My dad was a pretty conservative guy; although if you asked him he would say he was a Democrat. He identified with the Southern blue collar dems; he was from Arkansas. The big reason for that was not his political outlook, it was that he was a huge union guy. He believed in the union he was a member of; he went to union meetings and was pretty quick to defend unions in discussions. After he left the Air Force, he was a typical blue collar union worker, just like so many others at the time. In the days before Reagan and the beginning of the dismantling of the industrial base of this country, a lot of people belonged to unions and they were a force for labor. I would have to say that he would be appalled at the discussions we are having about bailing out the auto companies. After all we are talking about millions of jobs here! Why is it OK to fork 350 billion dollars of the recent bail out over to the banks and watch them buy each other up and continue to give incentives and golden parachutes to CEO's, and do nothing to help the American auto workers and their families? Why is there even a question about keeping an industry that is essential to keeping the economy (what's left of it anyway)on it's feet? If the auto industry in this country goes down we will be feeling the effects for years. I'm not saying that we just fork money over to them with no oversight, although as it turns out, that seems to be exactly what we've done for Wall Street in spite of reassurances that it wouldn't happen that way. No, I think we really can look at the money as a sort of loan to help them out. To let them fail will just make the current economic situation so much worse. People don't always think about how things are interconnected, but to possibly loose as many as one in ten jobs is not something that I feel we can let happen. And I don't know if this can wait til January; I think this is something that needs to be addressed now.