I just read that Obama signed a $680 Billion defense bill that cans the F-22 and other projects he considers “outdated” relics of the Cold War. Then, completely ignoring the fact that this bill doesn’t actually provide any money for anything (it just says how the money they haven’t got yet should be spent), Obama goes on to brag about expansion of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that will take place thanks to the scrapping of the F-22 and other projects.
The official White House line has been that the F-22 was ill suited to insurgent wars in desert environments, which I will admit is a legitimate argument. Members of the Pentagon have also said they believe the termination of the F-22 project was a good idea considering our current military situation.
But while the F-22 is not suited for what we’re doing now, I can’t help but wonder if it was suited to what we will face in the future. While we will be battling the radical wing of Islam for many more years to come, and Islam fights insurgent wars, there is a growing threat of real military power from the Chinese and the Russians. I’ve already mentioned on this site that the Russians are running subs off our Atlantic coast and long range bombers in South America. Thanks to security lapses in the 90’s Chinese engineers are turning out better and better military projects, even going so far as being able to track our subs underwater(thank Slick Willy for that).
Fighting a military style war against military opponents means you have to have things like fighter jets. And with the way technology’s growth is exploding all over the world, we’ll need advanced fighters with advanced avionics and systems just to be able to compete, much less WIN a war.
So, what did Obama’s bill signing do today for future Americans who (I believe) will most assuredly be faced with the threat of military style combat at some point in the next 10-15 years?
It weakened their chances. It weakened our country.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Wage Czar Slashing Wages
Okay fellow capitalists…According to the AP News Wire Obama’s Wage Czar has decided that companies that took the bailout money last year who haven’t paid it back yet, must cut executive salaries by at least half and in some cases up to 90%.
The feds have their fingers in corporate pies and are starting to exercise control. I figure that should a company resist the government (at the point of a figurative gun which is the only way government can operate in business), that business will be flat out taken over by the US Government. Or worse, it will be broken up and management fired then sold off piecemeal if the assets are good enough.
Once again, this proves why business should NEVER HAVE GOTTEN INTO BED WITH THE GOVERNMENT IN THE FIRST PLACE. To the corporations and executives who now have to face this, good luck with that…you should have known better. And to anyone who last year said that people like me were exaggerating about the outcome of government interference in business needs to read up on what’s going on in Corporate America, it is being dismantled wholesale by this administration. Washington is full of looters.
The feds have their fingers in corporate pies and are starting to exercise control. I figure that should a company resist the government (at the point of a figurative gun which is the only way government can operate in business), that business will be flat out taken over by the US Government. Or worse, it will be broken up and management fired then sold off piecemeal if the assets are good enough.
Once again, this proves why business should NEVER HAVE GOTTEN INTO BED WITH THE GOVERNMENT IN THE FIRST PLACE. To the corporations and executives who now have to face this, good luck with that…you should have known better. And to anyone who last year said that people like me were exaggerating about the outcome of government interference in business needs to read up on what’s going on in Corporate America, it is being dismantled wholesale by this administration. Washington is full of looters.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Things are looking up....right? Right?
Polls are beginning to show that most Americans are starting to breathe a little easier these days and employment (August) and consumer spending (September) has gone up recently…so things are looking up right?
Umm…no.
Consumer spending was up, mostly due to Cash For Clunkers. That’s gone now…so now what?
Yesterday CBS had a news story here saying that unemployment claims have gone back up. Wall Street had predicted 180,000 jobs to be cut but 230k were cut instead. Up from August by 29,000 which had been hailed as a sign the economy was getting better but which had only been REVISED down, so it just beat expectations, it wasn’t actually down.
Also, three days ago CBS had a story here talking about Credit Card Companies jacking up their interest rates gearing up for the 800 pages of new rules laid out by the Fed due to take effect in February 2010. Barney Frank is so mad about it that he wants the rules implemented December 1st of this year and is crafting a bill to do just that.
The last paragraph of the story is the only part that’s interesting about it…”The banks are also under mounting pressure. Discover's credit card losses were up 8 percent in August, while Bank of America's were 10 percent and Citigroup's 21 percent. But that's not generating a lot of sympathy from consumers or congress”, illustrating beautifully the thinking of Frank and others. Let’s hinder them going into their biggest season so their losses get even higher for the year. The CC companies never really faltered much last year, despite the fact that the number one consumer debt outside of housing is their credit cards. People are beginning to default on their cards and it’s only going to get worse as unemployment goes up. The companies will panic and raise rates (the new rules just say we have to be told they’re raising them) in huge increments and start collections on people who even smell like a deadbeat. Soon we’ll have a landslide on our hands just like last year and Frank will never admit he helped bring it about at all.
And finally, I found an article here about an economist who is making a lot of sense by saying that the second quarter losses of this year has caused some damage that’s not been felt yet. The article somewhat dismisses him (big surprise since it’s from the Huffington Post), but don’t take it as lightly as they did. I read an interview with this guy a couple of years back where he talked about the coming crash of the housing market. However, not many really believed him much at the time. I believed him then and I believe him now. He’s the one who got me started looking at the housing issue, and I believe he’s one of those that got Glenn Beck looking as well.
Look, the bottom line is that no matter what the Obama backers are saying, we’re nowhere near out of the woods yet if you ask me. We haven’t seen it all and while it may get temporarily better from time to time, there is still more to come.
Umm…no.
Consumer spending was up, mostly due to Cash For Clunkers. That’s gone now…so now what?
Yesterday CBS had a news story here saying that unemployment claims have gone back up. Wall Street had predicted 180,000 jobs to be cut but 230k were cut instead. Up from August by 29,000 which had been hailed as a sign the economy was getting better but which had only been REVISED down, so it just beat expectations, it wasn’t actually down.
Also, three days ago CBS had a story here talking about Credit Card Companies jacking up their interest rates gearing up for the 800 pages of new rules laid out by the Fed due to take effect in February 2010. Barney Frank is so mad about it that he wants the rules implemented December 1st of this year and is crafting a bill to do just that.
The last paragraph of the story is the only part that’s interesting about it…”The banks are also under mounting pressure. Discover's credit card losses were up 8 percent in August, while Bank of America's were 10 percent and Citigroup's 21 percent. But that's not generating a lot of sympathy from consumers or congress”, illustrating beautifully the thinking of Frank and others. Let’s hinder them going into their biggest season so their losses get even higher for the year. The CC companies never really faltered much last year, despite the fact that the number one consumer debt outside of housing is their credit cards. People are beginning to default on their cards and it’s only going to get worse as unemployment goes up. The companies will panic and raise rates (the new rules just say we have to be told they’re raising them) in huge increments and start collections on people who even smell like a deadbeat. Soon we’ll have a landslide on our hands just like last year and Frank will never admit he helped bring it about at all.
And finally, I found an article here about an economist who is making a lot of sense by saying that the second quarter losses of this year has caused some damage that’s not been felt yet. The article somewhat dismisses him (big surprise since it’s from the Huffington Post), but don’t take it as lightly as they did. I read an interview with this guy a couple of years back where he talked about the coming crash of the housing market. However, not many really believed him much at the time. I believed him then and I believe him now. He’s the one who got me started looking at the housing issue, and I believe he’s one of those that got Glenn Beck looking as well.
Look, the bottom line is that no matter what the Obama backers are saying, we’re nowhere near out of the woods yet if you ask me. We haven’t seen it all and while it may get temporarily better from time to time, there is still more to come.
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