CARS Program

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My friend happened to come visit last week and pulled up in a new vehicle. I’m not a “vehicle” person, but her wheels were so sharp, that I couldn’t help but take notice. They weren’t sporty or flashy, but stylish and effective for the job she needed them for. I have to admit it, we’ve been friends since we were in second grade, and she’s always been the trailblazer of the two of us.

So when she left, it was natural for me to check out her purchase. I’ve been toying with the idea of changing my wheels and when I read about her vehicle, I was sold. It was exactly what I had been looking for, but didn’t know existed. I need tow power, but do not want to drive a truck or a clunky vehicle, and this was a perfect option!

Vintage toy car

Read moreSo I started checking online for pricing and called some dealers. I didn’t know anything about the CARS program, so I did some reading on it and found my old vehicle qualifies for the program (though in the end, I found mine will get more money on the used market than for CARS). If you go through the government website, it will tell you if your exact vehicle qualifies and how much you will receive. I then called dealers to talk about it, and the first salesman I got on the phone told me I didn’t qualify.

To convince me, he showed me a statement online for class 2 vehicles, knowing full well that I had a class 1. He made me doubt my vehicle qualified. It was clear he wanted to get rid of me. Either he thought the paperwork for the program wasn’t worth his time, or he knew they had no inventory to sell (since lots are basically empty and pre-ordered cars are all sold already), so why bother? When I verified my vehicle qualified, I called back and had him paged, and you can guess, he didn’t ever pick up. He wasn’t interested no matter what. He knew he gave me a line of crap!!

Needless to say, I was annoyed.

When money changes hands, be careful. People will tell you anything!

Next we went to CARMAX and test drove the vehicle. By the way, CARMAX verified my vehicle qualified and they wanted it! Of course, I didn’t want to give it up. It wasn’t worth it for me.

Anyway, CARMAX didn’t have exactly what I wanted so we came home and I got more price quotes. The prices seemed high for the vehicles (even at CARMAX), so I did some more research. What I found was a pricing guide online that took actual sales and charted them out, for my exact vehicle. It averaged 1200 sales records. With that, you can see what others paid and what is a fair price. You can see an example here (click on Get Pricing Analysis).

Low and behold, the dealerships where I was calling or visiting were all charging on average around $3,000 more than the sticker price, which was, you guessed it, $3,000 higher than what most people had purchased this vehicle for. You can assume that the statistics are from sales prior to the CARS program.

I was like what the hell?! I tried to negotiate, but hit a dead wall. The dealerships are taking away all the incentive and those who don’t even want to participate in the program will be paying top dollar, if they buy a car now. It’s supply and demand, and the dealerships know people will pay, because they think they are getting a deal, even though the reality is, they are not! The dealership and salesman are!! They are realistically giving you $500, but I wouldn’t doubt that gets sucked in somewhere, too!

Do you think this is honest?

The CARS program should have taken this into account as we the citizens, are getting hosed again, if you want my opinion.

I’m delaying my purchased until the CARS program ends. Maybe then they will have ramped up production on the vehicles and they won’t have buyers, which will hopefully drive prices down to near factory invoice again, which will save me thousands!! Literally.

There is always a catch, if you do your homework. Money doesn’t come for free often, and when it does, you can be assured the sharks will come out and feed big time. It’s a feeding frenzy, at the expense of the average citizen. No surprise, for me, sadly.

Devising A Plan

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I’ll never forget one memory I have of my dog Lucy that absolutely astounded me and I think it will astound you, too. Lucy was a brilliant dog on many levels, and she had one of the keenest intellect I have ever seen in a dog.

We were eating dinner one night about eight or nine years ago, and it must have been something Lucy really loved because out of the blue with total silence around us, she started to bark and went running to the front door. My husband I both looked at each other. It’s dark outside, and there were no noises, so we wondered what she was barking at.

Read moreOddly, she barked three or four times, and then came circling around the living room and back into the kitchen–promptly sitting in the beg position, where our other dog Charlie had previous sat. He was now barking at the front door endlessly convinced someone was out there. We figured we just didn’t hear whatever it was, and we went back to finishing our meal, which included sharing nibbles with each dog, but now Charlie was out in the entry way barking–missing his share, and Lulu was now getting bites from both my husband and me. At first I didn’t pick up on it.

Then as Charlie returned because no one materialized, our little rascal Lucy did it again. She ran off around the living room this time, which was not a direct route to the front door, and started barking again. It was odd behavior.

This time I decided to figure out what this was all about, so I hightailed it in behind her and watched her, unknown to her. What I saw perplexed me. She stopped barking for a second, and stood there looking around. She didn’t look out the door like she normally did. Instead, she looked left and then right, and then barked again off into nowhere. If you weren’t paying attention, you might have thought she flipped her lid mentally. But when she saw Charlie, who was always slower to come running around the corner, she turned around like “Good! I gotta ya, fool!” and took off back to the kitchen with intent and purpose!

I was like,”What the heck is going on here?” She startled when she ran into me in the doorway to the kitchen, watching her. I could sense this feeling of “Oh no” from her and out of the blue, she turned back to look at the door and barked once again as if to say there really is something out there. Then she looked at me. I wasn’t buying it!! It was clear to me there was no one out there, and she and I both knew it. She then promptly followed me into the kitchen and proceeded to beg.

When something is outside, she is usually so roweled up that we can’t pull her away from the door for anything. I knew instantly there was a change in her behavior.

At first I was perplexed, but as soon as Charlie came in again to get his fair share and she ran off barking again, I saw a pattern. She realized if she could fake Charlie out with a false bark, he would get distracted for a reasonable amount of time, and she could then go and get his nibbles because he was out of the kitchen. She’d get twice the bites– because now she could beg from both of us, without any competition. We watched poor Charlie go barreling to the front door, thinking she had sounded a true alarm, and he’d bark for 4 or 5 minutes before finally giving up and realizing he was missing food.

Our little stinker Lucy devised a plan, and must have realized that if she lied and acted like there was someone at the door, her slower companion mutt would fall for it, and she would get all the goods! We watched her repeated it several more times. Her body language was clearly “off” as was the tone of her voice for an alert bark at the door. She was trying to fool all of us and nearly did!

Science has uncovered that animals lie in the wild to gain the upper hand when it comes to food, mating and survival. Here is an article that talks about deception in the animal world. Who knew Dolphins lied, too? Have you ever seen your dog pull a fast one?

Trying to Fake Me Out

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Naturally, you can guess, when people know I am a lie detector, one thing they do is try to fake me out with a lie, jokingly, to see if I will catch it, and my husband is no exception.

Yesterday, I was out and about with a friend, and when I came home, I asked my hubby if he sat outside and relaxed. Before I left, I told him it would do him wonders if he did, so I was hoping, when I came back, that he did just that. He needed some fresh air (after painting my office, of course!).

Read moreHe was standing over a huge, delicious pan of lasagna when I asked him, “Did you take some time to relax today?” He was looking down, trying to cut a piece and serve it.

He said very seriously, “No, I didn’t.”

His face was as still as a piece of wall art. I was in the dark for a second. Then he said “No, I didn’t” again, and in an instant, something caused the lower portion of the center of his left eyebrow to twitch in a flash.

“Ah!,” I said as I grabbed my plate of lasagna from him. “You did sit out. I am so glad to know that. Do you know your eyebrow just twitched and gave you away?”

My husband look up at me, grinned and looked left and then right and said, “It did?”

I smiled and sat down at the table to share Sunday dinner. “That was amazing,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that one before.”

Unless my husband happened to get an involuntary body twitch at the exact precise moment of his lie, there was no other explanation for him to show a sign of tension like that. I think he was working so hard to prevent himself from making any smirks or smiles that his face was so tense, it hiccuped.

So, while I couldn’t be 100% certain it was a lie by his twitch only, the odds were quite high that it was, and when I told him it was and he smiled, I knew for sure that I had called it right on the money.

The odds were low that he experienced an involuntary twitch at that precise moment, and more than that, they were low because the twitch didn’t repeat itself–which is common for the average twitch we all experience, without reason, from time-to-time.

I am so grateful my husband thinks that my abilities are something to poke fun at, and he is very playful about it. That is a big blessing!

Are you a confident lie catcher?

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Here is an interesting fact I had heard several years ago that I thought was quite interesting. I never would have guessed this:

Studies investigating lie detectors’ confidence in their decision making typically reveal three findings. First, there is usually no significant relationship between confidence and accuracy (see DePaulo, Charlton, Cooper, Lindsay, & Muhlenbruck (1997) for a meta-analysis).

Second, confidence scores amongst professional lie catchers are typically high (Allwood & Granhag, 1999; DePaulo & Pfeifer, 1986; Strömwall, 2001; Vrij, 1993) and police officers are sometimes found to be more confident than lay people (Allwood & Granhag, 1999; DePaulo & Pfeifer, 1986) (source).

Do you think you are good at spotting lies?

A Study of Honesty: Captain Sullenberger

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Last night, CBS 60 Minutes’ Katie Couric interviewed the hero pilot, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, of Flight 1549 which crashed into the Hudson three weeks ago.



If you want to see the remainder of the interview, go to CBS’s website.

Read moreIt is simply fascinating to watch Sully speak, and to listen to him talk to air controllers in the moments before impact. His voice is incredibly focused, and out-of-this-world calm, considering that he is at the helm of an aircraft that is disastrously malfunctioning and over one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Add to that, it is his actions that will ultimately decide not only if he lives or dies, but whether another 155 souls survive as well.

Sully has great control over his emotions. He is a man who lives his life by reason and logic. I am sure those who know him well would tell us he has always been an emotional rock. He is and always was in control. And he remained in control and kept his wits about him under the most harrowing of circumstances. It’s simply amazing.

Not only was he amazing in his focus and control, but even after everyone had disembarked from the sinking aircraft, and Sully was on dry land, he still wasn’t at peace until he could truly confirm, again, that all souls on board had made it out alive and were safe. And that was after he walked the empty plane twice before he disembarked! He is truly a remarkable man: a man of deep ethical values (Did you see this?).

As Sully puts it himself, he believed his life experiences leading up to that day were all there to help him in these critical moments.

Yet when we watch the the majority of Sully’s interview, his emotions are muted, and his expressions are minimal. He stares at the camera and the audience intently as he recalls his story, and very uniquely, he almost never breaks his gaze as he recollects and talks of his ordeal that day. He doesn’t habitually look up or down as most people do when they recall things. At one point, Sully even says the experience was unbelievable, and when he does, he shakes his head from side to side.

Captain Sully gives us what most would people would consider a heap of red flags that hint at dishonesty, if we didn’t know he was telling the truth here. He experienced a horrific nightmare that ended almost magically, and yet Sully shows very little emotions until the end of the show.

I personally think Sully still hasn’t come to terms with everything that has happened. He is still processing it, trying to make sense of it, and perhaps still in shock. He even commented that he has lost sleep because he wasn’t sure he could not have done things better! Simply unbelievable.

For me, all of Sully’s behaviors are genuine and true because they match his personality. If I didn’t know the truth here, I would likely hone in on the truth, due to what I call paralleling. When I look at Sully, I get an immediate sense of his personality. His facial features and emotions identify to me that he is a man who is very humble, giving and kind. I would be able to confidently speculate, based on that, that he is a man who is reserved, without an ego, and without a temper. He is quieter than most and with that, I would not be surprised by his lack of expression or emotion. It would not stand out to me.

So next time you see a clue or two, think twice before saying “deceptive”. You may convict an incredible human being, like Sully, if you don’t know the nuances of personality and behavior.