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No Responses to “Plus Lots of Travel and Plenty of OT”

1. Dfens Says:
   January 30th, 2008 at 10:19 am

   What a timely topic:
   

   We all have to acknowledge that our problems were in part brought on by the failure of our government to regulate the institutions and markets that are now in crisis. The irresponsible fiscal policies of the past decade have led to a national debt that amounts to $9 trillion. The irresponsible so-called free trade policies of Democratic and Republican administrations over the past three decades have produced a trade debt that now amounts to more than $6 trillion, and that debt is rising faster than our national debt. All of which is contributing to the plunge in the value of the U.S. dollar. At precisely the point in our history in which this nation has become ever more dependent on foreign producers for everything from clothing to computers to technology to energy, our weakened dollar is making the price of an ever-increasing number of imported goods even more expensive. All Americans will soon have to face a bitter and now obvious truth: Our national, political and economic leaders have squandered this nation’s wealth, and the price of this profligacy is enormous, and the bill has just come due for all of us. - Lou Dobbs, CNN

   Of course, Pat Buchanan has something to say about that bill that’s coming due:
   

   America, to pay her bills, has begun to sell herself to the world. Its balance sheet gutted by the subprime mortgage crisis, Citicorp got a $7.5 billion injection from Abu Dhabi and is now fishing for $1 billion from Kuwait and $9 billion from China. Beijing has put $5 billion into Morgan Stanley and bought heavily into Barclays Bank. Merrill-Lynch, ravaged by subprime mortgage losses, sold part of itself to Singapore for $7.5 billion and is seeking another $3 billion to $4 billion from the Arabs. Swiss-based UBS, taking a near $15 billion write-down in subprime mortgages, has gotten an infusion of $10 billion from Singapore. Bain Capital is partnering with China’s Huawei Technologies in a buyout of 3Com, the U.S. company that provides the technology that protects Pentagon computers from Chinese hackers. This self-indulgent generation has borrowed itself into unpayable debt. Now the folks from whom we borrowed to buy all that oil and all those cars, electronics and clothes are coming to buy the country we inherited. We are prodigal sons, and the day of reckoning approaches. - Pat Buchanan, Human Events

   But hey, don’t worry your pretty little head about any of this when you go to vote in the primary election - that is, if you can be bothered to vote in the primary. Don’t vote for your interests, vote for the person with the best hair or the most winning smile. Vote for gender or skin color or political party affiliation. What ever you do, don’t vote for your best interests or those of your country, unless you’re some kind of nut.

2. Dfens Says:
   January 30th, 2008 at 4:33 pm

   You know, it’s not like they’re only outsourcing contractor jobs to f’ing France. They’re outsoucing soldier jobs too. Since that’s what got us into this mess anyway, why would anyone think we’ll stop at outsorcing weapons? If we’ve learned anything from Iraq it’s that getting mercinaries killed is a lot cheaper politically than getting US soldiers killed. This is a trend that’s taking off, not dying.

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