Steel production on America became too expensive compared to foreign imports. The President no matter who he is cannot control that. Industry moves areas as the economy of the area fluctuates and always has. New England had the textiles originally and then they moved to the South. Other industry replaced it in the North.

In Alabama we lost the steel industry for the most part and now it is being replaced by foreign auto manufacturing plants. We have about the lowest unemployment in the country. Most of the steel plants in the country were ancient build and too expensive to rebuild to todays standards. It hit Monongahela (spelling) Penna worse than Michigan.

The airlines were decimated by 911, everyone knows that, again the president cannot control that. At the latest count, the Unions only control 8% of employment and most of that in the Northeast. Those who had Union jobs were generally very overpaid as compared to non union jobs and this alone is bringing the end of the Unions in employment. I worked at one company in the machine shop where we had fantastic benefits and pay scale so that the Union could not get in.

The outsourcing and employment problems has been going on for many more years than Bush has been president. Look at the downfall of industry in California. Why did not Clinton do something about that years ago. Because a president cannot do that. He cannot control what competitive business will do. Kerry wants to cut the taxes (give a 5% tax break) for businesses to keep the jobs here. In effect that raises the taxes on the rest of the people to make up for the loss of governmental income.

Maybe we should just send all of our money to Washington and let them divvy it out as they think fair. That is communism simply put, what the Democrats want is almost there and considered Socialism as most of Europe is now. That is give everyone free essentials and tax the crap out of the people. America became great and prosperous by letting the Fat Cats in the offices make money with competition. Take that away and we lose the capacity to produce. Even Red China has adopted American Capitalism to raise an ancient country to todays standards. And it is working for them also. I bet Heinz does not want to see Capitalism go away. Then Kerry could not get his allowance. Yeah he is for the little people. He flew his hairdresser in from Washington DC to Washington state for a trim before a meeting. Yep, he knows all about how we live.

 

Amen, HiD.

As for steel mills, something on the order of 14 were just bought by the Chinese, dismantled and moved lock, stock, and barrel to China.

As Joe N. says, a particular branch of the military has specific missions. I spent 20 years active duty from Air Force Security Police to Army Corrections and 14 years assigned to different Infantry units wearing the Crossed Rifles of the Infantry and never saw a day of combat. I was woke up more than once for actual military missions with gear in tow to board an airplane to a trouble spot but because of the power the U.S. they backed down. I did do patrols in the DMZ in Korea and that is not a training exercise. As I did not see combat does that make me any less a veteran? Does it make me less an American?

I don't believe so, and the likes of some people in public office disgust me. There was another thread where I posted a link to a story about an American Hero, who served in VietNam, was a prisoner, and was then elected to the Senate. This man changed political parties due to the actions of another man who was elected to the Senate from another state. Granted there were probably other reasons but you know about the straw that broke the camel's back.

With a strong President there are many confrontations that end in a whimper, with a weak one the flames of confrontation rage high and the antagonists grow braver.

Seems I read somewhere that a country divided cannot flourish. After 9/11 we were united as one, now we have elements driving a wedge into the hearts and minds of Americans.

 

Electrolux, nearby in Greenville, hasn't been able to shut down because of real-estate problems in Mexico. Bosch announced they were locking their doors here, before Bush made his first economic decision. GM shut down Oldsmobile in Lansing while Clinton was in office. Michael Moore was filming the auto industry turning into a ghost town in Flint Long before GWB ran for office. United and other airlines need to take some responsibility for their own actions. I know a pilot senior enough to retire this year(doesn't fly the puddle jumpers) that has mentioned a couple internal "mistakes". I am upset about how Bush is "handling" the oil prices. You can't blame all the prices of stuff going up on oil though. A lot of people don't realize that right now there is a supply bottle neck in the railroad industry. Your not gonna hire people if you can't get your supply's delivered. The finished product price goes up because you can't meet demand either. A 2x4 stud costing $2.50 here! The railroads have soo much business now they can't keep up. Stuff is always late. Over the years they have closed so many short lines and yards to save costs of overhead and maintenance and get away from small business. And they reduced trackage on mainlines. Now that they have increased business, they pay crews to sit for hours to wait for tracks to clear, then when they max their hours, they have to re-crew. Guess what... the railroads are hiring too. They also continue to purchase new power. I also just heard AM General just got a huge order of Armor vehicles. I'm sure the reason is unfortunate though.

 

I'll be glad when the elction is over......

 

And this from a man that thinks a remote starter is "almost better than sex" I agree on the election, but don't know about that sex thing

 

Sounds like the media is closing ranks on this. Here is one guy who tried to do the right thing and got fired for trying. Something smells here.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MEDIA MATTERS
Radio talk-show host
canned for Rather blast
Seattle's Brian Maloney dumped,
said anchor should go over memos

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: September 19, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Seattle's "Radio Equalizer," Brian Maloney, has left Newsradio 710 KIRO-AM the same way he arrived – fired with enthusiasm.

The talk show host says that he was terminated from the CBS affiliate two days ago because of critical comments he had made earlier about CBS anchor Dan Rather and his handling of charges that memos about President Bush had been forged.

"On the talk show that I host, or hosted, I said I felt Rather should either retire or be forced out over this," Maloney told Associated Press in a telephone interview. "What they have expressed is essentially that my show went in a direction they're not comfortable with."


KIRO is a CBS Radio News affiliate, however it has been owned since 1997 by Entercom, a broadcasting company headquartered in Bala Cynwyd, Pa. In the 1930s, KIRO gave a start to a young Chet Huntley who went on to fame in the 1960s, with David Brinkley, on NBC TV’s Huntley-Brinkley Report.

"I really felt [Rather] was taking the network's credibility down with him," Maloney said, indicating that he was not at liberty to discuss the firing in detail.

"Talk-show hosts have generally had a lot of independence in these kinds of issues," he said. "Nobody's ever said, 'You can't criticize CBS News.'"

In December 2001, when he arrived at KIRO, an enthusiastic Maloney said, "It's a wonderful station with quite a variety of backgrounds in listeners and callers. That's what keeps it interesting. I know that any 10 callers will give 10 different views on what we are talking about. The fun is in the sparring between individuals."

Now, the sparring is over.

Maloney’s broadcast career goes back to 1993 when he was working on a political campaign in Santa Cruz, California. Following several years at KSCO in California's Central Coast region, Maloney went on to Reno's KOH-AM. In his early years, he became known as the "Radio Equalizer" because, "my show was one of the few places giving balance to the local news stories of the day. The name is silly but it kind of stuck."

 

What is CBS supposed to do when the White House told them the documents were authentic just before the show aired?

NEW YORK — It was 11 a.m. on Sept. 8 — nine hours before "60 Minutes" was to air. But as news executives debated whether to broadcast a story on newly obtained paperwork offering fresh evidence about President Bush's National Guard service, a big question hung over CBS News' Westside headquarters: Were the photocopied documents real or fake?

Suddenly, the answer seemed to materialize, and from an unlikely source — the White House itself.
John Roberts, the network's White House correspondent, called to report he'd just completed an on-camera interview with Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. Bartlett, it appeared, had no quarrel with the authenticity of the documents.

That was the turning point.

"If we had gotten back from the White House any kind of red flag, raised eyebrow, anything that said, 'Are you sure about this stuff?' we would have gone back to square one," Josh Howard, the program's executive producer, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview Friday. "The White House said they were authentic, and that carried a lot of weight with us."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...atguard19.html

 

I smell a rat, are these two statements the same?



Bartlett, it appeared, had no quarrel with the authenticity of the documents.


"The White House said they were authentic, and that carried a lot of weight with us."

 

We're supposed to believe a report from the Seattle times????
I don't for one minute believe that anyone from the white house would say that those poorly forged documents were authentic!
Sounds like some conspiracists trying to blame Bush for Dan Rathers poorly planned political attack against our Prez.

 

Frankly I am at the point where I try NOT to watch any of the news channels as they are ALL full of crap!.

I don't think we have had responsible news reporting in years, and I am not just talking about the Bush/Kerry issues. It is a good deal easier to see the bias during any election though.

It is all about rating's, good ratings means money and they will "make up" the news to get them.

 

I have not trusted the media for over 20 years and every year I trust them less. They have below zero credibility in my eyes. Lately used car salesmen appear to have more credibility than the media, politicians and lawyers.
Here is a story by Patrick J. Buchanin I just read that may interest some of you:

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Rather: The final days

Posted: September 20, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern


© 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.


"I gave them a sword, and they ran it right through me," said Richard Nixon. Thirty years later, Nixon nemesis Dan Rather might say the same of the blunders that are about to bring an inglorious end to his long career.

What – other than a blind bias against George Bush rooted in animus or ideology, or an obduracy bred of arrogance and hubris – can explain Rather's near-suicidal behavior since his "60 Minutes" segment aired over a week ago?

In that piece, Rather revealed four newly discovered memos from the "personal file" of Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, George W. Bush's squadron commander in the National Guard. The memos seemed irrefutable proof that Killian thought Bush a shirker whose defiance of orders was being protected by higher-ups like Col. "Buck" Stoudt.

Rather thought he had a story that could bring down a president. Instead, he has ravaged what remains of the reputation of CBS News and made of himself a cartoon caricature of liberal bias. His stonewalling defense of his Guard story will be studied in journalism schools alongside the frauds perpetrated by Jayson Blair and Janet Cooke.

How could Rather have been so stubborn and blind?

At least two experts consulted by CBS warned against going with the Guard story, saying there were "problems" with the memos. Within hours of the airing of the Rather piece, the Web had exploded with bloggers saying the Times New Roman font and "superscript" letters "th" in "111th squadron" appeared to have come from a word processor.

By Thursday night, the story of the forged memos was all over the country. Killian's widow and son declared them fakes. Ben Barnes, who told Rather he used his influence to get Bush into the Guard, was being called a liar by his own daughter.

But the smoke alarms at CBS were not working. Friday, a defiant Rather went on air to denounce his critics as partisans and assert that CBS stood by its story.

Over the weekend, the Dallas Morning News reported that Stoudt had been out of the Guard for 18 months when he was supposed to be pressuring Killian.

Rather's hole card, the testimony of Gen. Bobby Hodges, then head of the Guard, that the memos were consistent with what Killian believed, turned out to be a deuce. Hodges claims he was misled by CBS into thinking the Killian memos were handwritten.

Shown copies, he dismissed them as computer-generated frauds.

Yet on Monday, Rather – his memos a national joke, his experts and witnesses defecting and recanting – went on air to assert once again the memos were authentic and the president must address the Guard issues. "With respect, answer the questions," Rather thundered at Bush. "The longer we go without a denial of such things – this story is true."

This was ludicrous. It is the prosecution that must prove a man guilty, not the accused who must prove himself innocent.

Rather's conduct remains inexplicable. Why would he risk his career on the authenticity of 30-year-old memos that CBS' own experts questioned and he apparently got from an inveterate Bush-hater who was demanding anonymity for his accusations?

Of what is CBS now palpably guilty? Certainly of stupidity and gullibility of Olympian proportions. Certainly of an obduracy at odds with any reportorial temperament. Certainly of a blind bias toward the president. Can anyone believe CBS would have clung this long to so patently falsified an attack on John Kerry?

Worse, CBS appears to have been complicit in a criminal conspiracy to use forged U.S. government documents to bring down a president. The man who passes counterfeit money he knows or suspects to be counterfeit is guilty of a felony. And CBS must have suspected it was using counterfeit documents to damage President Bush.

CBS has to take Rather off the air for the duration of this campaign if it is to even begin to restore its reputation and credibility. For where President Bush is concerned, Dan Rather has no credibility left.

An investigation must be conducted into who tried to affect an election and bring down a president using forgeries of federal documents. And Rather and the CBS executives and producers must testify against the hatchers of this rotten plot to which they were an indispensable party, or they, too, must stand trial as accomplices in the scheme.

Dan Rather likely saw himself striding to the podium of the Radio and TV Correspondents' Dinner to accept the profession's highest award for investigative journalism. Now he will be the principal object of mockery and ridicule from that same podium, should he dare to show up.

In a way, this is a tragedy. A flaw in a man's character, magnified by his position of preeminence, brings about his downfall and ruin. In Rather's case, it was pride and a blind hatred of the right that led him to commit a journalistic atrocity that will end up killing not the president's re-election, but his own reputation and career.

 

Another story I just read:

Monday, September 20, 2004

See? B.S.!

Posted: September 20, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Barbara Simpson

The CBS "eye" is more than bloodshot. CBS has a shiner, and it's not about to go away soon. They can pile on the beefsteak to help heal it, but the only part of the cow that's piling up is what CBS and Dan Rather are shoveling – it's what comes out of the back end of the steer.

Get out your hip boots – it's getting pretty deep. Putting it politely, the official network line is B.S.

The messenger has become the story as a result of last weekend's "60 Minutes" segment, reported by Dan Rather, which cast serious aspersions about President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard during Vietnam. The report relied heavily on documents – which have turned out to be forgeries – and on individuals whose recollections are equally suspect.


The report wasn't an investigative segment – it was a hit piece, made all the more unpalatable and unacceptable because it was based on a fraud. Clearly, it was a fraud on the American people because it was presented as truth by a network news department.

But it was also a fraud because, as the days have passed, it appears that even experts asked to validate the documents warned about their validity. That being the case, the overarching question is why the segment was even aired? One can only surmise that the intent was not the reporting of "truth," but to create controversy over the president's military service and undermine his re-election campaign. If the story were true, it would only serve to bolster Democrat challenger John Kerry.

Now why would a premiere network news division do such a thing? They are, after all, seekers of truth and reporters of fact, aren't they? Sure, and if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.

Hardly had the segment aired, then the truth came out. Examination of the documents showed they were produced on a computer with fonts not available at the time they were ostensibly written. Pretty dumb. And Rather, instead of acknowledging the discrepancies, defended the story despite them, saying that he "believed" the accusations to be true.

Sorry Dan, that is B.S. We know it and the suits at the network aren't stupid. They know it, too. The difference is, they think we – the people – are stupid. They always have and they always do. Remember, the general rule of thumb of news operations is to aim the content at a 3rd- to 5th-grade mentality.

The media elites talk down to us because they believe themselves to be the anointed purveyors of news and information. For years, the public depended on mainstream media – print and broadcast – to report information concerning politics, government, society and anything else of importance. For years, broadcast media have been in the grip of the three major networks. They controlled it, with no competition.

For the most part, we trusted them. We'd been told reporters were seekers of truth, reporters of fact – that they were honest, thorough and impartial. Some even believed they were objective.

On top of that, broadcast media are part of "the press" and, because of that, are under the umbrella of constitutional protection with their own special inclusion in the Bill of Rights.

Talk about power. That's pretty heady stuff. And it's gone to a lot of heads – especially the talking heads on TV news – think Dan Rather, et al. All that power, enhanced by makeup, clothing, lights and cameras and money, has added up to emphasis on show biz and a lessening of the responsibility for truth, accuracy and, yes, balance.

It's clear that mainstream TV news has lost control of its obligation to present facts, figures and information to the public and to let the public reach its own conclusions. Now, it takes a different tack, presenting conclusions supported by its own choice of facts and expecting viewers to accept them, without question.

Well, surprise, surprise. We dumbos out here aren't as thick as they think we are. We have alternatives now, choices the mainstream ignore, ridicule and denigrate. Now, there's cable.

Remember, when CNN started, the mainstream derided it as being the "chicken noodle network." Well, it succeeded (never mind its politics) and now there are others, especially Fox, which presents its view of "fair and balanced," providing a contrast to what mainstream news selects for us to know.

The fact that Fox beat the mainstream in ratings for the convention illustrates that the thrown gauntlet was a good move. Add to that Internet news sites, bloggers and independent websites, as well as the ability to research issues accurately and quickly. They've rocked mainstream media to the foundations.

The Tiffany network is no more and the ruins are piled deeply around the feet of Dan Rather and the staff who produced the "60 Minutes" segment. Whether he survives is open for debate, but despite his protestations of his personal belief, the reality is that CBS News is seriously damaged and the entire news staff will be tarnished by being part of an operation which allowed such a deception to be aired.

And that's the way it is. See? B.S.!




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Bush did get out early, but he did them a favor. He served more time than required until downsizing. Then the reserves were overwhelmed with pilots and finding jobs for them. He had requested permission (and was not the only pilot) to end his term to persue his political profession. they were probably more than happy to sign those papers. I think if it was an issue, they would have made more of it 4 years ago. I like Clintons new commercial about how Kerry was the only one to "step forward". Forget about the the little requets he made, that got denied?

 

What I don't get, maybe I am stupid.... Even if Daddy pulled strings to get him in, then he successfully put in five years as a jet pilot and then disobeyed an order. If true would have been an article 15 at the most. What difference would that make 30 years later in his presidency? I just don't get the attempted hype. I certainly cannot see staking a news career on that premise.

Gentlemen, I have to make this announcment. I cannot ever be president. I received an article 15. I went to a bar that was off limits, and yes, got caught. That was before receiving an honorable discharge. That was almost 40 years ago, but you know how these things follow me.

I would love to see the youth record of Rather. Most young people showed their stuff at one time or another. I would hate to have my feet held to the fire for some of the dumb stuff I did in my teens and early twenties. The first presidency elections proved that Bush had a colorful youth, so what is the point of all this?

Being an important polititions son, Bush probably did not have to clean the day room every Saturday for a month either. I'm so jealous. Jeez, lets get on with the current needs of America.

 

This is what this election should be about IMHO, but it would be vastly less entertaining than what happens now

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