The claims of barbarity being part & parcel of the policies carried out by the American military is the common fodder of the liberal media, watchdog groups like Amnesty International & Doctors without borders, terrorist movements like Hamas, Hezballah, & AlQueda, and even governments of the second and third world. Not to mention depending upon political season even other governments of the first world decry American actions as being ones based upon barbarity and needless force.
The screaming of our barbarism is commonplace enough to have even effected Ornery. For example look up Murdock and his replete series of threads where he proposed and advocated that the American military is simply killing a million Iraqis without even a moment's thought. And many of you here who still contribute joined the argument behind such claims. Charges of rape, murder, thievery, extortion, and common battery were all just part of how the vast majority of our military conducted itself day to day.
The fact is that our military was exceptional in that we didn't have the issues either the British or Australians had in terms of charges of abuse and brutality towards civilians to the degree and initiation they did. And it was their own domestic media that pushed for and demanded their withdrawals partly because there were rapes, murders, thievery, battery, and extortion being committed multiple times by their own forces. Whereas the American forces were not guilty of such things. Of course we were guilty of far worse by taking pictures of naked piles of men who were being humiliated in an attempt to stop the perception by the insurgents that being a member of jihad was without penalty.
Knowing that if you were caught you would be paraded in front of female Americans naked & forced to wear women's thong underwear had a massive crippling effect upon insurgents wanting to continue the fight. Even the issue of the trumped up and ultimately revealed to be a hoax example of what truly would have been violence towards a prisoner just barely would have crossed the lines of battery. Yet we tried, convicted, and imprisoned nearly 50 soildiers/sailors/& CIA agents for things that even our allies don't bat an eye at.
Fact is our military is an anomaly amongst the standing armies of the world, with the plausible exception of Israel, in that we do the least harm to civilians during engagements and deployments. It really is a record that has no equal compared to what has gone before in history. You want to know what our military holds dear and important about the issue, mission, and policies?
Try reading some of the stuff Stray wrote about how they treated civilians. He could easily have been a shoot first ask questions later kind of person. But he was surrounded by people who also thought the only way to be successful was to conduct engagements with the civilians in as peaceful a manner as possible even if it ultimately meant that that generosity and civility would be taken advantage of by an enemy which saw no problem killing civilians as long as some Americans died as well.
The School of the Americas taught soildiers from nearly every country in the world that the military should be a tool of last resort controlled by civilian laws. People come to us to learn how to have a civilian controlled military which doesn't routinely brutalize civilians.
Unfortunately, what we have tried to teach and routinely practice as a military has yet to catch on in the majority of the world. You want to talk rape & murder? Try looking into Sri Lanka, the Philippines, North Korea, Congo, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Zambia, Nigeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India- hell just about any other military currently engaged in the world to see REAL RAPE & MURDER as policy.
You know who conflates the almost incident free performance of the American military when dealing with civilians? People without perspective who find that the half dozen improper policy executions in regard to civilians comitted by Americans must be morally equivelent to the thousands of deaths and rapes daily commited by other militaries as policy goals.
I found a total of 8 American soilders who have been implicated in three rapes in Iraq since the war began. Two of the soildiers convicted were not even aware of the rape being done by people under their command but are still in jail because they did not control their men.
That speaks volumes as to our performance and destroys any argument that rape is a policy of the American military.
Of course finding concrete evidence of Americans murdering civilians is almost impossible due to the fact that googling "American Military murdering Iraqis" brings up so much left wing drivel that we have systematically "murdered" at least 1 million civilians that you can hardly find the three examples that were investigated and the one that was prosecuted but ultimately found to be baseless in Haditha.
I guess if you BELIEVE RAPE IS POLICY then the objective facts that rape is not policy don't matter. Nor does it matter that our behavior in not Raping and Murdering is seen as a concrete example of our weakness as far as our enemies are concerned, while also being an example of our uncontrolled imperialism when judged by our liberal media and politicians at home and amongst our allies.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/168/37155.html
Read this and then tell me how anyone can fairly claim Rape & murder are policy.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Military Rape & Murder in Iraq.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Obama's Supreme Court Nominee
Is she worthy of the office?
She has had four cases ruled on in the Supreme Court of the USA. Three times she was overturned on Constitutional grounds. One time she was upheld. She has a new case that should be brought before the Supreme Court in the upcoming term concerning the fire fighters. That will make it her 5th case to be reviewed by the Supreme Court of the USA.
I have issues with her rulings and the basis for those rulings. I don't want case law enshrined for moral reasons ala Roe v Wade. It appears to me that she is a type of Justice who has a personal agenda large enough to edge her towards convolution of case law to make something she agrees with to be Constitutionally valid. We don't nee another justice on the court who will willingly engage in the style of legal sophistry that brings forth asinine rulings like Roe v Wade that most people- regardless of what you think about abortion- find to be a fundamentally flawed ruling that has had the unintended effect of conflating Abortion into one of the single most divissive political issues.
So yeah its 5, she has some problems, and I really don't agree that she is qualified in terms of her judicial ruling accumen or her ability to look at precedent, settled case law, and the legal constitutional basis compared to what the appelants want to settle.
I don't think she is qualified to do it based upon her track record, her racist remarks, her advocacy for a group whose members frequently demonstrate in the street calling for amnesty & reclamation of USA territory, and I find it insulting to a large degree that she thinks just because she has personally been discriminated against she is so sensitive to such abuse that she sees no problem in inflicting reverse discrimination by way of judicial rulings and vacating.
So yeah I got real issues with her legal competency.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Justice Department Motions for Dismissal of Voter Intimidation Convictions
The Justice Department does stand for protection of the right of citizens to vote. It even won its case- proving in trial that the men were guilty of voter intimidation.
The crux of the outcome however is racial. The NBPPSD could be counted upon to get out the vote for Democrats- and Obama- by what many at the time called outright intimidation and fear mongering. It was poopooed at the time by Obama's supporters. Obama is simply directing his JD to not uphold the law because in this case it was of direct advantage to his being elected and presumably he wants to make sure that in cities where the NBPPSD is powerful will again deliver vote blocks that will keep Obama in power during the next election.
Very cut and dry.
This is the "Change We Can Believe In" that about half of the voters voted for. I hope that you are all enjoying the progressive installation of a traditional fascist system. He took over your banks. He took over your mercantile exchange markets. He is about to take over your health care. And he is in the process of ensuring that the automotive industry becomes part of a corporative state structure where the government directly owns private firms while also assuring that the unionized labor groups are beholden to the continuation of government influence in exchange for 50% ownership of non-governmental stock.
It truly is breathtaking.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Legalize Illegals and Save Healthcare
You know we have done the whole "Let us simply declare illegals legal and then become serious about controlling the borders..." bit three times. And each time, the sudden legalization results in no improvement in the continuation of illegal immigration and has always resulted in a net drain on social entitlements now "legally" paid to the former illegals. Making illegals legal so they are qualified for government health care entitlements won't solve the medical cost gaps we have now.
If I thought legalizing them would work, I'd be all for it.
Understand this simple and indisputable point. If you seal the borders, expel current illegals, and introduce a sane streamlined and simple immigration policy to legally allow people to come to the country, you would in turn see many- if not all- problems caused by having 10-15 million illegals draining entitlements of funding cease to be a problem. Over night if you adopted my point 3 solution, hospitals could resume their former charity towards those legally in the country who no have no other access to emergency health care.
It really is that simple.
ANY PLAN ADVOCATED BY ANYONE THAT DOES NOT ADDRESS ILLEGAL ALIEN COSTS INCURRED BY HEALTH CARE IS EITHER A SHAM OR A POLITICAL PAYOFF.
Period. End of story. Access to health care is not the issue. Thanks to national and state laws, anyone needing health care is granted that care regardless of the cost of that care or their ability to pay. The problem is that illegals after receiving such health care do not provide the hospitals with any means of service recovery even on a wholesale basis. The result is hospitals are either shutting down or instituting draconian measures against one of the few costs they can control- namely employee compensation and doctor reimbursements.The hospitals are collectively telling their workers to work for less because between 10 and 30% of the customers do not pay a dime.
Watch as Obama's Health plan suddenly includes a unionization plan to set national wage standards and force unionization as a means to effect a controlled spending environment. It will be a boon to the AFL/CIO, but won't save a cent and put the nail in the coffin of people having an economic incentive to become a health care worker.
You think there are health care access problems now? Wait until the nursing and doctor shortage becomes exacerbated by the fact that 10 years of schooling and hundreds of thousands of dollars of tuition debt makes no sense if it only nets you a job that makes you 50k a year and is no longer a profession but instead a regulated skilled trade governed by a national union.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
National Health Care
Actually a lot of people choose not to have health care. The bulk of people who are legal citizens or aliens without healthcare coverage also happen to be between 18 and 25 years of age. The time in people's lives where short of a catastrophic accident, they tend not to need even a doctors visit. It is also the time in people's lives where they get starter jobs and have other priorities to pay for such as housing or taking a cue from Tommy, beer money.
The 40 odd million uninsured that keeps getting bandied about is made up of between 10 and 15 million illegals, 20 odd million young adults, and 10 million people who could truely be considered to be without health care due to economics or chronic conditions that make it impossible to get private insurance.
If you want to fix health care...
1 Institute a mandatory insurance pool for otherwise omitted pre-existing chronic disease.
2. Replace the current medicare/medicaid payment system with one that pays net 15 days, pays the actual cost of procedures, and criminalizes abuse by both patient and provider in cases of fraud with draconian mandatory prison terms.
3. In cases of illegals receiving health care, if they are incapable of paying
If you do those 3 things healthcare would effectively cover the 10 million people who need it but cannot get it. It would solve the problem of private insurance subsidizing the unrecovered expenses of Medicare/Medicaid. And would eliminate the current drain of funds from most large hospitals as a result of treating illegal aliens.
It doesn't take a National Healthcare plan to solve these problems. And if you did enact a National Health Plan as offered by Obama, it specifically does not address these three problems and potentially exacerbates problems 2 and 3.
Automotive Concept Cars Don't Work
Well taking a cue from Great Britain's TopGear television magazine, the reason why no one wants American cars is because they tend to have very poor fit and finish, have cheaply configured and produced sub-assemblies, and have woefully antiquated engines.
It really is that simple.
If you like cars, expect them to last at least a decade, want minimal upkeep costs, and expect that the fit and finish of your car to be at a minimum an A- execution, then most American cars will not fit those parameters. The concept car of the future offered ever single year at the Detroit Automobile Show was always that---a concept for the future. Things like engine control, multivarible port injection, advanced drivetrains, active suspensions, integrated advanced safety, advanced fuel types, and even green technology implementation of car life-cycles were all something the Big 4 offered.
Except year after year, the concept vehicles never seemed to come into an recognizable existence. When they did you got vehicles like the Aztec which was a nightmarish amalgamation of plastic body panels glued on to a truncated truck chassis or it was something like a Prowler which is a great car that sold well but would never be more than a niche car with a cult following. You cannot maintain a company as a broad market competitor if most of its cars are ill-conceived to the point that few buy it because it serves no obvious purpose.
Why buy an Aztec? It isn't a passenger coup. It isn't a truck. It isn't an SUV. It doesn't go very fast either on or off road. It was just a very ugly car that people talked about after seeing it in concept at the auto show circuit. GM mistakenly thought that the "buzz" and "gravitas" surrounding the Aztec concept meant people would buy it. Obviously they didn't.
But the irony is that while Detroit dwindled from the Big 4 to the Big 3, to the Big 1 with two destitutes, the rest of the world manufacturers were doing something other than just building concept cars that caught people's interest. Detroit collectively saw concept cars as they had since the 1950's. A concept car was intended to bring image branding to the market perception. When Detroit built a concept car, it wasn't intended as a proof of concept that would indicate the future engineering and styling cues to be expected on production cars. Also compounding this problem was the simple fact that the Detroit automakers did not engage in competitive racing on multiple levels. Meaning the rate of innovation in American production cars was almost exclusively the result of a handful of American designers and engineers who had somehow managed to eek out small micro niches of competitive motorsport in the Detroit factories.
Oldsmobile, Corvette, and Chrysler Vipers were the only remaining venues of direct competion left where the world leading manufactures were pitted in true competitive racing. And for all you NASCAR fans, realize something. NASCAR is now a very staid formula competition where the only difference between the cars comes down to the stickers on the fender wells and what decals get put on the front end to signify a "manufacturer. Aside from engine blocks, NASCAR has little to do with development or unlimited competitive adaptation during racing. Meaning it became Detroit's favored venue of "competition".
Unfortunately for Detroit, this form of competition yielded nothing in terms of technology or reliability that could be diverted back to the manufacturing of passenger cars. Like the concept cars made by Detroit, the choice to virtually exclude itself from competitive racing resulted in a situation where there was little benefit aside from marketing penetration.
In 1998 Toyota made a conscious decision to become the #1 automobile maker in the world in three respects. The first was in total numbers of vehicles sold. The second was in total net sales volume. And the third was to be the ultimate manufacturer in Formula One. By some estimates Toyota Formula One Team Motorsports has spent no less than $1.2 Billion in the last 11 years.
What did they get?
Well for starters they did get the world's most advanced car design center in Germany, with the wind tunnels and super computers to go with it. They also became very advanced in composite engineering and manufacturing. Having gone from 10 cylinder to 8 cylinder engines to the now required 16,000 RPM limited 8 Cylinder engines that must last 4 races in a row, Toyota directly imparted the design and reliability lessons learned from racing to their current passenger cars. Electronic engine management and multivarible transmission shifting technology went straight from their race cars to their passenger cars. They also got laughed at for generally finishing at the back of the pack for 10 straight years.
Until this year. Toyotas are now the terror of the Formula One campaign. BMW, McClaren Mercedes, FIAT Ferrari, and Renault are all now witnessing the results of driving competitively with a goal of excellence no matter the cost. And it is also translating into Toyota becoming the leader in numbers of cars sold and getting close to eclipsing Porsche as the world's most profitable car maker.
When consumers look at cars, almost all of them are simply looking for a reliable cost effective means of transport that meets their expectation of durability and usability. There are some who demand far more in terms of the vehicle being a pinnacle of some sort. Be it pure speed like a Buggati, style of a Citroen, ruggedness of a Pinzaguar, or durability & practicality of a SEAT. But almost without exception, the leading manufacturers are very similar to what Enzo Ferrari maintained as the reason for making passenger cars.
Put simply, Enzo Ferrari built cars for sale to consumers so that he could afford to build and race cars competitively in the leading motorsports competitions around the world. If you doubt it consider the examples. Porsche-Volkswagen-Audi own Lemans, Gruppe B & GT racing. Fiat Ferrari owns formula One. BMW owns track racing. Citroen owns WRC racing. Mercedes owns DTM, Formula One, and Truck racing. Renault is a bit down on its luck in Formula One, but it still competes and wins in rally racing as well. Nissan competes in Asia in endurance, road course, and Lemans racing. Honda supplies engines for open wheel racing, rally competition in WRC, and dominates motorcycle racing. In short the World's leading automobile manufacturers all compete heavily- Toyota even going so far as to compete in NASCAR.
And Where are the American manufacturers?
Oldsmobile of course died several years ago. The Viper was bought out by its designers and is now sold for short endurnce track racing to privateers. And GM's Corvette will see the end of its racing in American Lemans this season as well as make its last stop in the 24 Hours of Lemans as well. Meaning that in 2010 there will be ZERO factory backed efforts in any F.I.A. sanctioned competitions anywhere in the world.
If you intend to be world class, should you not compete against world class rivals? Do you expect to innovate your cars for sale to the public simply by picking motes from the ether? If you want things like active suspension, ABS, engine management, KERS, carbon fiber brakes, ultra efficient exhaust systems, and reliability engine mapping- which all resulted from Formula One- to appear on your production cars, do you not need to have a competition platform?
The whole point is that the American consumer began realizing that American automakers weren't making even a fraction of what they presented to be plausible in the concept cars. When European cars all began coming standard with ABS systems that they had developed in Formula One, American automobile makers were offering hastily cobbled together 3rd part ABS systems and then only offering them as expensive options on their highest profile car models. It doesn't take a genius to realize ABS is a pretty good idea. And it wasn't as if Detroit hadn't offered concept cars with ABS on them since the early 1970's. But in a void of competition development, Detroit never actually had to make a working ABS for mass implementation in all product tiers. By 1993 even lowly Volkswagen was slapping ABS on all its models. Detroit was still offering it as an expensive upgrade to its mid-level offerings, made it standard on the flagship premium brands, and still didn't have it for its entry models.
In 1995 I bought a Volkswagen Jetta GL for $15,000 brand new off the showroom floor. It had a 6 cylinder engine. AC/PW/PD/sun roof/Premium CD system/ leather interior/ ABS/Airbags/Active Suspension/Hella light package/ Sport rims/ and half a dozen other features I cannot remember. The Pontiac Sunfire I looked at had a 4 cylinder engine and AC. Sunroof, PW/PD/ABS/and airbags were available options. Active suspension and lighting improvement package was not an available option. The Sunfire also cost $17,000.
It isn't the case that Detroit screwed up because they didn't offer hybid or electric cars that turned off consumer demand. What turned off consumer demand for passenger cars made in America was the reality that in order to get a comparable car to the mid level import, you had to pay a super premium price purchasing the additional equipment needed to make an American passenger car comparable. The only thing holding up Detroit was the truck and SUV. The rest of the world simply doesn't have the market for either vehicle.
Consider that the Ford F-150 is the world's number one selling car by volume. More of these are sold every year than any other car in the world. But there is an exceptional caveat to that figure. The Ford F-150 is sold only in the United States and Canada. It isn't directly exported anywhere else in the world. The American market is very absorbent in terms of trucks and SUV's. Toyota and Honda both brought out full size trucks over the last few years to compete for market share. But when fuel prices skyrocketed Honda nixed the Ridgeline and Toyota scaled back its fullsize truck- but they could afford to because their passenger cars sell very well.
Detroit has been living on trucks for 20 years. And with the combination of high fuel costs and the emergine concept that not everyone needs a truck to commute to work in, the sales of Detroit's mainstay has collapsed. Add to this the reality that their passenger cars are essentially junk compared with the competition on the market and you get 50% declines in American manufacturer sales year on year.
It really is time for Detroit to take its medicine. Offering concept cars of a future that never comes, will not solve their problems. Chopping off brands and car models simply to stave off red ink won't work either. The only thing that will work is if Detroit eschews marketing promotions and style trending and instead realizes what every other manufacturer of automobiles in the world already knows.
Compete in automobile racing, take the technologies you develop and put them into the passenger cars you build for sale to the public.
It really is that simple.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Being a Bond Holder
Well if someone told me that my bonded security in a company "should willingly" be swapped at 27 ¢ on the dollar for non-securitized common stock I'd tell them to go screw themselves too.
The whole basis of buying corporate bonds instead of corporate common/preferred or corporate grade investment paper is that it is SUPPOSED to be the most secured form of credit ownership an investor can grant to a corporation. Meaning, although you don't get high yields or actual controlling and voting rights, you are supposed to get a guaranteed return of a modest rate and further be protected as a creditor class should the company falter or capitulate.
The US bankruptcy courts have ALWAYS ranked corporate bond holders as the First in line to get payments after the company's debts to suppliers and B to B liabilities. Meaning that if you own anything else other than a corporate bond, and the company goes into bankruptcy, you get paid LAST and often at pennies on the dollar. Because bond holders get the lowest return on their investment & because they have almost no influence on the ownership or operation of the company, they are seen as being the least able to mitigate their loses when a company goes south. Preferred and common stock holders have the ability to dump stocks easily or even force board room changes as well as block the actions of a company before it goes into bankruptcy.
So until now the rock solid rule was that whenever a company enters bankruptcy, after all the company's debts due to operation costs are paid, bondholders get paid in full if possible depending on the liquidity and total amount of assets possessed by the bond holders.
In the case of GM, the bond holders were owed approximately 3 billion in GM debt. GM if entering bankruptcy has in its assets more than enough money to conclusively pay off its debts to suppliers and the UAW and have enough cash and asset value to retire the entire bond debt. Stock holders of course would get squat after the bond holders were paid- but the stock holders could expect to be issued new shares in the company that emerges from bankruptcy, so their losses would only be paper loses assuming GM goes on to survive.
I saw the Treasury enforced offer to buy GM bonds in USA Today last Monday. GM basically said that bond holders would be forcibly converted to shares of common stock by the Treasury. The conversion of bond debt to stock was literally 27¢ on the dollar----FAR BELOW WHAT THEY COULD REASONABLE EXPECT TO GET IN A BANKRUPTCY----and to add insult to injury- although bondholders represented a claim to more than 60% of GM's current net worth, the Treasury had informed GM that the bond holders would not be allowed to collectively be represented at all on a future board whether GM enters bankruptcy or not.
In short the Treasury told GM that if it expects any government money- the bond holders get the shaft. Instead of collectively owning 60% of the asset valuation of GM, bond holders would be reduced to under 2% of the asset values.
Chrysler's fate for its bond holders is even worse. Essentially Obama said if you don't take take a beating and smile you are unAmerican. So if the offer is lose your secured debt, lose your dollar amount on that debt, gain no equity, and get less than 2% liability assets in a new GM or Chrysler or be declared un American I guess your options suck.
In plain English, the Administration has told the bond holder < which thanks to 401 K and mutual funds really means most Americans with conservative investment holding in corporate bonds> take a 83% hit on your investment and be thankful we aren't threatening to prosecute you in court.
This is the biggest sea-change in bankruptcy law in 200 years. And if you are wondering, it represents a direct and hostile corporative seizure by the federal government due to a politicalized policy agenda of the current Administration. For all of you who screamed about the Patriot Act or how malevolently incompetent President Bush was, I hope that you will be equally outraged at what Obama has done in the cases of the automakers and the banking system.
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