DETROIT - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said yesterday U.S. automakers must do more to answer the rising global demand for fuel-efficient autos.

"For years, while foreign competitors were investing in more fuel-efficient technology for their vehicles, American automakers were spending their time investing in bigger, faster cars," the Illinois senator told business and political leaders.

Obama said he would encourage automakers to make fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles by giving them health care assistance for retirees.

Federal assistance would cover 10% - up to $7 billion - of automakers' annual legacy health care costs through 2017.

In return, automakers would invest at least half of their health care savings into technology to produce fuel-efficient cars."

What nonsense. The market makes the sale, not giving away taxpayer monies. GM, Ford and Chrysler can easily manufacture cars as fuel efficient as anything anyone else does, but that isn't where the money is. Never has been, never will be. Or maybe he hasn't seen whats on the road nowadays. Now, Rush might not know HIS cars and be dumbass enough to call a Chevy Suburban a Sports Utility Vehicle, but there has to be someone in Obama's camp that can tell him that Americans like powerful vehicles, and that the older Americans get the bigger the car the better. College students and other young people galore flock to the smaller imports and thats always where the Japanese and Koreans will have a foothold, but the other half of the nation wants its soccer-mommy gas guzzlers and no amount of tossing tax dollars down a rathole is going to change that. If we had been using electric and hybrid technologies all along and the fuel injected overhead cam internal combustion engine was invented tomorrow, people with any brains would switch immediately.

Every time fuel economy is mandated higher, Detroit loses money then dumps workers. The fact of the matter is that there's plenty of oil, plenty of gasoline, and wasting money on today's hybrid technology is as dumb as Obama sounds when he decides to lie to garner votes. In 20 years the technology MIGHT be there to wean us all away from gas guzzlers but guess what?

If it were possible we'd ALREADY be doing it in mass quantity and the Arabs would be back to selling camels for a living.

And isn't Hussein sounding an awful lot like Jimmy Carter or is it just me.