Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Hazaanko on July 24, 2008, 11:08:48 pm
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http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=301702713742569
Original thread title was "Media Donations Favor Dems 100-1"
Karajorma changed it for.... dunno why.
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Wait.... Fox donated purely to the Democrats? .... .... I'm so confused.
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Seems a little unlikely doesn't it?
They're looking at the amount donated by the reporters and news staff. Let's ask how much was donated by the companies running those particular TV stations and Newspapers instead.
Smoke and mirrors.
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lol thats a small amount from the companies, an insultingly low amount, even if its for another person who's going be using it to burn money away to light his cigar everyday.
$100,000 from NBC to the Dems and only $3,000 to Reps
$40,000 from Fox to Dems and $0 to the Reps.
looks like Barrick has the job as far as the media is concerned.
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It's the amounts donated by the people who work there. You could have just as easily gone into a Mcdonalds, asked the staff what they had given and then concluded that McDonalds has a liberal bias.
It is not the amount donated by the company nor the amount donated by the people running the company. If the numbers meant something then the 100-1 bias would also mean that Fox favours the democrats infinitely more. In other words it means nothing at all.
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It's made of handwavium. That's all you need to know.
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Someone should use this article as proof that Fox has a ridiculously high liberal bias which means that conservatives are better off with MSNBC or CNN.
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It's the amounts donated by the people who work there. You could have just as easily gone into a Mcdonalds, asked the staff what they had given and then concluded that McDonalds has a liberal bias.
It is not the amount donated by the company nor the amount donated by the people running the company. If the numbers meant something then the 100-1 bias would also mean that Fox favours the democrats infinitely more. In other words it means nothing at all.
Oh it certainly means something.
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It's the amounts donated by the people who work there...
...It is not the amount donated by the company nor the amount donated by the people running the company...
is this one of those things i where i didnt understand what you said or that a simple mistake their? :)
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Individuals are limited in their (official) campaign donations.
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$500 limit?
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From the beginning of that article
The New York Times' refusal to publish John McCain's rebuttal to Barack Obama's Iraq op-ed may be the most glaring example of liberal media bias this journalist has ever seen.
You mean the one that had him saying the surge working is a fact of history? if they had run that they would have risked the whole blogosphere descend on them with clips of General Petreus telling McCain to his face that successes had nothing to so with the surge bar speeding things up a bit (at a congressional hearing last September) Oh and of course President Bush saying the same thing before he needed the opposite for political reasons.
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8s_NpaQGC8
Not reporting someone making a complete fool of himself is not an example of being against that person.
Just thought I'd drop that in.
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It's the amounts donated by the people who work there...
...It is not the amount donated by the company nor the amount donated by the people running the company...
is this one of those things i where i didnt understand what you said or that a simple mistake their? :)
They counted donations from the journalists, from their own personal money. It's not the amount donated by Ted Turner or Rupert Murdoch. Nor is it the amount donated by the companies CNN, ABC etc from their business accounts.
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Yeah its a long established fact tht the reported tend to sway one way while those that get promotions and the editors sway the other.
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:lol: Rupert Murdock giving money way for anything?!?!?!
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It's the amounts donated by the people who work there...
...It is not the amount donated by the company nor the amount donated by the people running the company...
is this one of those things i where i didnt understand what you said or that a simple mistake their? :)
They counted donations from the journalists, from their own personal money. It's not the amount donated by Ted Turner or Rupert Murdoch. Nor is it the amount donated by the companies CNN, ABC etc from their business accounts.
Ted Turner = 7:1 Dem
http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_donations/Ted_Turner.php
Rupert Murdoch = 2:1 Repub
http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_donations/Rupert_Murdoch.php
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand the big one...
http://www.theusreport.com/the-us-report/obama-favorite-for-donations-by-media-web-employees-and-inde.html
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Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee do not accept donations from political action committees or lobbyists. Nor do they accept contributions from companies, I believe. But corporate employees are, of course, able to donate on a personal level, up to a yearly maximum of 28,500 dollars.
These statistics reflect the personal donations of media employees, not donations by media companies.
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Seriously, what point are you trying to make with all this Hazaanko?
Either you make one or I'm renaming the topic "Fox News displays liberal bias!". That at least would get the ball rolling. :p
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Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee do not accept donations from political action committees or lobbyists. Nor do they accept contributions from companies, I believe. But corporate employees are, of course, able to donate on a personal level, up to a yearly maximum of 28,500 dollars.
These statistics reflect the personal donations of media employees, not donations by media companies.
#1: Obama and the DNC do and have done so (read the first article or just google around for a few seconds)
#2: Media companies don't make campaign contributions. Simple as that. But media companies, as all companies, are run by those in its employ. Companies ARE the people who work in it.
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If Obama or the DNC have accepted money from PACs or lobbyists, it was either a) prior to five months ago, when he made that promise or b) subject to some really weird loophole. Obama can't take money from PACs or lobbyists because he made a legally binding promise not to.
I'll ask about this at work, but I'm pretty sure that the no-PACs-or-lobbyists thing has been upheld.
Now, understand that And while the money totals pale in comparison to the $9-million-plus that just one union's PACs have spent to get Obama elected
means that PACs can still spend money on campaigns for Obama, they just can't give to him or to the Democrats. They have to run their own campaigns.
McCain and the Republican National Committee, on the other hand, take a ton of money from lobbyists. At one point in recent weeks the RNC had 85 million dollars and the DNC had 3, and the discrepancy could be attributed to corporate donations to the RNC. (My source here is my employers, a grassroots campaign operation.)
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#2: Media companies don't make campaign contributions. Simple as that. But media companies, as all companies, are run by those in its employ. Companies ARE the people who work in it.
Who do you think you are kidding with that? Companies are run by the people at the top not by the employees.
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#2: Media companies don't make campaign contributions. Simple as that. But media companies, as all companies, are run by those in its employ. Companies ARE the people who work in it.
Who do you think you are kidding with that? Companies are run by the people at the top not by the employees.
I don't think that the journalists are at the top. Just sayin'.
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That was kind of the point he was trying to make...
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If Obama or the DNC have accepted money from PACs or lobbyists, it was either a) prior to five months ago, when he made that promise or b) subject to some really weird loophole. Obama can't take money from PACs or lobbyists because he made a legally binding promise not to.
I'll ask about this at work, but I'm pretty sure that the no-PACs-or-lobbyists thing has been upheld.
Now, understand that And while the money totals pale in comparison to the $9-million-plus that just one union's PACs have spent to get Obama elected
means that PACs can still spend money on campaigns for Obama, they just can't give to him or to the Democrats. They have to run their own campaigns.
McCain and the Republican National Committee, on the other hand, take a ton of money from lobbyists. At one point in recent weeks the RNC had 85 million dollars and the DNC had 3, and the discrepancy could be attributed to corporate donations to the RNC. (My source here is my employers, a grassroots campaign operation.)
These took me literally seconds to google. Technicalities aside, Obama and the DNC still take money from lobbyists. Basically, the problem lies with Obama's and the DNC's extremely narrow definition of what a lobbyist "is."
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/22/681/
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obamas_lame_claim_about_mccains_money.html
#2: Media companies don't make campaign contributions. Simple as that. But media companies, as all companies, are run by those in its employ. Companies ARE the people who work in it.
Who do you think you are kidding with that? Companies are run by the people at the top not by the employees.
Then why would they hire anybody if they run it themselves? An engine runs a car. The people who work for a business run it. If you think the journalists/editors/etc have no influence over the company they work for, I believe you'd be embarrassingly wrong.
Seriously, what point are you trying to make with all this Hazaanko?
Either you make one or I'm renaming the topic "Fox News displays liberal bias!". That at least would get the ball rolling. :p
Am I not allowed to post a topic like this and discuss it?
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Engines don't drive the car, they do the hard work while the bigwig sits in comfort steering and putting his foot down. I'm an engine. Murdoch is a driver. Bosses are in charge. Employees are employed to work.
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Engines don't drive the car, they do the hard work while the bigwig sits in comfort steering and putting his foot down. I'm an engine. Murdoch is a driver. Bosses are in charge. Employees are employed to work.
I didn't say drive. I said run. Definitions aside, my point stands - If you think the journalists/editors/etc have no influence over the company they work for, I believe you'd be embarrassingly wrong.
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Well it would be pretty easy to point out that most journalists probably have a pretty good idea of how obviously incompetent McCain is, so they're either giving Obama their money, or simply abstaining. (biased opinion obviously, but I'm just saying)
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Wait, Hazaanko, from the articles you linked me to, it looks like Obama's definition of lobbyists is right on the money, and the other definition is too broad. At least that's my reading of it...
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Yes, Hazaanko, the journalists of companies like FOX have influence over the company they work for.
Examples:
- They can quit their jobs... which does what? The management will hire new people, people who agree with the them and the president/heads of the company.
- They can try to publish stuff that goes against what the heads of the company are saying... which does what? It gets them fired, and the story doesn't make it into the news.
- They can keep quiet and try to rise through the ranks of the company... which does what? It keeps them from working for a company where they will actually be able to publish the story.
You seem to have confused the roles of employee and shareholder. The typical journalist at FOX is not a major shareholder, and will not be able to control the future of the company. Real companies are hierarchical, with a president, CEO, etc. at the top, high, middle, and low management in the middle, and people like the journalists at the bottom.
my point stands - If you think the journalists/editors/etc have no influence over the company they work for, I believe you'd be embarrassingly wrong.
Although I can't be certain, I am going to agree. You do believe we'd be embarassingly wrong. But believing something doesn't make it true. And being embarassed is irrelevant.
The fact of the matter is, Hazaanko, that the journalists are not in charge. Companies are not democracies in which each member has an equal say. The editors are in charge of them, and somebody else is in charge of them. At the top of FOX, for example, is Rupert Murdoch. If the people directly under him were to tell their subordinates to do something Murdoch didn't like, he'd have them kicked out. So they don't. And if Murdoch finds out they're letting their subordinates getting away with something he doesn't like, he'll see to it those subordinates are fired and that it doesn't happen again. Sure, the subordinates can dislike the company's stance, but they can't shape it, and they generally can't get away with defying it.
The journalists working at FOX are giving money to Barack Obama. That says nothing about what the actual news content will be like.
And about that car analogy... yes, if the engine in a car breaks, the car will cease to function. But the only way the 'engine' of a company could break is if a HUGE number of its employees braved the fear of losing their jobs, and stopped following the president's orders. That's like saying that in an instant every single piece of equipment under the hood is going to shut down. It's not going to happen that way. If a part breaks, the OWNER of the car--Mr. Rupert Murdoch is the owner of this particular car--will have that part repaired--that is, the person or people will get fired. Murdoch is the owner of FOX, and even if every single person quit, he would still have all of the money and all of the infrastructure needed to hire new people who will actually do what he tells wants. And I have a strange feeling that he DOES NOT support Obama.
[/outrage]
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You missed an outrage tag :nervous:
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http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obamas_lame_claim_about_mccains_money.html
Explain to me why I should even bother clicking this link. Please. It just screams bias with a dose of stupidity.
EDIT: And having clicked it, explain to me what it has to do with the topic?
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Who do you think you are kidding with that? Companies are run by the people at the top not by the employees.
Then why would they hire anybody if they run it themselves? An engine runs a car. The people who work for a business run it. If you think the journalists/editors/etc have no influence over the company they work for, I believe you'd be embarrassingly wrong.
Your car analogy is a good one. Yes the car you have influences how fast the car drives, accelerates etc but you've completely ignored the fact that the majority of the choice about destination and how to get there comes from the driver not the engine. And it is exactly the same with a company.
Let me stop the silly argument you are trying to make though and point out something. Even if I believed you had a point one of the most biased stations on that list is FOX News. Even when Murdoch gave money to Democrats it was to Hilary not Obama. So By your own argument you should be telling people to watch CNN instead of FOX News because it displays less of a liberal bias. Is that what you are saying?
Am I not allowed to post a topic like this and discuss it?
Prior to my comment what had you actually discussed? You posted a link and said nothing about it. When we pointed out the flaws you didn't answer and simply asserted it meant something without going into any detail about why you were correct. It's only after I said something you seem to have bothered to actually start discussing why you feel that it's important at all and even then the argument is ridiculous unless you want us to believe that FOX News is unfairly liberal.
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Wow this is getting you guys really riled up. I wonder why.......... hehe :rolleyes:
Who do you think you are kidding with that? Companies are run by the people at the top not by the employees.
Then why would they hire anybody if they run it themselves? An engine runs a car. The people who work for a business run it. If you think the journalists/editors/etc have no influence over the company they work for, I believe you'd be embarrassingly wrong.
Your car analogy is a good one. Yes the car you have influences how fast the car drives, accelerates etc but you've completely ignored the fact that the majority of the choice about destination and how to get there comes from the driver not the engine. And it is exactly the same with a company.
Let me stop the silly argument you are trying to make though and point out something. Even if I believed you had a point one of the most biased stations on that list is FOX News. Even when Murdoch gave money to Democrats it was to Hilary not Obama. So By your own argument you should be telling people to watch CNN instead of FOX News because it displays less of a liberal bias. Is that what you are saying?
Am I not allowed to post a topic like this and discuss it?
Prior to my comment what had you actually discussed? You posted a link and said nothing about it. When we pointed out the flaws you didn't answer and simply asserted it meant something without going into any detail about why you were correct. It's only after I said something you seem to have bothered to actually start discussing why you feel that it's important at all and even then the argument is ridiculous unless you want us to believe that FOX News is unfairly liberal.
Discussions take two people (or maybe just one crazy person...?). Say something, wait for a reply, formulate another reply in turn, and do so.
Analogies only go so far. If companies were like cars, then there would be one human (the boss) and the rest would be machines/robots. This can get deep into philosophy, but why do companies hire people and NOT machines? Why do you think that is? Is it because technology isn't advanced enough?
I don't say things until later in the discussion because I enjoy seeing what other people's opinions and biases are. It is also quite amusing to see people try and guess what my opinions are and/or put words into my mouth.
And no, that isn't what I'm saying.
As far as flaws go... what flaws? Its simply data. Unless the data itself is flawed I don't quite get what you're trying to say about it.
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obamas_lame_claim_about_mccains_money.html
Explain to me why I should even bother clicking this link. Please. It just screams bias with a dose of stupidity.
EDIT: And having clicked it, explain to me what it has to do with the topic?
That link was in response to someone's claim that neither Obama nor the DNC take contributions from lobbyists. While it does indeed contain a heavy bias, the data remains intact and if you have enough sense, its pretty easy to maneuver around the bias. With practice, you might even be able to listen to somebody who's opinion differs from yours (GASP) :ick:
Yes, Hazaanko, the journalists of companies like FOX have influence over the company they work for.
Examples:
- They can quit their jobs... which does what? The management will hire new people, people who agree with the them and the president/heads of the company.
- They can try to publish stuff that goes against what the heads of the company are saying... which does what? It gets them fired, and the story doesn't make it into the news.
- They can keep quiet and try to rise through the ranks of the company... which does what? It keeps them from working for a company where they will actually be able to publish the story.
You seem to have confused the roles of employee and shareholder. The typical journalist at FOX is not a major shareholder, and will not be able to control the future of the company. Real companies are hierarchical, with a president, CEO, etc. at the top, high, middle, and low management in the middle, and people like the journalists at the bottom.
my point stands - If you think the journalists/editors/etc have no influence over the company they work for, I believe you'd be embarrassingly wrong.
Although I can't be certain, I am going to agree. You do believe we'd be embarassingly wrong. But believing something doesn't make it true. And being embarassed is irrelevant.
The fact of the matter is, Hazaanko, that the journalists are not in charge. Companies are not democracies in which each member has an equal say. The editors are in charge of them, and somebody else is in charge of them. At the top of FOX, for example, is Rupert Murdoch. If the people directly under him were to tell their subordinates to do something Murdoch didn't like, he'd have them kicked out. So they don't. And if Murdoch finds out they're letting their subordinates getting away with something he doesn't like, he'll see to it those subordinates are fired and that it doesn't happen again. Sure, the subordinates can dislike the company's stance, but they can't shape it, and they generally can't get away with defying it.
The journalists working at FOX are giving money to Barack Obama. That says nothing about what the actual news content will be like.
And about that car analogy... yes, if the engine in a car breaks, the car will cease to function. But the only way the 'engine' of a company could break is if a HUGE number of its employees braved the fear of losing their jobs, and stopped following the president's orders. That's like saying that in an instant every single piece of equipment under the hood is going to shut down. It's not going to happen that way. If a part breaks, the OWNER of the car--Mr. Rupert Murdoch is the owner of this particular car--will have that part repaired--that is, the person or people will get fired. Murdoch is the owner of FOX, and even if every single person quit, he would still have all of the money and all of the infrastructure needed to hire new people who will actually do what he tells wants. And I have a strange feeling that he DOES NOT support Obama.
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Never said that journalists were "in charge."
If you want credentials... actually, I was a senior journalist (among many other things) for a local newspaper for 3 years. Even though every media station differs, I'm pretty sure I have the gist of how it works there.
Not to put words in your mouth, but you make all employees sound like slaves where one misstep is met with the crack of a whip. I'm sorry you feel that way. My personal experience has been that of receiving a large amount of control and responsibility over my own work. People I have worked with as well as people I have talked to (from larger media stations as well) have expressed similar experiences. Of course, it all depends on the boss, but even when I've had bad ones, there was still quite a bit of leeway. I made the decisions over my area of work and was trusted with it. Yes, my work was reviewed and more often than not corrected, but it was still my article and still housed my views and biases, however hard I or others tried to 'unbias' them.
I guess what this part of the discussion boils down to is whether you believe employees are slaves with no control or say over their work (nothing but "car engines"), or if they are stewards - hired for their expertise and left alone for the most part to work.
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People seem to missunderstand something. Sure there is an inherent liberal bias in certain sectors of society. Journalists by definition assume freedom of information as one of their dearest concepts, which is an inherently liberal concept. Another sector is education.
These are natural things in the sense that if they weren't, those sectors would be fundamentally different.
So yes, journalists are generally biased towards liberal views, however a good journalist is not supposed to report his opinion. He is supposed to report facts in the most unbiased way possible. What they do with their personal time and money is irrelevant to their job.
If say, a journalist from Fox decided to go on a killing spree would you blame the company connected to him (in this case, Fox)? Of course not, it would be ridiculous. And so is the case you are trying to make.
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Hazaanko, curious about what you think about Kara's point -- that Fox News shows more liberal bias than CNN.
Do you think this is believable?
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I don't say things until later in the discussion because I enjoy seeing what other people's opinions and biases are. It is also quite amusing to see people try and guess what my opinions are and/or put words into my mouth.
Which is why I called you on the fact that you weren't actually discussing anything and therefore the thread was free game for me to rename. You created this topic. The onus is on you to start the discussion. You didn't. I posted a counter argument to the linked article, you didn't reply to that. You weren't involved in a discussion, and therefore the title has been altered to one more fitting to what the data suggested. People may now actually discuss that.
There is a very nasty name for someone who posts an argument they later claim not to espouse in order to watch people argue against it. This is a discussion forum not a "pose an argument and later claim you were playing devils advocate" forum.
If you want to argue about the companies having a liberal bias then go ahead. If you want to argue that newsrooms tend to be made up of liberals then again, go ahead, hell I might even agree with you on that one. You only need look at conservapedia to see the kind of moral sinkhole you end up with when a group of pure conservatives try it so maybe the liberal make up is simply natural selection in action. But if you're trying to argue that this automatically results in a liberal bias of the output of the station then you are a hell of a long way from making that argument. All you've done so far is make vague analogies and completely ignore the fact that your data should show a liberal bias in FOX News when quite the converse is shown.
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From what I understand of campaigndonations in the USA, the amount any company can donate has a limit on it. But, the big lobbying corporations found a loophole in that particular legislation by donating through their employees.
So instead of being limited to a for USA standards low sum, they can, if they have enough employees, donate millions.
Those few journalists from Fox News are trivial compared to the total amount of employees from the Fox Entertainment Group or even higher up, the News Corporation.
Stating that journalists donated to the Democrats is fine as a fact. But claiming that it proofs there is no bias towards the Republicans is absolute bollocks. It completely disregards how the system around campaign donations works. Also, you can have the inclination towards Obama as a journalists. Doesn't mean a thing, since within Fox news, journalists often base their approach to a story on instructions they are given from higher up.
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I just want to note that this loophole -- corporations donating through their employees -- has been more or less plugged, at least in the case of the Obama/DNC campaign. Donations must come from an employee's personal funds.
I guess the corporation could give the employee a bunch of money, and then order the employee to donate it...but you'd figure someone would pick up on that pretty quick.
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I guess the corporation could give the employee a bunch of money, and then order the employee to donate it...but you'd figure someone would pick up on that pretty quick.
You assume that someone would want to pick up on that.
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I'm pretty sure someone would, because corporations giving out tons of money is going to draw attention, and if they earmark that money for a specific use, someone will blow the whistle.
Plus, I believe that kind of operation has been picked up on already.
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Well, uh, it, uh... ummm, uh depends, uh... uh on the uh, station, and, uh, uh.. um show. Uh, just read and see, uh for uhm, uhhh yourselves:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_072208/content/01125109.guest.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThEAO0lt4Dw&NR=1
PS How long was that speech, because I can't really figure out if Obama's really unable to uh... speak, or is it an >1 hour long interview with MSNBC.
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Well, uh, it, uh... ummm, uh depends, uh... uh on the uh, station, and, uh, uh.. um show. Uh, just read and see, uh for uhm, uhhh yourselves:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_072208/content/01125109.guest.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThEAO0lt4Dw&NR=1
PS How long was that speech, because I can't really figure out if Obama's really unable to uh... speak, or is it an >1 hour long interview with MSNBC.
Hey.
STFU.
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I guess after 8 years of Bush Americans aren't used to someone who actually thinks before he says something. :p
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Well, uh, it, uh... ummm, uh depends, uh... uh on the uh, station, and, uh, uh.. um show. Uh, just read and see, uh for uhm, uhhh yourselves:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_072208/content/01125109.guest.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThEAO0lt4Dw&NR=1
PS How long was that speech, because I can't really figure out if Obama's really unable to uh... speak, or is it an >1 hour long interview with MSNBC.
:lol:
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It's already been proved that both sides of the electorate are quite happy to twist anything a rival says and turn it into something else, Barack seems more aware of this and is careful about it, unfortunately elections have become for more about 'don't vote for them', rather than 'vote for me'.
I think the Media is swinging behind Barack in general, companies like Fox don't just function in the US, they know the feeling in other countries, and they know the world attitude towards the 'Bush technique' of getting things done. Yes, there is great evil in the world, but Bush wasn't chosen to deal with it, and in trying to do so, the US government has added to the problems both inside and outside the US. In many ways Bush is allowing himself to be caught in the same trap that Reagan trapped the CCCP in, I think this is slowly sinking through even the hardened Republican hides of upper management in Fox.
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In many ways Bush is allowing himself to be caught in the same trap that Reagan trapped the CCCP in, I think this is slowly sinking through even the hardened Republican hides of upper management in Fox.
This is more apt than you realize. Proceedings, the Naval Institute's independent magazine, has been guardedly optimistic about Iraq/Afghanistan overall though certainly quite willing to criticize on points. This, I think, reflects the attitude of the sea services (Navy, Marines, Coast Guard) towards the endeavour in general, because on balance they have turned in highly respectable performances. The Marines were very unhappy with their performance in Gulf One, and they stepped up their training and force modernization efforts accordingly; when Afghanistan came, even the Army's formations supposedly designed for the cold-weather mountainous environment (10th Mountain Division) dropped the ball, the average Marine unit did well. The Navy has seen their doctrine for the last 15 years reconfirmed. The Coast Guard has recieved extra funding and authority, as well as an overseas force-protection role that has put them more on an equal footing with the other services; they're not quite so much the distant, strange, poor cousin they once were.
Then, in the last two issues, contributors have done a complete about-face.
Why? Iraq is going to destroy their ability to keep up their force modernization at this rate. The Marines have already had to put an improved amphibous assault personnel carrier they have been clamoring for for at least a decade on hold because they can't get the funding to buy the damn things. The Navy is starting to become mildly worried about the future of the DDG-X and Virginia classes, and there are rumbles that if it comes to it then it will either be those two or the much-questioned Littoral Combat Ship if it comes down to it, pick one. Even the Coast Guard is starting to worry that overseas commitments are going to interfere with their commitments for search-and-rescue and law enforcement around the US, though as yet they have no reason to fear funding shortage.
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An interesting analogy is a human body, once all the excess energy is burned off, without proper sustenance, the body will start to consume itself, if it is expending more 'energy' than it is receiving, then it will start to wither, that is, in a way, what the US is doing at the moment, in my opinion.
I think we've chatted before about the difference between 'smack and chat' diplomacy, and the current 'smack and smack some more' technique ;) That's why I personally think Obama is the best course to take, he isn't perfect, not by a long shot, but the focus for the US at the moment should be on stabilisation and communication and Obama is offering that as part of the 'package', I think that is an important issue.
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What the country needs is another Ike. :(