She Made Me A Believer, Almost

Erica Lee has made me a believer that America is a racist nation. I see her point from two different view points: 1. Americans still tend to dislike people they don’t identify with, and 2. There are a whole lot of different people in our country than we know about. We are a catch basin for all races.

When people associate racism in a hateful way I believe it is because the people we pick on don’t fit into our metric of people we admire and relate to. Another reason might be that we can’t relate to people who look radically different from us, namely blacks and Asians. They are so easy to pick out of a crowd and so easy to pick on that we tend to do it, i.e. pick on them. Ms Lee presented some interesting facts in her book “The Making of Asian America” that we should all become aware of. For instance the segregation of Japanese during WW II. I, for one, feel that the government made a wise decision to separate people who look so different from the general population during time of war with their country. I believe we saved these Japanese from a severe backlash of hatred by our white population. Ms Lee points out that the Japanese kept in the camps felt very different about their treatment. They felt that we should have treated them as loyal citizens which most of them were. What we didn’t learn from our history lessons was that the government deliberately treated them harshly. Never the less that period of history is over now and we must move forward. She wrote that after 9/11 a similar backlash against Pakistanis occurred against Sikh followers who could be easily picked out of a crowd. What surprised me about her timeline is how the United States created racial problems with our wars and then willingly took in refugees from those countries. I have not seen huge numbers of these ethnic groups in and around Chicago, but the numbers she gives are very large. Her description of the fall of Saigon at the end of the war cites hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese coming into the country, most of them undocumented. It didn’t end with Vietnamese because thousands of people from surrounding countries helped. Cambodians, Laotians, and Hmongs came as well. Recently, we experienced the need to do the same with Afghanis. With all of these people coming in from so many different places the cultural mix of the country is changing. The assimilation of so many different cultures, and languages will be difficult at best, perhaps impossible. Now, we also see an influx from South and Central America with additional cultures, customs, and languages. We also need a way to give these people work so they can feed and house themselves. There are just so many cleaners, dish washers, and grass cutters that we can occupy. One problem Ms Lee points out is that many of the people coming in are educated, but because of language differences they cannot find work that they are trained for. The result is that Phd level teachers, doctors, and nurses are finding work as truck drivers to provide for their families. It is sad, and the result is we have taken in too many people without any plan for providing meaningful work.

The assimilation of the millions of immigrants we’ve taken in since the seventies will take several generations to happen. As these new people change so will we. Together we will learn to love and help and integrate our new neighbors into a melting pot society. Perhaps by 2121 we will no longer be writing books about systemic racism. Or maybe the opposite, we will be writing more books about how bad it has become since the great influx of the twenty-first century.

PSA-160518-World Diets

different-diets5.jpg

For those of you who watch what you eat, here’s the final word on nutrition and health. It’s a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies.
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> 1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.
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> 2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.
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> 3. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.
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> 4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans…
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> 5. The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.
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> CONCLUSION: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.
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Another Piece of WWII

The Thursday night showing at the Stardust theater in Sun City West was “Heaven Knows Mr. Allison,”  starring Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr. Filmed in 1957 the story is about a marine who drifts ashore on an island in the Pacific during WWII. He finds it occupied by a nun. The two get to know each other for several weeks before Japanese occupy the island. For some strange reason they leave just as suddenly as they came A few days later they return. The marine kills a soldier in the Japanese camp when the soldier finds him.. The Japanese then begin burning the island to find the enemy.  The marine hides in a cave, but they find him. He is given a choice to come out or a hand grenade. An explosion occurs. It is not a grenade but a bomb. The USA began bombing the island and saved the day.

Peg and I agree that this is the best film we have seen at the Stardust theater. After looking it up, I learned that Ms Kerr received a nomination for best actress and the writers for best adaptation of a movie from another medium.

For some reason fate has made this winter a review of  history for me. It began with “The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell,” followed by a story about a Mitchell B-26, a wonderful book called “Flyboys”, a live performance of “South Pacific” at the Palm theater in Mesa, and now “Heaven Knows Mr. Allison.”

Fifty Year Plan

 

WILL BARACK OBAMA TAKE US

FROM **********THIS *************TO

2009 Dodge Challenger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

++++++++++THISeeni car

Here is a proposal to think about. What if POTUS, and the US car companies partner up and do some real long term planning?  The goal would be to make our car companies viable in a world market.  This means building product with superior quality, reliability, safety, performance, economy, and looks. Going one step further, I recommend that a new goal be set for this team. Overtake all foreign competition by making US cars competitive, and desirable worldwide. The team would need to plan fifty years ahead.  The actual business of making, and selling cars would be the domain of the car companies. The government’s role will make  it easy for the US manufacturers (like giving them tax incentives, or wage equalizers). Government can also make global trade easier for us, but harder for the competition. There isn’t any reason why GM, Ford, and Chrysler cannot kick ass in the world market provided they compete on a level playing field.

Planning and cooperation of  this nature will never fly in this country. Especially not with the far Left in power. This plan requires cooperation between management, labor, and government. That is not an idea the Left can deal with easily because they are so much against a company actually making money for their investors. Instead our leaders push Fiat, an Italian company,  to save Chrysler. How in the hell will that save jobs for the USA? All it will do is bring in a lot of cheap ass eeni cars that will fall apart in a month. 

Does the idea sound crazy?  Well, it’s not a new one. It is exactly how Japan worked with their carmakers. Look what that tired old  idea produced for them. They started with a single economy model, and dumped the cars in the USA. Once established in the US market, they attacked their quality, and responded to customer needs. Slowly, they advanced model by model to overtake our strongest manufacturing companies. The Japanese government gave the car companies concessions knowing that in the long term it would be better for the people of Japan.

 I never thought the Japanese  would take the luxury car market as easily as they did. Now they are worming their way into the final bastion; the pick up truck arena. Meanwhile, our adversarial relationship between worker, and management continues to build at a fever pitch. All the while,  government doesn’t give a shit unless it is an election year.

Now that POTUS owns GM he can oust the old time UAW guys, and replace them with fresh labor from Altgeld Gardens.

We May Indeed Be Nuts!

My Flag Flies Everyday

My Flag Flies Everyday

I am almost over the election. I haven’t blogged because the need to do so dried up when BO won. This week, however, I have to speak my piece on the latest of Uncle Sam’s idiotic moves. Why do we want to bail out GM? This car company has consistently thrown poor quality, and reliability at us in the name of “Made in the USA.” The same goes for the UAW. I tried my best to hold out by buying American for many years. I owned an Oldsmobile Intrigue for eight years. It was without a doubt, the best GM car I ever owned. I bragged about it’s reliability and performance. I tried in vane to get my kids to buy “American.” No amount of reason or guilt worked. Two of my kids  don’t even know that there are cars made in America that are not Honda or Toyota. They grew up on Honda, and Toyota. They are brand faithful. At the same time I was bragging about my Intrigue with 110,000 miles on it, my daughter bragged about her Honda with 180,000. All she ever did was change oil, and put brakes, tires and gas in it.  At 111,000 miles my Intrigue crapped out. It leaked fluid into the cyclinders and locked the engine tight. After I spent $1800 to replace a leaking intake manifold, I learned on the I-net that GM cars are notorious for this failure. They have had the problem for years, but have never taken any steps to fix it. 

The US car companies, management and the UAW, have let the Japs take them down. Now GM wants the tax payer to bail them out. The argument is that if they are allowed to go bankrupt, many thousands of jobs will be lost, thus fueling the recession.

The truth is that filing for bankruptcy will not be a loss of jobs. They can go on making crappy cars as is their usual business. The difference is that they won’t get any “free money,” from the taxpayer.

A few years ago, GM divested itself of a division called Delphi. Delphi makes electrical systems for GM and other car companies. GM gave Delphi as much pension debt as they could. Eventually, Delphi filed for chapter eleven. They couldn’t make a profit with all the baggage GM dumped on them. I know, because I am a stockholder. Want to know what happens to the stockholder when a company files for bankruptcy? The old shares become worthless, meaning the stockholder loses his investment. GM didn’t give a hoot about losing Delphi, it became Delphi’s problem.  Even though Delphi filed for bankruptcy, it has continued to operate for several years. They keep on shipping orders. They even entertained the purchase of another electronics company. How can a business that is in bankruptcy buy another company?

What GM is afraid of is all it’s incompetent managers losing their options and bonuses paid in stock.

The capitalistic system rewards companies that can design, make, and sell useful products that buyers want. GM does not do any of these things. They design cars that have a shorter life than their competitors, their designs are ugly, and they are made by the most unproductive union in the world, i.e. the UAW.

If we reward GM and the UAW with a government bailout, we are indeed nuts. Let the system work, we’ll all be better off for it. We won’t have to worry about BO turning the country socialist. WE will hand a socialist government to him on a silver platter.