The real test is to compare these numbers over a decade, you know, to do a comparative look.

The despicables don't want us to do that cause, you know, Obamas numbers don't look so good.

But of greater import to a despicable is that President Trumps numbers, even after only 3 years, look pretty damn good.

 

Yeah, he really needs to get on that. Course, as soon as he cuts something despicables get their panties in a knot about what hes cutting.

Cause Trump.

Like President Reagan said when people were yelling about his cuts; the defense of this country is my first job, if I fail at that, all the social programs won't mean a thing.

 

Trump's greatest vulnerability is the economy – just ask poor Americans
Reverend William Barber
The GuardianFebruary 11, 2020, 5:00 AM CST


Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

Rather than offer a report on the State of the Union, Donald Trump used his annual primetime slot in the House of Representatives to host a re-election rally. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, summed up the sentiment of the House majority when she stood behind Trump and ripped the text of his speech in half. “I tore up a manifesto of mistruths,” she later said. But of all the lies he told, the president is proudest of the economy he claims is booming. Poor and low-income Americans know that the economy is, in fact, his greatest vulnerability.

Yes, the Dow is at a record high and official unemployment rates are lower than they have been in decades. But measuring the health of the economy by these stats is like measuring the 19th-century’s plantation economy by the price of cotton. However much the slaveholders profited, enslaved people and the poor white farmers whose wages were stifled by free labor did not see the benefits of the boom.

In America today, 140 million people are poor or low wealth. While three individuals own as much wealth as all of them put together, the real cost of living has soared as wages have stagnated. Since the 1970s, the number of people who are paying more than a third of their monthly income in rent has doubled, and there is not a single county in the nation where a person working full-time at minimum wage can afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment. Sixty per cent of African Americans are poor or low-income, as are 64% of Hispanics, but the largest single racial group among America’s poor and low-income – 66 million Americans – are white.

Every day in America roughly 700 people die from poverty

While Trump stirs racial fears by attacking “sanctuary cities” and black political leaders, there are more white Americans who are unable to meet their basic needs than at any time in this nation’s history. Every day in America roughly 700 people die from poverty. When seven young people died from vaping, Trump called it a national emergency. But for the past four decades, Republicans have racialized poverty while Democrats have run from it, adopting euphemisms like “those who aspire to the middle class” to talk about poor people. By accepting the lie that everyone does better when the economy does better, both parties paved the way for the extremism of a plutocratic presidency.

We know that elites whose stock portfolios and personal taxes have benefited from the Trump tax cuts are going to stand by this president. But those people are an extreme minority – a literal plutocracy – in this nation. The question in 2020 is not whether Trump’s most ardent supporters will stand by him, but whether Democrats will embrace an agenda that can inspire poor and marginalized people to engage in a political system that has simply overlooked them for decades.

Even if Trump doesn’t lose a single vote from 2016, we know he lost the popular vote by more than 3m and won the electoral college by 77,000 votes across Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. If just 3-5% of the poor and low-income people in those states who did not vote in 2016 were motivated to turn out this fall, Trump wouldn’t have a chance. Each and every one of those people, black, white and brown, knows this economy isn’t working for them.

In Kentucky last year, the incumbent governor, Matt Bevin, sought re-election in a state Trump won in 2016 by 30 percentage points. But poor and low-income white people in Appalachia and black and brown people in Louisville and Lexington worked together through the non-partisan Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival to insist that access to healthcare, living wages and high-quality public education for all Kentuckians were not left or right issues, but right or wrong issues. And on each of the issues, Trump and Bevin were wrong. Trump flew in to rally his base for Bevin, but his challenger won. And when the victor, Andy Beshear, gave his victory speech on election night, he quoted the moral language of the Poor People’s Campaign.

As we look toward another election this fall, we know Trump’s campaign is going to be all about the economy. But we also know that message rings hollow for the vast majority of Americans. The work of 2020 must be to build power for a broad coalition that can give voice to issues affecting poor and low-income Americans and compel Democrats to speak to them, up and down the ballot.

Yes, Trump’s presidency is a threat to our democracy. But it is not enough to simply resist Trump’s extremism. We must rally together to follow the lead of those who know that this economy isn’t working for most of us. Now is the time to unite and rise together. Now is the time to address poverty and revive the heart of our democracy.

 

Shame you can't share in the good times. They're here for the sharing.

 

Its the economy, stupid.

 

Trump is getting on it right now by trying to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and any other program that does not benefit him and his other rich 1%. And as always with lie of conservatism everybody but the 1% gets screwed.

I hope so. That is looking like the best way to beat Trump.

This Data Shows That Trump’s ‘Blue Collar Boom’ Is a Bust
Next time you read a story about a raise in pay, try to see if it reports the wage data in nominal or real terms and if it includes fringe benefits.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/data-shows-trump’s-‘blue-collar-boom’-bust-121836

 

And rear admiral butt nugget repeats the old despicable lie intended to scare old people.

PUTZ

 

The Army spent $22B and 17 years on an armored vehicle but still has no prototype


Last Friday, the U.S. Army kicked off a competition to design a successor for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, a 33-ton tank-like workhorse used to carry troops into battle and provide fire support with its rapid-fire cannon and anti-tank missiles.

While it’s sadly typical for the military to feature cost overruns and flawed requirements, what makes the procurement process for the Bradley so outstanding is that it’s been riddled with financial waste and poor stewardship before the project has even started.

The Army has been promising a replacement for its thousands of Bradleys since 2003. Already upwards of $22.9 billion is calculated to have been blown on calls for and rejections of previous submissions. The competition announced last week is the fourth, and there are few signs that whatever doomed earlier rounds has been overcome now; the third one was axed mere weeks ago.

Worst of all, soldiers are now relying on 40-year-old armored vehicles that haven’t been fully upgraded since the decision was made to start from scratch with a replacement, leaving them in the lurch while the Army hopes that the fourth time’s the charm.

An examination of this expensive, convoluted road to nowhere reveals that the root causes are the Pentagon’s shifting goal posts, a lack of realistic expectations about what can be technologically achieved, and an apparent unwillingness to accept the solutions offered by the arms industry.

The M2 and M3 Bradley entered service in the 1980s and have featured prominently in the nation’s campaigns in Iraq. The Bradley’s own development was so convoluted and expensive that it became the subject of the comedy film “The Pentagon Wars.” However, the vehicle proved effective in the 1991 Gulf War.

But a few flaws have troubled the Bradley over time: It’s heavier than similar vehicles in other armies due to the armor that’s been added over the years to protect the troops it carries, which in turn has left its engine and electrical systems underpowered. It doesn’t have room for a full nine-person squad, and its floor wasn’t designed to protect against improvised explosive devices and mines.

In 2003, the Army launched a sweeping replacement program called Future Combat Systems, which sought to replace many vehicles, including the Bradley, using a common chassis and computer network to share sensors and communications. Supposedly, speed and sensors would compensate for diminished armor protection in the vehicles.

But it turned out that approach didn’t work, as the warfare in Iraq led the Army to realize that its vehicles needed more protection against rocket-propelled grenades and IEDs. The idea that technology could prevent vehicles from ever being ambushed was proving naïve. Moreover, the Army bit off more than it could chew by trying to develop a common hull for more than a dozen vehicles designed to perform very different missions!

After devouring $21.4 billion, the Future Combat System initiative was canceled in 2009 and a second venture launched instead: the Ground Combat Vehicle program. This time, the Army wanted the highest level of protection possible — and that led to design concepts of 50 to 65 tons, so heavy they exceed weight limits for many bridges in Eastern Europe. So, $1.5 billion later, the Ground Combat Vehicle program, too, was canceled by the Army in 2014.

While the United States was left with a fleet of aging Bradleys, other countries — namely Russia — were modernizing their equivalent military vehicles. That led the Army to express a sense of urgency when it launched its third replacement attempt, this one called the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle. The urgency reflected new concerns that a land conflict with the Russian military was a genuine possibility.

The term “Optionally Manned” reflected the fact that the Army wanted the vehicle to be operable by remote control when embarking on highly dangerous missions. The Army also wanted the vehicle to include revolutionary new defense systems and have a bigger gun, with a caliber twice the size of that on the Bradley, so it could outmatch its peers on the battlefield.

These were highly ambitious requirements, and the Army insisted that they had to be met on a very rapid timeline. In fact, they seem to have been too ambitious.

Of the three companies that showed interest, one dropped out, saying it was a business decision. A second produced a working vehicle but needed an extension to secure permits for delivery and was ruthlessly disqualified. That left only one company still in the so-called “competition,” though it was deemed impressive by industry observers.

But Congress, responding to negative reports, cut nearly half of the program’s funding in December. Then, the Army announced it was canceling the competition on Jan. 16, insinuating that the sole remaining vehicle failed to meet specifications anyway.

Industry observers believe the major problem was likely the same weight-versus-protection tension that had plagued the earlier replacement efforts. In this case, the Army wanted the vehicle to be light enough so that two could fit in a C-17 transport plane, but also expected a high degree of armor protection that was likely unobtainable with existing armor technology — particularly for a rushed competition.

The revised competition kicked off by the Army on Feb. 7 will reportedly take a slower, more exploratory approach before formulating specifications that might be unachievable as happened last time. This more flexible process may yield better results than its predecessors, but it shows alarming inconsistency. In the space of a few months, the Army went from demanding rapid results using predefined specifications to embracing a slow, noncommittal development process.

Some experts even argue that the program’s rapid self-destruction constituted a kind of success because it didn’t drag on for years after the industry failed to deliver hoped-for proposals. But not only is that underwhelming expectation problematic in and of itself, it also overlooks the fact that two companies that invested their own resources in meeting the Army’s specifications were left with little to show for their efforts, further tarnishing the Pentagon’s credibility after the previous failed efforts.

This Groundhog Day exercise in spending billions of dollars on three failed attempts to replace the same 40-year-old vehicle also highlights a deeper problem: how frequently large Pentagon procurements go completely off the rails due to short-sighted and inconsistent program management. It also indicates a continued unwillingness to accept limitations in what’s feasible given the current technology.

It’s stunning that after the first two high-profile failures, the Army wasted more time and money — although fortunately less than in previous attempts — on yet another failed procurement program. No one won in the latest fiasco: not the taxpayer, not the arms industry, and certainly not soldiers who will likely have to make do with even more aging Bradleys before a new vehicle comes along.

 

Innovation is not cheap....

 

Do you think they’d advertise if they had a new technology or wait to use it by surprise...

 

Old people who do not fear a politically powerful Republican Party are delusional. The Republican Donor Class never liked Social Security and Medicare. If they are able to cut both they will.

 

Democrats who don’t realize that socialism doesn’t work should look at the Soviet Union or Venezuela

 

Online furniture seller Wayfair cuts 550 jobs, 3% of workers
JOSEPH PISANI
Associated PressFebruary 13, 2020, 1:48 PM CST



NEW YORK (AP) — Online furniture seller Wayfair said Thursday that it is cutting about 550 jobs, or 3% of its total workforce.

Most of the layoffs are at its Boston headquarters and its European office in Berlin. The company has about 17,000 employees worldwide.

Shares of Wayfair Inc. fell 10% to $86 Thursday afternoon. Its stock has fallen 28% in the last year.

Founded nearly 18 years ago, Wayfair has never made a profit. Although sales have risen as more people become comfortable buying sofas and rugs online, the company spends much of its revenue on shipping, advertising and other costs.

Wayfair said in a prepared statement that it continually evaluates “the needs of the business," and that it is still hiring for other roles. “We remain as confident as ever in Wayfair’s future," the company said.

Wayfair also runs other online stores under different names, including Perigold, AllModern and Birch Lane. Following other online brands that have opened physical stores, Wayfair opened its first permanent mall store last year.

 

It's Tump fault that this company used faulty business practices?...never turning a profit.

 

Admin can't explain why US job growth has slowed under Trump
Just once, I'd like to hear someone from the administration explain why American job growth has slowed since Donald Trump took office.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/admin-can-t-explain-why-us-job-growth-has-slowed-n1136321

 

Same old bullshit.

How about comparing the first three years of Obama's record with the first three years of President Trump's record??

And Obama had nowhere to go but up.

 

..So what.

Hiring by US businesses hits a record high

• Hirings increased to 5.9 million in April, the highest level since the Labor Department started keeping track.
• That came as total job openings exceeded workers classified as unemployed by 1.63 million.

 

@Sanity_is_Relative is babbling again.

OVER 1 MILLION MORE JOB OPENINGS THAN UNEMPLOYED WORKERS.


Did you get it that time?

And the service industry is dying??
It seems they didn't get the memo.....

 

More despicable talking points based on wishful thinking.

MORE THAN ONE MILLION JOB OPENINGS UNFILLED BECAUSE THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH APPLICANTS!!!

Did you get it this damn time?