Rubberball,
Have you ever seen that toilet seat? First, it's not the Air Force's, it's the Navy. Secondly, it fits inside of a P-3 Orion patrol aircraft. Thirdly, it's not the 'normal' toilet seat you would expect to find in your bathroom. It's an entire wall, seat and floor panel that goes from the top of the aircraft, down along the bulkhead, across the toilet, around, and then down to the floor. It is over 6' tall, 4' wide, and about 2' deep, and yes, does include the standard 'seat' part built in a part of the unit.

"Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was deep into a lengthy report before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the new Pentagon budget. He had just pointed out that the Department of Defense was the first to uncover such military expenditures as a $400 claw hammer and a $9,000 wrench when Maine's Republican Senator William Cohen said, "I'm fascinated to hear all this, but I'm told there's now a problem with a $600 toilet seat." This, Cohen deadpanned, "gives new meaning to the word throne."

The item in question was not precisely a toilet seat but a corrosion- resistan t plastic case that fits over a toilet. It is used aboard the Navy's P-3C Orion antisubmarine planes. Republican Senator William Roth of Delaware, chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, which looks into suspected cost overruns, had been conducting an investigation of the accessory. Roth was tipped off by a contractor in Washington State who had been asked to bid on the toilet unit in January. When the contractor learned that Lockheed Corp. was charging $34,560 for 54 toilet covers, he wrote a letter to Roth contending that the units could be purchased at most trailer- home sales outlets for about $25.

In a cable to the Pentagon last week, Lockheed President Lawrence Kitchen insisted that his company had made only a 13.4% profit on the units. Nevertheless, he eventually lowered the price of the covers to $100 apiece and gave the DOD a $29,165 refund. "This action is intended to put to rest an artificial issue," said Kitchen, "that detracts from the critically important ongoing review of the 1986 DOD budget." Senator Roth, on the other hand, might have felt he was getting to the bottom of the whole defense- spending issue.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,960748,00.html#ixzz0j6t0CwPn"

I encourage you to make sure that you know what you're talking about before spouting off some figures that you're unaware of. *I*, for one, have seen the piece that they are talking about, and my father, having flown countless hours in the P-3 aircraft, probably has substantial 'interface' with such a device.

Since people are fed 'tidbits' of information, or hear soundbites about something, and do not know the entire story, they spread this disinformation around, touting it to be 'the truth' and in fact, are often wrong and to those in the know, usually end up looking foolish.

I present the true facts to you as an example of how throwing out information that can be easily checked can come back to haunt you, in the hopes that if you're going to make a statement like this, in the future, you at least see if it's accurate.

Warmest regards,

Gary

I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!