funjumper101

The righties still don't have anything to say. Why is this so hard to answer? Does it make your heads hurt to think in realistic terms? The question is - Do you support raising taxes to provide the best possible medical care for the veterans of the events in Afghanistan and the Iraq invasion and occupation? A YES or NO answer. YES = We should raise taxes specifically for the care of the veterans from the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. NO = We should not raise taxes specifically for the care of the veterans from the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. Either you are willing to support he troops, for real, or you are not. Which is it? Put your money where your mouth is, one way or the other. I suggest a 5 cent per gallon fuel tax for all petroleum based fuels. That seems very appropriate as the pain will be shared by everyone.

Excellent!! Maybe the liberals that like "gun control" will start to get a clue. I think that every US citizen should be required to learn how to safely shoot a rifle and a pistol, and how to clean them when they are done. If the mystery is removed, the fear goes away. We should implement the Swiss model of civil defense. Adult males should own at least one firearm, keep a stock of usable ammunition, and be required to maintain proficiency in target shooting. Adult women should have the option to participate, if they want to. Use of a gun in the commission of a crime should be a mandatory 10 year sentence, with no possibilty of parole, on top of any other charges. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. Guns are just one of the tools that can be used to do it. This is no joke. I honestly feel this way. The Second Amendment is pretty clear on the matter. The language is clear, in context of the rest of the Bill of Rights. The NRA's analysis of intent is spot on. "Consent of the governed" only works if the people have the means to resist. It is the difference between "citizens" and "subjects".

Toyota Motor Company has pioneered gas/electric hybrid technology. The early models sold in Japan and the Prius line sold in the USA were sold at prices far below the cost to manufacture them. They didn't even attempt to amortize the development costs, never mind the manufacturing costs. Now why would a company do that? Because Japanese business culture takes a very long view of the business cycle. TMC put the technology into the real world with tens of thousand of units sold at a loss. The lessons learned by this wide scale testing have been incorporated into the later models. I am sure that in the long run, TMC is going to make bank on the technology. A fine example of how to run a huge corporation. Use current profits to bankroll R&D expenses and invest in cutting edge technology. A very smart way to grow your business, long term. The US view of the business cycle is completely different. If you can't make a profit RIGHT NOW, it isn't worth the investment, long term. Wall Steet wants continual growth in quarterly profits. They don't much care about long term R&D investments. If GM had continued to develop the EV1, battery technology, etc, I'll bet that electric cars would be much farther along in the development cycle than they are now. We give the oil companies tax incentives for exploration and development. Similar benefits would work well for auto makers.

Fuel cost about the same in 2000 as it does now, if you use any other currency besides the US dollar. As shrubco has managed the largest spree of borrowing the world has ever seen, the value of the dollar has dropped like a stone. The reason that Iraq was invaded and occupied is that Saddam Hussien was going to start selling oil for euros. There is NO WAY the US would allow that. The dollar has been propped up for decades due to the oil market using dollars as the currency for oil. The demand from China and India is skyrocketing, Their economies have been built on the backs of the US economy. For short term corporate profit we sent manufacturing overseas. Labor cost were less. Now we are sending tech and customer service jobs overseas. The war on the middle class has been executed to perfection by the rescums. Pretty soon there will be really rich folks, and really poor folks. The rescums are very proud of this acheivement.

With the economy cratering in, recruitment is sure to become much easier. Anyone joining the military at this point knows that they are VERY likely to go to Iraq. The standards had to be relaxed to come close to meeting the recruitment targets. If we are going to keep the occupation of Iraq going, the draft needs to start back up ASAP. We already have a back door draft (stop loss). We need to make shrub's middle eastern adventure a lot more painful for the upper middle class and the rich. When their kids start coming home maimed or in body bags, we would be out of there PDQ. This will never happen. The rich are pulling all the strings nowadays. They have no sense of responsibilty to this country anymore. For those kind, there is no longer any honor is serving your country. Only the poor folks do that kind of work.

What a load of crap. The correct statement is "There are two political parties that loves having judges "fix" what THEY see as wrong." Judicial activism is bad only when it gores YOUR sacred cow. If it gores the other guy's sacred cow the response is "The judges/courts got it right this time." It works both ways and you know it. Be honest enough to admit it. The reactionary content of my posts in this forum are DIRECTLY the result of the rescumlicans complete and utter disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution, as shown since 1980. I don't much care for ANY of the current crop of politicians. I used to be conservative to the core. Then I figured out that the supposedly religious right wing whackos have perverted the system in the most foul and disgusting way. The sheeple are content to let it happen. shrub didn't win the election in 2000 and he didn't win in 2004. The evidence against the rescums WRT to voter fraud, vote caging, etc, etc is overwhelming. The right wing controlled media spin machine keeps feeding the people bullshit. They eagerly lap it up as though it is manna from heaven. This country is spinning down the toilet at high speed. And the righties are very proud of it. Scumbags, through and through. I stand by my assessment of Stevens. He is not worthy of respect for sticking by precedent instead of what he really thinks. A chickenshit reaction.

Good Job! Thanks for saving her. She looks like a sweetheart. I suggest that you name her Lucky.

He don't know me very well, do he? Professor - you know me better than that. In other words, he did what a judge is supposed to do. Stevens DID say that he thinks killing people is wrong. But his job is NOT to decide whether it is right or wrong - that is a political question. His job is to determine whether the method was constitutional. Despite his personal issues with it, he decided according to the Constitution. The past judges have all found it Constitutional. And while the views of society has changed, the Constitution - and the views redaring it - have not. We can't have judges nullifying things just because they don't like them. He said he doesn't like it but that's not enough. How do you square that position with precedents like the Dred Scott decision and Plessy v. Ferguson? The precedent set in the Dred Scott decision was never overruled. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments resolved the issue. The precedent still stands. In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that "seperate but equal" facilities were constitutional. Another example of precedent being flat out wrong. It took 58 years for that one to begin to be corrected. The only first world country that has capital punishment is the USA. It is pathetic that the country that is supposedly the harbinger of freedom for the world is so backwards on this issue. Civilized countries do not execute their citizens. Cynthia Sommer might have something to say about prosecutorial errors. There have been a lot of folks who were on death row that have been exonerated by DNA testing. How many innocent people have been executed? I completely disagree that Stevens deserves respect for his blind adherence to precedent. To me, it shows a profound lack of character on his part. He knows what is right, but does nothing to make changes.

I find the site's use of somewhat opposing viewpoints refreshingly honest. YMMV McCain is a nutjob. He is against general aviation. He has serious medical issues that he won't disclose. A vicious and nasty temper in private is one thing. An inability to control that temper in public, is downright scary for a person in his position. Did you watch the clip regarding Delores Alfond? Track down the audio of him going off on Phil Boyer, president of the AOPA. He ends up foaming at the mouth when Boyer won't have any of his bully tactics and sticks to the facts at hand. When the real campaign starts, I hope that video clips from McCain's temper tantrums is used by the opposition. He is a douchebag, through and through. I don't like any of the candidates. Obama is the best of the bad choices available. Pretty much like most elections. NO FUCKING WAY will I vote rescum ever again. The Reagan years did it for me. I lived through them as an adult, so I don't buy ANY of the revisionist history shit that is popular nowadays. Reagan didn't win the cold war or any of the other crap the rescums market to the credulous. It all is a load of crap. His adminstration was a pack of criminals. They set the tone for shrubco. And the sheeple let it all happen.

Both my trucks have trailer hitches and ball mounts. I have been hit once. A low speed hit by someone who was tailgating. As you describe, the ball mount does a lot of damage. Their car left on the back of a tow truck. My truck didn't have a scratch. I pull my boat and I haul the garbage/recycling bins down to where they get picked up. Even if I didn't need them I would leave them on anyway. I like having a "radiator killer" on the back of my rides. It helps keep the tailgaters away. WRT to repairing the BMW, follow the advice of the BMW dealer. Use the shop they recommend. The advice regarding injuries is excellent. Go see your MD and get checked out. Many times neck and back pain takes a while to kick in after a rear end collision. The insurance company should be on the hook for all costs, including a comparable rental car (don't settle for a sub-compact) and any other expenses incurred. If they get wind of the medical stuff, they'll bend over backwards to make you happy. By having medical records related to the accident, you greatly increase your leverage.

McCain was subjected to 5 ½ years of Soviet driven "brain perversion techniques." Is he fit to be President and Commander in Chief of the military? U.S. Veteran Dispatch By Ted Sampley March, 2008 For years, the mainstream news media has refused to stop idolizing the so-called straight talking maverick John McCain long enough to question the mental health consequences of the years he spent as a "special" prisoner of the communists in North Vietnam. McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate for President, who could one day have his finger on the "red button," claims the communists subjected him to 5 ½ years of nonstop indoctrination sessions so intense that he attempted suicide. Unfortunately for McCain, after his bomber was hit by anti-aircraft fire near Hanoi on October 26, 1967, he parachuted into the hands of an evil communist enemy who 7 years earlier had adopted Soviet methods of prisoner interrogation. At that time, the Soviets were perfecting techniques designed "to put a man's mind into a fog so that he will mistake what is true for what is untrue, what is right for what is wrong, and come to believe what did not happen actually had happened." Psychiatric Journals are flush with reports concluding that former POWs may remain entangled in "harsh psychological battles" with themselves for decades after returning home including difficulty in controlling intense emotions such as anger and stress. In political circles, McCain, sometimes referred to as "insane McCain," is well known for having a "volcanic" temper which his colleagues say often erupts into vulgar language and personal insults. Democrat Paul Johnson, the former mayor of Phoenix, experienced McCain's in-your-face temperament up close. "His volatility borders in the area of being unstable," Johnson said. "Before I let this guy put his finger on the button, I would have to give considerable pause." The Journal of America Medicine reported in an 1996 article that being a former POW is associated with "increased cumulative incidence rates of chronic disorders of the peripheral nervous system, joints, and back and an increased hazard rate of peptic ulcer." The 71 year-old McCain most certainly suffers pain and the weakening effects of chronic arthritis. He broke both arms when he was forced to eject after his bomber was hit. He says the Vietnamese periodically re-fractured his bones during years of interrogation and torture which rendered him permanently incapable of raising his arms above his head. McCain has never been publicly vetted about what and how much medications he is taking. Aside from his anger and arthritic pain issues, McCain has had reoccurring bouts of malignant melanoma, a deadly form of cancer that can spread quickly throughout the body. These facts alone beg the question on how a President McCain, in the absence of his campaign staff handlers, would deal with a snap decision that had to be made "if the White House phone rang at 3 a.m." McCain's POW experience is unique. His communist captors considered him the "crown prince" of U.S. POWs because his father, Adm. John McCain, was commander of all U.S. forces fighting in Vietnam. Because the communists believed he was from a "royal family" and would when finally released return to the United States to an important military or government job, they held him for two years in "solitary confinement." In February, Reuters news reported that McCain's former captors are expressing delight in the news of his nomination as Republican party Presidential candidate. "In the past Senator McCain has conducted activities that had a positive impact in bringing the two nations [Vietnam/United States] closer. That is a point that Vietnamese people who follow the current affairs do recognize," said retired North Vietnamese Colonel Nguyen Van Phuong, representing retired and present members of the Vietnamese communist military. Since McCain was first elected to Congress 1982 (and later to the Senate), he and his staff have expended tens of thousands of hours pushing U.S. legislation favoring communist Vietnam. In 1995, McCain stood with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. to give President Bill Clinton valuable political cover he needed to disregard the issue of missing U.S. POWs in Vietnam and remove the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam. No U.S. POW had any communication with McCain or knew where he was being held during at least 8 to 12 months of McCain's first two years of captivity. He has either been unable or unwilling to account for the months he was missing from the POW system. Within days of McCain's shoot down and after being told the identity of his famous father, the Vietnamese rushed him to Gai Lam military hospital (U.S. government documents), a medical facility normally unavailable to treat U.S. POWs. McCain was kept at Gai Lam for six weeks under the control of Soviet medical specialist anxious to test the use of their "mind and behavior modification" drugs on such an important prisoner. McCain said the communists were so effective with their interrogation techniques that he broke on the fourth day after being captured and began cooperating. "Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I [McCain] did not cooperate. Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant." Pages 193-194, Faith of My Fathers, by John McCain. U.S. intelligence agents concluded in the early 1950s that Soviet intelligence (KGB) agents were experimenting on their prisoners with "mind control" techniques and behavior modification drugs Allen W. Dulles, the then-newly-confirmed CIA director acknowledged the dilemma in April 1953, when he told a gathering of Princeton alumni that "a sinister battle for men's minds" was underway. The Soviets, Dulles explained "have developed brain perversion techniques, some of which are so subtle and so abhorrent to our way of life that we have recoiled from facing up to them." During the Cold War, the Soviets and the CIA began competing with secret experiments on prisoners aimed at honing the use of "chemical and biological materials capable of producing human behavioral and physiological changes." The experiments included isolation, sleep deprivation, humiliation, alternating with long hours of interrogation. Since the Russians and Chinese (and our own CIA) have proven they can in a relative short time alter the basic emotional and behavior patterns of captives, it is fair to assume that McCain's unpredictable and often volatile temperament is directly related to his treatment as a 5 ½ year prisoner of the communists. The American public was first exposed to Soviet "brain perversion techniques" during Korean War when the communists launched a propaganda offensive featuring filmed and recorded testimony of captured U.S. servicemen confessing to war crimes including the use of germ warfare. By the end of the Korean War, "70 percent of the 7,190 U.S. prisoners held in China had either made confessions or signed petitions calling for an end to the American war effort in Asia. Fifteen percent collaborated fully with the Chinese, and only 5 percent steadfastly resisted." Military officials were especially alarmed when a significant number of the U.S. prisoners refused to recant their confessions as soon as they returned to the United States. Beginning in 1960, KGB and Chinese agents directed the Vietnamese in establishing Vietnam's original interrogation guidelines for U.S. prisoners. They suggested interrogation techniques and issued specific intelligence requirements to be extracted during prisoner interrogations. Official American position on POW confessions was that they were false and forced while privately expressing grave concern that the collaborations proved the communists had developed techniques that could "put a man's mind into a fog." Psychologist have identified behavior in which a former prisoner emotionally bonds with an abuser as the Stockholm Syndrome. McCain was a strong advocate for prosecuting Bosnian, Yugoslavian and Iraqi war criminals and is adamantly opposed to any form of normalized relation with Cuba until it allows "free elections, human right organizations and a free and independent media." Yet, McCain has resisted any kind of war crimes investigation of his former Vietnamese torturers. Prosecution and subsequent trials could bring to justice the Vietnamese torturers known by the American POWs as the Bug, Slopehead, the Prick, the Soft Soap Fairy, Rabbit, the Cat, Zorba and many others who were responsible for the murder in North Vietnam of at least 55 U.S. POWs and the brutal torture of hundreds of others. In November 1991, Tracy Usry, chief investigator of the Minority Staff of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, testified before the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, that the Soviets interrogated U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam. McCain became outraged, interrupting Usry several times, arguing that "none of the returned U.S. prisoners of war released by Vietnam were ever interrogated by the Soviets." Former KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin testified during the hearings that the KGB did interrogate U.S. POWs in Vietnam. Kalugin stated that one of the POWs worked on by the KGB was a "high-ranking naval officer," who, according to Kalugin, agreed to work with the Soviets upon his repatriation to the United States and has frequently appeared on U.S. television. Col. Bui Tin, a former Senior Colonel in the North Vietnamese Army, testified on the same day, but after Usry, that because of his high position in the Communist Party during the war he had the authority to "read all documents and secret telegrams from the politburo" pertaining to American prisoners of war. He said that not only did the Soviets interrogate some American prisoners of war, but that they treated the Americans very badly. McCain stunned onlookers at the hearing when he moved to the witness table and physically embraced Col. Tin as if he was a long, lost brother. In 1949 Dr. Andrew Salter authored Conditioned Reflex Therapy, a pioneering work in the field of psychoanalysis. Ten years later, as Richard Condon was writing The Manchurian Candidate, he asked Dr. Salter to help "design" the brainwashed character for the book and subsequent movie. More than 40 years later, in 1992, during the C-SPAN broadcasts of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, Dr. Salter watched the hearings from his New York City apartment. Salter became fascinated with McCain's overly aggressive and angry behavior toward witnesses, especially family members of men still missing in action. After a few hours he called a friend telling her, "the signs are all there, I'm afraid Senator John McCain has been brainwashed." During the Senate Select hearings, McCain opposed all efforts by the POW/MIA families and activists to have the Select Committee expand its investigation to study how successful the Vietnamese, Soviet, Chinese and Cuban interrogation apparatuses were at exploiting American prisoners of war. News pundits have elevated McCain to "the most popular national political figure in the country" by repeatedly describing him as a "war hero" based on his refusal accept a communist offer of "early release" from captivity. What the media has carelessly refused to acknowledge is that the camp's senior ranking U.S. POW (SRO) had issued unquestionable orders that if a POW was to be released, "it would be the longest held prisoner" Because McCain was not the longest held POW, he would have faced a military court-marshal if he had accepted the offer. It is incumbent upon McCain to prove to the American people that the 5 1/2 years he spent at the mercy of communist interrogators did not leave him with mental health issues that could hinder him in making snap decisions "if the White House phone rang at 3 a.m." Is McCain taking any kind of pain or "nerve" medicines? If so, do the medicines cause emotional and physical reactions? McCain was once treated for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is said to get worse over time for former POWs, what is the status of his treatment? Does McCain still harbor stress-triggered suicidal tendencies? Where was McCain and what was happening to him during the months he was missing from the POW camp? McCain implies that he made only one propaganda broadcast for the communists, but Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers say he made over 30. How many did he make and what did he get in return? Why does McCain still deny that the Soviets were involved in the interrogation of U.S. POWs in Vietnam? Does McCain's former interrogators, the communist Vietnamese, Russians, Chinese and Cubans have anything in their secret intelligence files about his behavior as a prisoner with which they could blackmail a "President" John McCain?

Interesting web site. I just donated some $$. McCain is not fit to be a Senator, never mind CIC. Http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/index.htm

No. From what I can find on the web, it appears that the entire matter was swept under the rug as much as possible. The transcripts of the hearings were either altered or mysterious lost, depending on which source you read.

I understand your point completely. To me, the similarities do not overshadow the power of Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler's own words, as documented in the transcripts available online. I did a fair bit of reading about the McCarthy hearings many years ago. In the historical context of the times, the early part of his work was considered to be a very good thing. Only when he spun out mentally and went rabid did his reputation change. Part of my research was talking to my relatives, who were college educated adults during that period. The consensus was, he started out doing good work, but it devolved into evil. That view isn't quite the popular interpretation that appears in the history books nowadays. A good portion of my research was from reading from the collection of Time and Newsweek magazines that my aunt and uncle had. If I remember correctly, they started their subscriptions in 1946, right after they got married. It has been a while. I'll have to ask my cousins what became of the collection. The 1973 book by Jules Archer titled "The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking True Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR" is available from Amazon. The price is $10.17 with free super saver shipping. I just ordered a copy. I expect it to be fascinating reading.

This is an interesting part of US history. I had never heard of it until yesterday. I'll be doing some more reading on it. begin quoted text >>> BBC: Bush's Grandfather Planned Fascist Coup In America New investigation sheds light on clique of powerbrokers, including Prescott Bush, who sought to overthrow U.S. government and implement Hitlerian policies Paul Joseph Watson Tuesday, July 24, 2007 A BBC Radio 4 investigation sheds new light on a major subject that has received little historical attention, the conspiracy on behalf of a group of influential powerbrokers, led by Prescott Bush, to overthrow FDR and implement a fascist dictatorship in the U.S. based around the ideology of Mussolini and Hitler. In 1933, Marine Corps Maj.-Gen. Smedley Butler was approached by a wealthy and secretive group of industrialists and bankers, including Prescott Bush the current President's grandfather, who asked him to command a 500,000 strong rogue army of veterans that would help stage a coup to topple then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. According to the BBC, the plotters intended to impose a fascist takeover and "Adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression." The conspirators were operating under the umbrella of a front group called the American Liberty League, which included many families that are still household names today, including Heinz, Colgate, Birds Eye and General Motors. Butler played along with the clique to determine who was involved but later blew the whistle and identified the ringleaders in testimony given to the House Committee on un-American Activities. However, the Committee refused to even question any of the individuals named by Butler and his testimony was omitted from the record, leading to charges that they were involved in covering the matter up, and the majority of the media blackballed the story. In 1936, William Dodd, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, wrote a letter to President Roosevelt in which he stated, "A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime.... A prominent executive of one of the largest corporations, told me point blank that he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism into America if President Roosevelt continued his progressive policies. Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there. Propagandists for fascist groups try to dismiss the fascist scare. We should be aware of the symptoms. When industrialists ignore laws designed for social and economic progress they will seek recourse to a fascist state when the institutions of our government compel them to comply with the provisions." The proven record of Prescott Bush's involvement in financing the Nazi war machine dovetails with the fact that he was part of a criminal cabal that actively sought to impose a fascist coup in America. Prescott did not succeed but many would argue that two generations down the line the mission has all but been accomplished. Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H6J6Wx0t8w&feature=related Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQew4UiUmUY&feature=related Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r4RLEIFQbA&feature=related

A profound silence from the righties... pretty much says it all.

I saved this article few years ago. I haven't found anything better. I think that the state and the feds should be out of the business of marriage completely. The rights and presumptions under law that are conferred by "marriage" should be re-defined as "civil unions" for all couples, same or opposite sex. The "marriage" part of the equation involves religious and moral issues. The legal side has nothing to do with it. Begin quoted text>>> By STEPHANIE COONTZ Studying marriage over the last several years has been a lot like adjusting to marriage itself. No matter how well you think you know your partner beforehand, the first years are full of surprises, not only about your spouse but also about yourself. I have been studying family history for 30 years, but I began focusing on marriage only in the mid-1990s, when reporters and audiences started asking me if the institution of marriage was falling apart. Many of their questions seemed to assume that there had been some Golden Age of Marriage in the past. My initial response was that marriage is not undergoing an unprecedented crisis, but has always been in flux. For thousands of years, people have been proclaiming a crisis in marriage and pointing backward to better days. The ancient Greeks complained bitterly about the declining morals of wives. The Romans bemoaned high divorce rates. The European settlers in America began lamenting the decline of the family and the disobedience of women and children almost as soon as they stepped off the boats. Furthermore, many of the things people think are unprecedented in family life today are not actually new. Almost every marital and sexual arrangement we have seen in recent years, however startling it may appear, has been tried somewhere before. There have been societies and times when nonmarital sex and out-of-wedlock births were more common and widely accepted than they are today. Stepfamilies were much more numerous in the past, the result of high death rates and frequent remarriages. Even divorce rates have been higher in some regions and periods than they are in Europe and North America today. And same-sex marriage, though rare, has been sanctioned in some cultures under certain conditions. On the other hand, some things that people believe to be traditional are actually relatively recent innovations. That is the case for the "tradition" that marriage has to be licensed by the state or sanctified by the church. In ancient Rome, the difference between cohabitation and legal marriage depended solely upon the partners' intent. Even the Roman Catholic Church long held that if a man and woman said they had privately agreed to marry, whether they said those words in the kitchen or out by the haystack, they were, in fact, married. But in practice, there were many more ways to get out of a marriage in the early Middle Ages than in the early modern era. However, the current rearrangement of both married and single life is without historical precedent. When it comes to any particular marital practice or behavior, there may be nothing new under the sun. But when it comes to the overall place of marriage in society and the relationship between husbands and wives, nothing in the past is anything like what we have today, even if it may look similar at first glance. The forms, values, and arrangements of marriage are indeed changing dramatically all around the globe. Almost everywhere people worry that marriage is in crisis. But I have been intrigued to discover that people's sense of what "the marriage crisis" involves differs drastically from place to place. In the United States, policy makers worry about the large numbers of children born out of wedlock. In Germany and Japan, by contrast, many planners are more interested in increasing the total number of births, regardless of the form of the family in which the children will be raised. So while federal policy in the United States encourages abstinence-only sex-education classes, Japanese pundits lament the drop in business at Japan's rent-by-the-hour "love hotels." There are some common themes, however, under all the bewildering differences. Everywhere marriage is becoming more optional and more fragile. Everywhere the once-predictable link between marriage and child rearing is fraying. And everywhere relations between men and women are undergoing rapid and at times traumatic transformation. In fact the relations between men and women have changed more in the past 30 years than they did in the previous 3,000, and a similar transformation is occurring in the role of marriage. My effort to understand the origins and nature of that transformation forced me to change many other ideas I once had about the history of marriage. For example, like numerous historians and sociologists, I used to think that the male-breadwinner/full-time-housewife marriages depicted in 1950s and 1960s television shows like Leave It to Beaver and The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, the kinds of marriages that actually predominated in North America and Western Europe during those decades, were a short-lived historical fluke. I changed my mind. It is true that 1950s marriages were exceptional in many ways. Until that decade, relying on a single breadwinner had been rare. For thousands of years, most women and children had shared the tasks of breadwinning with men. It was not unusual for wives to "bring home the bacon" -- or at least to raise and slaughter the pig, then take it to the market to sell. In the 1950s, however, for the first time, a majority of marriages in Western Europe and North America consisted of a full-time homemaker supported by a male earner. Also new in the 1950s was the cultural consensus that everyone should marry, and that people should do so at a young age. The baby boom of the 1950s was likewise a departure from the past, because birthrates in Western Europe and North America had fallen steadily during the previous 100 years. I became convinced, however, that the 1950s Ozzie and Harriet family was not just a postwar aberration. Instead it was the culmination of a new marriage system that had been evolving for more than 150 years. I now think that there was a basic continuity from the late 18th century through the 1950s and 1960s. In the 18th century, people began to adopt the radical new idea that love should be the most fundamental reason for marriage, and that young people should be free to choose their marriage partners on that basis. The sentimentalization of the love-based marriage in the 19th century and its sexualization in the 20th each represented a logical step in the evolution of that new approach. Until the late 18th century, most societies around the world saw marriage as far too vital an economic and political institution to be left entirely to the free choice of the two individuals involved, especially if they were going to base their decision on something as unreasoning and transitory as love. The more I learned about the ancient history of marriage, the more I realized what a gigantic marital revolution had occurred in Western Europe and North America during the Enlightenment. That led me to another surprising finding: From the moment of its inception, that revolutionary new marriage system already showed signs of the instability that was to plague it at the end of the 20th century. As soon as the idea that love should be the central reason for marriage was first raised, observers of the day warned that the same values that increased people's satisfaction with marriage as a relationship had an inherent tendency to undermine the stability of marriage as an institution. The skeptics were right to worry about the dangers of the love match. After examining the gains and losses associated with the destabilization of marriage, I realized that my historical studies had taken me to the very place I have ended up in my personal life. Like many women who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, I went through a number of stages in my attitude toward marriage. As a teenager, I thought getting married meant living happily ever after. During boring classes in junior high school, I doodled hearts in my notebook, coupling my initials with those of whatever boy I currently had a crush on. I would write out my first name in front of his last, trying to see how they looked when prefixed with the magical title "Mrs." But in college, my interest in getting married took a back seat to the excitement of campus life and my involvement in the outside world. Around that time I also became more critical of my parents' marriage. My dad, whom I loved dearly and who was a wonderful father, was not a wonderful husband. He could be impatient, demanding, and occasionally condescending toward my mother (though never to his daughters). Even as a self-centered 18-year-old, I saw that when my mother finally left my father, after 19 years of marriage, there was a dramatic improvement in her self-confidence. My mother's experience, combined with a few heartbreaks of my own, made me wonder if I might be better off staying single, and my ambivalence about marriage was reinforced by the historical and anthropological research on male-female relations that I was encountering in my studies. I worried that being married would rob me of my hard-earned independent identity. When I finally decided to tie the knot, it was with enough trepidation that my husband-to-be announced to our assembled friends and families, only half in jest, that his sister would stand beside me throughout the wedding ceremony to prevent me from bolting. For the first year of marriage, the word "husband" came out of my mouth in a self-conscious stutter, as in "My huh-huh-husband will be over later." With time, however, the word began to roll easily and frequently off my tongue. For one thing, it is nice to have something less cumbersome to call my partner than my "significant other" or my "live-in boyfriend." I have also come to see the word as a public signal to friends and family that I am in a committed relationship, and as an invitation for them to take an interest in our well-being as a couple. But I doubt that I'd be as satisfied with being married if my friends and family had veto power over our parting. The historical transformation in marriage over the ages has created a similar paradox for society as a whole. Marriage has become more joyful, loving, and satisfying for many couples than ever before in history. At the same time, it has become optional and more brittle. Those two strands of change cannot be disentangled. For thousands of years, marriage served so many economic, political, and social functions that the individual needs and wishes of family members (especially women and children) took second place. Marriage was not about bringing two individuals together for love and intimacy, although that was sometimes a welcome side effect. Rather, the aim of marriage was to acquire useful in-laws and gain political or economic advantage. Only in the last 200 years, as other economic and political institutions began to take over many of the roles once played by marriage, did Europeans and Americans begin to see marriage as a personal and private relationship that should fulfill their emotional and sexual desires. But those changes had negative as well as positive implications for the stability of marriage as an institution. No sooner did the ideal of marrying for love triumph than its most enthusiastic supporters started demanding the right to divorce if love died. Once people came to believe that families should nurture children rather than exploit their labor, many began to feel that the legal consequences of illegitimacy for children were inhumane. And when people started thinking that the quality of the relationship was more important than the economic functions of the institution, some men and women argued that the committed love of two unmarried individuals, including those of the same sex, deserved at least as much social respect as a formal marriage entered into for mercenary reasons. For 150 years, four things kept people from pushing the new values about love and self-fulfillment to their ultimate conclusion that people could construct meaningful lives outside marriage, and that not everything in society had to be organized through and around married couples. The first impediment was the conviction that there were enormous and innate differences between men and women, one of which was that women had no sexual desires. That crumbled in the 1920s, as people rejected the notion of separate spheres and emphasized the importance of sexual satisfaction for women as well as men. The second thing that held back the subversive potential of the love revolution was the ability of relatives, neighbors, employers, and government to regulate personal behavior and penalize nonconformity. The influence of those individuals and institutions was eroded by urbanization, which allowed more anonymity in personal life, and the development of national corporations, banks, and other impersonal institutions that cared more about people's educational credentials and financial assets than their marital status and sexual histories. The third factor was the combination of unreliable birth control and harsh penalties for illegitimacy. Then, in the 1960s, birth control became reliable enough that the fear of pregnancy no longer constrained women's sexual conduct. And, in the 1970s, reformers abolished the legal category of illegitimacy, successfully arguing that it was unfair to penalize a child whose mother was unable or unwilling to wed. Women's legal and economic dependence on men, and men's domestic dependence on women, was the fourth factor that had long driven people to get and stay married. But during the 1970s and 1980s, women won legal autonomy and made huge strides toward economic self-sufficiency. At the same time, the proliferation of labor-saving consumer goods like permanent-press fabrics, ready-made foods, and automatic dishwashers undercut men's dependence on women's housekeeping. As those barriers to single living and personal autonomy gradually eroded, society's ability to pressure people into marrying, or keep them in a marriage against their wishes, was drastically curtailed. Today we are experiencing a historical revolution every bit as wrenching, far-reaching, and irreversible as the Industrial Revolution. Like that huge turning point, the revolution in marriage has transformed how people organize their work and interpersonal commitments, use their leisure time, understand their sexuality, and take care of children and the elderly. It has liberated some people from restrictive, inherited roles in society. But it has stripped others of traditional support systems and rules of behavior without establishing new ones. The marriage revolution has brought personal turmoil in its wake. But we cannot turn the clock back in our personal lives any more than we can go back to small-scale farming and artisan production in our economic life. It would be wonderful if we could pick and choose what historical changes we will and won't accept, but we are not that lucky. Just as many people found new sources of employment in the industrial world even after the factories had displaced old ones, many people will be able to carve out satisfying and stable marriages on a new basis. But many others will live their lives and construct their personal commitments outside marriage. Promoting good marriages is a worthwhile goal, and we can help many marriages work better than they currently do. In today's changing world, one-size-fits-all advice books and glib formulas for marital success are of little value. But sociologists and psychologists have found a few general principles that seem to help most kinds of modern marriage flourish. Because men and women no longer face the same economic and social compulsions to get or stay married as in the past, it is especially important that they begin their relationship as friends and build it on the basis of mutual respect. As men and women marry later, they come to marriage with a lot of life experience and many previously formed interests and skills. It's no longer possible to assume that two people can merge all of their interests and beliefs. Accepting differences does not mean putting up with everything a partner dishes out. It is certainly not the same thing that psychologists meant in the 1950s, when that advice was directed only at the wife. Today acceptance in a relationship must be a two-way street. And in a world where marriages are no longer held together by the compulsion of in-laws and society or the mutual dependence of two individuals who cannot do each other's jobs, continuing emotional investments in a marriage have to replace external constraints in providing ballast for the relationship. Another important principle that flows from the historical changes in marriage is that husbands have to respond positively to their wives' requests for change. That is not female favoritism or male bashing. For thousands of years, marriage was organized in ways that reinforced female subservience. Today, even though most of the legal and economic bases for a husband's authority over his wife and her deference to his needs are gone, we all have inherited unconscious habits and emotional expectations that perpetuate female disadvantage in marriage. For example, it is still true that when women marry, they typically do more housework than they did before marriage. When men marry, they do less. Women are more likely to bring up marital issues for discussion because they have more to gain from changing the traditional dynamics of marriage. In the 30 years I have been studying family life, I have read many women's diaries, written over the past 400 years. I have been struck by how often entries focused not on the joy of marriages but on wives' struggle to accept their lot. Many women did write about their love and respect for their husbands, of course, but many others filled their diaries with reminders to themselves to cultivate patience, self-restraint, and forgiveness. One woman's refrain was that her husband's behavior was "the cross I have to bear," another's, the reminder that her husband had never beaten her, and that she should "be more grateful for what I have." Men's journals dwelled less on the need to accommodate wives' shortcomings, but they, too, reflected the frustration of living in a fixed institution in which there was no sense that problems could be worked through and relationships renegotiated. What might I write if I had time to keep a daily diary? It would undoubtedly be infused by the greater sense of choice that my husband and I now have in comparison with the past. As with any marriage, there are times we have to search for patience and forbearance. But the choice to stay and work things out is a conscious one and a mutual process, not a unilateral resignation to accept the inevitable. My diary would record a lot more active delight in my daily married life than most journals of the past and a lot less talk about "resigning myself to my lot." Yet as a modern woman, I live with an undercurrent of anxiety that is absent from the diaries of earlier days. I know that if my husband and I stop negotiating, if too much time passes without any joy, or if a conflict drags on too long, neither of us has to stay with the other. What is true for individual marriages is also true for society. As a result of centuries of social change, most people in the Western world have a choice about whether or not to enter marriage and, if they do, whether or not to stay in it for the rest of their lives. Married people may be able to reach out to friends and counselors for help, and our employers and political leaders could make it easier for us to sustain our relationships by instituting family-friendly work policies and social programs to help us juggle our many roles. But the most effective support systems for married couples, like subsidized parental leaves, flexible work schedules, high-quality child care, and access to counseling when a relationship is troubled, would also make things easier for those people who are constructing relationships outside marriage. Conversely, any measures that significantly limited social support or freedom of choice for the unmarried would probably backfire on the quality of life for the married as well. We can certainly create more healthy marriages than we currently do, and we can save more marriages that are in trouble. But just as we cannot organize modern political alliances through kinship ties or put the farmers' and skilled craftsmen's households back as the centerpiece of the modern economy, we can never reinstate marriage as the primary source of commitment and caregiving in the modern world. For better or worse, we must adjust our personal expectations and social support systems to this new reality. Stephanie Coontz teaches history and family studies at Evergreen State College and is director of research and public education for the nonprofit Council on Contemporary Families. This essay has been adapted from Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage.

The medical care for these brave people is part of the three TRILLION dollar estimate of the true cost of the Iraq invasion and occupation. I would be delighted to have my taxes raised to ensure that they get the best possible care. Associated Press story >>> Some 300,000 U.S. troops are suffering from major depression or post traumatic stress from serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 320,000 received brain injuries, a new study estimates. Only about half have sought treatment, said the study released Thursday by the RAND Corporation. "There is a major health crisis facing those men and women who have served our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Terri Tanielian, the project's co-leader and a researcher at the nonprofit RAND. "Unless they receive appropriate and effective care for these mental health conditions, there will be long-term consequences for them and for the nation," she said in an interview with The Associated Press. The 500-page study is the first large-scale, private assessment of its kind — including a survey of 1,965 service members across the country, from all branches of the armed forces and including those still in the military as well veterans who have left the services. Its results appear consistent with a number of mental health reports from within the government, though the Defense Department has not released the number of people it has diagnosed or who are being treated for mental problems. The Department of Veterans Affairs said this month that its records show about 120,000 who served in the two wars and are no longer in the military have been diagnosed with mental health problems. Of the 120,000, approximately 60,000 are suffering from PTSD, the VA said. Veterans Affairs is responsible for care of service members after they have left the service, while the Defense Department covers active duty and reservist needs. The lack of information from the Pentagon was one motivation for the RAND study, Tanielian said. The most prominent and detailed military study on mental health that is released is the Army's survey of soldiers at the warfront. Officials said last month that it's most recent one, done last fall, found 18.2 percent of soldiers suffered a mental health problem such as depression, anxiety or acute stress in 2007 compared with 20.5 percent the previous year. The Rand study, completed in January, put the percentage of PTSD and depression at 18.5 percent, calculating that approximately 300,000 current and former service members were suffering from those problems at the time of its survey, which was completed in January. The figure is based on Pentagon data showing over 1.6 million military personnel have deployed to the conflicts since the war in Afghanistan began in late 2001. RAND researchers also found: _About 19 percent — or some 320,000 services members — reported that they experienced a possible traumatic brain injury while deployed. In wars where blasts from roadside bombs are prevalent, the injuries can range from mild concussions to severe head wounds. _About 7 percent reported both a probable brain injury and current PTSD or major depression. _Only 43 percent reported ever being evaluated by a physician for their head injuries. _Only 53 percent of service members with PTSD or depression sought help over the past year. _They gave various reasons for not getting help, including that they worried about the side effects of medication; believe family and friends could help them with the problem, or that they feared seeking care might damage their careers. _Rates of PTSD and major depression were highest among women and reservists. The report is titled "Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery." It was sponsored by a grant from the California Community Foundation and done by 25 researchers from RAND Health and the RAND National Security Research Division, which also has done does work under contracts with the Pentagon and other defense agencies as well as allied foreign governments and foundations.

I have never had issues with clearing my ears. I have had issues with the one or the other sinuses under my eyes. The pain can be very intense. It feels just like an icepick has been stuck into my face on one side. I got into the habit of using sudafed, aka, dry up medicine, before jumping, or before flying on the airlines. It worked fine. When I mentioned it to my doctor, he told me that it wasn't a good idea and listed off a whole bunch of reasons why. I don't remember the details, but he was pretty convincing. He recommended a product called Mucinex, which is an expectorant. It works like a champ. No problems with plugged sinuses. It doesn't make my nose run or produce any symptoms. I just don't have any more sinus issues when flying or skydiving.

The right wing media spin machine has worked overtime to trash both Demcratic candidates. McCain has been given a pass, so far. Obama's point was clumsy, but accurate. shrub's presidency has been a disaster for all but the very wealthy, from an economic perspective. The rescums are doing a great job of obscuring the real issues in the campaign. If 60 - 80% of the people want the Iraq war to end, why didn't that translate into overwhelming Democratic victories in the 2006 elections? If the economy is a major concern to the electorate, why is McCain, who has admitted that "domestic economics is not a strong point" even being considered as a viable candidate? The rescums are masters of manipulating the people into voting against their own best interests. A perfect example is the way that the rescums spun the issue of estate taxes for the very wealthy into being a "death tax" that should be abolished. The estate tax is simply a form of capital gains taxes assessed when assets move on to the heirs of the original owners. Ownership change = capital gains taxes are due. The ceiling for the tax to kick in is so high that the percentage of people affected is tiny. The rescums hold that "That money was earned and the taxes have already been paid." That spin is a complete contradiction of reality, but the sheeple buy it, hook line, and sinker. The tiny minority of the population that is affected by the estate tax has fooled the sheeple completely. If the rescums had their way, capital gains taxes would be abolished completely. Eliminating the estate tax is a step in that direction. The estate tax is also a form of social engineering. The goal was to prevent a generational aristocracy from taking root in the US. There is an argument to be made that the Ford Foundation, the Kennedy Foundation,, Bill Gate's Foundation, etc would not have come to be without the incentive of avoiding estate taxes. I don't know that I buy that argument completely, but there is some truth to it. Before anyone starts pitching a fit about using tax strategy for social engineering, consider the mortgage interest write-off for property owners. That is a classic example of tax strategy for social engineering. Encouraging people to own property is enabled by providing this wonderful tax benefit. If you are a renter, you don't get to write off any portion of the rent you pay. Social engineering at its finest.

Nice editorial from the SJ Merc News. begin quoted text>>> Poorly chosen words obscure Obama's point. "When their (the Republicans') economic policies fail, when the country's coming apart rather than coming together, what do they do? They find the most economically insecure white men and scare the living daylights out of them." - Democratic candidate Bill Clinton in 1991, as reported in the New York Times With a clumsy remark about small-town Pennsylvanians last week, presidential candidate Barack Obama gave opponent Hillary Clinton another chance to tear him down. And he gave Republicans another chance to avoid a critical issue in this campaign: the financial plight of too many Americans after eight years of tax cuts for the wealthy, stagnant incomes for the middle class, a trillion-dollar war and now a recession. Like Bill Clinton before him, Obama was alluding to the culture wars and scapegoating that divert attention from real problems like the growing income gaps in a global economy. But now all attention is on whether Obama's comments were "elitist," as Republican presidential candidate John McCain called them Monday. Obama was speaking about the difficulty of persuading people that government can make things better when they haven't seen evidence of it for decades. "So it's not surprising then that they get bitter," he said, "they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." A Huffington Post blogger posted the comments, which were made at a private fund-raiser in San Francisco. Had Obama been speaking to folks in Scranton, he might have chosen words more carefully: perhaps "frustrated" instead of "bitter," and "seek solace in" instead of "cling to" religion. Republicans are gleeful. Characterizing (wine-sipping, wind-surfing) Democrats as snobs out of touch with heartland values is a chapter from their dog-eared playbook. Now Obama has fallen into the trap, and the other Clinton in this race is shoveling in the dirt. Shame on her. Obama is essentially saying the same thing Bill Clinton said when he was running against President George Bush amid a recession 17 years ago. In every presidential election, Republicans have championed "family" values and hot-button issues like gun rights to divert attention from corporate giveaways, the health care crisis and rising costs of college. Hillary Clinton, McCain and 24/7 TV analysts have feasted on Obama's poor phrasing and retreated to platitudes about the virtues of the heartland. On Monday, McCain praised "a generation that made the world safe for democracy." But as for that generation's grandchildren, working two jobs in Wilkes Barre without health insurance, no mention. As for millions of Americans facing bankruptcy, McCain at first rejected help, only relenting after he was characterized as coldhearted. Hillary Clinton could have picked up where Obama faltered and talked straight, as her husband did. Instead, she dredged up her target-shooting days with her Dad, and added Monday, "I don't think he (Obama) really gets it that people are looking for a president who stands up for you and not looks down on you." As he did with race, Obama must talk frankly to rust-belt voters about the real reasons for tough times and the hard road ahead to economic recovery. Only this time, he must choose his words wisely.

Don Balch was my FJC instructor on May 7, 1983. He was running the Falcon Parachute School at Eagle Field in South Dos Palos, CA near Los Banos. I still have the ribbon from the class. My first couple jumps were on a 35' round canopy. I have pictures to prove it. He was quite an animated instructor. He scared the crap out of one student with shouted "How are you going to pull that handle!!!". The correct answer was a shouted "Like my life depends on it!!!". An Iranian dude in the class got up, walked out of the class, hopped in a nice Porshe 911, and took off. He didn't even try to get a refund. The rest of the class was too stunned to say anything. Once the beer started flowing after the jumping, the incident became quite funny. Eagle Field was quite an interesting DZ. Lots of funny shit happened there. When the DZ was forced to move (if you don't pay the rent, you get booted off the airport) one of the porta-potties met its end with a huge explosion. Mendota didn't have the same vibe. It was too close to town and there was no hot tub. Last I heard, Don was still with Robin and was breeding dogs of some sort. Is he still around?

Do you actually think Bush didn't want his vacation "interfered with" over 9/11? If so, then you are amongst the ranks of the MOST severely blind. Contempt for Bush is one thing, but that sort of view is no less than bizarre. The following PDB doesn't seem to have provoked much interest from shrub. There is some question as to whether or not it was actually presented to him, as he was on vacation at time. News reports prior to 9/11 indicate that shrub didn't like having his vacation disrupted by staff bugging him about things that weren't especially important. shrub certainly knows the difference between important and not so important stuff. He broke away from a vacation to rush back to Washington to sign the emergency bill to prevent Terry Schiavo's feeding tube from being removed. That was a really critical issue, compared to a PDB titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US". Begin quoted text >>> The following is a transcript of the August 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing entitled Bin Laden determined to strike in US. Parts of the original document were not made public by the White House for security reasons. Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America." After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a -- -- service. An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told - - service at the same time that bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative's access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike. The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of bin Laden's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the U.S. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that in ---, Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own U.S. attack. Ressam says bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation. Although Bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Laden associates surveyed our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997. Al Qaeda members -- including some who are U.S. citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were U.S. citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s. A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks. We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ---- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists. Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York. The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

Why was I expecting that answer? Why would you expect anything else? If I did have first hand details of succesful covert operations, I certainly wouldn't post them in a public forum. I have heard a small bit of first hand info, discussed between relatives with similar backgrounds. Their individual activites took place about 30 years apart. When they figured out there were people listening, they shut up PDQ. I would have liked to have heard more. Funny how you didn't contest the rest of the content of the post. Maybe you know more about recent history than it seems.

You don't need any special jumpsuit or equipment to skydive without a parachute. You won't survive the landing, but the skydive will be fine, right up until impact. Every aircraft ever built can land in the water. You have to have special equipment or design to prevent damage to the aircraft and have the ability to take off again...