Center for a New American Security

I hope they listen to the

I hope they listen to the American people and prioritize Jobs over Int'l misadventures abroad.

Let China and India take Africa and Afghanistan (via the Shanghai-Coop).

Leave Iraq to the Iranians.

Let's concentrate on Mexico, and legalize marijuana, since that's the narco-state's cash crop.

Obama's 2012 Platform should be "Yes, We Can (Smoke Out)", and watch all the 18 yr olds vote Democrat!

Yeah, but the most awkward

Yeah, but the most awkward dynamic in American warfighting will reassert itself, too.

The more that the WH and Congress argue over who's the more totally awesome destroyer of terrorists and fight the political battle over credit for good defense policy, the more both will be tempted to punt/delegate responsibility for strategy and execution over to the Pentagon, and especially to the COIN-favoring crowd that's currently the sexiest in the rings. In a more perfect world that would be good thing. But at a time when our wars so basically need a political component and political engagement to be won, and when our CMR is so basically unstable, I can't help but see that all as a primrose path.

The name Petraeus will become shibboleth again.

This is about the mid-term

This is about the mid-term elections and changing members of committees. Repubicans will support the troops and security, but they are tired of the spending as well. The Repubicans know America can not wage a war it can not afford. It was a Republican that ended the Vietnam war and a Democrat that escalated it.

Just watched President Obama address the nation. The speech was pretty much what I expected we have heard it before from Reagan and Clinton. It is a rehash of government for as long as I can remember with different players.

Speech reminds me of what I use to tell my mother when I got caught with my hand in the cookie jar. Think we have all said the words. I would have more respect for what Obama said if he took ownership for his policy being the root of 11/2.

Obama explained 11/2 away as people being unhappy with the “outcome”. Think he is in denial, the outcome is the equal and opposite reaction to his policy action. At least he agreed that Obamacare needs health care. All Americans know Obamacare did not lower the cost of health care it only changed how people paid for health care. Nothing has been done to change the escalating costs of health care that continues to increase much faster than wages. There is as much linkage to Obamacare and 11/2 as there is to the economy and joblessness. The mid-term election was a reaction to Obama’s policy as a whole.

Obama does not want to spend the next two years discussing the last two years. This is the same guy who spent the last two years blaming all his problems on Bush’s previous four years. Getting lost in the process of governing is not an excuse, both Obama and Pelosi are professional politicians fully aware of what processes they were using to implement their policy. The last two years was more than just about the economy stupid. I think Mr. Obama is concerned about Congressional investigations.

I would believe that Obama really cared about all Americans if he had not spent the last six months in a full court press campaigning for the Democrats. America is red, white and blue; he just spent the last two years giving attention to only the blue part of the American population. Obama is America’s president and it is wrong for him to campaign for one party when he himself is not running for office. Now all of a sudden, we are all important and Obama has the blues.

Obama’s plan to move forward sounds like the same the agenda of the last two years. This is the same person that just spent the last two years painting the Republicans as the party of “NO”. After 11/2, Obama wants to listen to all the alternatives. He listened to the Republicans before; he just did not change his policy. Now he wants to take the Pelosi government into the sunlight. Why should I believe Obama?

Obama mentioned that good civil servants would not be able to govern as a result of 11/2. These civil servants can get in the unemployment line like every other American. I have a funny feeling that these servants will not be unemployed for long; their buddies will take care of them. Obama will not be saddened by their demise for long. The rest of the American unemployed will have to wait, the same as they have been waiting for the past two years.

With the Obama administration it is always “you don’t understand”, “they did not like the outcome”, ”it is about more education”, or “I need to explain it better” but never the policy. It is always the sales job.

The real question is, will the master of change, change.

Obama likes the analogy of driving a car to differentiate the “D”emocrats from the “R”epublicans. All I have to say to Obama is sometimes you have to get out of the car to see which way the car is pointing. Sometimes “R” is for forward. Direction is relative.

Speech reminds me of what I

Speech reminds me of what I use to tell my mother when I got caught with my hand in the cookie jar.

By "cookie jar", do you mean your little pee-pee? LOL!

Zak - your post had nothing

Zak - your post had nothing to do with the midterms and the changing members of committees?

http://www.martialartsplanet.

http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1074356062&postco...

Those were the videos I mentioned.

Visitor 3:38... To answer

Visitor 3:38... To answer your question, here is an article talking about the little-publicized house vote last July in which every republican voted in favor of a resolution that would greenlight the bombing of Iran.

I'm terribly sorry... I

I'm terribly sorry... I forgot the link.

http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/136016.html

I have to stop sniffing so much glue.

Mr President, If your policy

Mr President,

If your policy had nothing to do with the firing of Democrats and booting Pelosi..........

Then why did your policy do this.

Think I heard the Republicans mention something about tax burdens a year ago, DID YOU LISTEN??? Maybe you were just to involved in the process of making law.....

Even you Mr. President consider the 1099 filings to be a burden on business, WHY THE FUCK DID YOU DO IT? HELLO!!!! That is a middle class tax increase.

"The 1099 provision in the healthcare bill appears to be too burdensome for small businesses. It just involves too much paperwork, too much filing. It's probably counterproductive," Obama said.

PS:

How many Presidents does it take to talk to the PM of India ?
.................ANSWER: Two thousand (that is how many people are going with the President on his coming trip). One to talk and 1999 to fill up FIVE STAR HOTELS.

Obama, have you heard about technology? Stuff like TWITTER?....VIDEO CONFERENCE....USE IT.

Time to cut the travel budget. Obama is America's president, he should not have spent six months campaigning for 50% of the American public.

It has only begun....... You

It has only begun.......

You policy wonks that want your agenda funded might be interested in this...

http://www.reuters.com/news/video/story?videoId=164009160&videoChannel=5

Looks like the new WEASEL words in American politics are ECONOMY AND JOBS. The American public will not stand to be lied to. I think that the mid-terms proved that.

Obama going to India to save my US job is BULLSHIT. If he and Hillary open up the CHECK BOOK and write money out to INDIA cause PAKISTAN got some will just about light the fuse at home.......

Something to consider.....So what was Hillary doing in the Philippines?.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10...

"The USAID hub will begin with a budget of $27.5 million specifically for climate change mitigation."

God my asshole has been fucked so many times by this administration, I don't know who is behind me anymore...

Stop the spending!!!!

I want my Military to do the

I want my Military to do the Hokey-Pokey all day long, so my tax dollars don't have to go to them.

Visitor 409. You're correct

Visitor 409.

You're correct on all accounts.

Lot of Democrats ran on mid-term platforms to stop off-shoring which was local politics. Obama is going to India to talk developing business relations. We already have business relations with India (how many American companies have their shingle up in India already, there are Billions being made and never coming to the US for the IRS to collect taxes on ). Obama is telling me to save my job and create more in America, he has to take 2000 government employees to India to stay in five star hotels. That is a joke. After an election like the mid-terms, it is a joke I can not laugh at. That is a mixture of politics and policy, Yin-Yang.

What the Fed is doing, I think is a mistake. The spending that the Obama is doing is a mistake. Obama can wave off the spending as an "emergency", but I can not respect that when he and the Speaker of the House has done nothing except to waste ( their is a list of examples in the news of the past couple years). If Obama showed some measure of austerity, I could get behind some of his ideas. The way that he has spent beyond what was needed to stimulate the economy I think is a abuse of power and priviledge of the Presidental Office. Because of the way he handles his office I have absolutely no respect for the man, I do respect the office.

Both the Democrats and the Republicans have lost their way. Both parties are hopelessly corrupt. Americans do not like the lies from either parties. They really are not lies, they are mis-leading and not completely disclosed policy details. It is how the sound bites of the policy are sold to the American public. Americans are guility of not doing due diligence. In the case of Obamacare due diligence was almost impossible, I had draft copies of the law in my hands. That was the problem, they were draft copies and the American public had no way to understand what the law ment. The Democrats kept the release of detail on a short schedule and behind closed doors. There is some truth in the Democrats telling the American public that they did not understand the law. I know from due diligence that there are no cost controls and the monkey is now on the public's back. In other words, Obama and Pelosi got the American public pregnant then told them to deal with it. The sales pitch in the law that impacts the fewest people are ment to go into action first like getting rid of pre-existing conditions. The worst of it like the 1099 IRS filing was not ment to come until after the 2012 elections during Obama's second term. That was both a mixture of politics and policy at work. I thank the Republicans for saying NO. The Democrats duped the American public badly and that was pure politics in the way they got the heath care law passed. For Obama to tell me after the mid-terms that he regreted the process in which Obamacare was passed is really an insult to all of America's intellegence. Obama is a professional politician, he knew exactly what he was doing through out the entire process. Obama could have asked that the process be changed at any time. He knew that Pelosi was there to take the heat. That is they way Obama operates, delegation of blame (Chicago politics BTW).

I am focusing on Obamacare as an example, there are more examples. In hindsight, I think Pelosi was duped by Obama. Pelosi got to be the first woman speaker of the house. That is a historical event that will be read by school children for years to come. I think that agrees with Pelosi's personality. Pelosi is also far left, health care was an easy flag for her to carry. She is up in age and that allowed any negative baggage, which the Democrats knew was coming, to not damage her career which was near an end. I do not think that Obama and Pelosi ever anticipated the electorate response in the days after the law passed. There were too many bad emotions and broken windows in district offices. Those emotions ran deep and that is what made up some of the anger at mid-terms. Obama and Pelosi did not count on losing 60 Conservative Democrat votes out of Congress. That is going to hurt the Democrats going forward cause their party just moved further away from mainstream America.

The scale of events in mid-terms are rare. It takes a lot of emotion for the electrate to behave in a unified mass. The emotions that are acitve are a combination of fear and anger directed at policy and politics.

Politics is how we change policy peacefully. I hope it stays that way America can not afford to remain split and the politics has to stop. I do not see either the Democrats or the Republican giving. If Pelosi becomes minority leader, I would take that as a symbol of inflexibility on the Democart's part. It would be a grave mistake.

Is Obama a Clinton or Reagan. He is no Reagan that is for sure, he is a wanabee. Obama has more morals than Clinton at least their have been no bimbo eruptions. Clinton is anyone's whore that is the train wreck about his personality.

Obama is a Jimmy Carter and he will play the Jimmy Carter role after his one and only term in office.

"The republicans want to cut

"The republicans want to cut spending at a time that spending wants to increase."

ROFLMAO at the use of the passive voice here. "Spending wants to increase." Yeah, right, magically all by itself it wants to increase. There are no specific people who want it to increase because that redounds to their political advantage, i.e., they want to steal my money to bribe people to vote for them. Spending increases are a completely agentless and non-political event -- if you'll believe that, you'll believe anything.

"Oh Gawd, can't the military

"Oh Gawd, can't the military just kill people and break things, like it's supposed to, without being lumbered with all this crazy baggage"!!

Exactly. I really give a fuck who's fucking who. But AM that is not our damn purpose - we're there to kill people and break things. Let someone else do the social engineering. BTW AM - you do know who originally put the Anti-Homosexual Laws on the Books, right?

PROTESTANT PROGRESSIVES. Who wanted to use government to remake society to "reflect" their OWN GODDAMN values. And yes they always had plenty of academics ready to certify that this was right, true and the will of the majority. Rather like Prohibition, World Wars I/II, the UN, our busted and bankrupt Social Security system, and for that matter the Federal Reserve. Which is making our money worthless so the Wall Street and DC latte family Mafia can keep their plush troublemaking lifestyles.

There's plenty of wasted money in Defense folks - that's because it's a government operation. That and a Congressional Goody bag.

yes we can "end the wars" by letting them run amok here - which they already are. They want their GZ Mosque - The Victory Mosque - and it's within reach. And these nasty teenagers running our government will give it to them just to be snarky.

Bring em home, we need them here. To God knows what end, but we need them here....

Visitor 215, The pols are a

Visitor 215,

The pols are a bigger problem than the Corporations. The Corporations are simply doing their job of making money in the anti-Business climate in the USA. And depending on the industry it's been that way for decades.

We don't make anything in the USA anymore because it's painful and cost prohibitive.

We have a predatory, looting political class that wants to make themselves our masters, and knows it needed to impoverish us first. And we've been voting them into office to do just that, all the while swallowing Marxist swill about "the Evil Corporations". And semi racist innuendo about Mexicans, Yellow Peril, and before the Chinese the bugaboo was the Japanese.

Maybe the problem in America just might be: Americans.

Why the Hell would Business stay where they'll be extorted and abused, and not move to a place that wants them, and costs less?

I don't want Chinese wages or working conditions. But we should definitely look at their tax structure - or lack thereof.
And we should look at the other reasons Company's relocate to China, or Mexico, and why Americans are so damn eager to get the Hell out of America.

We need no or low Corporate taxes, low or no capital gains, sound money (STOP PRINTING), and a reduced and stable regulatory burden. What we've had for decades is an increasing burden and cost of regulation, increasing Health Care costs (that's our Buddy the govt again) and now an hostile and uncertain political environment.

You wanna live in the land of plenty or the land of foodstamps? You can't have both.

70% tariffs, harumph. Do people realize who finances our debt.

We the voters, we the citizens and who we elect, the one third of us that are basically living off the rest, and the crap we let the pols get away with are the problem.

"We can cost effectively

"We can cost effectively manufacture in America."

Kinda missing my point. I know Americans still have plenty of know how. I am saying that it isn't just slave wages that draw businesses to China, it's tax, tort, regulatory policy that make it really attractive. Since I'm in agreement on American wages not being lowered to sustenance levels, then we do something about what we do want to control, and can control.

In other words we get change our tax and tort laws to not be so anti-business. We the voters can elect politicians who will do these things - or out they go again.

Get tax and tort parity, and you'll get trade parity.

Keep raving on about the evil corporations - to justify electing rapacious politicians who force them to leave the USA or go out of business - and the evil corporations will take their dirty money somewhere else.

[PS - Black Swan normally is used to mean a completely unexpected event that changes the game. Was that what you meant?]

The Guvner on 6:33 PS -

The Guvner on 6:33

PS - Black Swan normally is used to mean a completely unexpected event that changes the game. Was that what you meant?]

Yes.

I don't know if people learn off-shoring in school as the only answer, but it seems we have totally wrote off the American manufaturing worker as an option. To change that mind set would be a paradigm shift for US multi-nationals ( it is funny cause a lot of foreign multi-nationals come to the US for cheap labor and profit....Toyota, Michelin, Samsung, list goes on....they do it to get access to the US market)

It is all about re-occuring costs and efficiency. There would also be a dose of national pride and an understanding of the deferred/moral costs of pushing work off shore. The concept of deferred cost means that we are screwing the heck out of some Chinese worker on wages and not following EPA regs to get our ipods and computers (do we need to buy computers every two years?). It is hard to get a consumer to accept moral cost, but there have been successes. More than anything, it would be a choice to purchase American made product because it helps Americans. If everyone suddenly decided to buy only American, their would be a lot of people in America hired. That sure would be a boost to social security.

We still have not touched on how to get the benefit out of marketing the US consumer. US market is still one of the largest in the world. With out access to the US, multinationals would not have the sales and profits. That is worth something and we give it up for free or subsidize it with taxpayer dollars. Example: US military protects the trade ships and helps India and pays interest on the $900B in bonds that China holds. Another is: US corporations are not paying taxes on profits and they are no longer providing health care to the workers they laid off so the American citizen takes up the load.

Talking head on the news from the State Department said that Globalization was important and Obama's trip to India was important because of Globalization. The reporter never aske the State Department person WHY globalization was important and if their was an alternative. I am digressing. Globalization is important, but if we are not careful we are going to hollow out America for a quick profit (which has already been done).

Thanks for the respectful

Thanks for the respectful disagreement, I will attempt to respectfully counter-argue --

- Manufacturing - dude I am all about putting my peeps back to work, I work in ICT sector but I grew up in the Rust Belt.
It wasn't pretty. I am saying we have to become competitive in the area of taxes and tort - torts not a canard. It's 2% of GDP. I'd take a 2% bump.

Taxes - the period you are talking about in History is also the period where all of America's competitors lay literally in ruin, and we had no competition. It's also a period where the government under Truman downsized by 2/3. And we had the Bretton Woods regime of the dollar as undisputed King -- at a stable exchange rate of 35$ dollars per ounce of Gold.

And we were also defending the entire non communist world, which gives some leverage as well.

We also had a much younger population and a larger tax base. And we didn't have such a vast and bewildering array of benefits and entitlements - and constituent groups that earn their living from them.

We need to look at the part of the world that took our jobs - you seem rather obsessed with Asia - how about Ireland?
Would 12.5% Capital gains be so bad.

Taxes and growth - and academic studies - er....uh...this merely confirms my prejudices about academics, and calling economics a "science". IMO it's augury. And they don't learn from their mistakes.

Having made those points, if the Left will give on taxes and tort I am all in favor of fair trade - that is parity and an eye for an eye.

After we pay the money back, of course. I got an idea how to do that too, if you're interested...

It doesn't make sense to say

It doesn't make sense to say tort is 2% of GDP. It's just transfer - there's no loss to the economy.

My point about the high tax rates was that they did not change growth or prosperity. We hummed along nicely at full capacity. It's not as if the money raised through taxes disappears - every dime of it (and then some) gets plowed right back into the economy. It doesn't go to congress, and it doesn't sit in a bank account. It retires debt that was used to built infrastructure and military, etc - all contributors to the GDP.

To be specific - if companies were so sensitive to tax rates, then any state with a higher tax rate than another state would lose all its industry. Companies are not moving overseas because of tax rates - some will say that to promote lower taxes, but the cold hard fact is they move overseas to exploit cheap labor. A perfectly good Chinese worker can be purchased for 97 cents an hour. Honda just recently doubled the pay for its workers at a Chinese plant because too many were committing suicide and it began to take a toll on their image. Think about that: they doubled their pay.

Believe it or not, my friend, taxes are the glue that binds our society together. They suck, but we do like the aircraft carriers to protect us, and we like driving on smooth roads. The rich used to understand the importance of the highly-progressive tax structure. They understood the benefit of equal opportunity, and that we are only as rich as the poorest among us. They used to know that not everything works on a cost/benefit basis. We don't starve terminally ill cancer patients even though feeding them is a waste of food.

Healthcare absolutely has to

Healthcare absolutely has to change. We are in total agreement there.

Here's something for perspective: California is running a $19b deficit. It wasn't all due to overspending... they also got clobbered during the financial crisis, going from $5b in dept to $19b from outright losses in investments, and through poor tax receipts due to the tanked economy. They resorted to some unusual methods to deal with this, and its far from over.

but...

If I were governor, I would have looked at this website, and saw that California has over 663,000 millionaires in the state. Using my calculator, I divide $19b by 663k, to get about $28,000. I would see that I can close the gap by assessing and additional 2.8% tax on only the first $1 million of all the millionaires.

The worst thing that's going to happen is they decide to move out of state in protest, but I happen to know that in this lousy economy, they will lose more than $28,000 if they try and sell their house. As a consolation for having to pay the extra money, I couldI tell them they have a tax break of 3.8% that they can take at some schedule, but I'm more inclined to send them a note of encouragement and remind them that any self-respecting millionaire should be able to make up the 2.8% hit, given the favorable loopholes and hedge funds they have access to.

I don't begrudge the rich, but they can't have all the money. They used to know this.

Problem solved, nobody loses their job and has to go on the rolls, services are not disrupted.