Sunday’s Forum
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FILED UNDER: Open Forum
OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
Who’d have ever thought a convicted felon and accomplished fabulist would lie?
Turns out the rapist had been sniffing around the bribe plane for a while.
What else has he been lying about? perhaps he solicited the bribe, too.
But wait! There’s more!
The firm chosen, apparently without a competitive bidding process, L3Harris Technologies, has been defrauding the DOD.
An astonishing coincidence, isn’t it, they’d settle right when they’re given a billion dollar contract to overhaul the bribe plane?
Pro tip: people will tolerate government corruption so long as the government delivers, and so long as the corruption isn’t paraded out in the open as a grand accomplishment deserving of praise.
It’s fun to watch the party [and its assorted internet sycophants like Connor] that has been crowing about the magical benefits of free trade morph overnight into saying they have always supported an economy centrally planned by the U.S. military and deep state in preparation for an escalating cold war against Russia and China.
The problem, of course, is that if everything is National Security and the US plans to grab the assets of other countries in the same way that they grabbed Russia’s $300 billion of overseas assets…. Everyone else can and will do the exact same to the US’ overseas investments. America has mining investments, oil investments, banks overseas – And those will be appropriated by foreign governments in response. Countries have agency.
The current market makeup isn’t natural — or, in terms Republicans may recognize, “Free.” It was set up intentionally as ww2 was winding down to benefit the US.
And it doesn’t have to stay that way.
The Florida headline of the day- Employee accused of killing customer over food order dispute in Florida
Before the disease I frequented the same two or three restaurants every day. When I was traveling to 14 states working in the land line telephone industry for 35 years and living in motels I ate in chain restaurants and local beaneries all the time.
I have seen all kinds of undeserved customer abuse of waitresses, waiters and cafe managers and owners. The help always stood there and took it. They would smile and politely say that they would do what they could to make things right. Only once did I see a manager call the police and have a total jerk of a patron removed from a dining room.
These occasions are the reason that my last job in food service, delivering pizza, was 46 years ago.
It’s also why I have never owned any firearms.
From the unhinged, far left, communist, woke, socialist, deep state rag, The Wall Street Journal, a brief explanation on why tariffs will not bring manufacturing jobs to the US.
Of course, they chose as an example an incredibly complex product that requires the talents of the very top Noble laureates, and the cream of the cream of skilled labor: jigsaw puzzles. Had they gone for something far simpler to make, like smart phones, their whole argument would collapse.
@Kathy: we simply need to raise the tariffs higher, and create some kind of business loan program to ensure that America (Fuck Yeah!) is capable of meting its own needs in critical infrastructure like Jigsaw Puzzles.
Otherwise, the Chinese could cut us off at any moment. It’s a national security thing. We also need to build up a national reserve of Sudoko.
I would actually be able to get behind a strategic economic plan to ensure that things that were in short supply during the worst parts of the pandemic were made in the US, at least at some minimal capacity that could buffer supply chain problems. And well-tailored tariffs could be a part of that plan.
I know that PPE and microprocessors were in short supply. And toilet paper.
(Oil and similar non-renewable resources should simply have strategic reserves which were purchased abroad, and we should be hoarding our own supply for when the foreign supplies begin to dry up — no point in tapping our oil now)
Not much action on today’s Open Forum. Nor yesterday’s.
Do great titles for books, movies, plays, ever stick in your head? Here are some of mine:
Where Am I When I Need Me — novel by George Axelrod
What I’m Going to Do, I Think — novel by Larry Woiwode
Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead — movie
@Kathy:
My brother works in computerised inventory and supply-chain managemenent systems for a rather sizable international auto-parts manufacurer/supplier.
Plants and third-party sources in US, Canada, Mexico, India, China, Germany etc.
His short conclusion re national autarky in this area:
“It’s just not bloody possible, without a decades work, and doubling the end-costs of the vehicles. It’s just fantasy-land.”
Same applies when you look into almost any sophisticated modern manufactured goods, from chips to pharmaceuticals to washing machines to aircraft to etc etc.
Even if the product itself is amenable to fairly localised production, the required plant and machinery is not.
@CSK: I think we’re running out of energy to be enraged about Trump. Also running out of ways to criticize him without being redundant.
Connor, JKB, and Fortune not showing up for people to jeer at doesn’t help either.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Yeah, I know. And I agree. But it may be dangerous to get so worn down by Trump’s outrages that one no longer reacts to them.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
From the east-pondian pov, I really wish people in positions of natioanl power, and the “reasoable” commentariat”, would stop being so “shocked” when it turns out Trump is, amazingly enough, going to act like Trump.
Stop being passive, start acting, you bunch of midwits!
Of course Trump is going to screw you over, and go back on his agreements, because he’s a self-obsessed fool.
He’s Donald Trump, ftlog, can’t you internalise that reality?
There is no “presidential” or “strategic” Trump.
There is no rescue party of “rational Republicans” about to ride into town.
Europe has the potential for Power, and (perhaps unfortunately now the necessity for it): start bloody acting like it.
Stop cringing and squabbling.
@JohnSF:
Are you addressing us personally here at OTB?
@Gustopher:
@JohnSF:
Jigsaw puzzles may seem like a trivial example. But if something this simple can’t just be made in the US, without a rather large investment, and still requiring imports, and at a higher price to boot, then what about far more complex products with even more parts?
Part of the effect of free trade is specialization. America’s big industry now is finance. And there’s automation as well. According to recent reading, I gather the US has a rather large manufacturing output, but employs like 2/3s fewer workers.
If so, then adding more factories won’t add that many more jobs. And in these days of anti-union sentiment, and share value supremacy, they’re unlikely to pay very well. Certainly not at a level where a single wage earner can support a family of five and send all 3 children to college.
@CSK:
No, if I was unclear.
I’m thinking of the European leaderships, and the European “establishment commentators”who keep on expecting “reasonable Trump” to turn up.
It’s like Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football.
When are they going to learn: there is no better Trump?
There is no reasonable, strategic Trump?
There’s just the “Toddler-in Chief”.
It’s long past time for Europe to stop fannying-about and to move to a post-US security and economic position.
(And it really pains me to say that, having been a comitted “Atlanticist” for a long, long time.)
@Kathy:
The same applies across much of the OECD: labour is expensive, and in many cases automation is both more efficient and effective.
In most OECD countries, manufacturing output has actually risen, but manufacturing employment has fallen.
In Germany manufactures employment is now about 18% of the workforce, compared to c. 40% in the early 1970s.
But output by value at constant prices is almost ten times greater.
Trying to recreate the employment economics of the 1950’s is a fools errand.
@JohnSF:
I thought as much, but I just wanted to be sure. You’re right. There’s absolutely no point in waiting for/hoping that Trump will suddenly get sane or grow up. He is what he is. And it’s awful for all of us.
Stop the presses!
Teeter Totter Trump agrees to delay EU tariffs!
WSJ
@CSK:
What really pains me: it’s NOT JUST TRUMP.
It’s the entire MAGA-fied Republican party: Vance, Bannon, Miller, etc etc
And their Congressional toadies.
How can Europe rely upon a US that might, depending on some marginal voting in the Mid-West, descend ito populist idiocy every four years?
That’s the real problem for us: the Dems are likely to take the House next year, and maybe the presidency in 2028.
But can we trust our security to that chance, and the risk of possible renewed MAGA ascendancy later?
Even assuming you don’t get President Vance in 2028.
No.
Turns out De Gaulle was right after all, dammit.
Let’s just hope the US and “Europe-as-a-Power” can establish a reasonable accomodation.
And that Europe doesn’t go sideways politically; history is not exactly comforting in that regard.
@Mister Bluster:
Europe could probably solve its entire energy issues by just hooking generators up to rolling eyeballs.
@JohnSF: Imagine living here, and realizing that this “Every 4 years” bullshit is untenable, at this stage.
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