Here is one image I think particularly haunting from the Korean War Memorial:

From the World War II Memorial:

A flower, placed in the hand of a dying soldier, part of the Vietnam Memorial:

And finally, looking towards Lincoln:

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A photo of the gold stars at the World War II Memorial:

Each gold star represents 1000 war dead.

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This weekend will mark another "Decoration Day", or Memorial Day, as is has come to be called. I kind of prefer Decoration Day, myself. It was a day when people would gather together and decorate the graves of the dead soldiers (and I include sailors, air men, marines and coast guard here whenever I use the word soldier, ok) and remember.

Do we still remember? Do we remember the words on the Korean War Memorial in Washington D.C. that:

FREEDOM IS NOT FREE

Men and women have died for our freedom and die today to ensure freedom for others. For this, if for no other reason, and there are plenty of good other reasons, I will pause this weekend, and I will remember.

May God bless all of our fellow Americans who this day wear our nation's uniforms.

And for those who did not come home, I want to leave you with some of the words from Taps (there are no official words), composed By Major General Daniel Butterfield, Army of the Potomac, Civil War, July 1862:

Day is done, gone the sun,
From the hills, from the lake,
From the sky.
All is well, safely rest,
God is nigh.

For information about Taps.

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So, there I was, sweating away this morning in the gym and half-listening to CNN when they did a really interesting interview with an automotive industry analyst who was brought on to talk about the stark drop off in sales at General Motors. She was quite good, actually, explaining that what has the Street so freaked out is that the drop in sales was mostly in the SUV market, where GM makes all their money. If Americans are not buying the big Suburbans than GM ain't making no money, Well, she said it better. Then she was asked about whether union deals were hurting GM and whether GM was really spending too much on healthcare.

And this is where it got interesting for me. The analyst said that $1200 out of every car sold is used to pay for health care costs. Ok, well, that seems like a lot but I have no way of knowing. How do I put that in context? How many workers does that $1200 pay for? How many retirees? How many families? In short, how many people are covered by that?

Well, she went on to put in context for me. And this is what I mean when I say that it's all in the way you tell it, all in the way you present information. Telling me $1200 per car really tells me nothing. But tell me:

General Motors spent more on health care last year than they did on steel

and you've smacked me upside the head and caught my attention. She felt that for a manufacturing company, this wasn't very good.

Can you imagine that? Is GM a manufacturing company or a social welfare state? Let's see if we can figure that out a little.

GM, according to their annual report for 2004, had net sales and revenue of $193.5 billion. GM seems to divide themselves into auto making and finance/insurance divisions for revenue purposes. That's our first hint that GM may not be just a manufacturing company -- they have a f/i division big enough to warrant a separate discussion in the annual report. Automotive still is the biggest, earning $161.5 billion of the $193.5 and f/i earning some $32 billion. But I do note that only f/i earned a profit -- some $2.9 billion. Unfortunately, I lack the time to probe further and I cannot seem to isolate how much GM spent on steel last year or even what the costs were associated with the automotive divisions. Not a shock, really, when you're dealing with a company that size.

But still, more on health care than on steel. Stunning, isn't it?

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