Health Care Reform = Redistribution of Income?

Oops!  After months and months of talking of bringing health care to the uninsured, helping those with "pre-existing conditions," and lowering the deficit (?, still don't get that one), Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont., Senate Finance Committee Chairman, by the way) has blabbed about how the "health care reform" law ". . . will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America."

I'd like to see how much money the good senator has socked away in savings accounts, stock and bonds, real estate, 401k, and other investments; for us to judge whether it's an unjust amount considering some of the poverty across the nation, and the national debt.  Fair's fair, right?

FoxNews article on the Baucus slip

John Lott (who's blog I got the story from) has linked a video of Howard Dean agreeing with Baucus.

Obama Exploits Another Loophole, Disses Republicans. . . Again

Link to Yahoo! News article

Obama, frustrated with having his appointments denied or stalled by Republican senators, made 15 recess appointments.  Normally his appointments would have to be approved by the Senate, but with the Senate out on recess, Obama's appointments will go through without approval.

The Republican's largest complaint is the appointment of Craig Becker, a lawyer that works for the Service Employee's International Union (SEIU)* and the AFL-CIO.

The president also appointed 3 new members to the Equal Opportunities Employment Commission.  Are we really still doing that shit!?!


"I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government," says Obama.  I'm tempted to repeat an idiom about pots and kettles, but will refrain because I'm sure someone misuse it as proof of racism, rather than my trying to point out hypocrisy.


* - Maybe you've seen them helping the man posing as a pimp, work out ways to get tax credits on YouTube.

Pin Drop Silence

Interesting e-mail from a family member.  Can't validate all the facts, but. . .

==============================

Pin drop silence - Pointed Replies When You Could Have Heard a Pin Drop

At a time when the US President and other US politicians tend to apologize for their country's prior actions, here's a refresher on how some former US personnel handled negative comments about the United States.

JFK'S Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60's when Charles DeGaule, the French President, decided to pull out of NATO. DeGaule said he wanted all US military out of France as soon as possible.

Rusk responded "does that include those who are buried here?

DeGaule did not respond.

You could have heard a pin drop .
=============
When in England , at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if US plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush.

He answered by saying, 'Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.'

You could have heard a pin drop.
===========
There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying 'Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intended to do, bomb them?'

A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: 'Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?'

You could have heard a pin drop.
================
A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S. , English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of Officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks when a French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English.

He then asked, 'Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?'

Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied, 'Maybe it's because the Brit's, Canadians, Aussie's and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German.'

You could have heard a pin drop.

............ AND THE FOLLOWING STORY FITS RIGHT IN WITH THE ABOVE ..........

Robert Whiting, an elderly US gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane. At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on.

"You have been to France before, monsieur?" the customs officer asked sarcastically.

Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously.

"Then you should know enough to have your passport ready."

The American said, 'The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it."

"Impossible. Americans always have to show your passports on arrival in France !"

The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained, ''Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn't find a single Frenchman to show a passport to."

You could have heard a pin drop.

THE END.

======================

If it weren't for the recent eathquake in Haiti, there'd be very little use for much of anyone to speak French.

There's Patrick Henry... And Then There's Obama

Just heard something interesting.  The famous quote from Patrick Henry, the "Give me liberty, or give me death!" one, was said on the same date that Obama signed the "health care reform" bill into law.

That's kind of ironic.

Wikipedia entry - "Give me Liberty, or give me death!"

Oil Change Tip 2 - Oil Drain Valves

Even better than tying off the drain plug, is to completely replace it with a drain valve.

Fram Sure Drain
Available for some cars, you replace your oil pan plug with the one in the package.  When it's time to do an oil change, you screw the hose assembly onto the plug, which opens the valve.

Link to Fram Sure Drain at Jeg's Performance Online Store.  They used to be available at Pep Boys, in the area where you'd find oil filter wrenches.  Not sure if they still carry them.  The local Pep Boys stores are good for plastic shift knobs with LED lighting, and clamp-on chrome exhaust tips, but are light on stuff I actually need.

Fumoto Oil Drain Valve
I've never been able to get a Fram Sure Drain for any of my cars.  The one listed in the book for the Buick didn't have the right threads and I had to return it.  There's no Sure Drain available for the Subaru.

I discovered the Fumoto Oil Drain Valves on the NASIOC (North American Subaru Impreza Owners Club) forum.  The brass valve replaces the oil pan plug.  Just turn the lever, and the oil drains out.  I installed it with a Subaru OE drain plug crush washer, and I've gone probably 10,000 miles without any leaking.

Fumoto USA

Oil Change Tip 1 - Drain Plug Tether

Oil changes are a simple, but often messy operation.  I have found that this can be helped a little bit, if you tether the drain plug to your wrist, a transmission fluid line, or something else under the car. 

What I did, specifically, is to take a length of dental floss, and tie one to my wrist, and then tie a loop in the other end.  After unscrewing the drain plug about a quarter inch, I'd put the loop over the threads of the drain plug, and lassoo that bugger.  Then when I finally got the plug unscrewed all the way, and it dropped into the catch pan, I could fish it out without putting my hand into the oil.

I used the dental floss because it was available, I knew where it was, and when I was finished, I could break the thread with a tug, rather than trying to untie.

Tom Hanks on the Racism of WWII

I though maybe Tom Hanks was one of a few celebrities that had his head on pretty straight.  I'm really not one to follow the talk shows, though.  Some recent comments on World War II have changed my mind.

In an interview with TIME magazine about the WWII miniseries that he produced, entitled "The Pacific," Hanks made some rather unusual comments about racism and the war.  And no, he wasn't even talking about the Nazis.

Certainly, we wanted to honor U.S. bravery in 'The Pacific', but we also wanted to have people say, ‘We didn’t know our troops did that to Japanese people.’

Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar by any chance, to what’s going on today?

The war in the Pacific was a war of terror and racism, of suicide attacks. Both sides viewed the other side as being subhuman dogs from a civilization that didn’t recognize the advancement of human kind. Sound familiar? Sound like something that might be going on?

Hanks made similar comments in an interview with MSNBC's Morning Joe.

'The Pacific' is coming out now, where it represents a war that was of racism and terror. And where it seemed as though the only way to complete one of these battles on one of these small specks of rock in the middle of nowhere was to - I’m sorry - kill them all. And, um, does that sound familiar to what we might be going through today? So it's-- is there anything new under the sun? It seems as if history keeps repeating itself.

Um, yeah Tom.  We started the war in the Pacific because we didn't like Asians and religion.  It had nothing at all to do with the bombing of Pearl Harbor or Japanese ties to the Nazis.  The "kill them all" comment seems to have come entirely out of his ass.

Hanks plans for the future?  A project dealing with the JFK assassination.

If we do it right, it'll be perhaps one of the most controversial things that has ever been on TV.

At this point I'm thinking it involves a conservative conspiracy, involving GWB as one of the triggermen, but that's just spitballing.

Sheesh!

Sources:
Quotes from TIME magazine, and some basic information lifted from this Fox News article.
Quote from Morning Joe from this CBS News article.
Quote from TIME magazine article, on the JFK project, lifted from this flimsy USA Today article.

I had heard of Hanks' comments from a radio talkshow a few days ago.  Which one, I could not tell you.  Something just jogged my memory earlier today, and dug into it a bit further.