Tired_Old_Man

How much money would be adequate to get to know people and then have them snatched away by the jaws of death over and over? Nursing home workers have a miserable job with miserable pay. Our whole remuneration system is screwed up. When I was an aircraft mechanic, I worked all the overtime I could get, sometimes doubling my yearly base, but one year, after losing a huge amount of money, my company hired the ex-CEO of All-State Insurance to be our new CEO. after 6 months of showing up about 5 hours a day, 3 days a week and with losses getting larger, they fired him, but he kept the money promised him for his three year contact and they gave him a severance package worth $3,000,000. All told, he received $7,000,000 for about 400 hours work or about $17,500 per hour. I made a little over a $1,000,000 for my almost 35 years.

Matthew 22:21 Jesus said “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s". Jesus said to follow the laws of Caesar, so why should I not compare BuSh to Caesar? And why not Hitler to Caesar. Caesar had more people killed per capita than Hitler.

Illinois Gov. George Ryan on Monday imposed a moratorium on the state's death penalty. All lethal injections will be postponed indefinitely pending an investigation into why more executions have been overturned than carried out since 1977, when Illinois reinstated capital punishment. "We have now freed more people than we have put to death under our system -- 13 people have been exonerated and 12 have been put to death," Ryan told CNN. "There is a flaw in the system, without question, and it needs to be studied."

And Caesar wasn't?

When I was a child, I was brought up by Roman Catholic parents (in name at least) and by fervent Pentecostal grandparents. My Catholic priest and the US Council of Bishops railed against war. My grandparent's Pentecostal ministers were against war and preached against it. But, during Ronald Reagan's term, I noticed that the Protestant clergy starting behaving in a very war-like manner. When Ronald Reagan was having a difficult time pushing his MX Missile program through congress, he asked Jerry Falwell to tell his associated ministers to preach the need for the MX from the pulpit during the Sunday sermons. They did at 1000's of churches. The Roman Catholic Council of Bishops condemned the MX Missile system, but enough pressure was put on congress by the Protestant lay people, that the MX was built and deployed (at great cost). When and why did the Protestant clergy become the protagonists of warfare? Would Jesus approve of the war-like stance of the Protestant clergy?

Hussein kept peace the same way that Marshal Tito kept peace, with terror. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia welcomed our intervention in Kuwait, but George HW BuSh knew better that to take out Hussein ans he wrote a book about it called "A World Transformed" in which he described why he didn't take out Hussein in 1991. Hussein was bad to his people, but he kept Iran in check. Notice how we are getting ready to attack Iran. Hussein was the buffer and now that he is gone, the USA or Israel will have to fight Iran, making for even more bad blood between the Christian/Judea forces and the forces of Islam. Yes, there is a bigger picture here, and it is fight the enemy who attacked you, but don't look to bite into more trouble than you can chew.

And I respect you and many other people on the opposite side of the political fence. But we must break down those fences. We must protect the USA, but we must be fair to the rest of the world also. I am a left wing person. You, I believe, are a right wing person. The American Eagle needs both a left wing and a right wing to soar. Two right wings or two left wings can only lead to a crash and breakup.

How prophetic was that slip? The Serbs, Bosnians and Croatians were held apart for many years by the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia's President Marshal Tito. As soon as Tito died and the Soviet union broke up, the Serbs, Bosnians and Croatians started fighting WW1 again and broke Yugoslavia into pieces. We have an exact parallel to that in Iraq with the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. But what makes it worse in Iraq is that the battles between these groups will spill over into the neighboring countries. The situation might be ameliorated if George W. BuSh would just try to negotiate with all of the countries in the area, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. But stubborn Bush and stubborn Rice will not talk to Syria and Iran. Their pride gets in the way of peace.

If that was true, we would all be calling for our children in Iraq to return home.

We have no right to kill people to guarantee oil flow. We could have worked at being energy independent, but we were too gluttonous. Jimmy Carter put a group of executive orders into effect as president which, if they had been left in place, might have freed us from the anchor of Middle-Eastern oil by now, but Ronald Reagan killed all those rules. Now BuSh has proposed many of those rules again and the Republicans are hailing him as a visionary. No matter how long we sacrifice our youth in Iraq, and no matter what the government looks like in Iraq when we leave, as soon as something goes wrong, the Shiites will start killing Sunnis and the government will turn a blind eye. They have a 1000 years of hatred stored up. They do not know anything about keeping a democracy going. Half the people in the USA would give up our civil rights for security. Just look at the polls after the stories about NSA spying on phone calls and e-mail without warrants came out. We have had a democracy for 230 years, but may lose it soon. All it will take is one attack bigger and badder than 911.

The Afghan people don't want our rules. Do you remember last year when that man was on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity? Condoleezza Rice said that wasn't democracy. Sure it was. The majority of people (who voted) voted for the representatives who passed that law which had the death penalty as its punishment. What are we supposed to do if the representatives democratically elected in Afghanistan pass a law making the Qur'an the legal basis for their laws? About 3 years ago, prior to the elections in Iraq, when they were working on the interim constitution, the Representatives trying to hash out the constitution wanted to allow Muslim clerics to make the laws (like in Iran) and Rumsfeld said, "That ain't going to happen". How can we "free" a country and then tell them what rules they can have? It is not freedom if we control their selection of rules. This sounds like the debate over predetermination (God knowing what you are going to do) and freewill that we were having a few days ago.

So the USA had to let 3000 of our people die and spend a trillion dollars because Hussein was giving money to people who had not done anything except lose a child to war? We were talking about 911.:faint:

Saddam and Hussein hated each other. Hussein's tie to terror was giving money to the families of suicide bombers who died attacking Israeli targets. Even BuSh has said on TV that Hussein had nothing to do with 911.:faint:

No. I was praising you writting. I was retelling a series of posts that I had at another forum today. I have nothing but respect for you, your service to this country and the service by your family. PLEASE, PLEASE, REREAD MY POST SO THAT YOU MIGHT SEE THAT I WAS TALKING TO SOMEONE ELSE. I AM SO SORRY FOR THIS MISCOMMUNICATION!!

That is so important to hear. At another site where I post I was told that it is people like me who never served, who don't understand. I have posted this many times before, so you can look it up. When I was 19, in 1964, I was gung-ho military and tried to enlist in the US Air Force. I failed my physical because of injuries suffered while playing freshman football in college. The last step of the pre-induction physical was a 26 page questionnaire and the last question was "Are you the sole surviving son of a man killed in the service of the US Military". My father was a US Army Sargent killed in Berlin in WW11 on the day after I was born in 1945, so I answered “yes”. I was told that I failed the physical that day and about 3 weeks later a new draft classification card came in the mail with a classification of “4A”. I was ready to serve, though knowing what I know now, I am glad my knee kept me out of that war; Another war in which we dismissed the French. We laughed at the French for leaving Vietnam and we kept laughing at the French until 65,000 of our youth were dead, many times that many more maimed and many times that number who had miserable lives because of much higher rates of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, crime, spousal abuse and suicide than that of the people who did not serve in Vietnam. And for what? We lost. The dominoes never came down. We were fed a line of crap, just like in 2002 leading up to the 2003 Illogical Illegal Iraqi Invasion. When will we learn? Aren't you glad you asked? I contributed my father. Can you top that?

Do you think George W. BuSh knows the difference between Suni and Shiite?

The war on terror has become the war on Islam. On 912, the day after 911, BuSh said that we must mount a new Crusade. Is he that stupid or that smart? Iraq had nothing to do with 911 The information available at that time was manipulated by BuSh. Every time a CIA report or Richard Clark told him no, BuSh said go back and look again. Clark being honorable, quit. George Tenant needing his job as CIA director over-rode CIA intelligence and said "Yes master". Watch the Scooter Libby trial. It is all coming out, about how the evidence was cooked. PNAC operatives in the BuSh White House had decided that Iraq was coming down in 1998. BuSh brought up the invasion of Iraq in his first cabinet meeting. Hitler had a better excuse for invading Austria than BuSh had for invading Iraq. Hitler was unifying his country. BuSh had to send troops half-way around the world. Hitler only had to cross the river. I would respect him if he was not a murderer. Over 3000 US military personal are dead because of his misadventure. Maybe 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians are dead because of his pride. By starting a war that was not needed, he has been able to cry "support us in time of war". That is about as disingenuous as Lizzie Borden asking for mercy because she was an orphan.

Only Two of the 10 Commandments have found their way into US Law.

Bless you. People who do things like you did give me hope that our country and world are not lost.:clap2:

BuSh made the decision to invade Iraq. So it is ok to kill Iraqi civilians? Hitler made the decision to invade Poland and Austria, but it is not ok? How parallel must it be before you admit it? Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's also means Give unto BuSh what is BuSh's and Give unto Hitler what is Hitler's Hitler was elected. Caesar was a monarch. We will not discuss BuSh.

Thank You!!

It is a common trait of human nature to dislike the one who is most like yourself. Especially when you only see the similarities subconsciously. When you look in the mirror, it is easy to say that you are not like your reflection, because your reflection moves its right arm when you move your left, but it still has all your traits. I wrote this on July 31st of last year and posted it at LBT. Back in the 1960's, I saw an episode of Star Trek entitled "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" in which Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise come across two humanoids; Bele and Lokai, from the planet Cheron. Each of them is half black and half white, starkly separated down the middle of his body. The only difference is one is black on the right side and white on the left, while the other is exactly the opposite. When I saw the show, I thought of it as a satire of race relations in the USA, but today I thought about it and realized that it might be more fittingly mocking the Jewish/Muslim battle now taking place in the Middle-East. If either Bele or Lokai were to stand in front of a mirror, he would see the image of his most hated enemy. A mirror image of a man white on his left would be a man white on his right. That is so fitting of today's (and yesterday's and probably tomorrow's) senseless slaughter taking place in and around Israel, because the Israeli and Muslim enemies are mirror images of each other. Abraham (Genesis 16) had two son's, one by his wife's maid-servant Hagar and then one by his wife, Sarah. The two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, are generally considered to be the fathers of Islam and Judaism, so the fight between Jew and Muslim is basically a family feud. In the "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" episode of Star Trek, when Bele and Lokai return to their home planet of Cheron, they find a scene not too unlike that of Lebanon. The whole planet is now lifeless except for the two of them who beam down to continue their fight to the finish. Must the Middle-East lead the rest of the world down the same path taken by Cheron? Some will blame the problem on the Israelis. "They are bullying the Palestinians and the Lebanese", they will tell say. Some will blame it on the Muslims. "Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist groups" they will tell say. "Iran and Syria are terrorist states arming terrorist groups" they will tell you. Bele and Lokai also had their excuses. "I'm white on the right, can't you see the difference?" Yet the Jews and the Muslims are both using the same tactic. Kill civilians until they put enough pressure on their leaders or until they choose new leaders to get their side to stop. But what has the despicable killing of civilians actually done? It has hardened each side's populace. There are many fewer Jews now ready to make piece with their Muslim brothers than there was three weeks ago. You might remember that after 911, the Republicans and Democrats came together in the US Congress to give President BuSh anything he wanted. There was unity in the streets of the USA. People; Black, White, Hispanic, Democrat and Republican were then Americans first. Osama Bin Laden and Al-Quaida brought the political left and right of the USA together. Well Israel's killing of civilians in Lebanon has brought the Sunnis and Shiites of the Middle-East together as never before. Even the Christians of Lebanon are now united with both the Lebanese Sunnis and Shiites. And the Sunni counties that have been friends of the USA are now criticizing Israel (and the USA) as if those Sunni countries were Shiite. President BuSh claims to believe in the sanctity of human life. He has vetoed legislation that would (in his opinion) destroy human life that is smaller than this period. Yet, he and Condoleezza Rice have proposed a piece-plan that must have "a lasting piece" which is a code-phrase for "when Israel wins". The Israeli prime minister told Ms. Rice that he might need 10 days to two weeks to win. Are we willing to watch both Israeli and Lebanese babies die for the next two weeks? Are those children any less valuable that the embryos that BuSh wants to protect? Yesterday, a building in Lebanon was blown up with about 60 casualties. About 30 to 40 children died. About 600 Lebanese civilians including about 300 children have been killed in less than these 3 weeks. There have been about 30 Israeli civilians killed. Ms. Rice and Mr. BuSh claim that terrorism must be stomped out in the Middle-East (and around the world), but is it not terrorism to launch missile strikes, to fire artillery and use F16's to bomb populated areas? Hezbollah is wrong. Hezbollah is a terrorist group, but that does not make Israel right, nor does it make Israel any less of a terrorist country. People and countries must be judged, not by their friendship with the USA, nor the "Good Guy" sign that they fly, but by their actions. Israel is killing 20 Muslims (and Christians) in Lebanon for each Israeli that dies in the Hezbollah missile attacks. Doesn't "an eye for an eye" have any meaning to the Israelis? The bible does not say "20 eyes for an eye". Both sides are wrong. Both sides must stop fighting now. The USA must insist that there be talks. The USA must drop the BS line that we don't talk to terrorists. Pretending that Hezbollah does not exist just keeps the killing of babies going on for a longer time. Can't we learn something from Bele and Lokai, and Star Trek, or must the Earth wind up like the planet Cheron?

But he didn't quit even after our son was in high school.:faint:

Of course they wouldn't. It shows the holes in their reality.

Hitler was obeying the law of the land also.:faint: