You're welcome. But for the big tub to be added for such filmography to the nautilus would require a re-design...
Posted on 12/09/2004 2:07:54 PM PST by dandelion
It's a great question: why don't we have enough armor? Kind of like it's great to see a contestant win a lot of money on a game show - but it's a LOT better when it's not manufactured.
Fixed. Staged. Chroreographed.
Whatever you want to call it, the news is always better when the reporter doesn't insert himself into the mix, as Edward Pitts has supposedly done.
According to Drudge:
From: EDWARD LEE PITTS, MILITARY AFFAIRS Sent: Wednesday, December 8, 2004 4:44 PM To: Staffers
Subject: RE: Way to go
I just had one of my best days as a journalist today. As luck would have it, our journey North was delayed just long enough see I could attend a visit today here by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. I was told yesterday that only soldiers could ask questions so I brought two of them along with me as my escorts. Before hand we worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor their vehicles going into combat have. While waiting for the VIP, I went and found the Sgt. in charge of the microphone for the question and answer session and made sure he knew to get my guys out of the crowd.
There was this thing, and we called it "journalistic ethics". But enough about ancient history - when the chips go down the press will always say "it doesn't mean the story/question/incident/expense report isn't true". Fair enough, it's a great question and it deserves to go on the editorial page. It does not deserve on the "news" page when a soldier (who was coached by the reporter) is picked by the mic man (who was also coached by the reporter) so other reporters can specifically target an individual with the administration. These Q&A sessions have been held in the past, but always without the Old Media present. This is the reason why.
But on to the great question: yes, they should ask this, and they should get an honest answer. Do you really want to know why we don't have enough armor? Let's find out why Dick Durbin (D, PA) says we don't have any armor...
From the Congressional Record, Feb. 11, 2004. (PDF):
We should do better. I said to the Secretary of the Army: Isn't this a priority? He said: It is our highest priority to build the 8,400 doors for these Humvees. He told me that many will be made in my State at the Rock Island Arsenal . I visited the Rock Island Arsenal and saw the first sets of doors come off for the Humvees, and the workers were so proud. They knew they had done something significant.
I said to the commander at the arsenal : How long will it take us now? We need 8,400 sets and we are also doing them at Anniston. He said: We are going to get these doors built in one year.
One year? In World War II, we were building bombers in 72 hours and ships in 30 and 60 days, and we need 1 year to make the armor-plated doors to protect the Humvees so that fewer of our men and women in uniform will have to go to Walter Reed Hospital for prosthetic devices and medical treatment.
I said: Why is it taking one year? He said: Because there is only one steel-fabricating plant left in America, and it is in Pennsylvania. It makes the steel that we can convert into the armor plating for these doors. We are using everything they produce as fast as they produce it.
So when the issue comes up about loss of manufacturing jobs, and loss of American jobs, and loss of our industrial base, it is more than a cold discussion of statistics; it is a discussion about the reality of our economy and the reality we face. Whether you live in North Carolina, where we have lost textile jobs, or you live in Illinois, where we have lost steel jobs, the fact is, as we lose these jobs, we lose our capacity. When it comes to something as basic as steel, that capacity plays out so that our soldiers in Iraq today are more vulnerable to enemy attack because we cannot produce the steel in America.
What makes this all the more damning is the fact that this information came from a Democrat in the now-dashed hope of making the economy a priority in an election year. Never mind that Durbin never points to the fact that this decimation of American Steel and the manufacturing industry happened as a whole under the Clinton Administration. Obviously, American products should be used to create American Armor, so as to avoid any chance of sabotage or low quality. But now we have to buy the vast majority of our steel from foreign countries, many of whom may disagree with our policies, and to whom we have to pay top dollar. Americans weren't supposed to do that anymore, remember? We were all going to work in those new Hi-Tech industries, we were all going to have cushy high-paying service jobs, so Clinton gave away our manufacturing jobs and all the contracts to foreign governments. Now most of our steel comes from China. Remember?
The real recipient of this question should be ever member of Congress who let American Steel die - NOT Donald Rumsfeld. A real reporter would ask the question of those who are responsible, not send in a stooge to ask it of those they'd like to see blamed for this mess.
Why don't we have armor?
Because we only have ONE American factory that makes steel for our armor, that's why. IF we want more American armor, we need to manufacture more American Steel.
It's really too bad the Old Media doesn't ask this question of those who could do something about it. But it appears they are only interested in manufacturing the news...
Yes. An equal playing field.
Using your own skewed metaphors: "Free Trade": "It's where a group of Communist Uber-Men Politicos use the power of government (in their workers paradise) to set artificially LOW compensation rates in the global "market" so as to "take the hard earned wealth (and industry and technology) from the U.S. citizens and their employers...and put it under Chinese control."
China now holds $500 billion hoarded in U.S. T-Bills. What do you think will happen when they finally allow their Yuan to float up 150% to where it belongs? They just stole IBM's PC division for a billion and change (hey, where are the Sherman Antitrust enforcers nowadays???). $499 billion left to play with, and the year isn't over yet. Lockheed and Boeing will likely be squarely in their sights...
You're welcome. But for the big tub to be added for such filmography to the nautilus would require a re-design...
"They just stole IBM's PC division for a billion and change (hey, where are the Sherman Antitrust enforcers nowadays???). $499 billion left to play with, and the year isn't over yet."
Remember the '80s? When all our real estate was being bought by the Japanese. Got stuck with a bunch of overpriced property just like IBM stuck China.
Remember, by taking over the asset, China is in a position to consolidate, and perhaps monopolize. Transfer any technology they don't already have back to China. For a billion they aren't using anyways. The IBM PC Division was running on razor-thin margins...but it was making money...and had a decisive niche market. Now China will have that niche. And IBM has to cooperate in the use of its name.
By INQUIRER staff: Wednesday 08 December 2004, 07:50
BIG BLUE confirmed it has sold its PC division to Lenovo - barring X86 servers - for $1.25 billion, while taking a 19 per cent share in the Chinese company formerly known as Legend.
The move marks not only the end of IBM's long adventures in the PC business but a clear shift in the centre of gravity of the industry from the US to China.
The $1.25 billion Lenovo will pay is a mixture of cash payments and shares, with Big Blue holding 18.8% of Lenovo's business. IBM will retain the right to provide services for PCs, while the head of its Personal Systems Group will become a top gun in Lenovo once the deal has been approved.
IBM's CEO Sam Palmisano said that Big Blue salesmen would continue to get commission on sales of Lenovo machines and his company would continue to use these machines within its own business.
IBM introduced its rather functionally deficient PC in 1981 and the introduction of Lotus 1-2-3 for the machine made it an option for corporate buyers. The mantra used those days was that no one ever got fired for buying IBM, and personal computers started to become acceptable in business environments.
The growth of the PC in corporate environments catapulted a number of hitherto obscure firms into the limelight, including Intel and Microsoft, and, later on, Compaq and Dell.
Although IBM attempted to forge a partnership with Microsoft in 1987 to create OS/2 as a real OS system rather than the brain dead DOS, eventually that partnership died a death and the Seattle firm decided to push its own graphical environment, Windows.
Despite Big Blue having its own suite of desktop application software, other companies including Lotus, Ashton Tate, Wordperfect, Wordstar, Borland and eventually Microsoft, were able to understand selling such packages far better than IBM. At one time, IBM charged customers well over $1,000 to write PC printer drivers for non-Big Blue devices.
IBM's idea in 1987 was that it could continue to dominate the PC market with the introduction of its own proprietary hardware architecture, MCA. But no one was fooled by that and droves of potential customers flocked to a rapidly growing set of clone PC manufacturers.
Big Blue continued to turn over around $10 billion a year on sales of its notebooks and desktops, and the sale to Lenovo will put the Chinese firm into the third biggest vendor of these machines worldwide after Dell and Hewlett Packard. Ten thousand IBM employees will be transferred to Lenovo, a quarter of those are based in the USA.
"IBM's CEO Sam Palmisano said that Big Blue salesmen would continue to get commission on sales of Lenovo machines and his company would continue to use these machines within its own business."
What a riot! I love it at this point. The IBM snakes I knew from the sixtees and seventies... ha ha. I could tell some stories about how IBM tried to convince the world on their their supposed state of the arts technology during various phases. But I won't. I did once a few days back then decided it was not right. Honest hard working previous or current IBM folks may read it. But IBM continues to work on the premise or so it could appear, that their salesmen are their life blood, which they truley where for many years. You might say they valued their salesmen more then their research scientist. At any rate, I feel sorry for all those that will lose their job at IBM over the next two years or so, once the hatchet yet again starts to fall.
Now wait tell we hear a deal going down for some Chinese company making a deal with Sun Microsystems. Then the gig is really really over folks! Hey then throw in Silicon Graphics, Dow Chemical, shoot, no problem, Zerox, you bet. We can do. It is a bit scarey ah.
The design sure looks polished off, but somehow does not appear so threatning now. Surely Big John Kerrys's back side would not get as ruffled with that "clean hull design".
Look up the spot price of steel and compare it to the start and end of the tarriff. There is no relationship to what doctrinaire free trade theory holds should happen.
You need to start thinking strategically. Strategically, it is important to us to secure the minerals and fuel sources we need, and have the ability to deny them to those who oppose us. SH was an ally of China. Therefore, turning Iraq to a friendly state secures those oil reserves to our ultimate control. China has a serious lack of oil on its own soil, and an inability to project power to secure fields overseas.
People concerned about China here should remember that as long as the Persian Gulf is really an American Gulf, we have the ability to turn off the Chinese oil tap any time we wish.
Same thing with agriculture. Our ability to make China addicted to American and Canadian wheat is also an ability for us to have the upper hand with them. Don't want to play ball in the future? Guess what, your people will starve.
Obviously electric-arc furnaces cannot be progress for the future because there is a much more finite supply of scrap than of iron ore.
A mini-mill is an admission that US Labor laws make mining and smelting of steel an essentially hopeless enterprise for future investment.
I would take exception to the strategic picture you paint. Our strategic posture is brittle, and relies on thin reeds.
China is exporting corn, and a lot of other foodstuffs...its economy is far more robust than most arm-chair tacticians are really appreciating, as they now approach having the largest ship-building complex. And another major weakness. The Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula is not an American Pond...if you hadn't noticed, while we may have nominally supportive titular heads of government, underneath this is seething a huge Islamo-fascist anti-american cauldron....constantly being stirred by Al-Jazeera, Saudi-financed Mullahs and Madrassas ...and the likes of two-faced governments with their state-controlled media such as Egypt, and yes, China.
Consequently, with the help of Jimmy Carter and his ilk (plus likely moles) in the State Dept. and CIA over the last 25 years, we have lost the hearts and minds of all the middle east with the exception of Afghanistan, and Iraq. These are recent, and fragile re-orientations at best. They are still easily swayed by a few Al-Jazeera videos of mosques being shot up. Not dependable at all.
Capital should be mutually accumulating under "free trade"...our firms should becoming wealthier...not progressively selling off their posterity and becoming weaker and weaker. Only the unflinchingly pro-American national security advocates have been accurately predicting all these turns of events.
And the grim future we have forecast is unfolding before our eyes.
Two points:
1. Iraq/Iran for China is not really overseas - they share the same land mass. It is rather the issue of the landroads and pipelines.
2. China has huge reserves of coal. Coal can be liquified and as oil becomes more expensive this can become viable option.
Same thing with agriculture. Our ability to make China addicted to American and Canadian wheat is also an ability for us to have the upper hand with them.
China can make her agriculture more efficient (even Japan with much higher density of population can produce most of Japan's grain). In northern China there are large tracks of land suitable for the wheat cultivation.
"With the demise of Big Blue as a PC manufacturer, I think even the Cato-ists and Von Mises-blindered dogmatists have to concede that something is seriously amiss in their theories."
No, this only confirms the free trade theories. "Big Blue" has demonstrated their total misunderstanding of the PC market from it's inception to today. Remember the "Peanut"? Now, "Big Blue" can focus their captital and talent on other uses that they understand. By focusing on their other products, they have the opportunity to increase their productivity and generate more wealth.
The "Fair Trade" folks would instead have enacted tariffs to protect "Big Blue" and artifically raise consumer costs introducing inefficienies in the market and reducing wealth for all.
There are three main forces at work here.
First, US companies are chomping at the bit to get into China but are having hell tapping the market there. Who else better to do that than the Chinese?
IBM just placed itsself as a rider on a Chinese company being able to effectively tap China. Its much more important to them than selling their PC division.
Two, the PC industry is playing out in large part. Its not what it once was in many ways. Of course it still has life, but PCs are becoming commodity items, especially in the west.
Third, China has a desire to expand from manufacturer to actual businessman. They want to have their corporations with a global reach and fully move up into what other countries have been doing for years. They are in essence wanting to move up the chain into an investor class, of sorts.
There have been several brands of Chinese origins that have done this already, and more are on the way.
In essence IBM is getting rid of its baggage and is picking up part of a company that is dynamic to China. The Chinese are also picking up insta-global presence.
IBM is not reorganizing itself in a helpful way. It is the kind of reorganization more consistent with going out of business altogether. The securities market clearly thinks so.
We should already be getting richer as a country. We are not. We are hemmorhaging wealth in a one-way street to China along with the productive capacity, capacity, engineering, and skills. All that is mounting up on our side is IOU's, Checks drawn on blue sky, and continually confounded and dashed hopes of "buying" a piece of the Chinese "market." It will never happen.
Why? Because the Chinese government intends to make sure that nothing that happens actually benefits U.S. industry. Nothing. This whole excercise is an attempt to bring a huge "wrecking ball" to the U.S. economy...and never let it get back up again as an industrial threat to communism.
I am confidently going to predict right now that IBM will see no profits from this departure from economic reality. The stock market analysts on the Street obviously agrees...
While China might like to muscle in on the investment/business side of things, that, again, is not because they are truly becoming capitalist. It is another front in their attack on our capital equity markets. Another divide-and-conquer ploy. I recommend you read up on some of the Casey Institute studies on this. Closest thing today you will get to see of the old William Casey and Ronald Reagan at work...
"Your theory is flawed."
It's not my theory. "Free trade" is the generally accepted theory among almost all competent economists.
"We are, vis-a-vis China, getting poorer."
Really? I thought we were paying them 'slave wages' to build our nic-nacs. How does a 'slave' getter richer than his master?
Do you have a link to Casey's studies, or are they only in hard-copy?
Some "competent" economists argue that "Free Trade" is a good thing. Other "Competent" economists argue that it ain't necessarily so (e.g., Samuelson.) Don't try to play superiority games.
Further, there is a really good REASON that economists do not rule nations--and it's the same reason that the military does not make final judgments in the US--they have to accept the decision of the civilian CinC.
The debate about 'free' vs. 'fair' is a political debate. The question that the politicians have to answer (ideally, in a responsible fashion) is which of these theories is better for the USA as a whole.
It's clear from you post that you have no CLUE what's going on in Red China. There are no significant "independent" corporate entities over there: all the large and reasonably important ones are actually Gummint-owned or -controlled.
Thus, we have a form of fascism, where the State and Industry (and the Military) are one gigantic entity. Thus, "corporations" do not determine a fair wage--the Gummint sets the wages, conditions, etc.
In the case of PRC, of course, human life and health is about 15th place (and they only really care about the first 10 places...) thus there are no safety, pension, health, enviro, or other controls excercised by the Gummint-Employer.
And the Military takes care of the complainers...
Read a newspaper or book someday. It will prevent you from looking entirely stupid.
"Read a newspaper or book someday. It will prevent you from looking entirely stupid."
I guess you really don't get this. You might start by reading this article. These armor kits are made by government employees at a government arsenal. The arsenal commander says they could produce more but can't get the steel. The steel manufacturer says they could up production by 22% yet the arsenal hasn't asked for more steel. Government employees and a government plant. There is no finer example of the effects of a protected industry.
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