The Reagans

[Rob67]

Originally posted by strandinthewind
EEK - I hope they come back OK.

I agree that most of Iraq is peaceful now. But, soldiers and citizens are still dying pretty much everyday. So, there must be some strife somewhere. Hopefully, it will end soon.

So are people in every city in this country...the murder rate in Chicago is higher then the death rate in Iraq.

I agree, hopefully it ends soon!

Rob

[darklinensuit]

This is sad, and I thought it would fit in this thread:

Levi's Closes Last Two U.S. Sewing Plants
Fri Jan 9,12:16 AM ET Add Business - AP to My Yahoo!


By T.A. BADGER, AP Business Writer

SAN ANTONIO - Levi Strauss & Co., the California Gold Rush outfitter whose blue jeans are a globally recognized symbol of America, closed its last two U.S. sewing plants Thursday.



About 800 workers at the 26-year-old San Antonio plants lost their jobs in the move, which was announced last September.


The financially troubled company, based in San Francisco, has been shifting production to overseas contractors for years to offset drooping sales in the ultra-competitive apparel market. Only two decades ago, it had 63 U.S. manufacturing plants.


Levi Strauss spokesman Jeff Beckman said the 150-year-old company was making a delayed but unavoidable business decision.


"We tried to do our best to maintain manufacturing in the United States, but we have to be competitive to survive as a company," he said.


Sewing in San Antonio finished up around Thanksgiving and last month it ceased the laundering work done to give jeans their various finishes. Once, more than 4 million pairs of jeans were made here each year by workers earning an average of $10 to $12 per hour.


This spring Levi's will shutter its three remaining company-owned plants in Canada, completing the shift to contract production in China and other countries with far cheaper labor.


Levi Strauss, which is privately held, has weathered seven straight years of declining sales after its revenue peak of $7.1 billion in 1996.


In 2002, the company reported sales of $4.1 billion, and Beckman said the yet-to-be-released number for 2003 would be 2 percent to 3 percent below that.


The company has seen its global work force shrink from more than 37,000 in 1996 to about 12,000 as of last month, roughly half of them in the United States, said spokeswoman Kari Otto Seymore.


Along with the San Francisco headquarters, Levi's will continue to base its design and sales staffs in the United States, along with some distribution centers.


"We're still an American brand, but we're also a brand and a company whose products have been adopted by consumers around the world," Beckman said. "We have to operate as a global company."


Walter Loeb, a retail analyst in New York, says the profitability of moving production is worth more than a symbolic presence in the United States, where Levi's had made jeans since the 1870s.


"Investors are not very sentimental these days," Loeb said.


Loeb said even with overseas labor, management faces a big challenge in restoring the company's once-snug fit with consumers.


"There was a time when Levi's was the fashion garment of the day," he said. "The exclusivity of the Levi's brand is no longer as important to customers."


Seymore said Levi's severance package includes two weeks pay for every full year of employment, as well as an enhanced pension program and a period of subsidized medical coverage. In addition, she said, workers will be given up to $2,450 each.





That's better than what Viola Casares received when she and about 1,100 other Levi's employees were laid off from another San Antonio plant in 1990, but she doubts many workers are smiling.

"They would rather have a job," said Casares, who co-founded a group that protested the 1990 closure. She said that with other factories in the city also closing, workers will have trouble finding jobs that pay as well as the ones they're losing.

"For me right now, I feel like I'm in mourning," Casares said. "We used to be like a family. It's hard to believe that it's final."

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by Mad4stevie
Well, if this is the case, then give the money back to the rightful owner, whoever that is. It is easy to criticize someone's actions in hindsight. All I have to say is . . . people can't choose their parents, or their grandparents, for that matter!

I expect that everyone has some distasteful stuff that could be tied to them, no matter what the angle. Seriously, is there really anyone in a leadership role that doesn't have something in their background that could be questioned?

So you want to chastise people for comparing Bush to Hitler but you'll let his family slide on this one? Nice defense, counselor.

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by Rob67
So are people in every city in this country...the murder rate in Chicago is higher then the death rate in Iraq.
Rob

Whew. That's a relief.

[strandinthewind]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
So you want to chastise people for comparing Bush to Hitler but you'll let his family slide on this one? Nice defense, counselor.

Apples and Oranges. W was never part of Prescott's antics. Also, here is an article (one of many pulled in a google search) that demonstrates how basically all of America has profited from Nazi Germany. Do we make the heirs of the people who recieved a salary at these companies give the money back? How about the people who benefited from these salaries (butchers, stores, maids, etc.) - whould their heirs be required to give back money as well even though they had nothing to do with it, but received some benefit from these activities of their forefathers?

http://www.spx.org/faculty/holocaust...porations.html

[Rob67]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
Whew. That's a relief.

More like a comparison...

Rob

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by strandinthewind
Apples and Oranges. W was never part of Prescott's antics. Also, here is an article (one of many pulled in a google search) that demonstrates how basically all of America has profited from Nazi Germany. Do we make the heirs of the people who recieved a salary at these companies give the money back? How about the people who benefited from these salaries (butchers, stores, maids, etc.) - whould their heirs be required to give back money as well even though they had nothing to do with it, but received some benefit from these activities of their forefathers?

http://www.spx.org/faculty/holocaust...porations.html

And out of all those corporations, only one has a family that has produced two presidents. Like I said, there are different standards for the leader of the free world.

[strandinthewind]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
And out of all those corporations, only one has a family that has produced two presidents. Like I said, there are different standards for the leader of the free world.

Yea - but surely those corps. have essentially hand picked or had a hand in picking every President since then.

Again, even if all of what is asserted about Prescott Bush is true, W has never done anything like that to our knowledge. So, I say, as was said earlier, without more proof, the sins of the Grandfather (and America as a whole) should not be visited on W.

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by strandinthewind
Powell's defense

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/01/08/spr...ort/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/po...09POWE.html?th

Powell Admits No Hard Proof in Linking Iraq to Al Qaeda

" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conceded Thursday that despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no "smoking gun" proof of a link between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and terrorists of Al Qaeda."

[strandinthewind]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/po...09POWE.html?th

Powell Admits No Hard Proof in Linking Iraq to Al Qaeda

" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conceded Thursday that despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no "smoking gun" proof of a link between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and terrorists of Al Qaeda."

To my knowledge, Powell never asserted a smoking gun. He asserted that the photos and other intelligence suggested SH was building up an arsenal or preparing to do so. He also asserted SH unwillingness to account for or explain away this intelligence. Thus, SH was a security threat that needed to be removed. This is why I have said and will always say, timing issues aside, SH and no one else is solely responsible for the situation in Iraq.

[dissention]

Originally posted by strandinthewind
W was never part of Prescott's antics.

But he'll gladly take the money that was made because of his grandpoppy's antics...

[darklinensuit]

Forgive me if this has been posted, but I thought some of you might enjoy this.

White House - AP Cabinet & State

O'Neill Calls Bush a Disengaged President
Fri Jan 9, 2:28 PM ET Add White House - AP Cabinet & State to My Yahoo!


By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON - Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, pushed out of the administration for not being a team player, says President Bush (news - web sites) was so disengaged during Cabinet meetings that he was like a "blind man in a roomful of deaf people."



O'Neill, who has kept silent about the circumstances surrounding his ouster from the Cabinet 13 months ago, is now ready to give his side of the story with a tell-all book that paints Bush as a disengaged president who didn't encourage debate either at Cabinet meetings or in one-on-one meetings with his Cabinet secretaries.


To promote the book which will be out Tuesday, O'Neill was appearing Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes" in an interview with correspondent Lesley Stahl.


In an excerpt released by CBS, O'Neill said that a lack of real dialogue characterized the Cabinet meetings he attended during the first two years of the administration and gave O'Neill the feeling that Bush "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people."


O'Neill said that the atmosphere was similar during the one-on-one meetings he held with Bush.


Speaking of his first meeting with the president, O'Neill said, "I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage (Bush) on. ... I was surprised it turned out me talking and the president just listening. It was mostly a monologue."


O'Neill is described as the principal source for the new book, "The Price of Loyalty," being published by Simon and Schuster, and written by Ron Suskind, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal.


In addition to interviews with O'Neill, Suskind drew on 19,000 documents O'Neill provided, according to CBS, which said Suskind also interviewed dozens of Bush insiders to flesh out his account of the administration's first two years.


Asked about O'Neill's comment about a disengaged president, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters Friday, "I think it's well known the way the president approaches governing and setting priorities. The president is someone that leads and acts decisively on our biggest priorities and that is exactly what he'll continue to do."


Asked about the administration's opinion of the upcoming book, McClellan said, "I don't do book reviews."


O'Neill, the former head of aluminum giant Alcoa, did not immediately respond to phone messages from The AP left at his office in Pittsburgh. But in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, O'Neill said he hoped his inflammatory comments did not overshadow the substantive issues he discusses in the book.


"If the 'red meat,' taken out of context, is all that people get out of this book, it will be a huge disappointment to me," he said. "Ideally, this book will cause people to stop and think about the current state of our political process and raise our expectations for what is possible."


O'Neill gained a reputation during his two years in the Bush Cabinet for frequently shooting from the lip with incendiary comments that shook up financial markets and antagonized Wall Street. O'Neill said he was just trying to discuss complicated public policy issues in greater depth than the television sound bites so often used by the typical Washington politicians.


O'Neill was fired in December 2002 when Bush shook up his economic team in search of better salesmen for a new round of tax cuts the president hoped would stimulate a sluggish economy.


O'Neill had publicly questioned the need for another round of tax cuts in light of the growing budget deficits. He was replaced by John Snow, former head of CSX Corp., who became a staunch advocate for new tax cuts, which Bush signed into law in May.

[dissention]

Originally posted by darklinensuit
Asked about O'Neill's comment about a disengaged president, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters Friday, "I think it's well known the way the president approaches governing and setting priorities. The president is someone that leads and acts decisively on our biggest priorities and that is exactly what he'll continue to do."

A blind man in a roomful of deaf people? Nah, more like a one-legged man in a butt kicking contest.

[darklinensuit]

Originally posted by dissention


A blind man in a roomful of deaf people?

That's the line that made me laugh. I guess Reagan was comatose in a room full of snorers.

- Jake

[Mad4stevie]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
So you want to chastise people for comparing Bush to Hitler but you'll let his family slide on this one? Nice defense, counselor.

I don't understand how you can interpret what I said to mean that I am "letting it slide". And, for the record, I think it is disrespectful for people to compare Hitler and Bush as being in the same ballpark. How can you compare them when one person was directly responsible for murdering 6 million Jews? Come on. Honestly, do you really think this is a good analogy?

As I have said before, people have the right to their opinion, but I don't have to agree with it.

I think it is a valid point regarding the sins of the grandfather not being passed on to future generations. This makes me think of all of the decendents of slaves who feel we should somehow compensate them for what their ancestors were subjected to. There is nothing that can be done about that now. Its been almost 150 years since that time, and people need to deal with their issues and get over it. It isn't like they were subjected to slavery.