Sink the Bismarck; Guns of Navarone; Longest Day; Battleground; Battle of the Bulge; Patton; Saving Private Ryan. One cannot help but be dazzled by the villainous Germans, and their ruthless efficiency. 

They wore slick uniforms; fought with unbelievable weaponry; they had an intense, precisely-organized Prussian approach to war - compared to the "laid back," improvisational method of the Americans.

The Nazis had all the best armaments. The renowned Bismarck...Tiger tanks...the 88mm cannon...the M42 machine gun...ME 262 jet fighters; V-2 rockets. Yet they lost to the Americans, with their flimsy Sherman tanks, and lumbering B-17 bombers.

Obviously then, it begs the question: How did the Americans manage to win?  

But to those who had lived through that era, they would reply, "We out-produced 'em".

Indeed; immediately after Pearl Harbor, the incredible wartime economic shift in the USA took place with amazing rapidity:

Ford and GM quickly changed over their assembly lines to producing tens of thousands of jeeps, trucks, and tanks. Arsenals in the Midwest manufactured shells and cartridges by the millions.

Boeing, North American, Douglass, Curtiss, Grumman, et al. hired hundreds of thousands of aviation workers; and by mid-1943, were turning out thousands of warplanes every month to be shipped to the ports of departure on our two coasts.

No less impressive was the remarkable wartime re-organization of the railroads, instrumental in shipping the weapons of war - plus the oil and gasoline to fuel them - running on precise wartime schedules.

But the key to it all was STEEL; and the workers who labored on 12-hour shifts - seven days a week - in the booming mills that produced it.

The Germans had their gigantic Krupp works in the Ruhr Valley. We had Pittsburgh, Gary Indiana, and Youngstown.

If one had been living in any of three major steel towns during the war, they would recall the smokey, orange-hazed night sky. Crashing noises from the mills. Train whistles blaring at night.

15 to 20 minute waits at railroad crossings were commonplace during the 1940's.

Now, trains are a rare sight; you might hear one at night. 

Nowadays, because of the scrap metal boom, most traces of the old steel mills have literally vanished. The air around Pittsburgh, Gary and Youngstown is pristine, compared to the days of steel prosperity, before the major manufacturers began shutting down.

But why - for the most part - the absence of steel making in America? Were we to fight another prolonged war, what then?

First came the incompetent Jimmy Carter of the late 1970's, who's lack of foresight started our steel-manufacturing demise.

It was he, plus his fool Attorney General, Griffin Bell, who had denied the lawsuits of the fired steelworkers, who were suing the major steel companies on the premise that by closing down their plants, it would bring not only local economic calamity, but also risk our national security (in the event of war).  

Then came Reagan...Bush...Clinton. Need we go on? 

Promises, promises. All initially promised they'd bring manufacturing and steel jobs back to those distressed rust belt towns; but after their elections, they were probably just too darn busy to get around to it...but they sure meant well.

Of course, over the past few decades, it’s been cheaper to import steel manufactured in foreign countries. 

But that doesn’t mean that America's steel industry is doomed. Many mills are actively producing high-quality specialty steels for specific markets requiring it. Demand for seamless pipe for the oil drillers has remained especially strong.

On the contrary, in the coming months & years, many economists predict heavy manufacturing is going to make a comeback in America; although nowhere near the heydays of the 40's, 50's and 60's.

But it all remains contingent on the availability of cheap energy.

Today, moderately strong world steel demand, higher global prices, a weak dollar, high ocean freight rates- all are acting as a disincentive for steel imports, with a concomitant rise in strength of our slowly-recovering domestic steel industry.

Hence, once the economy improves, an expected rise in demand portends good times ahead for US steel makers...except for one "X-factor" now ominously looming on the horizon: the bizarre environmentalism of the Obama administration - and the green fanatics looming within both halls of Congress.

And what do they have in store for us? Prosperity? Another Great Depression? Who can even explain their motives, other than ruin?

In a time of severe recession; a real unemployment rate hovering around 16%, with no end to the job losses in sight, and ever more families seeking food stamps, Barack Obama and the Senate democrats have chosen "climate change" as their priority.

Never mind that polls reveal less than 10% of Americans even care about climate change, or the bizarre premise that the earth is warming. They feel otherwise. They don't believe it; nor can find evidence of it in their daily lives.

But those same polls reveal that the vast majority are DEEPLY worried about the economy: 

They DO see the suffering that's evident around them, as wave-after-wave of job losses keep rippling through the nation, with no end in sight.

But Barack Lunatic Obama seems to feel otherwise:

Incredibly, this vainglorious man is encouraging the Senate put “Cap-and-Trade” on a fast track to passage, so he can go to Copenhagen this December and crow heroically (to the European socialists) that the United States is now the leader in the green energy revolution- saving the world from the non-existent threat of global warming!

But as they say...misery loves company.

The European nations have ruined their own socialist economies after adopting the insipid, job-destroying, "green energy revolution" - and are mired in deep recession. So naturally, they're exerting enormous pressure on Obama to do likewise.

Hence, he is quite bound and determined to please them. He seeks glory in Copenhagen. He wants to arrive there, triumphantly waving his victorious Climate Change law to the world, proclaiming the damnation of fossil fuels for all time!

And if it sparks an inevitable downward slide of the US economy - so be it.

But we know Cap 'n Trade has nothing to do with the climate; in reality it will be the fast track to economic ruin.

Cap and Trade will tax all energy use in America, spelling disaster for the energy-intensive steel industry, let alone how it will destroy another 30-50% of what remains of our manufacturing base.

But liar Obama remains in full campaign mode, running around the country, happily proclaiming his favorite mantra about how his plan (scam) "will generate millions of new green jobs."

Sure it will.

In reality, it will generate millions of newly-unemployeds, now dependent on their monthly Obama check for survival.

Cap and trade will inevitably destroy the coal industry. It will all but level the budding recovery in our steel industry. It will put people who work as drillers and refiners on the unemployment lines.

But it will produce a great spike in the economy- in China.

As the cost of manufacturing gradually rises over this next decade, we'll witness millions of jobs fleeing offshore in the inexorable search of higher profits. The laws of economics cannot be repealed. Those countries offering the lowest production costs (energy-taxation) always emerge the victors. 

Meanwhile, the entire United States gradually becomes a massive, California-like disaster, as the radical environmentalism of the1980's that ruined that state is foisted upon the rest of the country, by none other than the mean-spirited diminutive weasel from San Francisco, Barbara Boxer- proud sponsor of the Senate climate bill.

Obama's insistence of switching to higher cost wind/solar generated electricity (and other alternatives) is less than a zero-sum game. Any green jobs created are more than offset by the loss of conventional energy jobs- hurting the US manufacturing sector which requires reasonably-priced energy to compete in the global marketplace.

Higher energy prices literally ruin the economies of scale in every facet of our lives.

Look for the doubling and trebling of our electric bills; five dollar-a-gallon gasoline; and keeping our houses at a shivering, European-like 59* at night.

And what about the inevitable spike in food prices? Or the fact that school after school will be forced to close down - or seek higher tax levies - as their energy costs skyrocket, and teachers are laid off en masse. Has anyone considered that?

And for what? Because of preventing too much carbon dioxide - a gas humans exhale  -from "poisoning" the air?

Meanwhle, what's the first thing Mr. Obama will do after returning from Copenhagen next December 19, having accepting the world's accolades for pushing through his destructive plan?

Of course; he'll go to his oval office; crank up the heat to 80*, roll up his shirtsleeves, put his feet up on the desk; light a cigarette and think..."what a country!" 

Meanwhile, millions of the newly unemployed, and millions more miners, blue collar workers, and others worried about their futures, will think..."What a president- aarrgh!"

Thanks Mr. Obama; have a Merry Christmas.