Tired_Old_Man

Leatha: Intersexed? Is that the same as an hermaphrodite? Do you consider these friends born with a medical anomaly known as being 'intersexed' (having both male/female ovaries and testicles) to be children of God? Are they mistakes of God? If God can make a person that is neither male, nor female, why can't God make a person with a female body and a male brain or a person with a male body and a female brain?

I guess it must be because we were both born Roman Catholic and have the RC chromosome. :faint:

Read at you own risk. Graphic language. I am always baffled as to how any straight person can think that being Gay is a choice. I am going to speak graphically here so, stop anyone who is prudish, please stop reading now. When I was 11 years old, I was talking to the prettiest girl in my class and all of a sudden, I realized that my penis was rubbing the inside of my pants and trying to push its way through. No one had ever told me about that physical reaction. This was 1956. This was before video tapes. We only had TV for a few years in my home and the shows were not (sexually) realistic and movies were all "goodie-2 shoes" types. I had no idea what was going on. I never had the choice to be Gay. I ask any straight person who thinks being gay is a choice, "when did you decide to be straight?" If he (or she) is honest, they will have to admit that they never did. It just happened to them, just as it just happens to Gay people.

I read about this experiment at least 25 years ago. A medical research scientist noted that there was a difference in the shape of the Hypothalamus (in the brain) of gay men and straight men. He also noticed that the incidence of gay men was higher in England among males born in the late 1930's through the early 1940's, so he went to the UK to try to find out why. In the UK, he questioned the mothers of the gay males. He found that many of them were pregnant during air raids. All humans are conceived as female but because of the xy chromosome, at a particular point during gestation, testosterone is released and the parts that would have been female, become destined to be male including the section of the hypothalamus that controls sexual desire. It has been shown (according to this research scientist) that testosterone can be neutralized in a test tube with adrenaline. The research scientist theorized that the pregnant women would have been pumping out massive quantities of adrenaline during an air raid and that adrenaline could have gotten through the umbilical cord and effected the fetus and the testosterone that the fetus was producing. The research scientist came back to the USA to test out his hypothesis. He set up an experiment with rats. Half of the rats were put in a cage with 12 hours of light, 12 hours of dark, plenty of food and plenty of exercise wheels. The other half were put into a cage in a room with random light and dark, random feedings and broken exercise wheels. The first group had little stress, while the second group had plenty of stress. The first (stress free) group had many less homosexual offspring that the stressed group. The research scientist then killed gay rats and straight rats, and took frozen sections of their brains. He found that the gay rats had the same difference in the shape of their hypothalamus (compared to straight rats) as the gay humans had compared to the straight humans.

No one said that you were a terrorist. I said that you probably tended to vote for the same people that KKK members and Neo-Nazis vote for. I do not think that either you nor members of the KKK nor members of the Neo-Nazi movement will be casting too many votes for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, if either is the Democrat's candicate for president. If you vote the same way as they do, it does not make you a terrorist though they are, but if I found myself voting the same way as those two groups often enough, I would ask myself, what do they see in this candidate that I don't see?

And no matter which country they come from or which God they claim to worship?

And that is why I do not salute the flag nor pledge allegiance to the flag. I will, however at any time, pledge my allegiance to the constitution of the United States of America, and I have.

You are 100% correct, but on many other forums that I have been a member of, the opening post would have been classified as "baiting" and removed. I, however am glad that it was left to be seen and ridiculed by members of every political, religious, and sexual orientation. Palidin stands alone in writing his words with no visible means of (membership) support. I imagine that there are others who may feel the same, but they are either too ashamed to agree in public or just reluctant to show their true colors.

Doesn't the United States have an obligation to these people after they asked them for help? Does anyone believe the US said, "Come work for us. We will pay you well and then we will turn our backs while you and your family are killed" and the Iraqis said, "Sounds like a good deal to me". Have you ever heard of "Tonkin Bay" or "The Main"? The USA has gone to war for phony reasons before.

I hope this doesn't make too many enemies, but sometimes people are so smart/intelligent and maybe even disciplined that they do not realize how hard some things are for others who don't have their gifts. When I was a senior in JHS (9th grade back then), I got the highest mark in the school on both the Math midterm and Science midterm, plus got a 98 on the Social Studies midterm. I only got an 85 on the English midterm (damn poetry). There were 34 classes in the 9th grade. Well, about a week after the Midterms, my French teacher let me have it in class in front of all my classmates. He said that the teachers where at a meeting and they were all bragging about how well their students had done. Of course, my Science teacher, Math teacher and SS teacher all were bragging about me and then they asked Mr. Moody, how did TOM do on the French midterm? (If he wasn't a Black man, he would have turned red), but he said 36% and they laughed him out of the room. Believe it or not, I studied harder and spent more time studying for the French midterm than any other midterm. I just do not have an aptitude for foreign language. Recent studies on the brain show that the brain is not like a computer. When you load a spreadsheet on a PC, the same components are used as when you load a word processor or a financial program. However the brain has selected areas for different purposes. I have never been able to play a musical instrument, type without looking at the keyboard or learn a foreign language, but I can fix almost anything, ranked in the top 3% of the country on competitive math and verbal reasoning tests in high-school and scored very well on the SAT. It seems that we all have our good points and bad points, so I hope that (you) teachers can show some compassion when dealing with people who have a low aptitude in your chosen field.

Many members will probably pray for you so that you can become Enlightened enough to be happy when they tell you, "I'll pray for you".:frusty:

And that is exactly what my thread starting post said.

I had hoped that I would like it when I bought "Purpose Driven Life". As you may notice, I like to post and maybe rant, but I try to speak from knowledge. Let me put it this way, when I express my opinion, I like to have something to base it on rather than "that's what I think because that's what I feel". Nothing has frustrated me in life more than spending a lot of time doing research on both sides of a topic, suggesting a course of action and then to hear, "well I'm no expert, but I would rather do it another way". And then when things go wrong, "I have no luck". Yes, Liberal and conservatives can both be discriminatory. I am a liberal and generally don't agree with conservatives, but I know some conservatives who are very intelligent and they have as much right to their feelings and conclusions as any liberal. Even when they are not intelligent, they have a right to their feelings and conclusions, though I might respect those feelings and conclusions less. I didn't say respect the person less.

You have as much right to your believes as anyone. You state yours, I'll state mine. I am glad that you realize that I am right. I was being sarcastic too.

No matter how well they are paid, dead people can not spend money. Going to war with Iraq was stupid, but if we had to go into Iraq, why didn't the USA train people to be translators? Not all the Iraqi people are glad we went to Iraq. Many were fine with Saddam Hussein. More were not, but I recently saw a news show and they interviewed a Shiite who a few months after the war started was praising the USA for invading Iraq, but now saws he wished they had never come to Iraq and he would gladly have Saddam back in power. Health care may be better if the US army is operating a hospital in that area, but according to all the reports I have read and heard, 2,000,000 Iraqis have fled Iraq and the majority of them are upper middle-class. Mostly doctors and engineers, and many are not coming back. I wish the best for your future son-in-law. I hope he is able to come back home soon and in one piece.

I don't hate the USA. I hate the politicians who get us into wars and act like the USA has a right to bomb or attack any country that does not do what is best for the USA or maybe more precisely what is best for big business in the USA. It is not that I want the USA to emulate any other country, only that we should follow our own constitution. The USA is in danger of becoming another Nazi Germany and very influential people in our government think that would be fine. PNAC is a group that thinks the USA should start wars in order to assert itself and to achieve what is best for the USA's power structure. George W. BuSh stocked his cabinet and chose many of his advisors from PNAC. I do not know if BuSh took the PNAC people into his inner circle because he agreed with them, or they gradually led him around to their way of thinking. PNAC said long before 911, that the USA needed another Pearl Harbor for PNAC to be able to achieve its goals. "We seem to do nothing right in your eyes". Who is this "We"? Am I not as much a part of the USA as you are? Subconsciously you have just excluded me from "your" country. That is what annoys me. Without realizing it, you have ostracized me. I will have you know, that I vote in every election and I have paid taxes all my life. I am just as good an American as anyone here and maybe because I love my country, I risk the fallout of speaking out. In the 1930's, it was people like me who were rounded up for being unpatriotic in Germany. With NSA spying on phone conversations and Internet usage, I may be labeled a traitor. Have you joined the club with Ron Cusano and Ann Coulter? Should I be shot or just hung like Saddam?

When you said "We" in your last sentence, I assume you meant Canadians.

I read it to become more knowledgeable. Also, I had seen Rick Warren on TV and he seemed different than the Falwell's, Dobson's, Haggard's and Robertson's of this world, so I gave it a try. It was worth while reading it, if only to find out what I didn't like about it and so I could speak intelligently about the book and Reverend Warren. I also read the "Holy Qur'an" and "The Book of Mormon" though Ii have no inclination to convert.

Our immigration laws are based on previous immigration, so Europeans, including British, Irish, Germans and Italians get first crack. Believe it or not, but not that many European want to come to the USA anymore to live. They have better work rules, better medical care and a standard of living that is as good or not better than here where they are. I know of many people who have moved to Ireland, the home of their parents or went to other European countries to escape the problems of the USA. We need people in this country according to many economists and other learned people. Should we ship out the 12 million (some estimate up to 40 million) illegal immigrants and them invite 12 million other people in? Maybe if we stropped the wasteful "War on Drugs", we would have some money to do that, or we could save the money and give it back to the Social Security fund. By the way, if we can find a way to start the 12,000,000 or more illegal immigrants on a path to legal status, they could help bail out Social Security for the Baby Boomers.

Drug trafficking is a problem, but like many of the problems that the USA faces, the real problem is that USA does not face the problem. The "War on Drugs" is a joke. All the "War on Drugs" actually does is keep many US military and law enforcement personal busy wasting their time that could be put to better use, wastes $12,000,000,000 per year that could be put to better use and most of all makes a lot of very rich drug dealers even richer. No matter how secure they make the borders, drugs will come in as long as there is enough financial benefit in selling illegal drugs. Republican (tough on crime) Presidents have commission studies on the "War on Drugs" and even though both Nixon and Reagan packed their commissions with hand-picked people, the results always came back the same; treatment (on demand) and education are the only way to win the so-called "War on Drugs". When I was living in NY, a family member of mine was an alcoholic and a crack addict. She was able after much fighting (with the bureaucracy) to get into a wonderful rehab center. The program was two months of in-patient aromatherapy followed by a 6 month halfway house placement with a gradual movement into normal society, but in a different environment than the patient came from. The rehab had a 67% success rate and my family member has been clean since 1993 and is raising a family while getting promotions to become head of her department on her job. As soon as George Pataki became governor of NY State, being a strong “law and order” advocate, he slashed the budget for rehab centers and increased the budget for prison building. Another family member of mine had the same addiction problems and went to the same rehab about a year later, but after Pataki's budget cuts, the program was now only one month and my niece did not fare as well. She reverted to her drug and alcohol use, became a prostitute to finance her habit, contracted AIDS and dies leaving 6 children to the foster care system. Pataki sure saved NY State taxpayers a lot of money. The financial cost of prisons and foster care is much more than the cost of rehab. The social cost is even greater. We complain about people not raising their children, but when we have one of every 100 men in the USA in prison, of course there are going to be many fathers who are not raising their families. With Black men the ratio is much worse. The "War on Drugs" is a failure socially and financially, but we will keep fighting it because politicians do not want to be thought of as weak on crime. They may be thought of as strong on “law and order” issues, but they are not increasing “order” with extra law enforcement, because they are trying to solve a social and medical problem with brute force. No matter how many commissions say that the solution is on demand rehab and education, the politicians will keep feeding the right-wing knee jerk attitudes and the Christian's puritanical attitudes, and another generation will be ruined. If it were possible to shut down the drugs coming in from Mexico, they would increase from Canada, and from the Caribbean and from commercial airline flights from around the world. When I worked at JFK, my airline was handling flights for small airlines or airlines which had so few flights into JFK, that it wasn't worth it to hire their own mechanics. One day after repeated warnings, the DEA impounded a 757 from a well known airline because of the hundreds of pounds of drugs that were inboard. Even if it were possible to shut down all imports of illegal drugs into the USA, then people would make synthetic versions of coke and heroin, etc. They are already doing it with drugs like Methamphetamines and Ecstasy. Drugs come in from Canada, but there is not the big uproar about the Canadian border. If you do not see the racism in the Mexican border debate, then that probably is a sign of your lack of racism, but believe me, not all people are as benevolent as you are.

Very Sad!!

We are not in bad financial shape, but neither are we wallowing in money. We are able to fly for free because I was an aircraft mechanic and it is part of my retirement package, but we must fly standby. Today JetBlue canceled 300 flights, and American, United and Delta also canceled many flights because of the weather on the East coast. That will back up travel for all airlines and make it difficult to travel on standby. I am worried about Tina getting home. Trying to get there will only make it worse. I forgot if it was in this thread or another, but I mentioned that I tried to make it to NY recently and there were no flights available, so I went through Raleigh/Durham NC, but then got stuck there and wound up coming back to Florida without ever getting to NY. It was so bad that even buying a full fare ticket wouldn't have helped. They were buying people off of the flights with vouchers for future travel.

I replied: Thank you for an intelligent response. We seem to be in agreement on many of the ideas that you mentioned. Here, on the other hand is a sample of the other responses that I received: * Hell TOM, that's easy, we are stupid. * Good Question, Why? I guess it's because Jesus didn't have anything to do with 911. If that's not the answer then I must be Ignorant or uninformed or both!! * I have never mocked, belittled, or underestimated our terrorist enemies. On the contrary, I recognize them as intelligent, cunning, and well organized, as they commit murder in the name of their "God" and "Religion." This is why I advocate their total and complete extermination. P.S. they're towels TOM, not sheets. * I finished my reply to the first e-mailer with this: You will have to admit that the last one is troubling, at best, and scary at worst. The worst part is that the person that wrote it is intelligent and articulate, and has fought me tooth and nail on many issues. His arguments are difficult to refute. Difficult, because he lacks compassion and a sense of equality as human beings, so there is no humanity to appeal to, just the cold idea that we are superior to them and like vermin, we have a right (and maybe an obligation) to destroy them. Notice how he emphasizes their God and Religion. His (Christian) Religion obviously did not teach him that we are all God's children; his God's children and their God's children. His lack of understanding of his own religion allows him to not realize nor care that it is the terrorists' lack of understanding of their religion which perpetuates the hatred and the continual warring between the Eastern and Western civilizations. Civilizations; now that is an oxymoron.

Since no one wants to tackle this rhetorical question, I will post a few of the replies I got from e-mailing it to the people in my address book. #1. Yes,that is an interesting question. We have been brainwashed since childhood undoubtedly in the Christian way, and to see the others as infidels, evil ones. It is a terrible shame. I for one have tried over time to not do this. Possibly my father's distant relatives came from North Africa, or Tunisia and way back were Semites. Now,that includes Arabic and Hebraic people. Recently, I saw a very old photo of my dad, and you could really see a distant Arabic culture. Perhaps this is very strong in my genes,and that may be why I have not been driven to dislike others in "sheets", as I am sure you do not feel this way. Clearly, I do not believe that any culture anywhere which represses its citizenry, particularly its women is doing anything good for posterity. But, at this point, people might see this in some Arabic (or sheet,cultures) and decide to hate them for that. Our Western culture does many things that are not humane or correct so should we hate ourselves for that? Humans typically seem to dislike what they do not know, as with different foods, until they become educated about the unknown, and then perhaps there is some hope for understanding, and more than tolerance of differences, but acceptance.

I think I know what an ignore list is. Well, usually (at other forums that I have been a member of) a member on my ignore list can neither e-mail or PM me, plus I can't read his posts in the threads. Is that the way it is at LBT? What is a buddy list? What does someone on by buddy list get to do that a member not on my buddy list can not do? I never had a buddy. :doh: And what is a Journal Buddy list?