green

Yep, it is much easier living in an important country, you know. Oops! I meant to say unimportant country!!!! My big bad. Mea maxima culpa, but I was running out for a fill appt this AM. (By the way I now weigh 170 lbs. Yippeee!:scared: )

Re the above comments, I don't know whether you have been hearing about this American government's practice of extraordinary rendition. This is what they did when they took the Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, and deported him to Syria, a country which does permit torture. The aircraft which was carrying him and a few American officials stopped over in Italy in order to refuel while on its way to Syria. Well, it seems that the government has practiced extraordinary rendition before with other citizens of western countries who are Muslim and who the government believes to have terrorist connections. They kidnap them and fly them to Islamic countries which do practice torture. Because European soil is involved, either for the kidnappings - the CIA is involved - or as stop-overs while planes are being refueled, the Europeans are now becoming officially engaged in this issue. It seems that they are not amused by these antics! There has been refueling stop-overs in Sweden, Germany and in the case of Arar, the Canadian who was recently paid 11 million dollars by the Canadian government for damages, in Italy. The Italians are particularly annoyed because a Muslim cleric living in Italy was kidnapped by the CIA and sent to Egypt where he was tortured and sexually abused.

Yeah, TOM, from the first time I cyber met you I had been wondering about that tag line on your posts. To tell you the truth, it made me nervous until I got to know you a little better. :scared:

Aw shucks, kid, I knew that!!!! My da explained this to me when I was under 10. I just figured that you didn't have any other name to call yourselves. We other North Americans can call ourselves Canadians or Mexicans. What are you gonna call yerselves? United Statsians?:scared:

That doesn't happen up here in Canada because business does not play a part in our health care. Medical procedures are always a result of what the doctor or specialist decides is appropriate for the patient. Bone marrow transplants are standard in Canada, by the way. There have been the occasional cases - these are not routine - where a patient can get a procedure done south of the border, something that is either fairly experimental or cannot be done here for some other reason, and in these instances our health care will pay for this procedure unless it is something really out of the mainstream. And even then, these patients can appeal to be reimbursed. Though our federal government has mandated that all citizens have the right to health care, the actual programmes are run by the provinces, not federally. As to this business of government regulating the lives of private citizens, I fail to see the connection. The only individual who has access to my health records is my doctor. Even when I want material sent on to another individual in my health team I have to personally sign release of information forms. Thus the government is entirely in the dark about my recent colonoscopy results - not that they would care, eh - just as my doctor has no idea as to what my taxable income is or my net worth.

Ewww! That's immoral! What I learned from the knees of my da was to always pay cash for everything except property. And what I learned from my divorce was to keep everything I own in my own name.:heh: Now, I got divorced when I was 27 and have followed this financial advice ever since.:scared: :scared: This has worked out well.

This has been a long, long conversation but I think that it has been very interesting; this has been an opportunity for a real cross-section of the types of people that represent America (and Canada in the case of Green and TommyO) to debate their beliefs. So often in real life birds of a feather flock together and thus we do not have this opportunity to get up close and personal and actually talk with people who hold very, very different beliefs from one's own. I don't think I have ever met a Baptist in person but I know lots of lapsed Catholics, Muslims, and Jews. Indeed, these folk comprise the majority of my closest friends and family. I mention this in order that you can see why I have found this thread so valuable. Perhaps many of you feel the same way...that you have come into contact with individuals with very different viewpoints from those of your family and friends. Cusano and I crossed swords fairly early on in this thread and then we made our uneasy peace. He believes. I don't. And I apologized for using the putz-word. The battles between the Christians, that is to say Cusano vs the more liberal gang have been interesting, I think. It strikes me that there is a fundamental split in the vision of Christianity and the focus of belief between the liberals and the conservatives; the conservatives are big on rules and punishment and the liberals are big on justice tempered by mercy. The conservative is inclined to want to threaten his neighbour with Hellfire because he didn't cross his ts. (From my limited understanding of both Judaism and Islam, both desert religions by the way, there are many more rules and much more emphasis on the observance of these. This makes sense; life in the desert is much tougher.) The conservative is an individual who uses the Bible as a rule book. He is also not, psychologically speaking, a curious or laid-back cat. His weakness can be that he forgets that he is only a little man - just like the rest of us. Spiritual arrogance is never a good thing. The liberal is someone who chooses to take a broad positive philosophy out of the Bible: perhaps laying particular emphasis on the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament and the message contained in life, teachings and death of Jesus out of the New Testament. He is temperamentally/philosophically much more inclusive, more generous, and more forgiving than the conservative in his approach to his belief and his Christianity. His weakness might be that he can be so accomodating that he loses sight of his own beliefs. There is nothing wrong with this if you are a theist and have come feel that the beliefs of other peoples must have the same weight, power, and value as the ones you yourself started out with.

We might be distantly related, eh.:scared:

This crap is spam and you can report it to the management by pressing the red and white triangle which you will find in the upper right hand corner of each post. I do this whenever I run across this crap. It is not as satisfying as crushing the spammer like a bug between my fingers, though.

About a year and half ago I read material which gave a per capita breakdown of healthcare costs in the industrialised countries of the West plus Australia and New Zealand. All of these countries, with the exception of the United States, have universal health care. The annual costs for health care in the US clock in at roughly $2,000 more per person than is the case for the nation with the next highest per capita per annum cost. The gross cost per capita per annum for health care in the US is slightly over $5,000. (I believe these figures were prepared by the World Health Organisation.) The $2,000 difference which each and every American is paying is going into the pockets of big businessmen and the politicians who are owned by them. Recently there was an article in one of the national Canadian newspapers which dealt with an analysis or breakdown of who actually uses our health care system. It seems that the poor are not frequent users, and neither are men, except for emergencies. Women and children use the system. Affluent, better educated, city or suburban people use the system the most, especially if they are women; this is a system which is available to all but is most heavily used by the middle class. It is only when Canadians become old and decrepit that the class patterns in usuage start to disappear. I continue to be surprised by the fearful attitudes which so many Americans display towards universal health care, particularly now that the legislation has changed and you can no longer shed a crippling health bill of half a million dollars or so by declaring bankruptcy.

These clowns are spammers. They are very annoying. Whenever I see these posts I report them to the management. You can do this by clicking on the red and white triangle that appears at the top right-hand corner of the post.

I was done by TLBC in September and my first fill was 4ccs. I am at 5ccs now and I am going in for a fill on Thursday. Others in my graduating class have more fill but I am sensitive to being filled. When you go in for your fill, Doddie, they will make you wait and sip water afterward. This is in order to see if you are too tight. If you are, they will remove some of the fill while you are still there. This has happened to me. Going in for your first fill is kinda fun. You get to meet others who are in your graduating class - that is to say, others who were lapbanded around the same time as you were - and while you are sitting around and sipping water you will end up swapping stories. It is a lot of fun.

Oh, Neenagh, that's bad, very bad of your employer....:omg:

Green is going in for a fill this Thursday AM. All this talk of food....I realized that I can eat just about anything these days!

Sounds like we are god's golems.:phanvan

But what is the value of belief in salvation without acknowledgement of the value of good works? The Old Covenant offers up the Ten Commandments and the New Testament offers up the injunction that we must love our neighbours as we would ourselves be loved. We are also presented with the spectacle of who Jesus was when He appeared in His fleshly form and how He behaved while He was downstairs and walking about on this earth. All of this is, presumably, part of the package, is it not? (Hitler, by the way, had a belief in salvation and thought that it would be a good thing to scrub out the Jews. This, arguably, was not a good work, eh.)

This is in the way of a debate on matters of theology and belief systems and is not intended to be a support thread. That is why it is found, as others have pointed out to you, in the Rant and Raves forum. Some of us find these discussions passionately interesting and quite intellectually stimulating. You, it seems, do not fall into this category. And that is just something for you to think about.

Yep, I agree with my fellow Canuck. Although I am a non-believer I have been greatly heartened by the goodness of many of the believers whom I have met on this thread. And like TommyO, I have been spooked by those who are close-minded ultra-right wing Conservatives.

I love the bed!!!!

Welcome back! sez Green.

Mandi, do you have Winner's out where you live? You can buy high thread-count king size bed sheets for a good price there.

Come into the cold! We have Teaching English as a Second Language programmes up here in Toronto, Canada.

She who walks 4 and a half miles today Will live to wash her doggies another day.........:clap2: eh

Why should this really matter to you, Cusano, or to your Christian God? These are only outward frills which vary from sect to sect but the basic demands of the Christian faith are the same: faith in the Trinity and an attempt to live a life that is marked by a sustained attempt to practice good works towards those who are often the least loveable. Remember that Jesus did hang out with the working class and with prostitutes. Today these individuals might be those who are out of work and on welfare and receiving food stamps. Some of them might be Black or Hispanic. Some of them might be dealing with drug problems. Do you really think these doctrinal differences actually matter to God or to Jesus or to the Holy Spirit, assuming that this triumvirate actually exists? Lay off the Catholics! A good Catholic is a good Christian, I would suspect, for the demands of a good Christian are belief and the practice of good works.

Amen from Green.