YES WE CAN have a general strike without having jobs.

Send in the clowns.

QUALITY HEALTHCARE: A Right, a Privilege, a Responsibility and a Concern. Politically correct balderdash, unfortunately from members of my chosen profession.

A doctor is nothing more than a high-priced mechanic and a hospital is just a germ-free garage. With as many people as we have in this nation owning cars, you'd think more people would come to that realization. Unfortunately, the auto repair industry is more-and-more adopting this unworkable health 'care' industry model.

TAX REFUNDS for illegal immigrants.

NORMAN AUGUSTINE: "A major restriction on what we can do in space is the cost of launching payloads. And it’s my belief that the only way we will see a quantum reduction in the cost of taking payloads into space will be when space tourism becomes a reality. I firmly believe that will happen, and at that point we’ll be able to do some really amazing things in space."

DUBIOUS DONATIONS: check your credit card statements carefully.

SOME HISTORY: A video clip of the Japanese surrender on the U.S.S. Missouri on September 22, 1945.

RANDOM THOUGHTS on health, health insurance, health care, and health control from the retirement lane. According to this article in the New York Times, the root cause of obesity is too much food ...

The 1970's saw a striking rise in the quantity of refined carbohydrates and fats in the U.S. food supply, which was paralleled by a sharp increase in the available calories and the onset of the obesity epidemic. Energy intake rose because of environmental push factors, i.e., increasingly available, cheap, tasty, highly promoted obesogenic [??] foods.

... and the solution is not enough nanny state.

[T]hree of the most ... health-saving measures: a 10 percent tax on unhealthy foods and drinks; more obvious nutrition labeling ... like a red, yellow or green traffic light on package fronts [skull & bones?]; and reduced advertising of “junk foods....”

May I also note that the 1970's saw the morphing of health insurance to government-mandated health care to now-government-mandated health control (ObamaCare)? Perhaps the root cause of obesity is too much government.

ASTEROIDS: deflect them when you can mine them. I suspect the environmental extremists prefer the 'do nothing' option; let the asteroids cleanse the Earth of those pesky humans.

GOTTA LOVE HER. The owner of the Phoenix Suns basketball team, Robert Sarver, came out strongly opposing AZ's new immigration laws. Arizona 's Governor released the following statement in response to Sarver's criticism of the new law:

"What if the owners of the Suns discovered that hordes of people were sneaking into basketball games without paying?

What if they had a good idea who the gate-crashers are but the ushers and security personnel were not allowed to ask these folks to produce their ticket stubs, thus non-paying attendees couldn't be ejected.

Furthermore, what if Suns' ownership was expected to provide those who sneaked in with complimentary eats and drink? And what if, on those days when a gate-crasher became ill or injured, the Suns had to provide free medical care and shelter?"

-- Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer

From my email.

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane. From the news lately, it's increasingly clear that Democrats are the party of irresponsibility; Republicans are the responsible party.

DARPA is building test bed for virtual satellite clusters. More here.

The 'building block' concept is certainly interesting, especially in the sense that they system is easily reconfigurable and there is little chance of single-point failure, but now there are complexity issues. Each building block of the constellation has to have its own power, propulsion, communication systems, etc., where a single satellite does not.

It's not clear to me that the advantages of clustering outweigh the disadvantages.

WANT A HIGH MPG DIESEL AUTO? Well, you can't have it in the U.S.

 

The mpg claims appear to be correct.

HILARY ROSEN WAS RIGHT: Ann Romney doesn’t speak for women in the workforce. Linda Hirshman is a hard-left feminist, so she obviously speaks for all working women.

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane: "Julia" is the Obama administration's ideal feminist. Instapundit has much more.