China

When I get to the office today, one of my tasks will be to purchase tickets for a business trip to China scheduled for September. I will then pass the flight information to the home office. The home office will procure an invitation letter for me which will then allow me to apply for and obtain the visa required in order to enter China.

This will be my second trip to China. I went for the first time in February of 2009. Unlike the first trip, I am looking forward to going this time.

Prior to my first trip, I had a lot of preconceived notions of what to expect when I got there. I anticipated that the hotel would have rooms which were small, dingy, uncomfortable, and quite possibly a health hazard. The food would be inedible and dangerous. The streets would be narrow and clogged with ox-drawn carts. The people would have the lifeless faces of worker drones. I fully expected a goon in military dress to confiscate my Gideon’s pocket New Testament and haul me off to a reeducation camp.

Upon arriving at Shanghai Pudong airport, the company van whisked us to the hotel. The minute I entered the hotel I realized it was equal to the best hotels I had ever occupied. Unlike the European hotels at which I have stayed, the bed was a king size “American” bed. There were only a few clues which prevented me from thinking I was in a Houston Marriot.

Our host collected us for an evening meal. We went to an Indian restaurant. As we exited the cab, we entered a shopping area which had a McDonald’s, a KFC, a Pizza Hut, a Papa John’s, and a Subway. I joked with our host that all China needed was a lawyer to sue McDonald’s and it would be America. How was I to know that two days later I would enter a cab which would have an advertisement for a lawyer staring at me from the back of the headrest?

The food was fantastic. The worst meal was pizza from a Howard Johnsons. It seems the Chinese like their pizza sauce on the sweet side. It reminded me of catsup. It was far from inedible, just different. I was stunned by the quantity. Most meals we left more food on the table than we consumed. And we consumed a lot. I asked if the leftovers would be given to the poor. I was told it would be thrown in the trash.

I did not see an ox-drawn cart while I was there. The wide streets were clogged with automobiles. I learned that the Chinese people are hard workers. The harder and smarter they work, the richer they become. They will initially purchase a more affordable car. There were a lot of Ford Focus and Chevy Malibu types running around. The goal is to move up the car ladder. A black or dark blue Buick Lacrosse would be a stepping stone car. To be honest, I had never seen a Buick Lacrosse until I went to China. It wasn’t until my return to the States that I realized they actually sold them here. From the Buick, the Chinese may then graduate to a black Lexus. The goal is to own a black Mercedes.

I am still not clear about religion in China. We hear a lot of negative reports in the States. All I can do is report what I saw while I was there. There was a bible in the nightstand by the bed at the hotel. Inside the front cover there was information that it was placed there by a Bible Society. The Gideon name was not mentioned. The Bible was in English and Chinese. Additionally, the map of the city which is produced by the government showed the locations of Christian churches in Shanghai. Granted, it also showed the locations of Mosques and Temples. In America the Mosques and Temples would have been shown but the ACLU would have assured that the Christian churches would be excluded.

There is still a lot I don’t understand. However, from what I have pieced together from information given to me by my Chinese co-workers and what I have personally observed, I have drawn a conclusion. It seems that the Chinese government officials allow and even encourage personal initiative which results in wealth building. When the people prosper, the government officials prosper.

The down side seems to be that if a government official is corrupt, the Chinese cannot vote them out of office. This differs from the United States where it seems that we will not vote them out of office. I must do more research before I decide which system is worse. Maybe the American voters will do the right thing this November.

Random Bits

I feel the need to write. I have a dilemma in that there are a multitude of thoughts which I need to express. Instead of dedicating this blog to one topic, I have decided to try and limit myself to one paragraph for each of the topics on which I want to comment. Maybe I should blog more often. Maybe daily? Not going to happen.

I must start off with Obama’s Katrina. According to the mainstream media (MSM), the Gulf of Mexico is completely covered in oil. To bring levity to the situation, they are making a desperate attempt to blame it on Bush. At the same time, the MSM is working angles to make Obama seem like he is actually doing something. Stephanopoulos started his newscast with the story of Obama’s daughter asking the President while he was shaving, “Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy.” Maybe she should ask if departments under his control are issuing safety awards to future disaster sites like they did last year for the oil rig company. Or maybe she should ask him if they are going to start checking for dead batteries. They safety inspected the rig 10 days before the accident and missed a dead battery. Come on! My $39.95 carbon monoxide detector reaches the end of its life and I can’t sleep for the thing reminding me to replace the module. What’s wrong with these people?

Staying with Obama but changing subjects, I have a different take on Joe Sestak. Actually, I think Obama may be the victim here. It has come out that Bill Clinton was involved. I can’t help but wonder if this is Hillary in 2012 dirty tricks. Someone needs to tell Obama that when Vito Corleone told his son Michael to, “Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer,” that it was implied that you keep your eyes on your enemies. Maybe Obama needs to watch the film again.

Let’s move to my health, or lack thereof. I broke my right ankle at the beginning of March. I had a blood clot develop in my right calf, most probably as a result of the muscle atrophy in that leg. So now I am on a three to six month regimen of a therapeutic dosage of rat poison. I was released two weeks ago from wearing the boot which they used instead of a cast. Now all I have to deal with is the swelling. The doctors say it should lessen in about a year.

A side benefit of the broken ankle is that now I have a CPAP machine. I wasn’t allowed to drive with the boot on. To be intellectually honest, I probably wouldn’t have been able to drive safely with the clunky thing on my leg. As a result, my wife had to drive me everywhere, including the doctor’s office. I had worked so hard at keeping the two of them apart! Anyway, she proceeds to tell him how I stop breathing in my sleep. Next thing I know, I am sleeping in an office suite with electrodes attached to my scalp. So now I have this medieval torture device which attaches to my face and pumps air into my nose. I have yet to experience a good night’s sleep. That includes the night I was awakened by my wife to tell me it was leaking after she felt the exhaust stream. Being cranky from lack of sleep, I not so politely informed her that the air has to go somewhere.

A friend of our daughter moved in with us in February. The way this happened is a long story, too long to go into here. However, it is safe to say that it has been interesting going from a one teenage girl house to a two teenage girl house. The newest member of our household graduated from high school last weekend. With college starting for her next fall, we are not sure what is going to happen. We are taking it one day at a time. It has caused us to pause and reflect on our own daughter’s graduation which will occur this time next year. Our baby is becoming a young woman.

I was in Switzerland the week before last. I flew through Heathrow for the second time in my life. Unless I can’t avoid it, it will also be my last time. Heathrow is a nice airport staffed by nicer people who have no leadership. They can not handle any form of crisis. Flights were delayed due to the volcanic ash. For nearly four hours I had to resist the urge to grab personnel and tell them what they needed to do to make the airport run. My advice: Avoid Heathrow at all cost.

It was good to get back to the States. Now we are celebrating the Memorial Day weekend. Getting back to Obama, he has elected not to attend the services at Arlington this year. He will be in Chicago instead. Vice President Biden will go to Arlington to honor those men and women who sacrificed all to preserve our republic. I suspect Obama would feel uncomfortable around all those who acted counter to his efforts.

Please have a safe and happy Memorial Day. Please remember those who made it possible.

Losing Our Real Culture

One of the responsibilities of my job is to interview, select, and hire recently graduated engineers. I then place them in a job that is a literal pressure cooker. The position I put them in is simultaneously the best and worst possible job. At the worst, they have to overcome insurmountable problems in order to satisfy the customer while making an acceptable profit. At the best, they develop skills which will afford them a multitude of paths for career advancement.

All of the engineers I have hired and put in this position have experienced failures during their tenure. However, to date, none of them have become failures. I recognize this as a “God thing” and give Him the glory. There is no way an ordinary person such as I could have as many hiring successes as I have had without a huge amount of help.

Recently, as a result of a couple of these engineers being promoted to new responsibilities, new batches of recent graduates have come through my office for interviews. In order to obtain a feel for how they will perform in the role they are applying for, I usually talk to them about their senior project. Their project requires them to use most if not all of the skills they learned throughout their engineering education. The project is usually completed as a team.

Every time I go through this process, I am reminded of my senior project. There were four of us on the team. I am proud to say our project was completed successfully and I received an A for my efforts.

This is not to say that the project was without problems. Indeed, we had one member who did not complete tasks on schedule. He routinely ignored requests and constructive criticism. In the end, the other two members and I told him what he would put in his final presentation. To the extreme frustration of the three of us, he ignored us and his presentation did not fit and the information given made no sense.

Throughout the process, while we were demanding to see progress, he would tell us how his ancestors had contributed a building block which made what we were doing possible. It was as though the contributions his ancestors made centuries ago released him from all responsibility to accomplish his assigned tasks today. We three attempted reasoning with him by pointing out the contributions each of our ancestors made and then pointing out what we had done to bring the project to a successful completion. We finally resorted to simply but bluntly telling him that regardless of what his ancestors may have done, he was going to fail if he did not work and his attitude was placing the grades of his fellow team members in jeopardy.

In the end, I approached our professor to discuss the issue. He informed me that he had already recognized the problem and would be dealing with it fairly. I don’t know what grade he gave the other students. I would think that the other two who had worked as hard as me also received A’s. The grade of the fourth fellow is of little consequence if he never understood why his contribution to the project was more important than his ancestor’s contribution to engineering.

Then I look at our world today through the eyes of that college student I was all those years ago. I look at how we celebrate diversity by emphasizing the contributions of the ancestors of various groups. I realize it is important to be proud of our heritages. I am glad to see groups being recognized which were previously ignored.

That being said, what is lacking is a frank discussion as to how these groups contributed. The contributions were not made as a result of the groups in question getting together and deciding they were going to place their mark on history. The contributions were made by individuals or small teams of individuals literally rolling up their sleeves and creating something by the sweat of their brow. They may or may not have known what their ancestors contributed. If they did not know, it didn’t matter. If they did know, they were probably proud of the accomplishment but recognized they could not rest on their heritage and still be successful. They had to make their own contributions to be successful.

This is what made America great. A diverse group of individuals came to settle this nation. I believe for the most part they were proud of the heritage they were leaving behind. That pride fueled a desire to succeed on a personal level. That pride did not stand in their way of learning the commonly used language in their new land. It led them to recognize that when opportunities were not available, they had to create their own opportunities. They worked hard. They made a contribution of which we Americans can be proud.
What we can not do is rest on their contributions.

General Motors

Before we get to the subject of GM, let’s start with a pop quiz. Who owns Chrysler? If you are like most Americans, you know it is a foreign company. You may even know that it is an Italian Company. If you are really in the know, you would have said FIAT. And like most Americans, you would have been about 20% correct. FIAT only owns about 20% of Chrysler. The UAW owns most of it. The US and Canadian governments combined own about half as much as FIAT owns.

Isn’t it amazing how the news media and the US government have used the truth to deceive us? It is true that FIAT owns part of Chrysler. However, the way it was presented has led us to believe they bought the whole thing.

I am not a big fan of Oliver Stone. I am very skeptical of conspiracy theories. As I watch the news regarding GM, however, I am beginning to see a pattern of deceit which has led me to my own conspiracy theory. Unlike Oliver Stone’s theories, mine will be proven right or wrong in the next 6 months.

Originally, I thought the government’s ownership in GM was the first step to government control of all business through the purchase of or outright take-over of US businesses. I now see something more sinister. The government is going to use GM to cement the current batch of elected official’s stranglehold on their offices. They will do this by controlling how we perceive reality.

The reports have been coming out steadily on how various GM divisions have seen increasing sales. The government and news media conclude this means the recession is over. The problem with this is that GM closed Pontiac, Saturn, and Hummer. If a potential car buyer was going to by a now defunct GM product, it would follow that they would most probably buy another GM product, thus driving up the other division’s sales. Additionally, the owner of GM, the US government, announced that cars produced by one of GM’s competitors were unsafe and should not be driven. How’s that for conflict of interest?

I am not saying that there have not been increases in sales. I am simply saying that they are manipulating the numbers so that it looks better than it actually is.

Now, GM’s CEO, Ed Whitacre, is making commercials touting how GM has paid back their loans to the government. They have paid them back early and with interest. The problem is that GM paid back the loans using the money the government gave them when the government purchased 60% of GM.

What could possibly be the incentive to make reality sound better than it actually is? Here is where I move from fact to conjecture.

The government intends to divest itself of GM through an IPO (initial public offering). In other words, they are going to offer shares of stock in GM to the public for purchase. The government has been criticized from all sides on the purchase of GM. “The government has no business running a business.” “The government paid more for 60% of GM than what 100% of GM is worth.” How are they going to make the IPO attractive to investors? They are going to manipulate the numbers so that things look better than they are. Sales are up. Loans are being repaid. GM is a sound investment. Step right up and buy your stock in a success.

The government unloads GM to investors. They go to the voters and say, “See, we knew what we were doing. We got all your money back and saved GM. Re-elect us so we can do more of the same for you.”

If they time it right, it will be after they are re-elected when the investors and the voters realize they traded their cows for a bags of magic beans. Unlike Jack, they will get something less desirable from their goose than a golden egg.

As I said, the next six months will prove me right or wrong. However, we need to get the word out in order to stop this from happening. You need to talk about this with your friends and family. The 2010 election has to be played out on a level playing field, not some government and news media contrived field. Americans deserve a fair and honest election. If we allow Washington to buy our votes with funny numbers of perceived prosperity, we may be on the verge of losing America.

Bumbling Bundling

As you can probably tell from my profile photo, I am a gearhead. I convinced my Mom to buy a Car Craft magazine for me while on a grocery shopping trip in 1968 and I haven’t stopped since. Presently, I am building a 1941 Chevy and I also spend a lot of time reading and contributing on-line at several car related bulletin board forums.

One of the bulletin boards that I frequent is the Hot Rodder’s Bulletin Board (http://hotrodders.com). In addition to the car related forums which contain thousands of threads regarding technical car issues, there is an “Off-Topic” forum which often contains threads of political nature. If you have read any of my posts, you have probably already figured out that I spend a lot of time reading and posting in the “Off-Topic” forum as well.

There was a post several days ago which prompted the tome you are reading now. The thread starter posted some information about Cap and Trade. The upsetting part of the post for me was the potential infringement it seemed that Cap and Trade would make on the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution with respect to property rights. The post said that the Cap and Trade bill would require home owners to have an energy audit performed on their home. If the home was found to be below par, it would have to be improved to a certain level before the owner could sell it.

What I found almost as troubling as the potential infringement on our rights was the response posts of several other members of the bulletin board. Completely ignoring the thread starter’s legitimate concerns about the government illegally infringing on our rights, they accused him as wanting to destroy the planet. They also ridiculed him for not understanding that the government would pay for part of the improvements to bring the property to sellable condition.

After making a few uneducated comments on the thread, I decided to write a more in-depth comment. Time to do some research.

I googled H.R. 2454. I found a lot of conflicting information. After a considerable amount of search fine tuning, I found some sites which had the actual bill. The first one had a summary and other basic information. Basically, the summary gave you warm fuzzies because the bill is going to single-handedly save the planet. There may have been something in there about curing the common cold.

Buried deep in the page was a link to “Read the entire bill.” At last, the holy grail of conservation. I could read for myself whether or not I would have to get a government energy audit license in order to sell my house. One quick click and there it was. “This file is extremely large and may slow your computer down or cause it to crash. Do you want to continue?”

I was stunned. What had our elected officials done? I can use my computer to find instructions on everything from trimming my nose hair to how to build a nuclear weapon. Yet somehow they managed to write a piece of legislation which is so large and complex that it would likely crash my computer.

I eventually did find a PDF file which my computer would handle. At 932 pages though, I couldn’t handle it. Further searching led to a Realtor’s organization site which had excerpted the pertinent pages. At last, I had the truth from an anonymous person working for an organization with a vested interest.

It seems that the bill originally included the energy audit and license to sell regulations. These were dropped before the bill was passed in the house and sent to the senate. There is still a provision that the states can require the audit and seller’s license if the state organization created by the federal bill so decides. I felt a little better knowing that the states would be less likely to do something like this. That was until someone pointed out that the California senate passed a bill which would allow people to ride bicycles without a seat provided the bicycle manufacturer designed and built the bicycle to not have a seat. Don’t believe me? Google “Kehoe SB 527.” This is representative of the brain trust we have put in control.

Through my frustration it occurred to me that our government has taken a page from the cable companies’ operating manuals. The art of bundling. You know, that is where the cable company takes something you need, like a station which tells you if a tornado is heading toward your house, and they bundle it with something you want, like the SPEED Channel, but then force you to buy something you normally wouldn’t let in your house, like Lifetime.

The government has taken something that no reasonable person would be against, like conservation, bundled it with something we want, in this case money for part of the improvements, provided you are poor enough and your home is worthless enough, and bundled all of that with a reduction in your rights which were originally granted to you by the Creator and protected by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

My wife’s cousin recently posted a quote by James Madison on his Facebook wall.

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”

There is a movement afoot in the US calling on our representatives to “Read the Bill.” The idea is that, at 932 pages, there is no doubt that the majority of our representatives did not read this bill before they voted on it. I will go one step further. Write the bill so that the average American can read it and understand it.

We have to stop our run-away government. They are supposed to be working for us, guarding our rights, not stripping them away. Find a candidate who supports the work of our Founding Fathers. Someone who recognizes that our rights are not granted by the government but rather our government is in charge of protecting those rights. Donate money to that candidate. Volunteer to make phone calls and walk precincts with literature. We are a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. But we are giving that up and allowing a DC lawyers to perform our work for us. In turn, they are working hard on enslaving us.

A Crass Political Stunt?

In December I wrote about how I was warming up to Oklahoma. Admittedly, it has been a slow process. With the spring thaw, dodging the OK sized potholes can dampen one’s affection for this state. The thing is, I couldn’t love this state more and it’s all because of one man.

This week, our senator from Oklahoma, Senator Tom Coburn, introduced an amendment to Obamacare which made a statement and the entire country should listen. Senator Coburn sponsored amendment S.AMDT.3556 to H.R. 4872, the health care bill. Senator Coburn drew a line in the sand and put the remaining 99 senators on record as to what type of country we will have in the future.

The purpose of S.AMDT.3556 is listed as follows:

To reduce the cost of providing federally funded prescription drugs by eliminating fraudulent payments and prohibiting coverage of Viagra for child molesters and rapists and for drugs intended to induce abortion.

The first part would have cracked down on Medicaid fraud. This may not sound like much of a big deal, but Coburn estimates Medicaid fraud costs us, the taxpayers, approximately $650 million annually. I find it hard to argue with saving that kind of money.

The last part is probably the most contentious. I do think it is safe to say that most Americans would prefer their tax dollars not be spent on abortion.

The middle part of the amendment is the area which turns my stomach. The thought that my tax dollars would be used to purchase ED drugs for child molesters and rapist boggles my mind. Maybe I am naïve but I would have never even considered this to be a possibility in the America in which I grew up.
And yet, here we are in 2010. We have the basic assault to our freedoms which is the Obamacare bill itself. On top of that, we have the real potential of our tax dollars being used to purchase ED drugs for pedophiles and rapists.

If you are still with me, I am sure you are thinking that our elected officials did the right thing. After they got over the initial revulsion of the thought of impotent child molesters and women haters being pumped up to commit more crimes with tax payer dollars, they promptly and decisively sent a message to the perverts of America that there is no way decent Americans are going to fund their evil.

Guess again.

The Coburn amendment was tabled by a vote of 57-42. Fifty seven senators feel it is perfectly appropriate for sexual criminals to continue unabated and, in fact, aided by the use of taxpayer funding.

At the risk of being silenced by the thought police in this country, I will go on record as stating that these fifty seven senators are despicable examples of human beings. That being said, you, the voters, sent these people to Washington to represent you and your values. Is one of your values curing erectile dysfunction in sexual predators? It is time to send a message to Washington and vote the scum out. I only hope it is not too late.

Oh, and if you are curious who the sexual criminal enablers are, here is the list. Please, please America, do everything that is legally within your power to remove these people from office as soon as possible.


Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Begich (D-AK)
Bennet (D-CO)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Burris (D-IL)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Franken (D-MN)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Hagan (D-NC)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kaufman (D-DE)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Merkley (D-OR)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Specter (D-PA)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Udall (D-CO)
Udall (D-NM)
Warner (D-VA)
Webb (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)

I Have a Dream?

I was recently chatting with a co-worker and the conversation drifted into a discussion about health care reform. I decided to forward him an e-mail I had received which contained the text of a letter to the editor of the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion Ledger. The letter was submitted to the paper by one Dr. Roger Starner Jones MD of Jackson. I include the content of that letter to the editor here for your reading enjoyment.

23 August 2009

Jackson, Mississippi Clarion Ledger

“Why Pay for the Care of the Careless”

During my last shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ring tone.

Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid.

She smokes a costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.

And our president expects me to pay for this woman’s health care?

Our nation’s health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture – a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one’s self, or heaven forbid, purchase health insurance.

Life is not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.

Starner Jones, MD

Jackson


Anyone who spends much time on the internet or sifting through e-mails knows that there is a lot of made up junk floating around out there. I usually make it a point to fact check items before I forward them along. Before I forwarded this item, I fact checked it. I ended up finding far more than the facts.

One of the top items which popped up in a Google search of Starner Jones MD was a Snopes entry. I trust that informed surfers know that Snopes is presently snarled in a controversy as to the political bias of the owners. I had always made every attempt to use multiple sources in the past and Snopes seemed thorough and accurate. I do however now use extra caution when reading through a Snopes entry. What is interesting about my search on Starner Jones MD was that while Snopes did verify that the Mississippi Clarion Ledger did publish the above letter to the editor they also felt compelled to publish a response letter to the editor. For the life of me, I can not determine what the response letter has to do with the veracity of the Starner Jones MD letter. Maybe the detractors of Snopes are correct and they do have a liberal bias. It seems that the truth is only the truth if it has a companion dissenting opinion to go along with it.

I also found a plethora of left wing blogs and opinions regarding the letter. They all said basically the same thing; Starner Jones MD is a white Republican racist. I went back and re-read the letter. I was confused.

No where in the letter did Dr. Jones indicate the coloration of his own skin. To be fair, I did find a photograph purported to be the good doctor. I didn’t check to see if it was actually him. He appears to be what most would call “white” but he seemed more of a light tannish pink to me.

I could not find his political affiliation. I guess his detractors have more time and energy than me to verify this.

That leaves us with the racist tag. Since the liberal dogma is that only “white” males can be racist toward “blacks,” and since we assume the photo of Dr. Starner is real and he is in fact “white,” I looked for proof that the patient was “black.” Could not find it. Dr. Jones’s detractors say that the description is obviously of a “black” person. I find that leap in logic to be racist in and of itself. As a matter of fact, I know more “white” people who fit the description given.

The real truth is that liberals, in order to further their agenda, selectively refuse to separate ideas from skin pigmentation. In this case, Dr. Jones, a “white” doctor, took an idea put forth by the President of the United States, a “black” lawyer, to task. He logically pointed out that it is the culture of America that is broken, not health care. Collectively, regardless of skin color, we Americans are far more interested in spending our money on things which are detrimental to our health while we are averse to spending our money on things which will preserve and improve our health. Anyone who looks at the American situation with any degree of honesty realizes that the only way to combat that point of view is to provide an ad homonym claim of racism.

Dr. Jones’s letter does attack the character of his patient. In so doing, it to some extent attacks every American’s character. I know I spend some of my money on things which are detrimental to my health. I am sure that if you are honest with yourself, you will admit to the same.

Dr. Martin Luther King said the following in his “I Have a Dream” speech:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Using liberal logic, Dr. King’s idea seems to be racist. I would rather think that the true racists are today’s liberals.

Movies, In-Flight Movies, and The Blind Side

This New Year’s Eve, our family did something we seldom do. We went to see a movie in a movie theater. While the movie was great, the experience reinforced one of the reasons we seldom visit the theater.

There was an article written a while ago in which the author observed that movie going had become less civilized as a result of movie goers acting as though they were in their living rooms watching television. Babies cry. Cell phones ring. Conversations are carried out over the movie dialogue. Anyone who has experienced a text screen flashing on and off in the seat next to you can verify that is also an annoying experience. From the condition of the floors and the seats, I would not want to visit the living rooms of some moviegoers. With the price of tickets and concessions pushing the family visit to the theater to the $50 and up range, why should a sane person subject themselves to it?

We also have a problem in our family with regards to our tastes in movies. Let’s just say that I am a Marx Brother fan and my wife doesn’t seem to appreciate their brilliance. She looks for movies with social relevance and a meaningful story line. I view movies as sheer entertainment, escapism. Brain candy. We seldom agree on what is a good movie.

We do have a loose knit system of finding movies which we both will enjoy. Since I travel out of country at least once a year, I get to view my share of in-flight movies. I can then return home and suggest movies I am pretty sure we both will like, tell her of movies I liked but am pretty sure she won’t, and movies I could not sit through again. Here are some examples. Over her reluctance, I convinced my wife to rent The Illusionist. We both liked it. I told her that I enjoyed The Time Traveler’s Wife, but I didn’t think it was a movie she would like. So, we will wait until it is on cable and maybe watch it then. After watching The Hours, I told her how the flight attendant became annoyed with my constant requests for a parachute. If she wants to watch that one, it will be alone.

On New Year’s Eve, without the aid of an in-flight movie screening, we went to see The Blind Side. This is what I call a journey movie. You know how the movie is going to end before you enter the theater. You go to see it so you can experience how the characters arrive at the end. The entire family enjoyed this movie.

Since the movie is setting box office records, most of you have probably seen it and the ending is known. I won’t then bore you with the details about what makes this a great movie. The muse that prompted me to write today arose from some of the criticisms of the movie. Criticisms with more bite than my co-worker’s complaint regarding the film adjustment of the 2004 Clemson vs. Tennessee score.

One criticism is actually brought up as part of the story line in the movie. Did the Tuohy family specifically select a large homeless kid with some athletic ability for the purpose of grooming him to become a star football player for their alma mater, Ole Miss? I am not exactly sure how you can ask that question with a straight face. Taking a homeless teenage boy into your home is risky business, at best. To have the forethought that you are doing this with the eventual goal of helping a college succeed in football is even more absurd. How detractors even came up with this game plan is hard for me to comprehend
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Chances are excellent that the Tuohy family took in a kid who at best would have probably become a gang enforcer, at worst would probably be dead, but with support and love his ultimate destination turned out to be an NFL star. Let’s just explore the worst scenario when considering the Tuohy family. Let’s say they somehow did have the foresight to seek and groom a football star for their favorite college. Would saving one person’s life through opportunistic motives then become a bad thing for that one person?

This of course leads to the next big criticism: This movie reinforces the stereotype that black people can’t make it unless rich white folks step in to help them. The Tuohy family ends up being demonized as racists for being rich, white, and compassionate. In the minds of the critics, I am sure this makes sense. As far as they are concerned, personal involvement outside of your race and social sphere is an incomprehensible concept. It is common knowledge that the only correct way to help poor people is for rich, mostly white, mostly male Congressmen and Senators to steer tax monies from regular Joe Americans into such life-enhancing projects such as Cabrini-Green or, perhaps, Hurt Village, which is where our football hero was being nurtured.

If you haven’t seen The Blind Side, see it now. Let’s just hope that the critics are ignored and the movie prompts us all to lend a helping hand out of love toward those who are less fortunate but every bit as valuable as ourselves.