This semi-regular column is written (in his own blood) by an automotive sage and noted malcontent known as The Mechanic. Mercilessly beaten as a child with rolled-up back issues of old car magazines, our free-spoken hero developed a unique "for your own good" take on cars and the auto industry, along with an unfortunate habit of setting himself ablaze. Later, after a distinguished career as an automotive journalist and magazine editor, he cast off the reins of his musty oppressors, carved out his superego with a plastic spork and became The Mechanic.

On his way back from Iraq yesterday, President Bush said his administration would likely scrape enough funds from the banking bailouts to see GM, Ford and Chrysler through at least the next few months.

This was only hours after some crazed, and dare I say it, ungrateful, Iraqi newspaper reporter threw his shoes at the man (apparently shoe-throwing is the ultimate insult in Iraq) in protest.

This is a good thing. The bailout money, not the shoe-throwing. President Bush knows -- as I do, you do and Barack Obama does -- that the American auto industry may have had its proverbial head up its proverbial *** for decades, but it's still worth saving. It's worth saving because America with an auto industry is a better America.

And I'm not talking about jobs here, or economic ripples that will affect every single person in this country negatively. I'm talking about a great America. And a great America makes cars.

Maybe I'm blinded by my passion for the automobile and my patriotism for the greatest country the world has ever known, but nobody, and I mean nobody has been able to explain to me how America is better off with a bankrupt auto industry. Not the pundits on the 24-hour news channels, not the car-hating columnists at the country's big newspapers, not the liberal greenies that surround me in Southern California. Nobody.

Not even you, the Inside Line readers, have been able to convince me that we're all better off if GM, Ford, Chrysler and the UAW take their collective medicine and pay for their seemingly endless run of bad management decisions with extinction. I know not all of you out there feel that way, but many of you do. Those who do swore off domestic cars years ago for one reason or another, some justified, and they'd figure no auto American industry is better than a sick one pushing cars like the Pontiac G3, the Dodge Caliber and the Mercury Grand Marquis.

Well, they're wrong.

Don't get me wrong; nobody should spend their hard-earned money on turds like the G3, the Caliber and the Merc, but I'm here to say that the American auto industry needs to live and if tax dollars must be spent to save it, then we should spend them. When you consider all the waste in Washington, the flushing of our tax dollars to fund bridges to nowhere (both figuratively and literally), saving the U.S. auto industry is without a doubt a better use of our funds. Don't you think?

Consider what your tax dollars fund. When was the last time you complained about the $3,478,000 spent on the harbor seal and stellar sea lion protection program, or the $82,164,000 that funds bypass facilities for migratory salmon and steelhead fish at the dams along the Columbia River, not to mention the $984,000 that went to the University of Oklahoma in Norman for the large-scale application of single-wall nanotubes or the $492,000 given to the Rolls-Royce Fuel Cell System (U.S.) Inc. to fund development at the Fuel Cell Prototyping Center at Stark State College of Technology in Canton. This last one is really aggravating when you realize that the Rolls-Royce Group reported a net profit of $1.2 billion in 2007.

Or how about the $1,648,850 or your money the senators from Illinois, including Barack Obama, secured for the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. Man, these freakin' fish are costing us a fortune.

Enough is enough. Call your senator, tell him or her to cut all this crap and save the Detroit Three.

Maybe, just maybe, with a little luck, some smart management decisions and an optimistic public willing to give GM, Ford and Chrysler another chance, they can be the Big Three again. I hope I live to see it. -- The Mechanic, Inside Line Contributor