BARACK Obama displayed reality-denying virtuosity last week when, announc ing the cashiering of General Motors CEO Richard Wagoner, and naming his replacement, and as the government was prompting selection of a new majority of GM's board of directors, and as the government announced the next deadline for GM to submit a more satisfactory viability plan than it submitted at the last faux deadline, and as the government kept the billions flowing to tide GM over until, well, whenever, the president said: "The United States government has no interest in running GM."
Actually, his administration prefers to do that rather than allow bankruptcy to infuriate the United Auto Workers union, which was pre-emptively grateful to Obama's administration with lavish contributions to candidate Obama.
The president supposedly showed "toughness" in sacking a conspicuous member of a particularly unpopular little cohort, CEOs of big corporations. He will need more grit if, as his administration hints, this time it is serious, that its patience is wearing thin, that someday GM could face "controlled" or "prepackaged" or "surgical" bankruptcy. One suspects that those adjectives intimate that it will be faux bankruptcy, gentle in dealing with the UAW.
Last November (five months and $17.4 billion in auto bailouts ago), this column noted: "Some opponents of bankruptcy say: GM must not be allowed to fail before it perfects batteries for its electric-powered Volt, which supposedly is a key to the company's resurrection. This vehicle was concocted to serve GM's prolonged attempt to ingratiate itself with the few hundred environmentally obsessed automotive engineers in Congress. They have already voted tax credits of up to $7,500 for purchasers of such cars -- bribes that reveal doubts about consumer enthusiasm for them at a price that would reflect cost."
In December, GM, by then a mendicant groveling before its congressional masters, ran a full-page newspaper ad apologizing for having "disappointed" everyone, vowing to stop selling so many "pickups and SUVs" (which were 11 of GM's 20 most profitable products in 2008), and promising "revolutionary new products like the Chevrolet Volt." Another ad, which appeared before December and is still running, features a car attached to an electric cord, and says the Volt amounts to "reinventing the automobile."
Last week, in an unenthralled summary of GM's "viability" plan, Obama's administration said: "GM earns a large share of its profits from high-margin trucks and SUVs, which are vulnerable to a continuing shift in consumer preference to smaller vehicles. Additionally, while the Chevy Volt holds promise, it will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short term."
The stunning shift in consumer preferences has been reported under headlines such as "Hybrid Car Sales Go from 60 to 0 at Breakneck Speed" (Los Angeles Times, March 17). Absent $4 gas, customers, those nuisances with their insufferable preferences, don't want the vehicles the politicians want them to want, even with manufacturers now offering large rebates and other incentives.
The two best-selling vehicles in America this year are large pickup trucks (Ford F-Series and Chevy Silverado). In February, Toyota sold 13,600 Tundra and Tacoma pickups and 7,232 Priuses. It sells the Prius at a loss, which it can afford to do because it makes pots of money selling pickups.
Has the car designer in chief (a k a the president) considered the possibility that what he calls "the cars of tomorrow" will forever be that?
His administration can't be faulted for failing to do well what can't be done well -- industrial policy, wherein the political class, with negligible experience in commerce, flounders. The administration can, however, be faulted for trying.
The government's wallow in the automobile industry, under this and the previous administration, merits a hockey coach's evaluation of his team: "Everyday you guys look worse and worse. And today you played like tomorrow."
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Absent $4 gas, customers, those nuisances with their insufferable preferences, don't want the vehicles the politicians want them to want, even with manufacturers now offering large rebates and other incentives.
Obama will deliver the $4 gas via cap and trade, shutting down North American drilling, and EPA regulation of carbon emmissions.
GM and Segway unveil new two-wheeled urban vehicle
NEW YORK A solution to the world's urban transportation problems could lie in two wheels not four, according to executives for General Motors Corp. and Segway Inc.
The companies announced Tuesday that they are working together to develop a two-wheeled, two-seat electric vehicle designed to be a fast, safe, inexpensive and clean alternative to traditional cars and trucks for cities across the world.
The Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility, or PUMA, project also would involve a vast communications network that would allow vehicles to interact with each other, regulate the flow of traffic and prevent crashes from happening.
"We're excited about doing more with less," said Jim Norrod, chief executive of Segway, the Bedford, N.H.-based maker of electric scooters. "Less emissions, less dependability on foreign oil and less space."
The 300-pound prototype runs on a lithium-ion battery and uses Segway's characteristic two-wheel balancing technology, along with dual electric motors. It's designed to reach speeds of up to 35 miles-per-hour and can run 35 miles on a single charge.
The companies did not release a projected cost for the vehicle, but said ideally its total operating cost including purchase price, insurance, maintenance and fuel would total between one-fourth and one-third of that of the average traditional vehicle.
Larry Burns, GM's vice president of research and development, and strategic planning, said the project is part of Detroit-based GM's effort to remake itself as a purveyor of fuel-efficient vehicles.
Ideally, the vehicles would also be part of a communications network that through the use of transponder and GPS technology would allow them to drive themselves. The vehicles would automatically avoid obstacles such as pedestrians and other cars and therefore never crash, Burns said.
"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something."
So declared President Obama Sunday in Prague regarding North Korea's missile launch, which America's U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice added was a direct violation of U.N. resolutions. At which point, the Security Council spent hours debating its nonresponse, thus proving to nuclear proliferators everywhere that rules aren't binding, violations won't be punished, and words of warning mean nothing.
Rarely has a Presidential speech been so immediately and transparently divorced from reality as Mr. Obama's in Prague. The President delivered a stirring call to banish nuclear weapons at the very moment that North Korea and Iran are bidding to trigger the greatest proliferation breakout in the nuclear age. Mr. Obama also proposed an elaborate new arms-control regime to reduce nuclear weapons, even as both Pyongyang and Tehran are proving that the world's great powers lack the will to enforce current arms-control treaties.
There's no doubting the emotive appeal of Mr. Obama's grand no-nukes vision. Ronald Reagan shared a similar hope, and in recent years these pages have run a pair of news-making essays by George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn positing such a diplomatic goal. They probably gave Mr. Obama the idea. But the Gipper understood the practical limits of arms control in delivering such a world, and Messrs. Shultz and Kissinger are hard-headed enough to know that global rogues must be contained if we are going to have any hope of a nuclear-free future.
Mr. Obama recognized this rogue proliferation threat in his Prague address, but to counter it he offered only more treaties of the kind that are already ignored. OK, not merely more treaties. Two days earlier in Strasbourg he also vouchsafed the power of his own moral example.
"And I had an excellent meeting with President Medvedev of Russia to get started that process of reducing our nuclear stockpiles, which will then give us a greater moral authority to say to Iran, don't develop a nuclear weapon; to say to North Korea, don't proliferate nuclear weapons," Mr. Obama said, implying that previous American Presidents had lacked such "authority."
The President went even further in Prague, noting that "as a nuclear power -- as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon -- the United States has a moral responsibility to act." That barely concealed apology for Hiroshima is an insult to the memory of Harry Truman, who saved a million lives by ending World War II without a bloody invasion of Japan. As for the persuasive power of "moral authority," we should have learned long ago that the concept has no meaning in Pyongyang or Tehran, much less in the rocky hideouts of al Qaeda.
The truth is that Mr. Obama's nuclear vision has reality exactly backward. To the extent that the U.S. has maintained a large and credible nuclear arsenal, it has prevented war, defeated the Soviet Union, shored up our alliances and created an umbrella that persuaded other nations that they don't need a bomb to defend themselves.
The most dangerous proliferation in the last 50 years has come outside the U.S. umbrella on the South Asian subcontinent, where India and Pakistan want to deter each other. No treaty stopped A.Q. Khan. Meanwhile, the world's most conspicuous antiproliferation victories in recent decades were the Israeli strike against Saddam Hussein's nuclear plant at Osirak, and the U.S. toppling of Saddam and the way it impressed Libya's Moammar Ghadafi.
All of which means that any serious effort at nonproliferation has to begin with North Korea and Iran. They are the urgent threat to nuclear peace, the focus of years of great-power diplomacy and sanctions. U.N. resolutions have formally barred both countries from developing an atomic bomb and the missiles to deliver them. If Iran acquires a bomb or North Korea retains one despite this attempt to stop them, then the world will conclude that there is no such thing as an enforceable antinuclear order. It will be every nation for itself.
In the Middle East, a Shiite bomb will send the region's Arab nations scurrying to Pakistan to get a Sunni weapon. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and perhaps even Iraq will be in the market for a deterrent. The Turks -- long a power in the region but wondering if NATO membership is enough protection -- will also seek to join the nuclear club. Meanwhile, Japan will increasingly wonder if Americans would really risk an attack on themselves in order to protect Tokyo. The nightmare imagined by strategists at the dawn of the atomic age in the 1950s, with every major nation getting the bomb, will be that much closer.
Mr. Obama is a brilliant talker, and his words thrilled a Europe that wants to believe he can conjure peace and a nuclear-free world. But note well how little the Europeans answered the President's call for more troops in Afghanistan, much less any help in stopping a nuclear Iran. Mr. Obama is offering pleasant illusions, while mullahs and other rogues plot explosive reality.
Note from AFA President -- Budget
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
AFA members, Congressional staffers, civic leaders, and DOCA members, yesterday, Secretary Gates briefed the press corps on his budget proposal for 2010. You can find his statement here.
In sum ... for the Air Force, the following was recommended:
Continued production of ISR systems
Increased production of the F-35
Continue the process to select tanker replacement
Purchase of more SOF lift, mobility, and refueling aircraft
However, the following programs were terminated/delayed:
F-22 production -- terminated
Follow-on Bomber -- terminated ("until we have a better understanding of the need, requirement, and the technology")
C-17 production -- terminated
Combat Search and Rescue Helicopter --X -- terminated
Transformational Satellite (TSAT) -- terminated -- and instead purchase of two more AEHF satellites
Missile Defense -- radically cut
o No increase of ground-based interceptors
o Airborne Laser (ABL) terminated
o Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) -- terminated
o Missile Defense Agency budget reduced by $1.4B/year
One cut -- which has but one line in the release -- retires 250 aircraft. This means:
We will have a defacto Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) -- since 250 aircraft is the equivalent of 3.5 wings (and over 5 CVBGs) of fighter aircraft
F-15s, F-16s, and A-10s will all leave the force ... with no replacements ...
Let me make a few observations about this budget.
1. This budget guarantees that the oldest Air Force in the history of our nation will get even older.
2. B-52s (built in the 1950s) will have to be kept on duty for a minimum of another 15-20 years ...
3. At a time when the nation is spending literally trillions of dollars, we seem to not have enough money to fund an adequate defense
4. We are using tomorrow's dollars to solve today's problems.
5. The acquisition decisions recommended will lock in the range of national security options for decades into the future.
6. The decisions are not just programic nuance -- but will impact core Air Force functions, to include Air Force ability to deter, to conduct an air campaign, and to rescue our downed Airmen.
7. The launch of an intercontinental missile by North Korea this weekend (and a similar launch by Iran 5 weeks ago) argues for a robust missile defense, not a reduced one -- to include the ABL. The technology of ABL has the potential to revolutionize warfare in the future.
8. It is difficult to determine the strategy which this budget supports. This is especially important since a Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is mandated by law ... and will be conducted in the upcoming several months. It seems the budget (and hence the strategy) precedes the QDR.
9. This budget increases risk ... in my view ... beyond so-called "moderate."
AFA believes there are major impacts and consequences ... for the full-up joint team. These budget recommendations may cost us lives and will reduce our strategic options in a very dangerous world.
For your consideration.
Michael M. Dunn President/CEO
Of course MSM (Marxist Socialist Media) refused to report on this video that was being viewed on several conservative blogs that the public were not aware of.
When hell breaks loose, MSM will pay for not presenting fair and balanced reporting on the candidates. I will be the first one stomping on MSM's worthless asses.
Posted by: Jack Ebbemble3450 ||
04/07/2009 20:27 Comments ||
Top||
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Men who used the treatment five minutes before having intercourse extended their love-making from half a minute to almost four minutes, trials showed.
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> Men who used the treatment five minutes before having intercourse extended their love-making from half a minute to almost four minutes, trials showed.
April 5, 2009: U.S. and Israeli intelligence have learned of an ongoing debate in the Iranian leadership. The more radical leaders, who control the Revolutionary Guard, and the al Quds force, want to equip Hamas (in Gaza) and Hezbollah (in southern Lebanon) with more lethal weapons, and goad Israel into another war. The Iranian radicals have been trying to get anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles to Hamas, as these weapons can be used immediately against Israeli helicopters, F-16s and UAVs that regularly operate over Gaza, and the armored vehicles that come in with raids and patrol the security fence. So far, none of these weapons have gotten through. The Israeli air raid on Sudan last January destroyed nearly twenty truckloads of these weapons. Iranian cargo ships are being watched closely for additional attempts to get the missiles to Gaza. This effort could backfire badly. There's a risk that, if Iranian anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles get used in Gaza, the Israelis may decide that their decision to leave Gaza four years ago was a big mistake, and take control once more.
A more worrisome effort is to supply Hezbollah with chemical warheads for some of their rockets. The less radical Iranian clerics have blocked this proposal, so far. The majority of the clerics who run the religious dictatorship in Iran are reluctant to see chemical weapons used on Israel, as they fear the retaliation (which might include a nuke, as the Israelis have no chemical weapons of their own). The more radical clerics take the "God is on our side" angle more literally and believe Israel can be taken down if hit hard enough. A little nerve gas should do it. The Iranian clerics usually work out compromises in cases like this, and the deal may include shipping chemical warheads to Hezbollah, but keeping them under the control of the Iranian security officers stationed there. Many Hezbollah leaders are also not keen on employing the chemical option. That's because Israel has the ability to take all of southern Lebanon, and grind Hezbollah into the dust. The Israelis would take a lot of casualties. But if Hezbollah hit Israeli civilians with mustard or nerve gas, the Israeli troops would have plenty of incentive to come across the border with murderous intent.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
