Mighty Oaks?

This is from ACORN's home page:

In response to recently released videos of
frontline ACORN staff, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis made the following announcement Wednesday morning:"As a result of the indefensible action of a handful of our
employees, I am, in consultation with ACORN's Executive Committee1, immediately
ordering a halt to any new intakes into ACORN's service programs until
completion of an independent review. I have also communicated with ACORN's
independent Advisory Council, and they will assist ACORN in naming an
independent auditor and investigator to conduct a thorough review of all of the
organizations relevant systems and processes

.

I think Ms. Lewis should have said, "...a handful of our employess in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Brooklyn..." I belive what we have here is a tip-of-the-iceberg situation. We can only hope that the brilliant journalism that produced the scandalous videos of ACORN in action, will sink this organization that is a titanic of corruption.

By the way, has anyone heard the President speak out about this?

True Cost of Environmentalism

According to some, the most serious looming environmental crisis is a shortage of fresh water.

Here is a story about the fresh water crisis and EPA regulations designed to conserve fresh water.

Three years ago, we renovated out kitchen. We bought a new high end Bosch dishwasher. Stainless steel on the inside, matches our cabinets on the outside, quiet as a mouse, but does not clean dishes for beans. Right from the beginning, we have had water spots on our glasses, and over time, it became worse: water spots, soap spots, dirt, etc. We had the repairmen here several times, to no avail. We tried everything: more soap, less soap, more rinse aid, less rinse aid. The store from whom we bought it, Michael's Appliances, and Bosch said that hard water

must be the culprit.

That sounded plausible, except for one minor problem: the previous dishwasher, a 20 (at least) year old rusty Whirlpool that sounded like a lawn mower had given us spotless dishes, and used the same water! So how could it be that hard water was the problem?

After 3 years of bickering (sorry, President Obama, the Constitution guarantees my right to bicker) with Michael's Appliances, they sent someone fairly knowledgable to our house, and he answered my question.

How is it that rusty-old-whirlpool cleans dishes better than shiny-new-Bosch? The old dishwasher used 13 to 15 gallons of water per wash cycle. The new one uses 4 to five gallons.

The new one, to save energy, has a less powerful heater, and the heater is a coil within the pipes of the dishwasher, instead of a big loop below the dish rack. So, it has less water and colder water. Hard water does interfere with the effectiveness of the soap, but if you use enough water, as in the old models, it does not matter. But with the lower water volume, it does matter. Over time, soap and calcium salts are deposited in the heater coil, and this interferes with the water flow and the heating efficiency, so that the machine becomes less and less effective over time.

So, now we have had to have the dishwasher removed, so the pipes could be properly cleaned out. We have to run hot water in the kitchen sink to pre-heat the water for the dishwasher. We have to get a whole-house water softener, a $2000. to $3000. investment. Water softeners (a) remove calcium and magnesium, which are good for you, (b) add sodium, which is bad for you, especially if you have high blood pressure, (c) have to be backwashed every night, which wastes dozens of gallons of water, and costs me more money, and (d) have to have the salt replenished from time to time, which costs me time and labor.

You can have the high-tech Bosch dishwasher; and you can have the EPA, while you are at it.

Give me the 20 year old clunker, and good, old-fashioned, patriotic, hard American water any day.

Obama Answers YES to My Blog

In "Obama Mulls big Health Care Speech," Charles Babbington of the Associated Press wrote the following:

Some Obama allies feel he gave too much leeway to Congress, where one bill has passed three House committees, another has passed a Senate committee and a third has been bogged down in protracted negotiations in the Senate Finance Committee.

See, even President Obama thinks that He is Smarter Than Congress!