can you say?

just trying to draw you in to the conversation

sit for one hour and think what would really happen if every American decided not to by an Asian car for one year.

what would happen to thier economy?
what would happen to our economy?
the price of cars are market driven,
there are 2 ways to make money, by volume and by price, if your sales decline you have to increase price, if your volume increases you can decrease prices. prices of new cars have skyrocketed to compete and this is why you are seeing lease programs disappearing, because the turn in value is not there. the car depreciates so much when it rolls off the lot. actually i think it would only take 6 months

Azues, what did you think of China?
the gas prices dropped and i sold my 454 suburban....they'll be back...(gas prices)

Okay, had to make this a separate post because I wanted to address Austin's (AbundDiga909's) follow up to my earlier long rambling.

First, Austin, I appreciate the tone of your reply. I figured I was getting a little sharp on a few points and I sort of expected that I might be setting up there to get my head bitten off! Anyway, thanks for that!

I did want to comment though (hopefully more briefly), since a couple of things in your reply caught my attention.   

When you say "I'm not asking us to embrace their religion" my thought is that, assuming someone holds to the belief that the Christian faith played a larger roll in the development of our country than some now say, if we would see a Muslim taking the office of U.S. president, as incidental, then that is, in a very real sense, the U.S. embracing Islam.

I understand there are lots of folks who have no quarrel with that; too often, I'm afraid because they just don't really care about such things anymore.

The differences in how we're viewing things here are clear in that you are ready to let go of what you call a "notion" (the idea that we were first, and for a long time, a Christian nation) but what I would call an important fact of history that we should hold on to for some very good reasons.

To say we should be celebrating the thought that "we were founded by immigrants," for one thing, I'm not sure is right either. Nothing really wrong with "celebrating" immigrants being here I suppose (since many (or most) of us are immigrants (or decendents of)), but the statement has a ring of all this celebrating diversity stuff which I think is again getting back to embracing "all" of "everybody's" belief systems when I am trying to respectfully maintain that there are not many roads to the same place (spiritually speaking) and that our country held that as a majority opinion once upon a time.

I'd say we might certainly celebrate that we were, early on, "populated by" immigrants and so there's a diversity of cultures here; it makes life interesting for sure, as they say "variety is the spice of life" but I have seen too much detailed info. that supports the fact of a very strong Christian heritage in the U.S.

I also understand the attempted balance you're trying to achieve by saying that (I'm paraphrasing here) you would never ask anyone to embrace our religion. That does sound good and fair and balanced at first, and it sort of sounds like another well-worn saying – something like "I don't like people trying to cram their religion down my throat, etc. etc. " (or something like that).

I suppose I agree with the "cramming" part, but as for "asking" (as you did say), someone to "embrace our religion" if it is Christian, I'd have to say I would be all right with that. After all, that is a basic tenet of Christianity, to strive to persuade others to believe.   "Go...teach all nations...teaching them to observe all things...I have commanded" are words of Jesus (see Matthew 28:19-20 on what's commonly called "the Great Commission").

I know I'm getting a little "preachy" here for a web site about boats, but hey this is the "Off Topic" forum!

Again, I understand there was more to what you originally posted than the spiritual content, but I guess I sort of honed in on that as the most important.

And again, thanks for taking my rambling seriously and respectfully.

Craig
(64X55)