Thanks, you are spot on. The rest of the world, or at least Asia, knows it is "economic warfare" and they are kicking our ass. You can't import into China, and to sell there you have to be a minority partner with someone there who will literally steal all of the IP they can see. Same as Japan did years ago, Korea was next, and now China. Hyundai operates in a mostly closed market, has a huge currency advantage, and comes here and flat out cheats. If anyone doesn't believe that google "Hyundai EPA lies"! Of course, the mainstream media gave them a complete pass on that, imagine if Ford or GM had gotten caught pulling that ****. They fraudulently deceived everyone to steal sales!

Seriously, anyone that thinks they're out to help us read this, maybe with a grain of salt but if you really think about it...... http://www.uwsa.com/issues/trade/japanyes.html

Yea, but daylight savings time swaps over tonight. And I think it eeked out 71 degrees here today. Although the wind was gusting to 35mph! Temp was right, but too much wind for me on the lake!

Soon, soon!!!

heat and frost insulator here - post is right on point.

fyi i had lunch at that marina last weekend. the trailer is a yard trailer and the boat is sitting about 40-50 feet from the ramp. its an 06 for sale

Thanks man, nice to see that I am not alone with my life experiences and opinions. I was at the United Brotherhood of Carpenters ( UBC) training center a couple of weeks ago. Being there made me much more awhare of where my dues go. Impressive. About 6000 rooms, thousands of sq' of training space. Last time I was there was in the early 00's as a Superintendent in training. My last visit was as a mentor to a Supt in training. One of the questions asked in our mentor orientation was why are you here? Lots of reasons given, when it was my turn to answer I said " to continue providing an invaluable skill that will further the reliance on union labor". I'm not a union blow hard but understand the benifits of being a union member as well as builing owners seeking out union builders. Through in negotiated / GMAX contracts and the scab outfits fall by the wayside. I have seen several non union carps buy their card and get run over, they typically last less than a week. \

The current trend is to have engineers / Project managers make the jump to Supt. Good luck to them, it wont be easy...

I'm sure most guys that think they are independant thinkers and do not agree with what has been layed out infront of them in the thread have left. To bad, in my experience of this topic this is how it ends. The IGNORENT ignore the facts and or opinions that they dont agree with. This is more of a pandemic issue with self righteous men that were born in the late 60's - mid 70's. Unfortunatly this is my generation.

Hopefuly they open the eyes and silently read the comments in the post and lift a finger to at a minimum inform themselves.

I will say my two sons will not be sheeple... and as long as the product is the same or better quality as forign will by American.

main problem in my trade is these clowns organizing... instead of taking young men that automatically seek out a union job. One of the old-heads told me one time "we didnt organize the rats - they organized us"

im 26 years old - drug up on 9 different dip**** bosses last year because they didnt have the respect. why? i can do the work. Now im traveling all over the country playing general foreman because contractor #1 called and wondered why i left and what itd take to get me to come back.

- an apprentice walked up to me friday and said "i heard youre running work - i feel sorry for them" - to which i replied "whats that supposed to mean" - he says "ohhh i didnt mean it like that at all. i just know you wont let them get away with any bull****" ive never been so proud...

I've been a GM/Chevy guy my whole life. Not originally for political reasons but because I just liked Chevys and grew up loving the 50's and 60's and 70's Chevy hot rods. I've owned countless Chevy trucks over the years and have absolutely NEVER had a major mechanical failure. I currently have an 01 Chevy 1500 4x4 that I use as a commuter that has 240,000 miles on the original engine. Besides replacing an alternator and rebuilding the tranny, it's all origional and it's been rode hard and put away wet! My 09 Yukon XL 3/4 ton 4x4 is bar none one of the finest automobiles I've ever been in (and I've been in countless including owning and driving countless high end cars).

Buy what you want. I don't get the complaints about American quality - I've just never personally seen it. But for gods sakes, buy the right truck for the job. Towing upwards of 15k with a halfton truck is just a recipe for disaster. I just hope my family isn't the one you plow into when you have a towing failure.

Toyota + 42' boat + no bow stop =

From your post you said you would rather they be overpaid than have it go back to a forign country, which I do agree with; but the line worker in any car factory in the country keeps their money here so that point is moot.

The auto industry was a passion of mine too growing up as I did outside of Lansing and I dreamed of working at one of the proving grounds as a development engineer, but was warned by every engineer I knew working for one of the big 3 to stay away....so I decided to get a Naval Architecute degree and build boats instead.

The whole American car industry really needs to wake up if they want to be competative, yes I know from an economic sense they are somewhat tied, but from a product development perspective they are not, the only one that seemed to get that was Ford. I think GM is catching up but has a way to go with most of their divisions, and God help Chrysler with their jumbled product portfolio.

I truly believe that America could still have the ability to be the best country in the world at mfg/engineering/product development, but that wont happen until we stop allowing tons of forign students into our engineering programs only to have them learn how to be the worlds best engineers and go back to their home country and produce products that compete with ours but are given huge advanages from their governments.