Tired_Old_Man

I am always amazed to hear people of all races, religions and ethnic groups complaining that their group is getting the worst end of the stick. I also hear people from the majority complaining that some minority group is complaining about everything that happens to them. Yes, you can always find discrimination from A against B. And if A is the majority, B will probably complain a lot. But lets look into why. Could it be power? Could it be the desire to keep power? Could it be the desire to gain power? Could it be the desire to have power that has been denied? It is common knowledge that the amount of racial and ethnic strive is usually inversely proportional to the well being of the economy or at least to the fairness of the economy. Many people claim that the US economy is doing well, but just as many others, if not more, claim that the economy has benefited some at the expense of others. I hear that Blacks or Muslims are always ready to complain about being picked on or singled out. Could it be that they get stopped by police more often? A judge ruled that it was ok to search a Black man's duffel bag because it was a known drug area. Almost all Black neighborhoods are known drug areas. So, I guess that means than any Black man has no rights to a “presumption of innocence” or that police do not need “probable cause” to stop a Black man and conduct a search. Maybe, Blacks and Muslims watch the TV talk shows and they hear politicians debating whether profiling should be allowed. No one ever suggests stopping all white men when ever there is a serial murderer at large in any community or city, even though 99% of serial killers are white. But is ok to discuss profiling Blacks or Muslims for drugs and terrorism. The FBI estimates that over 85% of all cocaine users are white. The Wall Street area of Manhattan is renowned for cocaine use. But you don't see police stopping Wall Street Money Managers and asking them to open their attache cases. You don't see actors stopped at random in Hollywood because it is a known drug area. Is every demand by a Black and/or Muslim valid? Of course not. But people who are not from those groups are always quick to point out any demand by those groups as another example of how pushy those groups are. When the Christian Right political movement complains about their group being an endangered species, I almost fall out of my seat in disbelief. The people that the Christian Right political movement have helped get elected and who allegedly share their views control the White House, both “Houses of Congress” and the majority of the “Federal Bench”. Are they crying because they do not have everything? Being raised in neighborhoods where quite often I was the only white person in the playground, walking the street, riding the train, in a store, etc. and believe it or not, I was once the only white member of (what had been) an all Black semi-pro softball team. When they had arguments, they called each other racial names. The light ones picked on the dark ones and the dark ones had equally mean things to say about the lighter ones. Most whites would not even know what many of the insults meant. But, when I worked on a job that was over 95% white, the whites made jokes based on ethnic or national origin. When I went to college, my freshman class had one non-white and there were only three non-whites in the school. Freshman year, during the three day orientation, the 50 members of my floor sat on the hallway floor getting to know each other. We played a game where the first guy said a euphemism for Black. The next guy had to say another one, if you repeated any that had already been said, you lost. They would get up to the high 20's. When I refused to play, they tried the same thing about Italians (because I am of Italian heritage). They only made it to about 8 or 9. Gays and Hispanics were also fodder for this game. In Belfast, Northern Ireland in the 1970's, the Catholics and the Protestants played the same game that the USA does with Blacks and whites. Irish men that I know told me that it wasn't about religion in Belfast, it was about economics. But isn't it the same thing in this country when it concerns Blacks and whites I asked? “No! It's about uppity Niggers.”

As a man who has not and can not ever have the personal choice to have an abortion, I want to state two opinions. Outlawing abortion will only make abortion illegal for the poor. The well-to-do will travel overseas for safe abortions or use their money to buy abortions from competent doctors without any medical records available for prosecution. The same groups who oppose abortion in the USA, also usually oppose birth control and sex education that teaches responsible sex. These groups believe that sex can be controlled by teaching abstinence, although through out history, sex has never been curtailed by either law, schools or the church.

Right there is the out for allowing abortions. "For everything that is shaped, and his received a soul from God, if slain, it shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed." In this or another thread, I contended that a God (who is as intelligent and "all-knowing" as is made out to be by the fervent believers), would not place a soul in a fetus if he knew it was going to be aborted. And of course God knows it. He knows everything; past present and future.

Go to page #1, Post #1 That's where it starts.

It doesn't have to be Lap-Band related. This section and the lounge are for other than Lap-Band related items.

Instead of the standard prep, one of my doctors suggested a clear liquid (water) diet for 3 days. Since that is about the same thing as I have done after each of my fills, it was the easiest way for me to prep myself. I have had about 10 colonoscopies, because in 1981 or 82, they found pre-cancerous polyps. That meant multiple colonoscopies for a period of time until finally I am back on the 5 year spacing.

Oh, I guess I could have used "Apple" for "A", but that would not have been standard either.

I also am fluent with the Military's phonetic alphabet, since as an aircraft mechanic who had to contact the tower and ask for taxi directions through taxiways with alpha-numeric designations, I was required to use the military's phonetic alphabet. However when dealing with "civilians", I found that Alpha, bravo, delta, kilo, Quebec and Zulu sometimes caused a "what" and X-ray sometimes caused an "X" and "R" instead of just an "X" to be understood. And while "Michael" is not the standard for "M", "Mike" is. If someone does not understand "Michael" one of my middle names and I while spelling in phonetically, I say "M like in Mary" because if they don't understand Michael, why would they understand "Mike"(?) and then I find that they used "Mary" for my middle-name, do not blame me for being intransigent.

I agree with most of what you wrote except why would someone ask any of those 5 "W" questions if they thought they understood the instruction or statement? A few years ago, our old friends flew in from Colorado to NY to visit us at our home in Brooklyn. My friend Dominic, his wife Idalina, their son George and daughter-in-law Maria joined my wife, Mrs. TOM, my son TOM Jr., my daughter-in-law Daria and me in our living-room for a lively chat session. During the visit my wife said something and I asked, "Do you mean...?" My wife said, "No, I meant...!" I have forgotten what was said, but the pertinent part to this narrative was that I asked each of the 6 other people (besides my wife and myself) what the sentence meant. Idalina and Maria agreed with my wife. Dominic, TOM Jr. and George agreed with me. It seemed like this was a “Men from Mars, Women from Venus” type thing, until we asked my daughter-in-law Daria. Daria did not want to answer. WHY? Because she was a school teacher who taught English. And she did not want to be a traitor to her gender. After much prodding, she finally admitted that the men were correct in the meaning of the sentence. Idalina and Maria both said that she knew what Mrs. TOM meant, but if she had said that and I hadn't questioned her, some of us would have thought she had said one thing and some would have thought that she said something else. If only Idalina and Maria had been in the room with Mrs. Tom, they would not asked any of the 5 "W" questions and yes, they would have known what she meant. But if only Dominic, TOM Jr. and George had been in the room with Mrs. Tom, they would not have asked any of the 5 "W" questions, because they would have thought they knew what she meant, but they would have totally misunderstood what was meant. I do not remember what the issue was. But if it had to do with where we were going to meet later that day to go sight-seeing and half the people wound up there and half the people wound up somewhere else, that could have ruined a nice trip. No one wants to ask their friends, relatives or co-workers to repeat things, nor do they want to seem like they are being overly aggressive. Maybe that is why most men do not like asking directions when they get lost while driving. The directions get you more lost as often as they help.

The epitome of the hypocrisy of the "Pro-Life" extremists are the ones (like some ex-coworkers of mine) who told me that killing a "Planned Parenthood" doctor is not murder because it saves the lives of "unborn babies". When we heard on the radio news-broadcast that a man was arrested for "murdering" a "Planned Parenthood" doctor, my ex-coworker told me that the story illustrated the liberal media. I asked why, since I heard no commentary or editorializing. He told me that it was not "murder". It was killing, but not murder. Saving Life Through Killing sort of like Peace Through War Bombers to Promote Life

If you remember, in "The Christmas Carol" the ghost of Bob Marly tells Scrooge that his chain is the accumulation of his life's bad deeds. We all carry around an analogous chain emblematic of our age. Well, as a man of 61, let me tell you that our weight also adds to our chain as does our age to serve as an anchor. The added weight to the chain each 5 years feels, like double of that which was added in the previous 5 years. Removing 10 or 20 pounds during a 5 year period actually makes it feel as if the last 5 years only added as much to your chain as the previous 5 years. No! You can never lose enough weight to reverse the effects of aging long term, but you can lose enough to feel younger as if your chain was reduced during the last 5 years compared to the previous. Please do not ask me to repeat what I just wrote, because it no longer makes any sense to me, either.:faint:

Why isn't our government raising the same concern about this abuse of women as they are making over the abuse of steroids for (mostly male) athletes??

The amount of weight that I hope to eventually have lost with my Lap-Band will be more than the body weight this of poor creature. I truly feel sorry for what our merchandising economy has wrought on our women and it starts with brainwashing the young helpless and most vulnerable girls.

I think I know who it might be. A friend of my wife and I, a Black woman who we have known 22 years, first in Brooklyn and now in Florida (she lives about 100 miles from us), told us that her minister (of an over 90% Black congregation) had a guest minister come in on the Sunday before the 2004 election to tell the congregation that a vote for Kerry was a vote for Satan. I have to think that at least one of the few 100 Black women in that church might have fallen for that "fire and brimstone" line. Our friend didn't, but she's not too sure about her sister.

I think we have a double standard in this country. I think she may be brilliant but she is such a hard-head, that she can not picture things from any other point of view than BuSh's. She even describes herself as a "True Believer". I don't really see him as a Republican. He is the consumate officer. He will swear that he believes what ever plan the leader decides on is the way he believes. When I was a aircraft mechanic, I spent 3 of my 35 years in management. When upper management would come out with a new plan, we would have these elaborate parties (known as road-shows) in which the CEO or some other over-paid muckity muck would tell us of the new direction that our company was going to take to fly us into the world of profitability. We were allowed, at the meetings to disagree, complain, explain and tear away at the plan's underpinnings to the CEO. I usually shot holes in the plan and was seldom wrong because invariably we did an about face within a year. However, after all the debate was over, we were supposed to go back to the troops and act as if we were in 100% agreement with the plan. When mechanics told us that the plan would not work because...even if they used the exact argument that we had used to our superiors, we were supposed to refute their argument. Some of us did a half-way job of selling the programs we didn't believe in. Some of us actually brainwashed ourselves into thinking the CEO makes 10 times what we make, so they must know what's right. Then there were the Colin Powell types: They argued like tigers with the CEO, but argued just as forcefully the opposite side of the debate when they explained the company's plan to the workforce. I believe that Colin Powell was in a debate with Rumsfeld, Rice and Cheney, but when BuSh made his decision against Powell's advice, Powell like the good soldier that he is, then sold the UN and the US public the same bill of goods, with the same dedication as Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney and BuSh. I don't think he is further to the right than a moderate Republican or a Moderate Democrat. I don't think he is further right that either Bill or Hillary. He is just a better soldier.

How about "Pro-Life means, I want every baby to live until they take their first breath and then they are on their own." The congressman that the Pro-Life groups support: Cut food stamp program Cut Medicaid program Support Capital punishment Support the war in Iraq None of the above are "Pro-life" in my book.

I have been predicting for over a year, that if Hillary runs, the Republicans will run Condoleezza Rice against her. WHY? Because the Democrats take almost 90% of the Black vote and 98% of the Black women (It is rumored that Condoleezza Rice was one of the only three Black women in the country that voted for BuSh). The Democrats also win a majority of the women's vote. Many Blacks would be torn between being able to point to Ms. Rice as being "one of us (finally)" in the White House and it might split the women's vote. I would not doubt that the Republican think-tanks are calculating as I write this, how many extra Black votes and women's votes they could garner versus how many good old boys they might lose. I think that Rice is one of the few people in the world who's head is as thick as BuSh's. It was rumored that they were romantically involved, but if they tried to kiss and banged their heads together, the seismology detectors would elert everyone and the secret service would be dispatched to find the IED that had been detonated in the White House. Could you picture a threesome of Laura-Rice-BuSh? It boggles the mind. Could you picture Ms. Rice asking BuSh to be her secretary of state? She would want to keep him around for advice...

My Employee Provided Medical Insurance Plan is run out of Texas by a company situated in Texas and the My ex-Employer who pays the bills is also based in Texas. Not only do they not pay for Birth Control Pills, but they will not pay for Estrogen Replacement Therapy if the pills have a similar formulation as Birth Control Pills. They were afraid my wife was trying to stop herself from getting pregnant at 55, I guess. Oh, and they can not claim that it is to save money. A 3 month supply of pills would be under $30. Compare that to the price of a birth in a hospital, pre-natal, post natal care and paying for all other medical insurance claims for the child until he is 18 years old. I am speaking of other women insured by my ex-employer, not my wife of course in the above paragraph.

It makes her seem like a moderate Margaret Thatcher.

When I wrote: I meant (and I guess should have wrote) To get a good Democratic president it would take a (wo)man who shows no diplomacy (or mercy) toward his Republican opponent in the campaign, but could shift to a (wo)man with the diplomatic skills of Benjamin Franklin. It is a shame that Colin Powell does not jump from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party. He would make a good president. I think she has a chance in the general election. In fact I have been predicting for over a year, that he Hillary wins the nomination, the Republicans will run Condoleezza Rice against her. WHY? Because the Democrats take almost 90% of the Black vote and 98% of the Black women (It is rumored that Condoleezza Rice was one of the only three Black women in the country that voted for BuSh). The Democrats also win a majority of the women's vote. Many Blacks would be torn between being able to point to Ms. Rice as being "one of us (finally)" in the White House and it might split the women's vote. I would not doubt that the Republican think-tanks are calculating as I write this, how many extra Black votes and women's votes they could garner versus how many good old boys they might lose. I think that Rice is one of the few people in the world who's head is as thick as BuSh's. It was rumored that they were romantically involved, but if they tried to kiss and banged their heads together, the seismology detectors would alert everyone and the secret service would be dispatched to find the IED that had been detonated in the White House. Could you picture a threesome of Laura-Rice-BuSh? It boggles the mind. Could you picture Ms. Rice asking BuSh to be her secretary of state? She would want to keep him around for advice... Anyway, have you seen this?

Why would BuSh want anyone with a degree in Middle-Eastern Political Science? He already has the whole Middle-East figured out and he doesn't believe in science. If you had a degree in Middle-Eastern Intelligent Design, BuSh would probably hire you to go on a talk show on Al-Jazeera and give a fair and balanced speech on why Democracy is needed in all the Middle-Eastern countries hostile to the USA, but not in the Middle-Eastern countries that are allies if the USA.

I am surprised that the UN does not send sacks of grain to these starving refugees.

BuSh is as stubborn as they come. I don't know if his stubborn streak was born of his spoiled upbringing or if he really thinks he communicates with Jesus. In many places in this country, hearing voices means you are insane. But it some places, hearing voices means you are either in cahoots with Satan or a Man of God. I liked much of Kerry's basic principles, but not his temperament. The same can be said of Al Gore. To get a good Democratic president it would take a man who shows no diplomacy (or mercy) toward his Republican opponent in the campaign, but could shift to a man with the diplomatic skills of Benjamin Franklin. Part Mike Tyson and part Benjamin Franklin.

Maybe eating is foreplay. :faint:

Habeas Fascismus: The Terrorists Win By Michael I Niman ArtVoice (etc.) 10/5/06 Last week was one that will go down in infamy as one of the most important and shameful weeks in western history. While future Americans might not be allowed to freely discuss such subversive topics as history, school children in other countries will learn what happened in the last week of September, 2006. A mere five years after a band of razor wielding two-bit terrorists declared war on America by destroying the World Trade Center, both houses of the US Congress finished their job and voted to end all pretenses of democracy and begin the transition to an imperial form of governance backed by state terror. Habeas Corpus: 1215-2006 On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week, while most Americans were busy discussing the possibilities of the new football season, the US Senate and Congress voted on and passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Of course, unless you’re reading The Christian Science Monitor or Al Jazeerah, you probably weren’t even privy to the proper name of the bill that ended our 791 year-old British-American legal tradition of Habeas Corpus – the foundation of all human rights legislation since before the Magna Carta. Habeas Corpus, which is Latin for “you may have the body,” is, according to the US Supreme Court, “the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action.” It is the basic requirement, formerly at least rhetorically respected, by almost every legal system on earth, that states that people who are arrested must be charged with a crime, and eventually have their day in court to defend themselves. The British Parliament adopted Habeas Corpus as the law of the land across the empire in 1679, while historians trace the first appearance of Habeas Corpus in British law to 1215. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 ends all of that, placing the United States at the bottom of the dung heap when it comes to legal protections of the most basic of human rights – the right not to be “disappeared” by one’s own government. On the subject of disappearances, it seems all references to The Military Commissions Act of 2006 were preemptively disappeared before the bill was voted on. Talk about obfuscation – according to a Lexis/Nexis database search of all major US newspapers, only five articles mentioned the bill by name, and of the five, only two mentioned it before it was voted on. Quisling Genuflection to Fascism Bill of 2006 The rest of the US press, according to another Lexis/Nexis search, made up euphemistically loaded names for the bill, such as The Detainee Bill, Interrogation Legislation, or the Terror Bill, as if this law would only affect “terrorists.” Of course, all this confusion made it quite difficult to locate a copy of the actual bill before it was voted on, and to locate a roll call for the vote after it was passed. It shouldn’t require a sleuth to find out something as simple as the name of the bill that essentially ends our pretenses toward democracy. In any event, I’ll join the rest of the press corps and rename the bill for my own purposes as well, hereon in calling it the Quisling Genuflection to Fascism Bill of 2006, which I’ll simply gloss as the “Quisling Act.” According to the New York Times, the Quisling Act (s3930) creates an undefined category of people called “enemy combatants,” a designation which can be arbitrarily doled out by the Bush administration or their minions. According to The Times, once designated as an enemy combatant, a person can be subjected “to arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal.” The bill strips the legislative branch of government of any oversight over disappearances ordained by an imperial presidency. According to The Times, All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him [sic.] an illegal combatant . . .” With the elimination of Habeas Corpus, the Times points out, the disappeared “would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment.” And while in prison, the Quisling Act allows for the disappeared to be tortured and gives the Bush administration the legal authority to decide what does and does not constitute torture, while drawing the line only at rape, murder, waterboarding and a few other of the more vile acts American interrogators have recently been accused of. Of course, if someone else, say the “democratic” government of Iraq, waterboards a prisoner, the Quisling Act states that any testimony obtained can be used as evidence in American courts. The bill doesn’t specifically mention beating detainees with pikes, stretching them on racks, or feeding them to lions – so the ultimate determination as to whether those forms of interrogation would be prohibited lies with the imperial president. A Law to Negate the Rule of Law The Quisling Act brings the US into uncharted legal territory. It essence, it is a law to negate the rule of law. According to legal scholars, the Bush administration can designate US citizens as enemy combatants using purposely vague guidelines under which someone can be disappeared for lending an undefined sort of material aid to a group or person unilaterally determined by the Bush administration to fall under the “terrorism” rubric. The Bush administration can also determine someone to be an enemy combatant for “purposefully and materially supporting hostilities against the United States.” Of course, this term is not defined. And if you are disappeared for allegedly providing such support, you will not have the right to argue that you didn’t. It gets worse. Recent laws have attempted to define terrorism in corporate friendly terms so that anyone protesting against commercial activities could be designated a terrorist. Utah, for example, passed a “commercial terrorism” bill that identified anyone picketing a business with the intent of discouraging people from entering it, as engaging in terrorism. Under this law, for instance, the now celebrated 1960 sit-in at a segregated North Carolina Woolworth’s lunch counter would be considered terrorism. If that law and the new Quisling Act were in place in 1960, the four black civil rights heroes who demanded their right to be served lunch along with white patrons would have simply been disappeared off to gulags. A federal court struck down Utah’s law in 2001 and many people are certain that the Supreme Court will strike down the Quisling Act. But, in case you haven’t noticed, the courts are a changing. The Supreme Court has nine members. Four of them, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Bush appointees Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, have already shown themselves to line up with the Bush junta even when this meant undermining the rule of law. One more Bush appointee, and this could happen if the Republicans retain control of the Senate, and the Supreme Court could swing to becoming a 5-4 rubber stamp for whatever insanity the Bush administration sends their way. Predictive Assassination So lets go back and revisit what constitutes a terrorist supporter – someone who, under the laws passed this week, can be disappeared into a system of secret Gulags. Journalist Robert Parry points out that in a recent speech given by George W. Bush in the lead-up to the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, he blamed the Russian revolution and the rise of the Nazis on the fact that no one took out Lenin when he first stated publishing pamphlets on communism, or Hitler, when he first started writing about Nazism. Hence, it appears, Bush is now advocating preemptive strikes against speech – what Parry calls, the end of free speech and free thought. According to Parry, Bush’s fantasy of “wiping out some future Lenin or Hitler would require killing or imprisoning anyone who wrote about political change in a way that rulers considered objectionable at that time.” Such “predictive assassination,” Parry argues, might kill, along with a Hitler or a Lenin, a Mandela or a Jefferson. And if you’re wondering who the new targets for predictive assassination might be, you don’t have to look too far. In the same September 5 th speech (available at whitehouse.gov), Bush warns that intelligence evidence shows “al Qaeda intends to [launch], in [bin Laden’s] words, ‘a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government.’" Bush goes on to explain that such a campaign would paint the War on Terror as causing financial losses and casualties, ultimately, with the aim of – and he explains that these are bin Laden’s words – "creating pressure from the American people on the American government to stop their campaign against Afghanistan." Duck and Cover Get it. It’s the free press, reporting ridiculous notions about the costs of war, and perhaps its ineffectiveness at making us safer from anything, that are out there supporting hostilities against the United States by spreading what Bush deems as al Qaeda propaganda – or more accurately, by reporting the news of the day. How much more clear does the writing on the wall have to be? Why were we supposed to think it was a joke when Bush, early in his judicially imposed presidency, said that things would be a lot easier if this was a dictatorship, as long as he was the dictator. The Quisling Act isn’t about locking up terrorists. We’ve always done that. It’s about locking up innocent people. People who can’t be convicted of a crime because there’s no evidence that they committed a crime. This is the only new class of people who will be detained under this new law – people who were never, nor would they likely ever be, convicted of a crime. This is a bill about locking up innocent people and terrorizing the population by holding the threat of disappearance and torture over our heads. The Senate approved the Quisling Act 65-34, with 12 Democrats joining in with an almost unanimous pack of Republicans. The Congress approved it 250-170, with 34 Democrats supporting the Republican mob.