Nightingale

we have too many restrictions about who can serve in our military for that to ever work.

well, if you count baking, mine would be frosted sugar cookies. I make damn good sugar cookies.

Wouldn't fertilizer fall under the chemical category?

I almost walked out of the movie, and I LOVE movies (was a film/screenwriting major). Because the movie was so incredibly bad, I never bothered to pick up the book. should I?

There's no problem with a country knowing who's coming over its borders. However, right now, immigration is a lengthy and uncertain process. Saying "let them apply legally" doesn't always work in many situations. Someone who wants to immigrate is stuck entering a lottery that only takes 50K people per year, unless they have family here or specific categories of work already lined up, or have special talents: Persons of extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics. Outstanding professors and researchers with at least three years experience in teaching or research, who are recognized internationally. Certain executives and managers who have been employed at least one of the three preceding years by the overseas affiliate, parent, subsidiary, or branch of the U.S. employer. Professionals Holding Advanced Degrees, or Persons of Exceptional Ability in the Arts, Sciences, or Business. Professionals holding an advanced degree (beyond a baccalaureate degree), or a baccalaureate degree and at least five years progressive experience in the profession Persons with exceptional ability in the arts, sciences, or business. Exceptional ability means having a degree of expertise significantly above that ordinarily encountered within the field. Skilled Workers, Professionals Holding Baccalaureate Degrees. Skilled workers are persons capable of performing a job requiring at least two years'' training or experience Religious workers and members of the US armed forces Employment Creation Investors: To qualify, an alien must invest between U.S. $500,000 and $1,000,000, depending on the employment rate in the geographical area, in a commercial enterprise in the United States which creates at least 10 new full-time jobs for U.S. citizens, permanent resident aliens, or other lawful immigrants, not including the investor and his or her family. People from the countries listed below are not allowed to enter the lottery. CANADA, CHINA (mainland-born), COLOMBIA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, EL SALVADOR, HAITI, INDIA, JAMAICA, MEXICO, PAKISTAN, PHILIPPINES, POLAND, RUSSIA, SOUTH KOREA, UNITED KINGDOM (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, VIETNAM Most of our immigrants come from the above countries. If someone doesn't have a particular job skill or family here, they're screwed. They either come here illegally or not at all, and for many, the situation where they're at leaves them thinking they can't be any worse off. To curb illegal immigration we either need to make the immigration process simpler and accept more people legally, or we need to somehow fix the situation in the countries they're coming from, which may or may not be possible. If we want them to apply and come here legally, we need to make applying and coming here legally possible, because keeping them out has proven to be not possible. We simply have too much border to secure, and most Americans would really resent getting asked "papers, please" everywhere they go and being arrested if they fail to produce the required documents. I'd rather have people here and documented than here and undocumented, and those are pretty much the only options we have.

I usually go for a brushed cotton heavyweight gi. The brushed cotton is just as durable, and it's not rough like the regular cotton, so if you're doing grappling or throws, or someone's attack pulls your gi, you don't get fabric burn. This is the one I have. My old one lasted about four years of daily training before I had to patch it, and I still wear it for studio training. I bought a new one that's exactly the same for tournaments. http://www.tigerstrikekarateequipment.com/14ozbruscotu.html

Well, flying planes into the twin towers wasn't exactly chemical, biological, or nuclear. More...aeronautic?

Jus Soli - law of the soil - if you're born on our soil, you have US citizenship. Jus Sanguinus - law of the blood - if your parents were citizens, so are you. ----- Interesting how the attitudes of Americans towards immigrants seem to have shifted drastically over the last 103 years. The poem below comes to mind: Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" -"The New Colossus" Emma Lazarus, 1883

Give them as much notice as possible and compliment them and thank them for the experience you've had working there. If you regret the circumstances that are making you leave, say that too.

I'll be interested to hear the ACLU's perspective on this. They challenged the ban on displaying the confederate flag by students. I can see them challenging this as well if nobody beats them to it.

Have you seen "V for Vendetta"? I saw it last night, and it hit WAY too close to home. Interesting thing is that the graphic novel it was based on was written in 1982.

I worked in an apartment complex that switched from hardwood to pergo in kitchens. Visually, you really couldn't tell the difference, and it was easier to install, easier to clean, less maintenance, and if you dropped a big pot on pergo, it bounces, and if you drop a big pot on wood it leaves a dent.

It seems to me that with a high performance landing injury/fatality, it may be easier to explain that the jumper made an error in judgment and was injured/died under a perfectly good parachute than explain why someone didn't pull. With a high performance landing problem, we usually have a pretty good idea what happened, but with a no-pull there seems to be a lot more questions about what happened (could they reach their handles? was it a hard pull? did they just lose altitude awareness? did they do it on purpose? were they unconscious? etc...), and there seems to be a lot more speculation about whether it was a gear problem, a jumper problem, or both.

I'll check it out Mrs. President. Is there a website? Richards The website was linked in my post.

Vote libertarian. http://www.lp.org I think you'd find the party platform quite interesting.

My solution: Lose the minimum wage. It's pointless and doesn't do what it's intended to do. There's just no reason to have it. Cut all social welfare/security programs from government, and pay people back what they've paid in. If we can finance a war in Iraq, we can afford to pay people back, plus interest. We can't get rid of the programs without reimbursing the people who won't see any benefit (not that there was much benefit to begin with, but it's a show of good faith). Cut taxes as much as possible, as the government will no longer be paying for social programs that don't work. Give people up to a 50% tax credit (not a deduction, a credit.) for donations to organizations that provide food/job training/shelter/charity/medical care for people that need it. The reasons: The government wastes too much money paying people that create red tape and wasteful policies. Private organizations have been feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless a lot more efficiently, accomplishing a lot more with a lot less money (because they have people that volunteer, and because they don't have the governmental red tape and bureaucracy, and they're just more thrifty to begin with in most cases) and they're local people involved in local causes who understand the needs of the community. We just need to provide the incentives for people to donate to these charities. If people know that the money isn't going to be kept by them anyway, they might as well give it to the food/shelter/job training/medical care charity of their choice rather than to the government who will spend more money doing less of the same thing. So, people will be taken care of, charities will have more money to do it, and the government will no longer be wasting our money doing what private charities do a lot more efficiently and effectively.

I agree that $2.25 an hour won't sustain anyone. But, neither will $7 an hour here in California. They'd only be making $280 a week. That's nowhere near enough for even a studio apartment and utilities in many areas of California, nevermind transportation expenses and food and clothing and all that. If we hadn't increased the minimum wage to begin with, that $2.25 would probably buy close to what the $7 does today. The living wage argument just doesn't work, because if you give more money to the folks that are on the bottom of the economic scale, it makes everything more expensive, and the people you're trying to help aren't any better off. In a society built on capitalism you just can't have everybody earning a "living wage" because the more you increase paychecks, you increase demand, lessening supply and raising prices. Other countries have looked towards systems that are slightly more socialist, but the people there pay a much larger percentage of their income in taxes, so you pretty much have the people making more money subsidizing the people making less.

No. Increasing (or even having) minimum wage doesn't make it so people can survive. It just makes everything more expensive. Example: Farmer hires 8 workers at $7.50 an hour. If those employees work picking strawberries 40 hours a week, he's paying them $2320.00 overall. If they each pick two flats of strawberries (16 baskets) a day, the farmer would have to charge $20.71 for each of those flats to break even just on what he's paying the workers. That's not counting all his other business expenses, insurance, etc. Farmer hires 8 workers at $2.25 an hour. Given the same info as above, he's now paying out $720.00 a week. Now, to break even on what he's paying the workers, he'd have to charge $6.42 per flat. When you add on the farmer's insurance and such, you're still paying a reasonable price for strawberries. If the farmer pays the minimum wage, those workers have more money to spend. But, the strawberries cost a lot more. If you expand this to any farmer growing crops, all your fruits and veggies will cost at least three times as much. So, those workers getting paid more have to spend more to buy food. Their landlord will charge them more because the landlord's gotta eat too, and his cost of living has gone up. The people who work in offices are asking for cost of living raises because their expenses have gone up. So, your dollar buys less than it did before, and the farm workers aren't any better off.

Honestly, I don't have a problem with the military offering fast-track citizenship to people who enlist for at least a few years. I wouldn't force them to serve, but if they want to, citizenship seems a reasonable reward.

Sure. Eliminate the minimum wage. Let employers pay employees what the job is worth rather than the state's artificially inflated value. Raising the minimum wage (or even having one in the first place) just causes inflation rather than improving the standard of living. If the poorer people have more money, demand for items goes up because they can now afford them, so price goes up because of the higher demand. Get rid of the minimum wage and you get rid of a huge part of the incentive to hire illegal immigrants.

Aspartame tastes nasty. I don't eat it.

Is there a way for premiere members to viewtheir own posts with the inserted links? (just want to be able to tell if links are being added into my posts).

You just need a maid. They're usually cheaper.

At Elsinore there used to be a guy with the nickname of "Runway". most of his aff jumps ended with him landing there.

Probably the same reason I've got an Irish flag in my bedroom, Irish music on my piano, and Irish dance shoes in my closet. I'm proud of where my family came from and what it took us to get here. Just because you're an American doesn't mean you have to completely give up all ties to where you or your family came from. I celebrate St. Patricks day. Doesn't make me any less an American. I celebrate the 4th of July too.