On 10 Nov 2003 21:35:06 GMT, otforme (Charlie Self)
wrote:

It isn't the loss of the high end hotshots that is the problem. It's the guys
and gals who build the machinery, in factories owned by Americans, kept on
American soil that we're losing, and they're the important ones. We're in deep
doodoo as our dearly beloved prez says if we are attacked by anyone who meets
with China's approval these days. If we can't manufacture tanks, guns, bombs
and bullets here, we're screwed, regardless of what the top echelon thinks. And
we're approaching that stage at a rapid pace. It was our manufacturing
capacity, the awakening of a sleeping giant, that won World War II. If we
couldn't have supplied our soliders and most of those of the rest of what came
to be known as the free world, we lost. We did it. Or, rather, our parents and
grandparents did it. I don't think we can.

Exactly.

The Japanese have long contended that we should become an agricultural
entity, and do what we do best - consume mass quantities of the
world's resources in exchange for all of our wealth.

We are well on our way with 10mpg SUVs and poorly built $250,000 homes
that rot into the ground in 15 years.

Greg