obama speach - Page 5

Exactly.  Go talk to Gingrich about that.

 

News is reporting unemployment rate dropped to 8.3% in January.  Still not great, but at least it's falling.  American laying off employees?  What do you expect?  The airline industry has been getting killed due to high fuel prices and fewer people wanting to get nickeled and dimed with stupid baggae fees, premium seat fees, and every other piddly fee they can think of.  Why should we keep 80,000 troops on the payroll when we're not involved in a major military engagement?

 

 Because I don't want to have to learn Chinese.

look I'm not one to knock the integrity of our economic reporting agencies.  But I find it real real hard to buy that a million people stopped looking for work in december...

especially after having to learn spanish......

Isn't it reasonable to expect that as we get out of 1(Iraq) and then 2 (Afganastan) wars, that spending on actual troops should drop to a post war status?  

 

I'm no expert but, while we should be spending on technology, I think it would be hard to justify keeping a wartime troop force (and their families) on the payroll when the wars are over. We have an active military of 1.5 mil, and another 1.5 reserves.  What exactly would all those personnel be doing during peacetime?

 

 

 

 

Train, deploy to LA during Katrina...
 

 

Iran is making war-talk. They would be idiots to challenge us in a conventional fight, but how easy would it be for operatives to blend into the normal traffic and hit us where it hurts?

Plausible deniability would be a major part of the strategy of course.

Same as they did prior to is invading Afganistan and Iraq.  Now if you want to reduce our presence in the UN and reduce overseas bases then we can easily cut the desired number of troops over time.
 

 

You know part of the job of the military is to sit there and look foreboding... 

That's actually the Air Force Strategic motto:  Peace through deterrence.  It won the largest war in history, the cold war.

They are fudging the unemployment numbers but you can only do that for so long. Unless the economy really picks up this spring this is going to snap back on 0bama just as the election is heating up. If the CBO's long term estimate is right the economy is going to slow down the 2nd half of this year. If they are right we could see unemployment rising again end of summer.

 

The thing people don't realize is how much of our economy was based on the booming housing market. Flippers and people using their home like a credit card through home equity loans and lines of credit was providing a whole lot of economic activity that we'll never see at that level again. I personally think we are still a couple years away from the economy resetting itself enough to get unemployment a whole lot lower.

The company I work for sees basic manufacturing trends a good 3 months before the pundits have a clue.

 

We supply engineered foam filters that are used to make high temp ceramic filters (through lost mold casting...sorta) that are used in foundries to cast everything that starts out as molten metal. Every engine block, every brake caliper, every motor housing, every every...goes through one of these filters.

 

When our customers, who supply basic manufacturing slows down, three months later all manufacturing dips.

 

Make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position.....

 

 

Not to get way way off the topic here.  But there is a reason we haven't had a world war 3.  And I think the A-bomb is one of the deciding factors.  

 

You know, the Japanese, were planning on terminating all the POWS in their camps once we invaded, and basically after we dropped 2 bombs on em.  Said you know what, we're not going to do that after all...  There is absolutely value in just the ability of using force, vs actually having to use it.  (for the most part people aren't going to die for a losing cause...)

If those two wars were to end today. Combat pay alone would save 350,000,000 a month. Factor in, that some troops, depending on deployment, also receive their checks free of federal income taxes. Also factor in, that during these times of wars, any soldier with dependents can place a portion of his check into a savings plan set up specifically for this at a 10% rate of return. So realistically, just the troop costs alone would save us almost 500,000,000 a MONTH.

These same troops were on the payroll before the war...for the most part. Without reducing the number of troops, we would save billions a year. There is no way a reduction in troops is the answer or the right move. Most of the military cost comes from base operations on a daily basis. upkeep and what not. I would say a few base closures here and there with troop redeployment is a better cost savings than troop reductions.

One of the vendors that comes to my store is eliminating a marketing department. As of March, 2300 jobs will be gone.