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September 2012
Republicans know they must have Ohio on their side to win the White House. That's what happened in 2004, when Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush carried the Buckeye State with 50.8% of the popular vote and thus secured the electoral-college majority needed for reelection. So of course
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9/28/2012
The crisis de jour in the European Union is over the scope and reach of a proposed banking union. Lender nations, Germany in particular, and debtor nations, notably Spain and Greece but potentially France, are at odds over how much integration is necessary and tolerable. Without some kind of oversight
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9/27/2012
The Obama Administration’s new national security strategy envisions a so-called pivot to the Asia-Pacific region which involves the deployment of the greatest share of U.S. military assets to that region as well as investments in new capabilities and operational concepts to deal with the emerging
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9/26/2012
Jason Sherman of InsideDefense.com reports this week that a Pentagon analysis of trends in the industrial base raises doubts about the military's ability to preserve its five-year lead in fighter technology. He quotes a passage from the analysis with worrisome implications for America's global
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9/26/2012
Boeing is on track for record results, with ValueLine predicting the company will generate nearly $100 billion in sales by mid-decade and earnings per share in excess of $7.00 (it's around $4.75 today). Several features help explain why the company is doing so well. First, Chairman & CEO Jim McNerney
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9/25/2012
The future of American manufacturing is in Asia and the Middle East. These two regions, followed by Latin America, will account for more than two-thirds of global economic growth over the next several decades. The demand in these regions for manufactured goods such as commercial aircraft, power
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9/25/2012
Over the past nine months there has been a wave of fatal attacks by Afghan security forces, either soldiers or police, on Coalition soldiers. The colloquial term for this is “green on blue” violence where green are friendly forces, blue represents U.S. and Coalition troops and red means enemies
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9/24/2012
Two giants bestride the world of commercial aircraft: America's Boeing and Europe's Airbus. They are roughly equal in terms of orders for their aircraft and planes delivered over the last ten years. Boeing dominates the twin aisle or widebody market with its 747, 767, 777 and the new 787 Dreamliner.
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9/21/2012
Responding to growing questions regarding the relevance of ground forces to future national security requirements, the Army is beginning to make the case for a new operational concept, one tailored to emerging challenges such as anti-access/ area denial (A2/AD) threats and the loss of forward operating
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9/20/2012
Discussions to date about sequestration have focused on major programs such as Medicare and defense spending or on large companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, SAIC and IBM. Lost in the noise is the potentially devastating impact on small and disadvantaged businesses. The irony is that both parties
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9/19/2012
Last night I turned on CNBC just in time to hear conservative host Larry Kudlow talking about a "postmortem" on the Romney presidential campaign. Aren't we getting a little ahead of ourselves here? It's still seven weeks until election day, and the two candidates are separated by an average of less
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9/18/2012
I have always believed that no one is born great. They achieve greatness by how they respond to major challenges and life decisions. No one would have called Harry Truman a great man when he was a Senator or even Vice-President. But it was the way he responded to challenges of being President at
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9/18/2012
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has issued a report on sequestration. According to the congressionally mandated report, sequestration is a terrible means for achieving deficit reduction that will result in significant economic damage.
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9/17/2012
Last week's disclosure that BAE Systems and EADS are in merger discussions has predictably sparked concerns among shareholders and stakeholders. Their fears can't be allayed until the two parties agree on all the details, but it is already clear why the companies think a combination makes sense.
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9/17/2012
America has been at war in the Middle East for more than 11 years. By some reckonings, the war has been going on for more than twenty years. Over this time period, the U.S. military has suffered some 6,700 dead and 50,000 injured. If post- traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and other
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9/14/2012
The Middle East is ablaze again, literally, and Israel is sending strong signals that it intends to attack Iran's nuclear complex with or without U.S. assistance. It would be nice to stay out of this latest round of regional violence -- most Americans have had their fill of foreign entanglements
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9/14/2012
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it was the end of an era in international relations. Despite the hopes of many, the twenty years that followed did not produce a transition to a new international system. Rather the past two decades have been more of a pause, a time when the world dealt with
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9/13/2012
The reason companies considering strategic moves are so secretive is that once news of their intentions leaks out, it can change the business environment shaping their plans. So it is with yesterday's disclosure by Bloomberg News that British military powerhouse BAE Systems and Airbus parent EADS
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9/13/2012
On September 8, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a television station in Virginia Beach that he wanted to buy more F-22 fighters for the Air Force, a move that would require reopening the program's production line. Romney was stumping for votes in the southeastern corner of the
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9/12/2012
In what can only be described as a despicable act of appeasement, the U.S. embassy in Cairo chose to side with Muslim extremists rather than defend the U.S. Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Yesterday the U.S. embassy
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9/12/2012
Say the name Lockheed Martin and listeners might immediately think of the F-22 Raptor, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Aegis air and missile defense system, military satellites, ballistic missiles and space launch systems. Lockheed also happens to be one of the nation’s premier IT and cyber security
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9/11/2012
Harbingers of doom are afflicting the defense industry. Threats are receding and so is federal spending. How can the shares of military suppliers fail to follow? Maybe so, but there are powerful reasons to suspect that defense stocks are still a better investment than shares in most other economic
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9/10/2012
Today’s jobs report may be bad news for President Obama and possibly good news for Governor Romney but it is disastrous news for the American people. The economy produced less than 100,000 net new jobs (and if the past few months are prologue, this number will be revised down next month). The manufacturing
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9/7/2012
After a decade of counter-insurgency warfare, the focus of U.S. military planning is returning to state-based threats. Whether President Obama is reelected or not, the joint force will be paying more attention to places like the Western Pacific and less attention to places like Afghanistan. All
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9/7/2012
Joint programs are a management challenge. There is the need to reconcile the often very different requirements of two or more services. This problem can be rendered even more difficult if the new program is intended to replace a number of existing systems. A service participating in a joint program
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9/6/2012
There's a reason Mitt Romney didn't mention America's warfighters in his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination, and it isn't the economy. Eight years of errors by the Bush Administration squandered the Republican defense franchise. Bush's security team repeatedly misjudged the
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9/6/2012
Even as the presidential election campaign heats up, foreign and defense policy are conspicuously absent from most of the discussions. In fact, the state of national security has been reduced to a “they said, they said” about who is responsible for creating the imminent fiscal cliff, in general,
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Date:
9/5/2012
The prevailing view among defense investors these days is that talk of budget sequestration is going to weigh down share prices until after the November election, and maybe longer. But a catalyst for re-evaluating sector equities has begun to appear on the horizon: the possibility that Israel will
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Date:
9/5/2012