Despite the greater-than-expected losses reported by Ford and GM today, such abysmal results fail to surprise anyone these days. The U.S. car industry's "Big Three" have lumbered on with bloated bureaucracies and product lines for many years now. But what the financial crisis has done is bring into sharp relief which carmakers are poised for survival and which are destined for the scrap heap.

Carmakers the world over have been hurting. Sales at BMW fell 8.3 percent in October, while Toyota recently cut its year-end profit forecast by 63 percent. The outlook is particularly bad for Europe, since 60-80 percent of car purchases there use credit-financing, the availability of which continues to shrink, while only 30 percent of car purchases in Japan are credit-financed. Meanwhile, slower automobile production in Europe is also taking a major toll on U.S. parts suppliers, adding insult to injury as the suppliers' prospects have already tanked with the car industry at home.

But even if carmakers everywhere are suffering, what sets apart a company like Toyota, currently the world's largest car manufacturer, is cash. Toyota has $18.5 billion in cash and a steady hand on those reserves. As for General Motors, flagging sales have caused the company to burn through $6.9 billion in cash in the last quarter alone. Fewer people are buying cars, but GM still has to pay its bills -- employee's wages, the costs of running factories, etc. Now, GM admits it may drop below $11 billion in cash reserves, the minimum it needs to pay those bills, before the year is out. That means bankruptcy. Ford is slightly doing better, but not by much.

So, can U.S. automakers still stage a comeback? They're already behind on fuel economy and alternative energy. GM has some big projects in the works, but it might not survive long enough to see them through. Millions of jobs are at stake, and President-elect Barack Obama seems to favor providing some aid to automakers. But we'll have to see if taxpayers want to get involved. They're probably still reeling from buyer's remorse after scooping up Fannie Mae and AIG.

The media circus surrounding the upcoming U.S. presidential elections and the candidates' constant reversion to rehearsed talking points in both the debates and interviews might leave you feeling jaded about the value of media political coverage. But rather than hope for the hoopla to stop, perhaps we should pray that it continues.

 

A recent study by political scientists at MIT and IIES, a research institute in Stockholm, suggests that in the long run media attention really does make politicians -- or U.S. congressmen, anyway -- more accountable:

Congressmen who are less covered by the local press work less for their constituencies: they are less likely to stand witness before congressional hearings, to serve on constituency-oriented committees, and to vote against the party line… Federal spending is lower in areas where there is less press coverage of the local members of congress.

The study set low standards for what counts as press coverage; the researchers simply looked at how often a politician's name is mentioned in local newspapers, which makes the apparent impact of such coverage all the more surprising. The study also finds that press coverage of local politicians is lower in areas where residents get their news from media sources that cater to multiple political districts. Bad news for local readers of the Washington Post and the New York Times?

An overview of Ground Zero on Oct. 2 in New York City. The owners of the World Trade Center site have announced that the World Trade Center memorial can be opened on Sept. 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack. It was also revealed in a 70-page report on Ground Zero's tortured rebuilding process that the rail hub will cost $3.2 billion, $700 million more than planned, and will not open until at least 2014.

The Freedom Tower won't be finished until the end of 2013.

Just in case you were worried that Congress was neglecting other pressing issues during the ongoing financial meltdown, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo is working diligently to prevent the imposition of Sharia law in the U.S.

The "Jihad Prevention Act," which he introduced last week would make it a deportable offense for immigrants to advocate Sharia and require that all immigrants pledge not to do so when they are admitted to the country. I'll give Tancredo the benefit of the doubt and assume that he actually sees this as a threat, though it's a bit dodgy that the statistics he cites are from the U.K.

On the merits though, this is a phenomenally dumb idea. It not only singles out Muslim immigrants for suspicion, needlessly inconveniences the vast majority of U.S. immigrants who aren't Muslim, and violates the very constitution that it's meant to protect. It also, as Cato's Jim Harper points out, displays a disturbing lack of faith in the strength of American institutions to stand up to the ranting of a few extremists.

It's also inaccurately named since, as far as I can tell, non-Sharia-related Jihad activities would still be allowed.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy (left) has brought his right-wing activity of "le jogging" to New York City today. He and wife Carla Bruni (center) are in the Big Apple so he can attend the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. For unknown reasons, he is not wearing his favorite NYPD T-shirt.

Earlier this month, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a champion judoka who has coauthored a book on judo, said he would be giving Sarkozy some lessons in the martial art. The next U.S. president had better watch out: It looks like some world leaders are training to go mano a mano.

Today, Sept. 17, is the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Camp David Accords. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin met with U.S. President Jimmy Carter at Camp David, Maryland, for 13 tense days -- from Sept. 5 to Sept. 17, 1978 -- to hammer out the agreements that led to the March 26, 1979, peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Under the terms of the treaty, Israel agreed to withdraw from Sinai, Egypt agreed to allow Israeli ships to traverse the Suez Canal, and the two agreed to establish normal diplomatic relations.

Carter and Sadat on Sept. 6, 1978	Carter and Begin on Mar. 26, 1979
Of course, those days weren't the last time Carter met with the leaders of Egypt and Israel. Here are a couple recent shots of the former president, still at it:
With Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Apr. 17, 2008	With then-interim Israeli PM Ehud Olmert on Jan. 22, 2006

Ok, I can't contain myself. The logo for the Democratic National Convention is a train wreck. The Democrats should be eager to cast off the negative stereotypes that they've accumulated since since Gore lost to Bush in 2000 -- weak on defense issues, wishy-washy, too touchy-feely, disorganized, and unfocused. But this logo does exactly the opposite. The soft gradients and jumbled type only serve to reinforce those negatives.

1. The colors are washed out. Red, white, and blue in a political context should never fade to pink and baby powder. It looks weak. Red is always a dangerous color to run to a gradient in a logo for that very reason.
2. And while I'm talking about color, why is the sky a burning red? Has a nuclear bomb just gone off somewhere over the horizon? Has global warming gotten that bad already?
3. The stars overweight the logo on the left side, making the whole thing feel too asymmetrical. They also remind me of the stars a cartoonist might draw over a character's head to indicate that he's had too much to drink.
4. The tightly kerned sans-serif type is completely out of phase with all of Obama's materials, which provide for much more air between each character.
5. The right side of the logo reminds me of Enron's Logo. I don't understand why those large chunks have been taken out of the mountains. Is it supposed to look like a plug or a puzzle piece?
6. Why is the "0" so much bigger than the "8"? Yes, I'm sure that's the nature of the type they chose, but it looks terrible. This election is about the "8," not the "0"
7. Why are there mountains anyway? I know they're there to tip the hat to Denver, the convention's host city -- but why? Is this convention being held for Denver or for the country as a whole?

What would a successful logo contain?

1. Strong, solid colors. Similar to the deep blue on Obama's materials.
2. Clean, simple type. Go serif to make it different, but not too different.
3. A horizon that looks like a sunrise, or some other imagery that points us to the future, not a nuclear holocaust. Hell, even some clichéd "21st century digital" bric-a-brack in the background would be better.

Daniel Gross tries to explain why Maine lobster is getting less expensive while other foods are doing the opposite:

At root, the global forces that are driving up the price of food don't significantly affect the vacation lobster business in Maine. Commercial and consumer demand doesn't vary much for off-the-boat lobster. Sure, many lobsters are sold to processing plants. But unlike other seafood products—think of canned tuna, or clam sauce, or frozen fish fillets—lobster is not produced or marketed on a mass global scale, which also means there are no speculators trying to make a killing on lobster futures. The fact that people are eating more and better in China and India isn't much boosting the demand for lobsters from Maine. Even in the United States, lobster remains to a large degree a regional product. [...]

With demand down, and with distributors facing higher costs, there has been significant pressure on lobster producers to keep costs low.

Isn't this analysis too complicated? Isn't Maine lobster simply a luxury good, the price of which falls when times get tough and demand -- primarily from the United States and Canada -- drops? That's what one ShopRite owner thinks:

The price has come down, but more important, what I'm hearing is, the supply side to supermarket retailers is better because tourist consumption is down in Maine," he said. "So there's been more consistent supply."

(Hat tip: Tyler Cowen)

We try to keep the focus here on international issues, but some items are too good to pass up. I hope taxpayer dollars aren't paying for this billboard in Kansas City, or anywhere else:

Via Matt Yglesias, who comments:

If anything, characterizing the sex-engineering link in this manner seems overwhelmingly more likely to reduce interest in engineering than to reduce interest in sex.

It's time to get your (Smart)bike on in D.C.

The long-awaited bike-rental program kicks off this week in Washington, which joins the ranks of Barcelona and Paris as a leader in promoting ecofriendly transportation. Washington's program is less ambitious than its European counterparts -- with just 120 bikes to Paris's 20,000 -- but Jim Sebastian, bike and pedestrian program manager for the D.C. Transportation Department, expects the Smartbikes to be a big hit:

It's really going to be replacing cab rides and car trips for a lot of folks looking to get around the city quickly... Plus they won't have to worry about parking."

An annual fee of $40 gets riders a program membership card and up to three hours' use of a SmartBike. There's no limit on the total number of daily trips, so riders could theoretically tool around all day on the cherry-red cycles.

No matter how long riders use the bikes, though, the city hopes they'll be safe: Each SmartBike member gets a safe-cycling guide, a bike map of the district, and a manual outlining D.C.'s cycling laws. The program doesn't provide helmets, but Sebastian does encourage riders to wear their own.

Riders will also have to provide their own locks, at least for the time being, which might pose potential problems of theft and vandalism (something Paris knows about). Still, the real litmus test will be how much use the program gets in its first few weeks. D.C.'s unseasonably mild August might spur some people to try the bikes. I'm tempted to give it a try this afternoon, if the weather holds.

Once middle-aged British intellectuals started paying to be waterboarded, it was only a matter of time before the controversial interrogation technique became a tourist attraction. Just next to the famous amusement park in Brooklyn's Coney Island, visitors can now experience the new "Waterboard Thrill Ride":

It looks at first like any other shuttered storefront near the boardwalk: some garish lettering and a cartoonish invitation to a delight or a scam — in this case there’s SpongeBob SquarePants saying, “It don’t Gitmo better!”

If you climb up a few cinderblock steps to the small window, you can look through the bars at a scene meant to invoke a Guantánamo Bay interrogation. A lifesize figure in a dark sweatshirt, the hood drawn low over his face, leans over another figure in an orange jumpsuit, his face covered by a towel and his body strapped down on a tilted surface.

Feed a dollar into a slot, the lights go on, and Black Hood pours water up Orange Jumpsuit’s nose and mouth while Orange Jumpsuit convulses against his restraints for 15 seconds. O.K., kids, who wants more cotton candy!

Artist Steve Powers, the installation's creator, intends it to be a provacative political commentary but -- this being Coney Island -- some visitors seem to find it legitimately entertaining.

It's truly disgusting that this freak-show huckster is making a buck by depicting torture for entertainment while the U.S. government is actually practicing these techniques. That's Fox's job!

During the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many social scientists have decried the U.S. Defense Department's lack of cultural sensitivity. Now, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a former president of Texas A&M University, is doing something about it. He has announced Project Minerva, which will fund research by social scientists on topics such as the influence of religion and economics on terrorism.

Rather than welcoming Project Minerva, however, many academics, particularly anthropologists, oppose it. In the recent FP Web exclusive "When Professors Go to War," anthropologist Hugh Gusterson wrote that many anthropologists -- who are in a largely left-leaning discipline -- simply won't stomach being funded by the Pentagon. Thus, those social scientists who do apply for funding will be a thin slice who have no qualms about accepting the Defense Department's money. This will lead to "selection bias," in which only a narrow range of perspectives end up being funded.

In response, Duke University professor Peter Feaver argues this week in "Pentagon Funding? Bring It On." that the challenge of selection bias can be overcome and that Gates is committed to openness and academic freedom. Proposals will be selected on the importance of the topic being investigated and the quality of the methodology -- and not on whether the results will end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy for the military.

What do you all think? Should social scientists be funded by the Defense Department in an effort to bring more cultural sensitivity to the military's methods? Who's right? Gusterson or Feaver?

Boston Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez apparently has great faith in the success of the surge. Look at this press conference brilliance:

I don't care where I play. I can even play in Iraq if need be. My job is to play baseball."

If this latest from Ramirez comes as even a remote surprise to you, you're probably not a baseball fan.

A few weeks back, I blogged a Times of India story about how China's construction boom was driving up iron prices, resulting in widespread theft of manhole covers in Mumbai.

Now, the New York Times is reporting that the epidemic of manhole theft is spreading throughout the United States as well. In Philadelphia alone, 2,500 covers have been stolen in the last year, costing the city at least $300,000. Widespread manhole-cover theft has also been reported in Long Beach, Cleveland, Memphis, Miami, and Milwaukee. Some cities are now switching to plastic covers or welding down the metal ones.

Police are trying to crack down on junkyards, but as one North Philadelphia scrap metal collector reports, the demand curve is not in their favor:

These guys here," Mr. Sergeant said, pointing at one scrap yard, "They’d buy a police cruiser and melt it down if we brought it in. The prices for metal are just that good these days."