quote...
If the Devil himself wanted to design a perfect trap for attracting morons, he couldn't have done better than this season's New York International Auto Show at the Jacob Javits Center. While I am known to be judgmental by disposition, I honestly did not set out with this notion preconceived. I arrived at it only after interacting with some of the attendees, many of whom might have passed superficially for average Americans.
"Jesus drove an SUV. Mohammed pumped his gas."
<snip>
The big news here was that there was so little news from the automakers themselves. Judging from the cars on display, they apparently aim to stick with the program of the now-ubiquitous low-mileage SUV war wagons as far ahead as anyone can see -- along with the still-popular gas-hogging pickup trucks based on the same chassis as the SUVs -- and the familiar cast of luxury sedans with jazzily updated electronics. There was remarkably little recognition that the civilized world -- the motoring world -- stands at the threshold of a new era characterized by the end of cheap fuel.
<snip>
I asked one middle-aged gentleman, who didn't want to give his name, what he thought about America's dependence on foreign oil. "It's not because we're relying on imports," he said, "except it's cheaper to get from other nations, like buying pineapples from Costa Rica."
(If the reader is detecting a hallucinatory trend here, be assured your perceptions are functioning.)
more at
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/oo/curmudgeon/index_NY_auto_show.html