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If you go back, and ever get the chance to jump at the Special Warfare Center's Commander's cup, it is a great experience. Tom B

So if he had been a mullah I guess you would believe the teachings of Mohammed. I am not sure how you made that leap, but I think you missed the point of my post. The "teaching" in this case was to stop worrying about the details, don't get lost in individual verses, and pay full attention to the greater story and its learning lessons. Trying to reconcile every small difference leads to one bad headache, and missing the bigger points. But as for following the mullah... duh. Probably one of the greatest correlation/causation factors in human life is picking up general religious customs of one's parents. Tom B

I understand what you are saying and agree with the intent. But I don't see it as interest rates per say, but the ratio of interest rates to the relative earnings potential, economic growth, inflation, other market opportunities, etc. For any reasonable interest rate you propose, I can match it with other market factors to yield the same stupid decisions and horrible results. I was thinking you were going another direction. Some here have claimed that low interest rates actually put leveraged home owners at far greater risk, as they let them purchase much more expensive homes than they otherwise would have, and consequently suffered far greater losses when housing prices fell. Oh how much easier it was when home prices only went up. But thanks for clarifying the direction you were headed. Tom B

If I intermixed the sub-prime mess I apologize. Yes, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac only granted conforming loans. But under pressure from Congress, they lowered the definitions of conforming. They increased the permitted ratio of payment to income and reduced the down payments, etc. They allowed great risk in vairable risk loans, for people stretched to make the initial payments. After they did that, the banks that traditionally granted higher risk loans, moved even a notch further down the tree. A lot of peple were declared conforming who should not have been, were never before. The proof of this is that both organizations were in trouble, long BEFORE the economy really went south. Tom B

Gee, the last time with the kind of density and intensity we are talking about would have been... right there on the Korean peninsula. And who was it.... Oh yes, the current nut case's father. And when was the last time we faced an army like North Korea's, with that many men always at the ready, on a battle line? That would have been WWI. Exactly. Your attempt to slam me just described the situation. The wider they make the battle line, the less effective our air and artillery assets will be at stopping them. They have our ass totally overwhelmed by manpower. They want it wide, we want it narrow. That is the whole point of the mines. To narrow it. I really need some of the drugs you are on. THEY ARE NOT UNDETECTED. THEY ARE THERE, AMASSED, ALL THE FUCKING TIME! There is no warning possible since they stay there. Your plan is a pipe dream. They can attack within hours whenever they want, and we had little to stop them. But the mine field reduces the battle front to lanes that MIGHT be defended. I am sure he does know about them. But assuming they do blow them, crossing a river under fire... well it is a much bigger obstacle really than the mine field. It would be a great natural barrier, except half of Seoul, millions of people are north of the river. The bad guys win big just taking that. There was never a solid battle line in Vietnam. There were few even brigade size engagements, an nothing even remotely comparable to what is across the DMZ in Korea. It literally is unique in the world. Vietnam was largely an insurgency war, and landmine's are not all that helpful in one. Except for the insurgents. In case you haven't heard, North and South Korea are STILL at war. They had a shoot out last week. Again, you show your complete and total ignorance. South Korea is FAR from a third world country. They have better infrastructure, roads, and mass transit than we do for example. They hosted the Olympics. They build ships, cars, electronics, oil derricks, etc. It is cleaner and safer than the US. And it is not a place where Americans WERE stationed, but one where they ARE stationed. I don't want our troops to be a speed bump. I don't have to imagine what happens when people are blown up. I have seen it. It is terrible. But read a little bit about North Korea before you post again, compare him to Bush for example. You you might see that the very real concern you have pales against what North Korea is capable of doing. It pales against what happens every single day in North Korea. I can't think of a single place in the world more evil, through and through. Tom B

No they weren't. In general, people buy as much house as they are allowed. All that lowering interest rates does is change the ratio of interest and principle. They are still going to max out the combined total of the two. With higher interest rates they would have bought a less expensive house, yes, but their total payment remains the same because interest is higher, so nothing changes in loan risk. What sent it to hell was Congress "encouraging" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite very questionable loans, setting the new industry standard. They were hell bent to make sure everyone could have the American dream of home ownership. The bottom line is that many people are not responsible enough to handle it. That old standard of 20% down separated who was and who wasn't. Under the new rules you didn't need savings or a down payment, you didn't have to prove you could pay it back. 17% of those who took sub prime loans never made their FIRST payment. Tell me how interest rates did anything, since they never paid any? They raised the percentage of income one could have in debt payment. The big killer was underwriting balloon loans, for people who had no chance of ever being able to make the the balloon payments. You said we need big government to protect us from ourselves? Maybe. But the traditional rules to get a home loan worked just fine for decades. Erasing them put us in this mess. Tom B

Well then I defer to your superior powers. This must be Obama's economy after all. Yes the president makes a budget request, which Congress ignores and puts in whatever they want. Yes, the president has veto authority. Congress got smart and now send an omnibus bill, generally late, and if the president vetos it he shuts down the government and makes one hell of a mess. Give him a line item veto, and I will grant that one. The President doesn't have unilateral war powers. Congress must fund it. Every year. And Congress has funded both wars all the way through. Tax laws he signs indeed, the ones congress gives him. Did Congress give Bush the tax laws he wanted? No. Tom B

I'm not talking about taxes. Didn't your insurance premium go up at all during last 10 years beyond switching the age group? Then you're lucky, as according to statistics average premium went up 219% during last ten years. I know you are not talking taxes, that is the problem. Your share of the national health care bill is what you pay for medical care (directly or with insurance) PLUS what you pay in taxes for other peoples care. If you only look at insurance costs it might look great, but you are only seeing part of the costs of the new system. If your insurance costs go down $1,000, but your taxes go up $2,000, you have not saved $1,000, instead you lost that much. None of this bill addresses the root problem. That is the actual cost of delivering health care. Not the bills, but the delivery cost. All we are doing is smearing the bills around differently, and on a national policy level, that accomplishes nothing. But if you don't pay taxes, it must look great. Because you push your share off on other people to pay. Tom B

The cost saving goes from the fact that treating sore throat in ER is much more expensive than threating it in doctor's office or urgent care clinic. At this moment those have no other options where to go. This is an example of why we score so badly in math. While the bill you speak of is much higher, the actual COST of treating a cold in an ER is only marginally different than in an urgent care clinic. The doctor and nurses are paid about the same, as are the instruments, drugs, etc. Only the bill is different, because of all the overhead burden included in it. But guess what. That overhead still must be paid for when you pull all of the non emergency cases out of the ER. It will show up somehow, somewhere, and we still must pay it, lest the hospital go bankrupt. I agree we need to move those cases out of the ER, but we need to stop kidding ourselves about the great savings it will bring, as they just are not there. Tom B

The North Koreans, like us, have war exercises. Assuming one per year, they have done it more than fifty times. How many times should we have followed your suggestion, and when we saw them moving more troops to the DMZ, bombed the shit out of them? Do you see the problem with your plan? But an even bigger problem with your plan is that even when they are not running exercises, they keep 75% of their 1.2 million man military right on the DMZ. They don't have to move forces to attack, and I am told that military experts believe they can launch an attack four hours from Kim Jong-il's order. Given that they have practiced exactly that for fifty years, I would not be surprised. Nothing about your plan will work. Nothing. Just to placate fear-driven politics? Do you understand just how great a danger North Korea is? By every measure I know of, Kim Jong-il is dangerously insane. He rules North Korea with an absolute iron fist. Their entire government simply doesn't give a damn about humanity. To keep their 1.2 million man army at full readiness, they let millions of people starve to death in the last decade. 75% of their army is always at the DMZ, so there is virtually no warning if they decide to attack. The US has never endured had an attack of that scale, in any war. The closest modern comparison is when China attacked us in Korea with 300,000, and they pushed us back nearly two hundred miles. And that was during a war, when we had forces fully in the field, completely ready for battle. Your belief that we could turn it back with Desert Storm like bombing is a joke. Without the land mines, they can attack with a one million man force spread out across the entire 155 mile DMZ. It seems very likely that they could be in Seoul in a day, far sooner than we could move assets there. If you want to assess how seriously the South Koreans take that threat, every bridge across the Han River, which runs through Seoul is equipped to be quickly and easily blown. With the mine field, they must slow to clear lanes through it. This bunches up their forces in small areas, making them far easier to attack with our air and artillery assets. The mine field greatly reduces the battle front. It also gives us much more time to use air power on them. You are right that the mines kill many people there. But if they reduced the chance of war there even just 1%, it is one of the best deals a military force has ever made. By far. Read up on how the North Koreans behaved the last time they crossed into South Korea. They made Hitler look like a pansy. Tom B

I had to question at least some of the language when I discoverd that in animal sacrifice, some of the best parts went to to the guys that wrote the rules of how to do it. In modern politics we would call that a conflict of interest. Tom B

I was one of those kids raised by the village. The largest force in my life was an uncle who was a Methodist minister and civil rights worker. I still live to his view of the bible. He taught me to focus on the stories, the intent of the stories, and not get worked up over the language of individual verses. That worked pretty well, and generally lets you avoid a LOT misdirection and confusion. I don't know how one can reconcile a belief that every word and verse is fact, since the apostles wrote slightly different versions of the same events. Tom B

Personally, I don't think a President is the major driver of the economy, good or bad. I don't give Reagan most of the credit, or Bush most of the blame. Our present financial mess was initiated by the housing mess. And much of it was caused by a handful of Democrats in the House and Senate, putting absurd rules in place through Fredie Mac and Ginnie May, including no down payments, loans to anyone without credit checks or the ability to repay, allowing interest only or balloon payment mortgages, etc. And I don't let Republicans off the hook, as they sat on the same committees, in fact they led them. So long as they got their pork projects, anything the Dems wanted to add so that everyone could have a house they could not afford was fine with them. But mainly I believe the American economic troubles were driven by a public that wanted it all, the big house they could not afford, the new car, make that multiple cars, the boat and RV, the $100K in credit card debt, and a negative savings rate. We do want it all and we want it now. In 1955 the typical new home was 1,100 square feet, with the family having more than three kids. They saved up until they had a 20% or greater down payment. In recent years, every newly wed young couple I knew was buying a 3,000 square foot house, 100% financed, and then they financed the furniture to go in it. And the cruise, not to mention the $50K wedding. Add to that American company management that outsourced most of its manufacturing. GE and Wallmart literally created China as a major manufacturing nation. Those who said we could have a "service economy" and do well on it were nuts. The prime way to create wealth is to turn raw materials into something valuable. We used to do a lot of that. Today we have largely service industries that merely spread existing wealth around. Sooner or later you run out of national accumulated wealth to spread around. It is quite the mess. Tom B

The law requires that you go through an FFL except in a few special cases. I use a friend who has an FFL. He charges $20 pluse shipping cost. I used to have my own, but the hassles just got to big during the Clinton years. And with me formerly having an FFL, I can't claim ignorance of the law. Many people ship them with no problems. But the one method I would absolutely NOT use is the Post Office. Should your package get opened somehow, they seem the ones most likely to turn it into an official action. And if memory serves, there are much greater penalties associated with illegally using the US Post Office in general. Tom B

- by cutting down the number of people who go to ER and do not pay, therefore having someone else (you and me) paying for it through increased premiums; It doesn't cut costs at all, for those of us who earn enough to pay taxes. At best it just changes the mechanisim of how we pay for it. Today we pay for the poor's medical expenses through our insurance cost. Tomorrow it willl be paid via our income taxes. Either way, we are going to pay for health care of the poor. But remember, most people's employers pay the majority of insurance costs. They don't pay your income taxes. This bill may end up shifting payment for the poor, from companies to us. I strongly disagree with that one. While that is the bill's intent, I believe the language of the bill could do exactly the opposite. Here is the math that explains why. Today, people pay $12,000 or so per year for a full family plan. Few healthy families have even 1/4th that in medical costs, but purchase insurance because it mitigates the huge financial risk of a major illness down the road. But under the new law, insurance companies will be required to cover pre-existing conditions. This removes any risk in not purchasing insurance. So with the new law, you can safely elect to forgo insurance, and pay your on medical costs. For most healthy families this is no more than $3,000 per year. Add to that the $750 fine for not buying insurance. You annual cost drops from $12,000 (plus deductable, plue co-pay, etc.) all the way down to $3,750. If this law passes with the pre-existing condition language, and only a $750 fine, healthy people will be nuts to purchase insurance untill they have an expensive illness. If many people do that, the insurance companies will go bust. The only income source they have to pay the really expensive cases, is with healthy people buying the $12,000 insurance. I have company funded insurance. But if I paid for my own, the first thing I would do after this bill passes is to cancel my health insurance. I would save a lot of money. So would most. Tom B

Yeah. What's 500 hundred or so years? A mere trifling! And again, you just can't confuse those "Christmas" trees with any Germanic pagan holidays celebrating the winter solstice. I mean, you'd have to be nuts to connect those two. What would you call 500 years, when compared to Christ being born some 2,000 years or so ago. I used "relatively" to soften the word modern, so as to not confuse it with more recent events. I fully admit to not knowing the exact period the trees came from. But then I don't have any reason to care one way or the other. I am an engineer, not a linguist. And I absolutly am not expert in Christanity. Tom B

Well for starters, I never claimed to be a "helluva Christian". In fact I don't think I ever said I was Christian at all. I find it very sad that Christmas has become a commercial extravaganza of gifts and a tree. But lets not pretend that it hasn't become exactly that in very large numbers. Do you live in America? If so, unless you have the senses of Helen Keller, then you could not have missed the events of today, Black Friday. If this is not about putting shit under a tree, then what is it? I ask because I don't know of any biblical justification for it, and am pretty sure that anyone could come up with several biblical points against it. Tom B

Really? People go to stores to spend incredible amounts of money and put gifts under a Hanukkah tree? I didn't know that. My Jewish best friend doesn't know that either I suspect. Do you think the presents originated with Christianity? Do you think the tree originated with Christianity? Nice baiting question. The tree is a relatively modern addition to it. I have never thought about presents other than the practice started by the Santa Claus guy in... Holland? I forget where he was from. Most people probably relate it to the three wise men I guess. But frankly, the shopping crusades we go on are just about as far removed from the ideals of Christanity as a non-criminal can get. But that was my point. We have this annual spending event we call Christmas, and stores spend a fortune in advertising to get customers in the stores to Christmas shop, and people want them to not say Merry Christmas? That is nuts on a practical level, having absolutely nothing to do with Christanity. Hell I have several Jewish friends, and most of them have a Christmas tree and give presents. What Americans in large numbers call Christmas is pretty far removed from Christanity. Tom B

First, do you realize how many times the North Koreans have massed troops on the border? Which time should be have bombed the hell out of them? How many times would we push forces there to stand ready. It is handy to use the Desert Storm example, but it took many months to get those forces there, both times, and Sadam just sat on is butt and waited. What if the North Koreans don't? Despite your info sources, mines remain a key way to defend an area. And since we don't plan to invade North Korea or Cuba (you guys forgot Gitmo) there should be little reason for us to be wandering across either's minefield. And the DMZ is NOT a few randomly scattered mines. They are arrayed miles deep in places, across the whole DMZ. You can't stop the bad guys from clearly a few small lanes across, but you can make it exciting when they use them, with our air and artillery assets. Mines reduce the actual battle front significantly, and work to a smaller defending forces great advantage. But Korea and Gitmo are the only to places we have this situation. Our combined forces already in Korea are by no means large enough to stop an invasion by the North, unless we are willing to use Nukes. Our guys that used to be on the DMZ consided themselves as no more than a speed bump on the North's drive to take Seoul, especially now that we have dumped our chemical munitions, the prime tools for area denial. I have been in the Korean DMZ, and I have worked clearing impact areas and bombing ranges of unexploded which is more difficult than minefields in the sense that ordnance there can be at much greater depths. But I don't deny it would be very difficult to clear the DMZ. As bad as the Korean loss of life was and remains, it is a cheap price if they prevented an invasion by the North, even if it was turned back as you state. Tom B

Not exactly. Easter is based on the Jewish Passover, and Passover is based on the lunar calander as you describe. I am guessing that when they started observing Passover, the moon was the best calendar most of them had. It makes as much In a similar fashion, some doctors proposed that women in India base their bith control pills cycle on on the phase of the moon. Full moon crazy could take on a whole new meaning if they had actually done that. Tom B

That's a pretty poor attempt to trivialise any genuine problems and vilations that actually do occur. Really? If it is just trivia, then why do they file lawsuits about nativity scenes that piss off the great majority of the population? And why would they try to block Boy Scouts from meeting in schools on religious grounds. And why did they push my school district to not accept Sunday rentals of our building on constitutional grounds. Apparently trivia is the sole reason for many of them to exist. Tom B

Really? People go to stores to spend incredible amounts of money and put gifts under a Hanukkah tree? I didn't know that. My Jewish best friend doesn't know that either I suspect. Tom B

Do you just make this crap up as you go along Bill? The long list reasons our founders declared independence are explicitly defined in the Declaration of Independence's, also known as their charges against King George. NONE of them are because England was a church state or imposed a religion. While they do have an "official" religion in England, the Protestant Reformation ended in 1648, with the conclusion of the Thirty Years War. That ended the issue for England. You can find our founders long list of real concerns at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence#Text >Will it really hurt you to drive quietly past that nativity scene on your >way to a seasonal shopping extravaganza? As long as there can be a Ramadan tribute and Diwali display on the same corner, no problem. Well we are not permitted to have a nativity scene. The courts do require us to have a KKK white cross display this time of year, but a nativity scene, that is just way too frightening I guess. Tom B

This isn't about allowing individuals to express their religious beliefs. It's about the government being prohibited from imposing religion on the people. You can pray all you want to whatever you want, but the government is not permitted to force you to pray. Perhaps you can explain how having a historical nativity scene in the town square forces you pray? I got news for you. The KKK putting up a display every year in downtown Cincinnati doesn't force me to be a racist. And a menorah there doesn't make me want to wear a yarmulke. So long as no public money is spent on it, what is the big concern? Or perhaps you can help me understand the pressure placed on stores a few years ago to say "Happy Holidays" instead of Merry Christmas. The holiday IS Christmas. That is why people are doing all the damn spending. Exactly how do any of these force you to do anything, except laugh at our stupidity. I am a elected school board member. There is no way in hell I would permit our staff to force students to pray, or even lead prayer. But even at the most extreme example, I have never seen a government force anyone to pray, only expecting that those present observe a bit of respectful silence as people do pray, and THAT is illegal already. Some idiots are now trying to force schools to not permit Boy Scouts to meet in their buildings, as they are a religious body, and they blocked our district from earning needed income by renting out the building on Sundays to a church. Somehow that violated their view of governments acting as a religious body. This has gone so far beyond your being forced to pray that it is way beyond absurd. Tom B

I have been on several 100 ways... I don't see how your rant is applies unless those people who went low said they would not go low because they were told it was wrong to do and then did go low just for kicks. Yes, the ones who loudly bitch about the long dirt dives and planning are never the ones who miss their assigned slots, go low, or fly all over the sky, disrupting the planned break off strategy. No, that would never happen in skydiving. As for "rant", the form of cynical humor obviously seems foreign to you. Perhaps laxitives would help your mood. Tom B