Tired_Old_Man

Defend the USA. Do not build offensive weapons and claim that they are for defense. Talk to your friends, but talk to your enemies twice as much as your friends. You can not learn as much as you need to know about your enemies by spy satellites and electronic eavesdropping. You can not expect your enemies to learn to speak English to make it easier for you. Learn to speak the language of your enemies and their history and customs. In a nutshell, be ready for war, but expend more energy on deterring war. Even a rat will fight if cornered. Leave your enemies an out, so that they may thank you someday (even in secret) rather than having the choice of fighting to save face. Yes, there are terrorists in the world, but not all of them are Muslims and not all wear white sheets. Many are born in the USA (80% Christian) and wear body armor. We are just as much terrorists to the people we attack as they are terrorists to us. We must learn to see things from their point of view. The USA wants financial control of the world so that we can keep wasting commercial goods for the benefit of the major corporations. We (the government) value the almighty dollar more than we value life. Our enemies do not want our destruction. They want us our of their land and their business. We have no right to Middle-East oil. If Carter's alternate energy plans had not been killed by Reagan, we might not be fighting in the Middle-East right now. The US is militarily supporting some of the most restrictive governments in the world. When is BuSh going to demand that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kuwait, and many more of our allies have fair and honest elections so that the people of those countries can be free (like the people of Iraq)? Our two face attitude about Democracy does not go unnoticed accept by the citizens of the USA. BTW, much of my complaints go back to just about every president and every administration since I was born. We let WW11 go to our heads. We cry about avoiding defeat, but we did not win in either Korea or Vietnam and the country is still here. Pride can be our biggest virtue or our worst enemy. BuSh just exacerbated the problem with his pre-emptive strike policy.

Many of the people on that list have been dead for 100's of years and although many of them were geniuses, they never had the scientific equipment available today. I would imagine that of all the billions of people that have ever lived, quite a long list of people supporting anything could be compiled.

But that was the line that the anti-evolutions were spouting then. Many years earlier, it was the "Earth is flat" and "Earth is the center of the Universe" or "Earth is the center of the solar system". Every time they are proved wrong by science they come out with a new distortion of the truth. First it was dinosaurs being rocks carved to look like bones and now its the great flood killed all the dinosaurs, but as usual the "Intelligent Design" or creationists or just plain "the Bible is word for word correct" advocates leave out little subtleties that most lay people don't know existed. Now Rick Warren is saying that God knew my DNA 6000 years ago when he was going through the events depicted in story of Genesis. Funny I never found the word DNA in the Bible. Some Christians believe that the Bible is not "word for word", but stories with metaphors. One day in God's view might be one or two billion years. God may have started the first spark of what became evolution, but to many Christians, to be around for 16 Billion years and to read the minds of 6 billion people all at once is not powerful enough for them, so they have to put all the knowledge of past, present and future in God, which takes away free will. If those people are right, then whatever I write here is God's choice, since He knew I would write this 6,000 years ago. And if he knew it 6,000 years ago, who am I to make him wrong? I am not that powerful.

Jack also forgot to mention that TWA flight 841 was destroyed by a bomb in the rear cargo compartment killing all 88 on board on 9-8-1974. There is also much evidence (though refuted by the US FBI and CIA) that TWA flight 800 was destroyed by missiles fired by the US Navy trying to stop a small air-craft piloted by a Muslim Extremist and filled with explosives from purposely colliding with the TWA 747 (7-17-1996). BUT When the USA positions itself as the Super Power of the world, it puts itself into a bad position, because it can not invade country after country, especially when the countries are 1/10th the size of the USA. GW BuSh did not understand this idea and he invaded Afghanistan with too few ground soldiers and too much B52 carpet bombing. That was a strategy blunder, but a legal move because the attacks were launched from Afghanistan, but then he invaded Iraq, which if you will notice is not on Jack's list. The amount of people killed because BuSh tried his "Pre-emptive" strategy is larger than all the other people killed on Jack's list combined. About the only thing that invading Iraq did was to pre-empt a chance at a peaceful resolution.

Good analogy except for one part. When he starts swatting the nest, it falls on someone else's head and he yells for others to fix things, while he sits back telling us how he is "the decider" and "Commander and Chief".

You made a mistake, but the person in question used innuendo rather that outright name calling. Comparing some of us to thieves, liars and murderers, saying that some of us crawl out of the woodworks and insinuating that being here compared to being in Sodom was not conducive to civil discourse and I have to admit, I was not civil at times which saddens me and makes me want to take a vacation (from posting).

And wasn't the tree that Adam got caught eating forbidden fruit from called the "Tree of Knowledge"?:faint:

This may be the apex of our disagreement. We have no right, IMHO to enforce our so-called interests in any region of the world. We are responsible for ourselves. If the USA spent more time making alliances and less time building weapons for the next war, which usually is part of the reason for the next war, maybe we could learn to get along. I know it is easy to say that I am expecting Utopia, but when we go into every situation and every part of the world with this "we have the right to protect our interests" attitude, then conflict is inevitable.

SO TRUE!!!

I had a similar experience. First fill fine, but since the next one went so poorly, just like yours, I now have all my fills with fluoroscope. I also starting having problems eating after that bout. I was traumatized and it took my body a while to get over it.

None for me, either.

Good advice and crossing the border may soon become more cumbersome as new security laws go into effect.

And this President only had to read his own father's Book, "A World Transformed" (GHW Bush and B Scowcroft) in which the perils and expected results of ousting Saddam Hussein where spelled out. But Baby BuSh said, "When it comes to war and politics, I put my faith in a higher father". Jesus would have counseled invasion of Iraq? Can you spell "disillusioned"?

Rich people can afford to hire these "Jury Advisors", while poor people can barely afford a decent attorney This has lead to a complete disconnect with reality between the public and their perception of the judicial system. The average US citizen sees the Jury system as always letting the guilty go free, while in actuality, the innocent are often convicted. The reason is that the majority of cases that get into the news are celebrity cases in which the celebrity outspends the prosecution (got to keep taxes down), but the vast majority of cases are those that do not make the news and they involve defendants with slim resources who very often have inadequate council and get convicted even when innocent. When I was a foreman of a Grand Jury in Kings County (Brooklyn, NY), the Assistant District Attorney told me that Kings County had an 88% conviction rate.

The best Neo-Con line of all time (though it spread to the general public) was "Just think what would have happened if Gore had been president" after 911. Well he would not have sat there reading a children's book with a look of stupidity on his face (I am giving BuSh extra credit when I say "reading", rather than "looking at"). I am so sick of the love affair this country has with Rudolph Giuliani. What else could he have done on 911? The attacks had subsided. This idea that only BuSh and Rudy could have handled 911 is based on what? Only Republicans can handle stress? I seem to remember hearing about a cripple (sorry for the rude term, but that's what they called him back then) who did not attack the wrong country when the USA was attacked, and I believe he was a Democrat.

Didn't a much more intelligent, much better president once say, "This is not about oil!! Its about Democracy" as his rationale for putting the US Military in harm's way? Wasn't his name George Bush?:faint: But even he was lying, because Kuwait is a Monarchy and the closest thing to a Communist state that has ever existed on the planet Earth.

No! It was that the Earth is 6000 years old and dinosaurs are fictitious.

Done! TOM PS: Can anyone tell me why we have this minimum letter-count? "Done" would have been a sufficient reply. If the reason is to stop bumping, it does not work.

I had to sleep on my recliner for a week after my sergury. It will get better. You will make it. You will look back at this and laugh a few weeks from now. Keep fighting.

Abraham had two sons: One was considered the founder of Islam, so therefore Muslims have as much right to the land as the Jews.

I am not familiar with either doctor, but on your end, you need to be sure that you can dedicate yourself to this life altering procedure. You will lose both your best friend and worst enemy; food. Your companion will not be there to comfort you. You will miss it and you will feel hungry both physically and emotionally. They are two different kinds of hunger. Please find a support group before you have your surgery. They may tell you things that may change your mind about having the surgery, but they may help you prepare for the life ahead with a band. I have had problems, but I would do it again. Good Luck

He was a race car driver, now is retired from driving, but owns and supervises the family racing business. Two sons, grandson and nephew, have also been successful driving race cars, although son Jeff was forced out of the driving end by injury. My sex drive is the same as it was.

I am afraid that you will never understand me, so I will not try to explain myself to you. If you want to read my words, feel free to do so and to draw your own conclusions. However, "Judge not, lest ye be judged".

Want More Proof how bad BuSh is? Today it was revealed that China was able to knock a satellite out of space. The reason that this is so important is that the USA depends on satellites for both military and commercial purposes. Without satellites, the US technological advantages in war would all but disappear. Our chance at winning even wars against small countries would be diminished. Until this announcement, only Russia had the ability to destroy our satellites What makes it so annoying is that BuSh had a chance to demilitarize space by a UN treaty signed by 160 countries, but of course, BuSh always looking for the edge, refused and now China will militarize space. China has little to lose, having less than 10% as many satellites in space as the USA.

I once knew a 747 pilot; a "Born Again" Evangelical Christian who believed the Bible to be word for word true. When we discussed dinosaurs, he said that they were rocks carved to look like bones of a large skeleton This was before the latest “excuse de jour”, which is that the dinosaurs were killed in the "Great Flood". When I mentioned carbon dating, he said that carbon dating was inaccurate. "Yes," I said, "carbon dating is inaccurate. When they date something as 70 million years old, it might be only 50 million or might be closer to 100 million, but not 6,000". When he tried to totally discredit the science, I reminded him that the airplane he was piloting to Egypt that evening, was designed using the same scientific principles that developed the "Theory of Relativity".