They forged right ahead making more of the same Gas may be rising But no problems they see So General Motors Brings us the Hummer H3 The dinosaurs thought They were too big to fail But they were wrong too Now we're hearing the wail We need to survive Just lend us some money If it wasn't so sad This all would be funny I know it sounds cruel and heartless and mean But sometimes bad companies do leave the scene You dug your own hole Don't sit there and cry Say, here's an idea Try building something we'll buy!

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday signed into law a measure banning motorists from text-messaging and e-mailing while operating a vehicle. It's sad that we've reached a point where people have to be told that they need to drive their car when they're supposed to be driving their car...

Dear Dub, Is there any way to turn of that chime that goes off if I'm not wearing my seatbelt? Most of the driving I do is just short, local trips and it really drives me crazy! Live Free or Die Yea, aren't all those safety warnings and labels annoying?..

Now that all the other problems in the world have been solved, Congress is turning its attention to whether $25 billion (a more sobering way to read that is 25,000 million dollars) should be given to the automakers to bail them... oops... I mean to invest in the auto industry...

With gas prices spiking in Florida, and going up all over the country because refineries in Texas had to shut down because of the hurricane, the message is clear. There hasn't been a new refinery built in the US since 1976. The ones that we do have are at running at full capacity...

I have a degree in engineering. I've dealt with asymptotic stability criterion for nonlinear time-variant differential equations. Why is it that I can't understand the pricing of gasoline?..

While the big news of the weekend is the government bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac it's an election year and promises of a bailout for Detroit's automakers are in the wind as well. A lot of people are going to point to the 1980 bailout of Chrysler, but that was structured so that the loan wound up being paid back and the money wasn't immediately thrown down a black hole. The problem I have with the proposed bailout is that the automakers find themselves in a hole that they themselves dug with a history of less than stellar products that turned consumers to other vehicles...

Hope everyone is having a great Labor Day! There's a recent addition to the vehicles at my house that's labor-appropriate. There's a water leak in front of the house near our curb box, so I now have a backhoe for a lawn ornament!..

I'm no fan of ethanol after having seen the real world mileage hit of 7-10% I take when I'm forced to put it in the tank of my cars. I'll leave it to others to argue about the economics of production and delivery of the stuff, like Ted Nugent did today on the opinion page of wacotrib.com Ted Nugent: Put a hoax in your tank with ethanol 'Feel-good' fuel is left's favorite snake oil By Ted Nugent, Texas Wildman Sunday, August 17, 2008 Greenies, what in God's name were you thinking? Oh, that's right...