Announcements
New Discussions
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Rate Thread
Hop To
Page 1 of 4 1 2 3 4
US Sail boat sales down #50667
06/08/05 12:26 PM
06/08/05 12:26 PM
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 545
Brighton, UK
grob Offline OP
addict
grob  Offline OP
addict

Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 545
Brighton, UK
"The 2004 RECREATIONAL BOATING - Statistical Abstract" is just out and it seems that sailboat sales is the biggest loser in the recreational boating markets.


http://nmma.org/facts/boatingstats/2004/files/market1.asp

I am not quite sure what to make of these figres as the total number of sailes is down but the value of sales is up. My guess is that these figures include dinghies cats etc as the average price of the boats surveyed seems quite low, $36,000.

-- Have You Seen This? --
Re: US Sail boat sales down [Re: grob] #50668
06/08/05 01:05 PM
06/08/05 01:05 PM
Joined: Feb 2005
Posts: 1,382
Essex, UK
Jalani Offline
veteran
Jalani  Offline
veteran

Joined: Feb 2005
Posts: 1,382
Essex, UK
The more worrying thing is the trend!

I imagine that European figures would follow the same pattern.


John Alani
___________
Stealth F16s GBR527 and GBR538
Re: US Sail boat sales down [Re: Jalani] #50669
06/08/05 09:55 PM
06/08/05 09:55 PM
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,049
Sebring, Florida.
Timbo Offline
Carpal Tunnel
Timbo  Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,049
Sebring, Florida.
Um...loss of the middle class? You have a situation where the middle class is being out sourced but the CEO's are making a killing, so the Larry Ellison's of the country are buying more expensive toys while his workers are selling theirs.

Did you see the news on General Motors yesterday? 25,000 US layoffs. You think any of those 25,000 people are going to buy a new boat?

And you can thank everyone out there who voted for Bush, the guy who said "Outsourcing is GOOD for America..."


Blade F16
#777
Re: US Sail boat sales down [Re: Timbo] #50670
06/09/05 07:38 AM
06/09/05 07:38 AM
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 223
Western New York
wyatt Offline
enthusiast
wyatt  Offline
enthusiast

Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 223
Western New York
You're right, Timbo:

We should become isolationists in the 21st Century. Let's start with Florida and not let anyone bring anything in or out. What's the political situation got to do with boat sales? I don't think it's fair to use a friendly website to slam politics. We're not here for that...

America, what a wonderful country.
Wyatt

Re: US Sail boat sales down [Re: wyatt] #50671
06/09/05 08:11 AM
06/09/05 08:11 AM
Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 2,718
St Petersburg FL
Robi Offline
Carpal Tunnel
Robi  Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 2,718
St Petersburg FL
I think Tims point is that sales have declined do to the poor ecomonical status the US in is right now. Specially gas prices, the war and the ongoing recession. Everything boils down to politics beleive it not. Politics in one way or another effects us all.

Re: US Sail boat sales - [Re: Timbo] #50672
06/09/05 08:17 AM
06/09/05 08:17 AM
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 800
MI
sail6000 Offline
old hand
sail6000  Offline
old hand

Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 800
MI


Well ,-the good news is the OBNOXIOUS PWC category is in decline with numbers sold ,--though noticed the numbers sold of power craft is continuing upward in all other categories .-

And speaking of obnoxious trends timbo-,As Wyat noted below ,--the political knee jerk reaction to blame everything imaginable on the current administration is childish at best.

GM -the trend over decades now , imports of the 80s-90s ,the move to robotics and numeric control machines that replace human assembley line workers is one that has occured and will into the future regardless of politics .
CEO corruption --you noted --you may also note it is only now during this admin. that new laws have been placed in effect and the false accounting practises exposed and those involved brought to justice to stop it , much of the actual corrupt practises occuring over a long period of time and worst during the previous admin.as we find by reading the testimony and facts .

The successfull traditions and ideals of basic human freedom ,including free enterprize and in larger sence western liberalism --in the true sence of the word --not political sence -that this nation is built upon is as Wyat also noted creates a wonderfull country --and opportunity for a better world in larger context-

here is an excellent article --perhaps you need to read a wider range of opinion from various information perspective sources-
read only if interested --non sailing -
June 6, 2005
Western Liberalism Is the Only Idea Left Standing
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services

The French and Dutch rebuffs of the European Union constitution will soon be followed by other rejections. Millions of proud, educated Europeans are tired of being told by unelected grandees that the mess they see is really abstract art.

The EU constitution—and its promise of a new Europe— supposedly offered a corrective to the Anglo-American strain of Western civilization. More government, higher taxes, richer entitlements, pacifism, statism and atheism would make a more humane and powerful new continent of more than 400 million to outpace a retrograde U.S. Instead, Europe faces a declining population, unassimilated minorities, low growth, high unemployment and an inability to defend itself, either militarily or morally. Somehow the directorate of the EU has figured out how to have too few citizens while having too many of them out of work.

The only question that remains is just how low will the 100,000 bureaucrats of the European Union go in shrieking to their defiant electorates as they stampede for the exits.

In fact, 2005 is a culmination of dying ideas. Despite the boasts and threats, almost every political alternative to Western liberalism over the last quarter-century is crashing or already in flames.

China's red-hot economy—something like America's of 1870, before unionization, environmentalism and federal regulation— shows just how dead communism is. Will Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba go out with a bang or a whimper? If North Korea's nutty communiques, Hugo Chavez's shouting about oil boycotts and Fidel Castro's harangues sound desperate, it's because they all are.

Fascism has long vacated its birthplace in Europe. The fragments of the former Soviet autocracy are democratizing. The caudillos are gone from Latin America. The last enclave of dictators is the Middle East. Yet after Saddam Hussein's capture in a cesspool, their hold is slipping too. There will probably not be an Assad III or a second Mubarak.

The real suspense is whether the Gulf royals can make good on their promises of reform and elections. Will they end up like pampered Windsors or go the ignominious way of the Shah of Iran? In desperation, the apparatchik journalists in the state-controlled Arab press are damning the United States, the avatar of change. Then there is bankrupt Islamic fundamentalism. The zealots can always tape a beheading or turn out a few thousand to burn an American flag. But the Taliban are gone from power. Iran is facing popular disgust at home, while its desperate nuclear plots are waking up even a comatose Europe. And the promise of a return to the 8th Century has always had an appeal limited to a few thousand pampered elites, like Osama bin Laden, Dr. Zawahiri or Zarqawi. These losers figured they might become Saladins if they convinced an Arab populace that the Jews and America, not their own corrupt regimes, kept them poor. Now they are reduced to ranting about the evils of democracy.

The Islamicists offered nothing to galvanize the Arab masses other than nihilism. That doctrine feeds or employs no one. Instead, we witness the creepy threats and the pyrotechnics of a lunatic ideology going the way of Bushido and the kamikazes.

Why all these upheavals?

Global communications now reveal hourly to people abroad how much better life is in Europe than in the Middle East and Asia— and how in America, Australia and Britain the standard of living is even better than in most of Europe.

The removal of the Taliban and Hussein and their replacement with democracies proved that the United States after Sept. 11, 2001, was neither weak nor cynical. In fact, it was the utopian United Nations, with its oil-for-food program, snoozing in Darfur and scandals about peacekeepers, that proved corrupt and unreliable.

What are we left with then?

Democracy, open markets, personal freedom, individual rights, pride in national traditions, worry about big government—about what we see in the United States, Britain, Australia and their allies in Japan and the breakaway countries in Europe. Elections in Ethiopia, France, Iraq, Lebanon and Ukraine all point to a desire for more freedom from central state control.

Embers of communism, fascism, theocracy and socialism, of course, will always flare up should we become complacent or arrogant. Wounded beasts like Iran, North Korea and bin Laden are most dangerous before they expire. Expect discredited EU bureaucrats to conjure up the specter of the American bogeyman before they pension out.

Still, the racket and clamor from all these anti-democratic ideas in 2005 are not birth pangs, but the bitter death throes of those whose time is about past.

©2005 Victor Davis Hanson


Re: US Sail boat sales - [Re: sail6000] #50673
06/09/05 08:47 AM
06/09/05 08:47 AM
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 9,582
North-West Europe
Wouter Offline
Carpal Tunnel
Wouter  Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 9,582
North-West Europe


What a load of BS Carl.

Tell mr Hanson that he should take a plane to either France and the Netherlands and really find out why the vote was "No"; instead of making things up about it. The guy is on a "full spectral dominance" wet dream ride. During his flight he should pick up a book on world history and study the chapters about "Iran-Shah", European Social-democracy and popular revolts in favour of free markets. The last bit can be a bit difficult as there never was such a thing in World history.

You listen to AM hate-radio to much Carl.



Wouter Hijink
Formula 16 NED 243 (one-off; homebuild)
The Netherlands
Re: US Sail boat sales down [Re: wyatt] #50674
06/09/05 09:18 AM
06/09/05 09:18 AM
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,049
Sebring, Florida.
Timbo Offline
Carpal Tunnel
Timbo  Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,049
Sebring, Florida.
Wyatt, let's see if you feel the same when Hadji from India is doing your job for 10 cents on the dollar, and you are selling your boat.

I realize this is not the place for a political debate, sorry if it sounded like I was trying to start one, I'm not. The thread is about falling boat sales, I just put my 2 cents in on why I think it is happening. Why do you think it is happening?


Blade F16
#777
World out of proper orbit - [Re: Wouter] #50675
06/09/05 09:20 AM
06/09/05 09:20 AM
Joined: Jun 2005
Posts: 302
Daytona Beach Florida
O
orphan Offline
enthusiast
orphan  Offline
enthusiast
O

Joined: Jun 2005
Posts: 302
Daytona Beach Florida
You know things in the world have changed when Wouter's posts are short and he is calling someone else's post BS.

Re: World out of proper orbit - [Re: orphan] #50676
06/09/05 09:41 AM
06/09/05 09:41 AM
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,049
Sebring, Florida.
Timbo Offline
Carpal Tunnel
Timbo  Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,049
Sebring, Florida.
But why are boat sales falling?


Blade F16
#777
Re: US Sail boat sales down [Re: grob] #50677
06/09/05 10:03 AM
06/09/05 10:03 AM
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 169
Santa Barbara CA
sbflyer Offline
member
sbflyer  Offline
member

Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 169
Santa Barbara CA
Shrinking middle class, families where both parents are having to work,including weekends, to cover costs like health insurance, more and more communities where nosy neighbors complain about stored boats, and more families that don't see the simple fun of going to the beach or their local lake for the weekend to share time together as an option....maybe..

Re: US Sail boat sales down [Re: sbflyer] #50678
06/09/05 10:09 AM
06/09/05 10:09 AM
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 12,310
South Carolina
Jake Offline
Carpal Tunnel
Jake  Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 12,310
South Carolina
This report only reflects NEW boats so before we should start crying about a dying market (and blaiming our governements), we should also consider the used boat market. Since the introduction of fiberglass construction, the used boat market has never been the same. I bought a 21 year old 23' monohull last year, restored it (no structural issues), and it looks like new for less than $6000. There are a LOT of used sailboats out there and I venture to guess that the used boat sales are climbing in about opposite proportion to the new boat sales.


Jake Kohl
Re: US Sail boat sales down [Re: sbflyer] #50679
06/09/05 11:13 AM
06/09/05 11:13 AM
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,049
Sebring, Florida.
Timbo Offline
Carpal Tunnel
Timbo  Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,049
Sebring, Florida.
Also, if you can't get to the water, you can't go boating. It's getting harder to find a spot to put in that has not been bought and developed, then closed to the public. Just look at what's going on in Key Largo.

Hey, where do used boats come from anyway??


Blade F16
#777
Re: US Sail boat sales down [Re: Jake] #50680
06/09/05 11:27 AM
06/09/05 11:27 AM
Joined: May 2002
Posts: 3,114
BANNED
MauganN20 Offline
Carpal Tunnel
MauganN20  Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Joined: May 2002
Posts: 3,114
BANNED
Lets also consider the fact that people these days are less and less willing to put themselves in debt for a luxury item such as a boat.

the 90's burned people when the fake economic "boom" busted. People were left with gobs of debt and no job.

You can't look at numbers like this in a box and just throw out statements like "LOOK HOW BAD THE ECONOMY IS!!!! SEE!!" or even relate something like this to the well-being of the middle class.

Re: US Sail boats [Re: Wouter] #50681
06/09/05 11:45 AM
06/09/05 11:45 AM
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 800
MI
sail6000 Offline
old hand
sail6000  Offline
old hand

Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 800
MI
Hi Wout
Been out on a beautifull lake front building site laying out a home designed and taking topos with the engineers and surveyor most of the morning--electronics and survey equipement are amazing nowdays,-GPS related --also overseeing the construction phase along with the design of the home and really enjoying the process on this beautifull warm sunny breezy day.-the project looks good ,-the lakefront home project will employ 100s of people locally .
The lake ,evan for a work-day was full of boats of all types , nice to see .

I,m sorry the author's article upset you on a personal level ,and that your reaction is to attempt to insult me on a personal level ,-so in some ways I,m pleased that the author has invoked that responce that challenges you to think, evan though misguidedly .-{-by the way I don,t listen to am radio or talk shows ,-just the local radio station with a very D bias ABC news }.

It is amazing how people that accuse others of a human failing --as per your hate comment ,--is generally always better applied to themselves . I can agree with you wout on numerous subjects and be supportive of your efforts -
Formula 16 --ratings improvement ,--disliking ugly americans -{who remain nameless} --but I can disagree with you on EU or socialistic notions and don,t have to accuse or attempt to personally insult as result -just disagree .
I think you missed the larger point and intent of VDH's article which is in part as you noted that in history all great civilizations had the common theme of free marketplace and healthy middle class that partisipated in it .--as per Amsterdam etc .
Don,t think he meant to imply that this is exclusive in history or will be in the future ,--just brief commentary on the numerous obvious problems the EU is currently inflicted with.
The author VDH is a history PROF .and author of several books ,-He is also a farmer in Calif ,-his Scandanavian heritage only a coupe generations removed immigrating to raise mainly grapes -raisins in Calif though mainly a prof. in Calif..

Recall numerous very offensive comments you have made over time about the US ,---i e --on our veterans day posting about the evils of US military personell and how you believe Stalin defeated Nazi Germany etc etc etc ,---

I have a long family history of military sevice dating back to the US revolutionary war ,---your EU bias ingrained teachings are insulting at times ,--though I understand the bias and EU perspective,--interestly I have family extentions to both sides of the US revolutionary war ,-my grandmothers side remaining loyalists in 1775 and moving to present day Canada where I still have relatives in Toronto.-The other side fighting redcoats of the time, in latter centuries fighting alongside to defeat Nazi-Germany and Imperial Japan .
An example /indicator of how wars -conflicts in history and seeming enemies become friends -good neighbors and evan extended family ,-and trusted allies in future history ---again the common theme is basic human freedom -self consentual govt .and free healthy marketplace in common along with free trade .
The most current examples are the former Soviet nations of Eastern EU Hanson lists in the article, as well as mideast nations noted.

Here is another Hanson article for you --just to set the record straight on that pesky Stalin issue ---enjoy
How the 'Cowboys' of the West Defeated the Nazis
By Victor Davis Hanson

This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on May 9, 2005.

President Bush is in Moscow's Red Square today, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945. Less than four years earlier, Hitler had declared war on the "cowboys" of the U.S. following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. When America in response entered the world conflagration, the Nazis had already been fighting Britain for 27 months and the Soviet Union for over five — and seemed days away from knocking the Russians out of the war. The ascendant Reich and its Axis protectorates stretched from the Arctic Circle to the Sahara Desert and from the English Channel to near the suburbs of Moscow, gobbling up more territory in three years than had Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon in their entire bloody careers.

Just three-and-a-half years after America's abrupt entry into the war the Nazis were not merely checked or defeated — but rather annihilated in one of the most brutal and extraordinary military achievements in history. The American ordeal was not without heartbreak and hard choices. In the present age of national furor over WMD intelligence failures and inadequately armored Humvees, we forget that World War II was largely a test of whether an America ill-prepared for war would make fewer fatal mistakes than its battle-hardened Nazi adversaries.

Heroic unescorted daylight bombing over Europe in 1942-43 proved an American bloodbath. If the intelligence for the Normandy invasion was impressive, the fighting during the next six weeks in the bloody hedgerows was tragically a near-disaster due to inexplicable ignorance about the landscape of the bocage, just a few thousand yards from the beaches. Well-meaning but flawed ideas about the requisite amount of armor and firepower of tanks led to permanent battlefield superiority for the Panzers, costing thousands of American lives. Pleasant mediocrities like Mark Clark were sometimes promoted; scary authentic military geniuses such as George Patton were occasionally ostracized. Repeatedly, we failed to destroy retreating and trapped German armies in Sicily, Italy and Normandy in the summers of 1943 and 1944. We had not a clue about Hitler's buildup of 250,000 attackers on the eve of the Battle of the Bulge. Strategically, critics complained that the war had broken out to prevent Eastern Europe from being absorbed by a totalitarian power only to end up ensuring that it was.

For all the horror of Hitler's culture of death, to end it we were put in the morally ambiguous position of aiding Stalin, who had killed millions more of his own Russians than the Nazis ever did. An ironic dividend of the wreckage of war was that tens of millions who had once chafed under the paternalism of the aristocratic Victorian imperialists were now for the next half-century to be enslaved under the savage socialist emissaries of the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, on V-E Day, Hitler and Mussolini were gone, Europe was liberated, the Holocaust ended, and the Americans free to finish off the waning militarists of Japan. Credit for victory was not ours alone. Our British and Soviet allies had fought longer and killed far more Germans. Hitler's follies — the invasion of the Soviet Union, the belated mobilization of the German economy, the misapplication of his frightening new weaponry, and his sometimes lunatic intrusion into military decision-making — all helped.

Revisionists now tend to credit the lion's share of the Allied victory over Hitler to the Soviets who probably killed two out of every three soldiers of the Wehrmacht. Yet the Russians waged a one-front war in comparison to the Anglo-Americans. They did not invade Italy or North Africa, and opportunistically took on an already defeated Japan only in the very last days of the war. Global submarine campaigning, surface naval warfare, long-range strategic bombing, massive logistical aid — all vital to the allied success, were beyond the scope of monolithic Russian power.

The Americans and British went from the windswept and hard-to-supply beaches of Normandy to the heart of Germany — on some routes about the same distance as Moscow to Berlin — in about a fourth of the time it took the beleaguered Red Army to cross into Germany. How did our forefathers pull it off, and are there any wartime lessons that we can distill from their accomplishment?

What destroyed the Nazis was the combination of American matériel and the zeal of large democratic conscript armies that, despite little preparation or experience, within mere months proved as formidable as their more experienced German adversaries. By the time the Americans were through, they had built 100,000 armored vehicles, 300,000 planes, 27 aircraft carriers and mustered 12 million people into the military. Indeed, by May 9, 1945, nearly 20 million more Americans were working than in 1939.

What the highly individualistic GI may have lacked in discipline, he more than made up with improvisation and initiative. Rambunctious Americans were innately mechanical and at home racing through Europe on their machines of mobile war. A free press at home debated decisions, and a popular and re-elected president explained how the sacrifices of war were tied to the higher good of democracy and freedom — and hence ultimately to national security. Gone was the old notion that two oceans ensured parochial Americans a pass from the perennial mess overseas or that the advent of industrial wealth abroad brought with it reasoned foreign leaders free from primitive emotions.

Once the Axis declared war, the U.S. did not have much patience with arguments that Hitler had legitimate grievances arising out of World War I or that clumsy American diplomacy had incited the fascists in Tokyo. Naiveté and the appearance of weakness in the face of bullies — not an accident, an old wrong, or a misplaced word — were agreed to have prompted attack.

The generation that was forced to ignite enemy cities, send billions in aid to a mass-murdering Stalin, bomb French rail yards, and deploy soldiers who sometimes fought with obsolete equipment, felt that they did not have to be perfect to know that they were good — and far better than the enemy. For them, war was never an easy utopian alternative between the perfect and the bad, but instead so often a horrific conundrum of bad choices versus those far worse — victory going only to those who had greater preponderance of right, made the fewer mistakes, and outlasted the enemy.

©2005 Victor Davis Hanson

-AND HERE IS ANOTHER Hanson argues the other side of being overly zealous in crediting the US military .
-Victor Davis Hanson

“An Overextended Argument. A reply to John Mosier’s “War Myths””

John Mosier’s revisionist examination of the First World War has a great deal of merit. Most historians, especially in the United Kingdom, have both underplayed the critical role of the American army that began arriving in force in 1917 and underappreciated the record of qualitative superiority of the German army over its Allied counterparts. After all, when Russia was at last knocked out, German armies, undefeated on two fronts, combined in the West against exhausted and depleted enemies, only to lose the war in less than two years. Mosier is absolutely right to emphasize these facts and to argue that only the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) accounted for victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.

Yet there is a fallacy of overextending that argument, as for example, when he emphasizes that the British only occupied 15% of the battle line on the Western Front — as if the allocation of terrain is a better gauge of military efficacy than, say, the relative numbers of Germans killed by the British or the contribution of British technology in critical areas like tank or aircraft innovation. This larger question of the proper credit for the Allied victory in the First World War can never be properly adjudicated, since it hinges on fundamental and often intangible questions of emotion and human nature. Is credit for victory (in any context) to be given to those who hold off the enemy, while suffering horrendous casualties, only to be saved by late arrivals? Or do the laurels deservedly belong to their eleventh-hour rescuers, without whose timely appearance in force the previous sacrifice would have proven in vain? “They” say we came late, suffered little, and stole the show; “we” retort that we arrived in the nick of time to save them from defeat in their own war. Both claims have merit and I don’t see how Mosier or any others will quite settle the relative arguments, although he is to be congratulated for emphasizing the other side of the often forgotten equation.

Mosier again reveals a penchant for revisionist insight when it comes to Blitzkrieg — and yet again simplifies elements of his often zealous argument to the point of caricature. He seems to think that Blitzkrieg was a static method, that its success or failure hinged on the basis of some theory chiseled in stone, independent of time and space. But was that really true outside of the handbooks of a few strategists who were still shaken by the trench holocausts of the First World War?

In fact, in certain instances, Blitzkrieg was a far superior tactic to mass infantry charges, entrenchment, or static and incremental patrolling — but only if particular prerequisite conditions were first met. Good weather, fairly level and unobstructed terrain, and ample gas and supplies were all essential for sustained mobility and advancement. Only tactical air support made the fast moving use of armor on a narrow front safe from flank attack — as Patton and Pete Quesada proved in August 1944.

In contrast, factor in rain, clouds, or snow — whether in the case of the 1941 final German late autumn approach to Moscow, Patton at Metz, Market-Garden, or the December 1944 German advance into the Ardennes — and motorized columns could stall and become vulnerable to counterattack by even small pockets of well-led infantry. Add in the problem of supply lines that were either stretched or for a time nonexistent, and then persistence in Blitzkrieg was a prescription for a disastrous combination of impassable roads, out-of-gas tanks, fog and clouds hampering fighter support, and armor offering easy targets in mountain roads and forests.

If Mosier’s argument is that the efficacy of Blitzkrieg has been exaggerated as a cure-all wonder strategy, thus distorting our own appreciation of the real pulse of the war, then he is, of course, mostly correct. In fact, armored breakout was just an alternate method of rapid advancement ushered in by the internal combustion engine, whose efficacy depended on an astute general who knew when and when not to employ it. Blitzkrieg does wonders when you want to outflank the Iraqi army in the deserts outside Kuwait or reach Baghdad in a rapid anabasis along the Tigris-Euphrates Valley in just three weeks. But it proves of little value in taking the streets of Fallujah or ejecting killers from a mosque in Najaf.

So if the weight of Mosier’s argument is that Blitzkrieg brought no real novel advantages to warfare and instead was counterproductive, then it is once again a thesis taken too far. Dismissing Blitzkrieg’s efficacy takes no account of the radical change on the battlefield that tanks, motorized transport, and tactical air support could achieve in mere days — not merely encircling and surrounding less mobile enemy forces, but also in achieving a psychological toll that might exceed the actual severity of the attack.

Mosier fails to distinguish between what we should call “good” and “bad” Blitzkrieg. His apparent assumption is that unthinking swashbucklers always thought as if they were doctrine theorists such as Fuller or Liddell Hart. Yet read Patton’s frantic comments in August 1944 when he was already worried that stretched supply lines, reduced enemy interior lines, shorter days, bad weather, and rough muddy terrain on the horizon would soon grind his advance to a halt before crossing into Germany. Even advocates like Rommel, Guderian, and Patton accepted, whether by instinct or bitter experience, that there were times when the unleashing of supposedly rapid moving tank columns proved neither rapid nor even successful. Patton, for all his bluster, privately knew that his lateral rescue sprint to Bastogne in snow over icy narrow mountain roads in sub-zero weather was not going to be anything like the past race around Paris.

By the same token, many on the German general staff anticipated that the so-called von Runstedt offensive of December 1944 would be doomed in a way the similar 1940 strike was not — given the changed strategic calculus, the nature of the respective enemies, changed weather conditions, and the absence of even minimal reserves of petrol. In fact, the initial German breakthrough of late December showed the full irony of Hitler’s idiocy: adherence to a sound concept in absolutely the wrong conditions; rapid advance with only a few days of logistical reserves; little air support when the weather cleared; and thrusting a long column into an enormous foe when there were no more reserves to protect the base.

Similarly, inclement weather and fighting on the defense in mountainous terrain favored the Finns — for a time. That the Russians may have thought massed armor assaults under such impossible conditions were viable is hardly a referendum on the efficacy per se of Blitzkrieg. Mosier at times seems to forget that to astute practitioners Blitzkrieg, like all military strategies, was simply one of many alternatives suitable for a given time and place.

Had Grant sought to outflank Lee and march to his rear without first defeating him in Northern Virginia, he probably would have failed with disastrous consequences for Lincoln in a vulnerable Washington. But such a foolish move would not necessarily have been a referendum on the logic of the so-called “indirect approach,” much less a harbinger that a firebrand like Sherman would fail in Georgia and the Carolinas when he tried avoiding battle and advancing deep into enemy country without communications, flank protection, or logistical support (but in more favorable terrain, in a wider theater of operations, with an entirely different army, and against commanders unlike Robert E. Lee). In fact, the Grant-Sherman partnership is a good antidote to Mosier’s various theses, reminding us that it is hard to give credit to victory to a particular army in a multifaceted struggle replete with differing types of sacrifice, and that certain theories of advance are not only predicated on particular favorable conditions, but also only work in concert with their radically opposite counterparts.

The same pattern of overgeneralization is again true of Mosier’s critique of strategic air power. It likewise was not a static concept. Sending lumbering bombers over targets at high altitudes, without fighter support, when wedded to the illusion of pinpoint accuracy with a small load of high explosives was naïve and surely not worth the sacrifice of devastating losses in crews and planes. By 1942-43 the Army Air Corps nearly wrecked itself over Europe, proving that the grand claims of air advocates of the 1930s were lunatic.

Or were they? In the rapidly changing contexts of World War II what was true in 1942 (Mosier’s “right from the start of the war”) was not necessarily so in 1944-45, either in Europe or over Japan. Fast fighter escorts with drop tanks, improved versions of the B-17s, the entrance of the latest model Lancasters, and the appearance of the B-29 in the Pacific, coupled with the frequent use of incendiaries in loads of well over 10 tons per plane, soon spelled the loss of entire cities and a resulting disruption in enemy industrial production, communications, and transportation that in a cost/benefit analysis (if we dare use such terminology when speaking of mass death) could more than justify the (vastly reduced) losses in strategic aircraft. Moreover, much of the successes over Europe in 1944-5 were borne on the experience bought so dearly in 1942.

That Germany did not have successful four-engine bombers with long-range fighter escorts eventually proved deleterious for its cause for a variety of reasons. Neither Russia nor England (much less the United States) redeployed critical artillery for anti-aircraft use around its major cities to the same degree as the Germans. Therefore they were free to use far more of their available heavy guns on the ground in their offensives against panzers. And this question of degree is important. Both Americans and Germans diverted fighters from ground support to dogfights over the German cities. But the Americans had far more planes to spare and were inflicting bombing damage in the process; the Germans sought to defend the homeland and diverted their precious fighters from attacking rapid Allied armor advances.

The belated use of V-1s and V-2s was a disastrous strategic blunder, precisely because it allotted scarce capital and labor to weaponry that in comparison to a Lancaster or B-17 was a terribly inefficient means of dropping a ton of explosive per Mark spent. And as Williamson Murray has variously shown, it is not accurate to imply that historians are correct in concluding that “the strategic bombing campaign in Europe was hardly a howling success” — even if we look only at the larger picture of the vast diversion of resources to prevent air attacks, the inefficient restructuring of the German economy to adapt to daily bombing, and the real effect that the destruction of urban cores had on transportation and communications. The Americans, unlike either the Germans or Russians, waged a multifaceted war involving surface ships, merchant marine convoys, and a variety of land, sea, and air forces over two vast theaters, an effort in which Blitzkrieg and strategic bombing played key, but not necessarily always the key, roles.

Examine the failed German blitz of 1940, and Douhet looks like a crackpot prophet. But look again at March to August 1945 when Curtis LeMay’s Superfortresses, loaded with napalm and mines, virtually shut down the Japanese economy in six months without destroying his bomber fleet, and we are not so sure quite how to assess his mad predications. By March 11 over Japan, “the bombers always get through” was as true as it was over Germany by early 1945 — and as false as it had been in 1942.

In short, Mosier offers historians valuable reminders not to become wedded to myths that a particular theory of attack ipso facto marks watershed breakthroughs in military art and practice. But to press his claims, he sometimes must employ the same sort of inflexibility in thinking that he rightly exposes in his critics, failing to appreciate the natural evolution of a theory as both technology and practical experience prove hardly static.

Strategists eventually did fathom the advantages of new ways of making war, and by trial and error worked hard to find the proper conditions and landscapes to use strategic bombing and Blitzkrieg to their full potentials. That the Allies did so far better than the Germans explains in part why they won the war.


Last edited by sail6000; 06/09/05 12:01 PM.
Re: US Sail boat sales down [Re: MauganN20] #50682
06/09/05 11:48 AM
06/09/05 11:48 AM
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,049
Sebring, Florida.
Timbo Offline
Carpal Tunnel
Timbo  Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,049
Sebring, Florida.
That fake boom of the 90's is happening all over again, with most of our fake "strong economy" now running on refinaced interest only loans. I just saw Greenspan on CNN and he agrees with me, but maybe you know more about economics than he does?

Today's real estate boom is the next internet bubble waiting to pop.

You want fries with that?

Last edited by Timbo; 06/09/05 01:37 PM.

Blade F16
#777
Re: US Sail boat sales down [Re: grob] #50683
06/09/05 12:19 PM
06/09/05 12:19 PM
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 917
Issaquah, WA, USA
H17cat Offline
old hand
H17cat  Offline
old hand

Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 917
Issaquah, WA, USA
Instead of complaining about a perceived down market report, that may not properly reflect our small boat and Catamaran market, we should take a positive approach. What is being done in your area to increase sailboat activity? As an example, in the Seattle area, our Sail Sand Point program is growing. See www.sailsandpoint.org. This year we added six new FJ's, six new Hunter 140's, and four new Optis. Efforts by our local sailors, including Peter Nelson, Laura Sullivan, and Jerry Valeske with their Hobie 101 and 102 programs have increased our Catamaran fleet sailing and racing activities. See http://www.ussailing.org/ODCC/Hobie&Sail_Sand_Point.htm

Caleb Tarleton
Sail Sand Point
US SAILING Multihull Council
Hobie Cat Assoc.,Div 4 and Fleet 95

Re: try 05 sales -- [Re: Timbo] #50684
06/09/05 01:31 PM
06/09/05 01:31 PM
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 800
MI
sail6000 Offline
old hand
sail6000  Offline
old hand

Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 800
MI

05 US boat sales
NATIONAL MARINE MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION Newsletter!

JANUARY MSR: GOOD START FOR WHOLESALE BOAT SALES IN 2005...Unit Sales increase three percent; dollar sales up 11 percent

CHICAGO, May 18, 2005 - Wholesale dollar sales of all boats were up 11.1 percent in January, 2005 compared to the same month the previous year, while unit boat shipments rose 2.7 percent, based on the January Monthly Shipment Report (MSR) released today by the National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA). Dollar sales for the traditional powerboat segments (outboard, sterndrive, and inboard boats) were up 10.4 percent, and unit shipments increased 3.1 percent.

“This continues a great run for traditional boat shipments, which have recorded dollar increases for the past 24 months, when compared year-to-year,” says NMMA director of Industry Statistics & Research Jim Petru. “With the exception of December 2004, unit shipments have also increased 19 out of the last 20 months. This is an encouraging start to 2005.”


Timbo -try reading different sources of info to verify your opinions ----first
I think a healthy 2 party system is important and take cause to some political bills wether authored by a D or R behind the name ,--honest exchange of ideas and concepts or inteligent debate on facts and merit are essential to democracy -
On a VDH article trend --and do read other numerous sources ,--but few I enjoy as much as Hanson --
--May 6, 2005
Democratic Suicide
When will the Dems start winning again? When they start living and speaking like normal folks.
by Victor Davis Hanson

We are in unsure times amid a controversial war. Yet the American people are not swayed by the universities, the major networks, the New York Times, Hollywood, the major foundations, and NPR. All these bastions of doctrinaire liberal thinking have done their best to convince America that George W. Bush, captive to right-wing nuts and Christian fanatics, is leading the country into an abyss. In fact, a close look at a map of red/blue counties nationwide suggests that the Democrats are in deepening trouble.

Why? In a word, Democratic ideology and rhetoric have not evolved from the 1960s, although the vast majority of Americans has — and an astute Republican leadership knows it.

CLASS

The old class warfare was effective for two reasons: Americans did not have unemployment insurance, disability protection, minimum wages, social security, or health coverage. Much less were they awash in cheap material goods from China that offer the less well off the semblance of consumer parity with those far wealthier. Second, the advocates of such rights looked authentic, like they came off the docks, the union hall, the farm, or the shop, primed to battle those in pin-stripes and coiffed hair.

Today entitlement is far more complicated. Poverty is not so much absolute as relative: "I have a nice Kia, but he has a Mercedes," or "I have a student loan to go to Stanislaus State, but her parents sent her to Yale." Unfortunately for the Democrats, Kias and going to Stanislaus State aren't too bad, especially compared to the alternatives in the 1950s.

A Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean, George Soros, or Al Gore looks — no, acts — like he either came out of a hairstylist's salon or got off a Gulfstream. Those who show up at a Moveon.org rally and belong to ANSWER don't seem to have spent much time in Bakersfield or Logan, but lots in Seattle and Westwood. When most Americans have the semblance of wealth — televisions, cell phones, cars, laptops, and iPods as well as benefits on the job — it is hard to keep saying that "children are starving." Obesity not emaciation is the great plague of the poorer.

So the Democrats need a little more humility, a notion that the country is not so much an us/them dichotomy, but rather all of us together under siege to maintain our privileges in a tough global world — and at least one spokesman who either didn't go to prep school or isn't a lawyer.

RACE

The Democrats, at least in the north, were right on the great civil-rights debate of 1960s. Yet ever since, they have lost credibility as they turned to the harder task of trying to legislate an equality of result — something that transcends government prejudice and guarantying a fair playing field, and hinges on contemporary culture, behavior, values, and discipline.

The country is also no longer white and black, but brown, yellow, black, white, and mixed. When a liberal UC Berkeley chancellor remonstrates about "diversity" and "multiculturalism," lamenting that his merit-based entrance requirements have sadly resulted in too few "Hispanics" and "African-Americans" (he ignores that whites at Berkeley also enroll in numbers less than their percentages in the state population), what he really means — but won't say — is that there are apparently too many Asians, about 45 percent enrolled in Berkeley versus about 12 percent in the state population.

What will he do? Praise a hard-working minority that overcame historic prejudice against them? Hardly. We suspect instead the typical liberal solution is on the horizon: some clever, but secretive administrative fix that contravenes Proposition 209, and then denies that compensatory action is aimed against the Asians it is aimed at.

In short, race-based thinking beyond protection of equal opportunity is fraught with public suspicion, especially when so many loud spokesmen for minorities — Jesse Jackson or Kweisi Mfume — either are elites themselves or do not practice the morality they preach. An Alberto Gonzales or Condoleezza Rice comes across as proud, competent, and an expert rather than a tribalist, while those in the Black Caucus or La Raza industry appear often the opposite. Would you want a sober Colin Powell or an often unhinged Harry Belafonte and surly Julian Bond in your party? Did Condoleezza Rice, answering acerbic senators without notes, or Barbara Boxer, droning off a prepared script, appear the more impressive in recent confirmation hearings? A Democratic "minority" appointment to a cabinet post at education or housing is one thing; a Republican belief that the best candidates for secretary of state, national security advisor, and attorney general are incidentally minorities is quite another.

AGE

The Democrats won on the Social Security issue years ago. Annual cost-of-living increases and vast expansions to the program helped to ensure that we no longer witness — as I did in rural California in the early 1960s — elderly with outhouses and without teeth and proper glasses. In fact, despite the rhetoric of Washington lobbying groups, those over 65 are now the most affluent and secure in our society, and are on the verge of appearing grasping rather than indigent. They bought homes before the great leap in prices; they went to college when it was cheap; and they often have generous pensions in addition to fat social security checks. So ossified rhetoric about the "aged" in the social security debate — increasingly now not so much the Greatest Generation of WWII and the Depression as the first cohort of the self-absorbed baby boomers — is self-defeating.

George Bush is appealing to a new group that really is threatened — the under-35's who cannot afford a house, have student loans, high car and health insurance, and are concerned that their poor therapeutic education will leave them impoverished as China and the rest of Asia race ahead.

DEFENSE

The problem with Democrats is that Americans are not convinced that they will ever act in any consistent manner. We can argue about Afghanistan, but if one were to go back and read accounts in October 2001 about hitting back, the news reflected liberals' doubt about both the wisdom and efficacy of taking out the Taliban.

Would Al Gore have invaded Afghanistan less than a month after 9/11? If John Kerry were President and China invaded Taiwan, what would he do?

What would an administration advised by Madeline Albright, Barbara Boxer, Joe Biden, Jamie Rubin, Nancy Pelosi, or Jimmy Carter do if Iran sent a nuke into Israel, or North Korea fired a series of missiles over the top of Japan?

Or, if al Qaeda, operating from a sanctuary in Iran or Syria, took out the Sears Tower, how would a Kennedy, Kerry, or Gore respond? Six cruise missiles? A police matter? Proper work for the DA? Better "intelligence"? Let's work with our allies? Get the U.N. involved?

Whatever we think of George Bush, we know he would do something real — and just what that something might be frightens into hesitation — and yes, fear — many of those who would otherwise like to try something pretty awful.

WILL THEY EVER LEARN?

Until Democrats promote someone who barks out something like, "We can and will win in Iraq," or, "Let the word go out: An attack on the United States originating from a rogue state is synonymous with its own destruction," or some such unguarded and perhaps slightly over-the-top statement, I don't think that the American people will entrust their safety to the party. John Kerry, to be frank, is no Harry Truman, and time is running out for Hillary Clinton to morph into Scoop Jackson.

Philosophically, two grand themes explain the Democratic dilemma. One, the United States does not suffer from the sort of oppression, poverty, or Vietnam nightmares of the 1950s and 1960s that created the present Democratic ideology. Thus calcified solutions of big government entitlements, race-based largess, and knee-jerk suspicion of U.S. power abroad come off as either impractical or hysterical.

Second, there is the widening gulf between word and deed — and Americans hate hypocrites most of all. When you meet a guy from the Chamber of Commerce or insurance association, you pretty much know that what you see is what you get: comfort with American culture and values, an upscale lifestyle that reflects his ideology and work, and no apologies for success or excuses for lack of same.

But if you listen to Dr. Dean and his class venom, it hardly seems comparable with how he lives or how he was brought up. John Kerry's super power boat, Teresa Kerry's numerous mansions, Arianna Huffington's gated estate, George Soros's jet, Ted Turner's ranches, Sean Penn's digs — all this and more, whether fairly or unfairly, suggest hypocrisy and insincerity: Something like, "High taxes, government regulation, racial quotas, and more entitlements won't hurt me since I have so much money at my own disposal anyway, but will at least make me feel good that we are transferring capital to the less fortunate."

Worse yet, such easy largess and the cost of caring often translate into contempt for the small businessman, entrepreneur, and salesperson who is supposedly illiberal because he worries that he has less disposable income and is less secure. And when you add in cracks about Wal-Mart, McDonald's, and the "Christian Right" — all the things the more cultured avoid — then the architects of a supposedly populist party seem to be ignorant of their own constituencies.

When will Democrats return to power? Three of the most influential legislators in the Democrat party — Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, and Nancy Pelosi — reside in and came out of the San Francisco Bay area, which for all its undeniable beauty has created a culture still at odds with most of America. John and Teresa Kerry would have been the nation's first billionaire presidential couple. The head of the Democratic party is a New England condescending liberal, with a vicious tongue, who ran and lost on a platform far to the left of an unsuccessful liberal.

In contrast the only two men elected president from the Democratic party in 30 years were southerners, hammed up their rural and common-man roots — the son of a single mother in Arkansas and a peanut farmer in Plains, Georgia — and were narrowly elected largely due to national scandals like Watergate or third-party conservative populists like Ross Perot. The aristocratic media — CBS News, the New York Times, NPR — is often liberal and yet talks of its degrees and pedigree; the firebrand populist bloggers, cable news pros, and talk-radio pundits are mostly conservative and survive on proven merit rather than image.

When we see Democrats speaking and living like normal folks — expressing worry that the United States must return to basic education and values to ensure its shaky preeminence in a cutthroat world, talking of one multiracial society united by a rare exceptional culture of the West rather than a salad bowl of competing races and tribes, and apprising the world that we are principled abroad in our support of democratic nations and quite dangerous when attacked — they will be competitive again.

Since they will not do that, they will keep losing — no matter how much the economy worries, the war frightens, and the elite media scares the American people.



Re: try 05 sales -- [Re: sail6000] #50685
06/09/05 01:48 PM
06/09/05 01:48 PM
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,049
Sebring, Florida.
Timbo Offline
Carpal Tunnel
Timbo  Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,049
Sebring, Florida.
Carl, I started by mentioning the layoff of 25,000 employees from GM, that's straight from the CEO's mouth. Do you think I need another source or do you think that will be good for our economy or new boat sales??

I'm not going to get into a politcal debate, what's the point? You are never going to change your beliefs and neither am I so you can spare us all the print.

BTW, I'm not a Democrat, I never voted for Clinton or Bush. I'm one of those wack-O's stuck in the middle of a extremeist, two party system.







Last edited by Timbo; 06/09/05 02:11 PM.

Blade F16
#777
Re: US Sail boat sales down [Re: grob] #50686
06/09/05 01:59 PM
06/09/05 01:59 PM
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 138
California!
Inter_Michael Offline
member
Inter_Michael  Offline
member

Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 138
California!
I love it when people cry out against outsourcing. You notice that Kerry never made a speech about that in front of a Honda plant in AK, or a BMW plant in New York.

In fact, many "non US" c's are located on good ol US soil. In fact..please, anyone, tell me what a US car is? A gm product made in canada, assembled in Mexico? Good God,

To blame the current admin. is just nonsense. Maybe one should take ECON 101 to learn basic principls of a free market economy before one reacts to such...well..you get it...

Forget the bush bashing....and learn how to be the first to the A mark.....

Isnt that what this forum is about?

Michael

Page 1 of 4 1 2 3 4

Moderated by  Damon Linkous 

Search

Who's Online Now
0 registered members (), 719 guests, and 81 spiders.
Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
Newest Members
Darryl, zorro, CraigJ, PaulEddo2, AUS180
8150 Registered Users
Top Posters(30 Days)
Forum Statistics
Forums26
Topics22,404
Posts267,055
Members8,150
Most Online2,167
Dec 19th, 2022
--Advertisement--
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.1