Tired_Old_Man

I will tell you the reason if you promise to keep it a secret. You live in Canada. The immigrants that many of my countrymen complain about coming here illegally were born in Mexico or Guatemala or Peru, etc. But here is the first part of the secret. We are all Americans. Some are North Americans, some are Central Americans and some are South Americans. But only those people who live in that space between Canada and Mexico (plus the one's with the grass skirts over towards Japan and the one's with the fur-coats who live near Russia) are called Americans. We are all Americans, but actually the ones who I just described should be called United Statesians. Or as I often refer to them: “Citizens of the United States”. Now the second part of the secret. I only live in the USA in a very peripheral way. More important that being a citizen of the United states is I am a resident of the state of Florida. At least 90% of the laws that I must follow are the Laws of Florida. How I vote is controlled by Florida. Even elections for Federal Officials: President, Senators and House Representatives are controlled by the laws of Florida. If I murder my next door neighbor and rape his wife, I have broken no federal laws, just the laws of Florida. My driver's license, the regulations for gun ownership, for property transfer, for marriage are all governed by the laws of Florida. Except for which army goes to waste their lives in Iraq, the federal government has very little to do with me (except every April 15th). Your way is fine with me, but 50 different Governors and 50 different legislatures must decide those issues. In many states where the governor, Senate and (whatever they call their house of representatives or) assembly, are all ruled by the same party, they pass laws not for the benefit of the voters, but for the benefit of keeping the party in control, in control. And no, I did not accidentally repeat myself. So the big secret is that the USA is really 50 separate countries with one military.

I did one minute the first day at level one. Then three minutes the next day. Then 5, Then... Nobody has the right to judge your progress, so just try to do no less than the last time, unless you take off more than 4 days. You should be able to increase the time gradually. When you get to about 30 minutes, increase the level to #2 and try to go as long as posssible. You will probably quit between 15 & 20. Next time, try to do at least 2 minutes more and keep trying to increase until you get to 30 and then increase the level to #3...

I know that, but many people have started talking that way in everyday life, and there is no music played while they are speaking. :faint:

What do you think will happen if on November the 6th, polls in 20 Congressional races show that the Democratic challenger has a 5 to 10 point lead over their incumbent Republican opponent and on election day, November 7th, the voter "out polling" shows that each of the 20 Democrats carried their districts by 10 points, but the official voter tallies show the Republicans winning all of those 20 seats and keeping both houses of congress? FOX News will do a story about bad polling techniques and how Republicans have a better "get out the vote" machine.

So do you agree that I was right when I said somewhere many moons ago at the beginning of this thread that the difference between "I love it" and "I am loving it" (or the equivalent "I'm loving it") is that "I love it" means "I do love it now" while "I am loving it" means "I have been loving it for an unspecified period of time"? Bitteroldhag: Please :help: This thread has wondered all over the universe (as threads so often do, as if they were alive), but the main question of the thread is here to be answered. Please give me a definitive answer. I beseech you.

I am a Democrat, but lobbying will eventually bring both the system down and the country right behind it. Lobbying, IMHO is not much different than bribery. The differences are so subtle, that I think the spelling of the words may be the most significant difference between the two. Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Liberal or Independent, it does not matter, if you want to keep the USA from becoming a kept country, we must take money out of the politicians hands. As long as a politician needs to make millions for his campaign, he will have the choice of honesty or winning and that is a decision by which we all lose. Everyone loses, that is except the lobbyists and the people that feed the money to the lobbyists.

One was a decorated fighter pilot and the other was a ceremonial fighter against piloting. When I was an aircraft mechanic, many of my fellow mechanics learned their trade in the US military. I am the same age as Baby BuSh and one of my fellow crew-chiefs when in the military was an aircraft mechanic assigned to the squadron of planes that Baby BuSh was supposed to fly. Guess what? He never showed up. The squadron's unofficial nickname? The Champagne Brigade. Aptly named.

He brow-beat his intelligence officers until they told him what he wanted to hear. He took the word of a civilian who had a vested interest in the USA attacking Iraq, when the intelligence officers who knew he shouldn't invade, said not to invade. Richard Clark and Paul O'Neil who were both in the BuSh cabinet have written books that said so. He should have know the cost of war because his father wrote a book explaining why he did not go after Saddam Hussein in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm. All the reasons that PaPa Bush said he wanted to avoid have come up to bite the USA in the butt. Too bad Baby BuSh didn't read PaPa Bush's book. When asked on NBC News why he didn't listen to his father, BuSh responded that he listens to a higher father in matters of war. So you are right: don't blame it on BuSh, blame it on God. President BuSh has admitted, as has VP Chaney, that Iraq had nothing to do with 911. As far as being patriotic: supporting the president has nothing to do with patriotism. Who were the heroes in 1938 when Hitler invaded Austria, the followers or the people who spoke out against the invasion? Who were the patriots in 1938 when Hitler invaded Austria, the followers or the people who spoke out against the invasion?

Oh, I can laugh and I do. BUT: When we need to convey information and someone drops the ball causing a screwup or people to be injured, then there is reason for concern. About 30 years ago, there was the "3 Mile Island" nuclear reactor meltdown and I remember the joke made about it. The operator who was supposed to react to the problem said he knew which valve to turn, but did not remember which way to turn it. He did remember what his instructor told him to remember as a memory jogger: "You can't add too much Water to a nuclear reactor". But when he went to turn the water valve he became confused over the meaning of that statement. Does "You can't add too much water to a nuclear reactor" mean that you can add as much as you want without fear OR Is "You can't add too much water to a nuclear reactor" a warning not to add too much water? He turned the valve the wrong way.

Thank you Suzanne for a very interesting post. It was doubly pleasurable for me to read, because my wife uses words like "queue" whenever she returns from one of her visits to see her relatives back in the motherland. She was born in London a little bit after the war. I read the bible occasionally and one of my favorite stories to debate is the story of the "Tower of Babel" (Genesis 11:1-9). It seems that God may not need to confound us with language this time, because we are doing it to ourselves. About 30 years ago, a large contingent of my wife's family came to visit the colonies. One of her uncles (who visited) was the Mayor of Kent. We spoke, but I could not understand a word he was saying. OK, I axaggerated. I could barely understand 50% of what he said.

I saw one which I would like to have: "Support Our Troops by Bringing Them Home" It looked just like the "Support Our Troops" bumper sticker that are everywhere. I wanted to ask the driver where he got it, but it is difficult to have a conversation on Interstate 95 at 80 MPH. :grouphug:

Which post are you referring to? :help:

Yes, do not wait. I put up with a improperly filled band until my doctor told me to come in today for an emergency appointment. When the band is too tight, it is hard to hold things down, and the irritation of coughing up the food causes swelling which makes the band tighter. I got to the point that I could not even drink Water and I needed a total unfill which was followed by an endoscopy.

I have to both agree and disagree with you. The person who didn't give me a chance because of my mediocre looks was not really the person I wanted, although I didn't know it. Also, by being persistent and kind (not phony, but truly kind), I was amazed how I could overcome my looks. My wife dated me just to get rid of me (gently) in a few weeks, because she didn't want to hurt such a nice guy and wanted to keep me as a friend after we broke up. That was 42 years ago and she still is a looker. When we go places together, people assume I am either loaded in my wallet or another area of my pants. Why else would a beautiful woman be with me? Yes, looks get you into the doorway just like a salesman's foot, but if the product you have to sell is not worth much, there will be no sale.

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL

By explaining it this way the looks issue is never brought up, and it is strange how this is the issue that hurts us all the most even when it is sometimes the least important. So true. When I was going to emotional counseling group meetings run by my surgeon's facility, the women were always talking about looks. When I said that I don't car what i look like, they all asked “Why did you get the surgery?” “FOR MY HEALTH” I wonder if Vicki would have a change of heart if this man had Bariactric surgery. People look at us as if we were slobs. Too often, WE look at us as if we were slobs.

It is not just people of weight who have these problems. Because of my job at the time, I was surrounded by women who were knock down gorgeous, unbelievably good looking women. That song by Lionel Richie and the Commodores: “Brick House” (which really means a brick $hit house) described many of them. Invariably when I would take one of the young ladies to a function or party, they would say how badly they looked. Compared to what? Lets say on the 1 to 10 scale of looks, the woman I was with was a 9. Let's also say that there were 100 couples at the function. There might be five girls there who were over 8.5 and my date would compare herself only with those 5 girls. The fact that she was better looking than the other 95 did not stop her from putting herself down compared to the chosen 5. Many times she was prettier than the chosen 5 or at least 3 of the 5. Beauty is very personally subjective, so it is hard to know who was the best looking, but she always knew that she looked terrible. Before you think that it was only in my eyes that the women I took out were so attractive, please be sure that one of my unusual traits is that I can judge looks from a non-emotional point. I can look at a person that I love and one that I hate and say that the one that I hate is prettier (if she is). Also, I had to fight all the other men away from my dates. When we walked into the room, all eyes turned our way, and I had my clothes on, so it wasn't me that caused the buzz. Most Women see something much uglier in the mirror than the person who is actually looking into the mirror. Women have set themselves up for failure by comparing themselves to the "air-brushed" women they see in magazines. A friend of mine was a model and I hung out with him and few of his co-workers for a while. They did not look in everyday life, like they looked either in magazines or TV ads. Makeup, lighting and camera angle can work magic. Looks have become so important in our society that women and now some men have developed a self-hate syndrome while trying to keep up with the Joneses of the fashion, TV and Movies world.

He heard her correctly. She spoke incorrectly. The proper response should have been her final response. "I am you son's math teacher." What she said was incorrect because it was ambiguous (at best) and more than misleading. Her students are not her kids. They are students in her math class. The least ambiguous statement she could have made was: "I believe you are the father of one of the students in the math class that I teach at (name of) school." Of course, I do not expect people to speak so formally in everyday life, but "I am you son's math teacher" would have been more accurate and sufficient in the surrounds where they crossed paths. TOM PS: I also don't expect a man to be so honest about his prior dalliances. Only I would be that honest and talkative.

YOU ARE A LOSER!! And you should be proud of it!

Teaching sarcasm as normal discourse is very dangerous. It distorts the language and as has been proven in many studies, people tend to live down to the level of the expectations of the discourse. When I was a child, I thought that the word "bright" meant stupid. For 4 years, I had a teacher who used bright as an insult, an assessment of stupidity and as a reproach. Make any mistake and she would say, "That's bright" or "Your are really bright". The more hideous the mistake was the more the rebuke was drawn out. "Your are really bright" became "Your are really, really bright" and then finally "Your are really, really bright" with really and bright each taking about 3 seconds to be pronounced. When someone mentioned to me that the Sun was bright, I asked. "why do you think the Sun is stupid?" When another person told me that I was bright, I apologized in fear. My teacher had a friend who was the teacher in the next room over and they would often get together within earshot of the students and argue over who had the "brighter" students. We knew by their expressions and by which students they would single out, that they were not bragging. Another problem that I continually see is parents saying, "Keep it up" when they mean "stop it". A child is trying to learn boundaries and does not need confusing statements. I told a child that I was minding to "Keep it up" as an encouragement to what I was teaching him to do and he stopped and flinched. It was obvious to me that "Keep it up" was usually followed by a slap or some other form of corporal punishment.

What scares me most is losing "free speech" because of over-zealous enforcement of our anti-terrorist laws. Recently there were 7 Muslims arrested in the Miami Florida area. It made huge headlines, but after a lot of examination, many people think it was nothing more than a bunch of disgruntled fools. An FBI plant was in with the group and many wonder how much the agent spurred on the discussion. Let me make one thing perfectly clear to anyone who wants to read something that I am not writing. If these people were planning and plotting to perform terrorists acts, then they should be prosecuted for their crimes. However, if it was just a bunch of eccentric big-mouths, then they should be set free and the time that they have spent incarcerated since their arrest should be more than enough punishment for their stupidity. Getting back to what I fear most: We may never know if they really had any intentions of anything more that talk. Why? Because of the new Geneva convention interpretation bill which just passed both houses of congress. This bill may give BuSh the authority to label these men as “enemy combatants” and then they would be denied council, would be held indefinitely and worst of all, they could be tortured until they confess to everything and anything that the interrogator wants to hear. Whether that will be the truth is something we will never know, because after the prisoners confess, that confession will be used against them in a military tribunal and will result in their conviction (and possible execution). Their case will go down as proof that we need this system. And as with any system that is needed and effective (and you know the government will point to their 100% conviction rate as proof of effectiveness), this system will be expanded to cover more types of crime. But there is the rub. Even if the 7 fools de jour were nothing more than big mouths looking to hear themselves talk, they will not be able to withstand the interrogation, and will be convicted. Free speech will suffer. First it will only be free speech about the war effort, then it can spread to other issues, and soon you may have to look over your shoulder before mentioning the name BuSh in anything but the most glowing praise. Ann Coulter set the stage. The US public thought they were in the audience, but may wind up as the central character.

Glad to meet ya: Feel free to ask away. If we don't know the answer, we will tell you that it is a question for a doctor.

I'll settle for a suitcase full of $100 bills.

Another Phony E-mail: ****************************************************** Read all of this one, it is interesting!! Read down to the very bottom highlighted in green, you don't want to miss this! VERY INTERESTING- 1. The Garden of Eden was in Iraq. 2. Mesopotamia, which is now Iraq, was the cradle of civilization! 3. Noah built the ark in Iraq. 4. The Tower of Babel was in Iraq 5. Abraham was from Ur, which is in Southern Iraq! 6. Isaac's wife Rebekah is from Nahor, which is in Iraq! 7. Jacob met Rachel in Iraq. 8. Jonah preached in Nineveh - which is in Iraq. 9. Assyria, which is in Iraq, conquered the ten tribes of Israel. 10. Amos cried out in Iraq! 11. Babylon, which is in Iraq, destroyed Jerusalem. 12. Daniel was! in the lion's den in Iraq! 13. The three Hebrew children were in the fire in Iraq (Jesus had been in Iraq also as the fourth person in the Fiery furnace!) 14. Belshazzar, the King of Babylon saw the "writing on the wall" in Iraq. 15. Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, carried the Jews captive into Iraq. 16. Ezekiel preached in Iraq. 17. The wise men were from Iraq 18. Peter preached in Iraq. 19. The "Empire of Man" described in Revelation is called Babylon, which was a city in Iraq! And you have probably seen this one. Israel is the nation most often mentioned in the Bible. But do you know which nation is second? It is Iraq! However, that is not the name that is used in the Bible The names used in the Bible are Babylon, Land of Shinar, and Mesopotamia The word Mesopotamia means between the two rivers, more exactly between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The name Iraq, means country with deep roots. Indeed Iraq is a country with deep roots and is a very significant country in the Bible. No other nation, except Israel, has more history and prophecy associated it than Iraq. And also, This is something to think about! Since America is typically represented by an eagle. Saddam should have read up on his Muslim passages... The following verse is from the Koran, (the Islamic Bible) Koran (9:11 ) - For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah; and there was peace. (Note the verse number!) Hmmmmmmm?! ******************************************** The Qur'an Verse 9:11 reads: "But if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, they are your brethren in faith; and We make the communications clear for a people who know." The E-mail is accurate until: And also, This is something to think about! Since America is typically represented by an eagle. Saddam should have read up on his Muslim passages... The following verse is from the Koran, (the Islamic Bible) Koran (9:11 ) - For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah;

In my case, it was not attorneys, but working in the aviation industry which helped to shape my Quest for verbal perfection. It was definitely a family trait, perfectionism as much as talking, but being afraid to bring down a plane full of people was a contributing factor. I became extremely good at my job and other mechanics would compete against me, in a situation similar to the old West's top gunslinger syndrome. If any mechanic could show me up, he would become "Top-Gun" because, most people knew that TOM was “Top-Gun” at fixing planes. For about 5 years, I did not work on planes, but instead worked on the simulators that the pilots practiced on. One day, as my fellow technician Keith was leaving for the day as his shift was ending and mine beginning, we exchanged information on two problems. I knew how to fix what had been troubling him and he knew the procedure for something that had confounded me. The next day, we crossed paths again and both of us said that we were unable to solve our problems by applying each other's advice. We then each demonstrated on the the simulators in question what we had explained the previous day. Keith blamed me for not explaining properly the instructions I gave him which stopped him from being able to fix his problem. Then, Keith blamed me for not understanding properly the instructions he gave to me which stopped me from being able to fix my problem. So I asked, “if we were playing 'catch' and I threw you the ball and you didn't catch it, is my fault for throwing the ball wrong?” “Correct.” “And if you threw you the ball back to me and I didn't catch it, is my fault for trying to catch the ball wrong?” “Right.” “Why is it always my fault?” “Because you are smarter than me.” Being good is a heavy burden, but once you lift it, you can never put it down and in fact it will just get heavier and heavier, unless you want to just throw it all away.