Channman

I work with each crew and remember with everyone else the silence when looking at the monitors knowing we all just lost friends. Un-known to us at the time the crew servived the explosion as several had activated their emergency Oxygen and were flipping switches, impacting the water was not as kind.

> How is that view from under a rock.. perhaps you could climb outside once in awhile. A little dark up under here, I peek out ever so often. Using the word Fascists in your post I think tends to remove any credibility you may have in your arguments. It tends to cheapen your position.

> Face it.. yall need to look at something else once in a while....the view from different sources is imperitive to understanding what the REST of the world is seeing. Earth to Amazon, Earth to Amazon...how does your view look from outerspace.

> This thread is so very happy. I'm hopping aboard this train, Kalland, Lawrocket, Bill, yourself and little old me, someone must be passing around the mushroom tea. Kalland, said it best, if we could throw the incumbents out more often we would surely be better off.

> I agree, keeping someone awake for 10 days straight, or putting them in a cold cell isn't really torture. But breaking their ribs? Suffocating them? Raping them with a broomstick? That's something worthy of Saddam Hussein, not the United States of America. We should care about human rights more than that - even if our enemies don't. I'm on board with the above statement.

Smells like freedom to me. HAA But there does seam to be a slight hint of stink in some of these threads.

> I think the US car companies need to work on their reputations for performance and reliability. The trend I've noticed here (LA area) is that when people want a performance car, they buy a German one (Porche, BMW) and when they want something cheap and reliable, they get a Honda, because US cars aren't really known for either their performance or their reliability. They don't seem to have a really strong selling point beyond "made in America" which, while important, doesn't outweigh the reliability factor for many people. What ever happened to the term "Build Better, Build Union" Maybe the Union is part of the problem. When a large percentage of your operating cost is Benefits, it can be very difficult to compete with foreign markets, on top of that building crappy cars.

> So while none of us really knows what will actually happen if Iran is permitted to place nuclear warheads on missiles and it uses them against Israel, I personally would not sleep well at night were I one of the Russian national command authorities, even if my bunker was as deep as Dick Cheney’s, because I would have to allow that some Israeli missiles probably would get through my defense network and I already know they are targeting my important cities. This, I think should give Russia some motivation to put some much needed heat on Iran to comply. We will wait and see if the economic benefits of doing business with Iran out ways the need for peace.

> Can anyone give me a valid reason why it's a good idea for Iran to have a nuclear weapon? Yes, I'll give you one. It gives us a ligitimate right to Light the bastards up. I only said that because it really pisses off liberals. Look its only a matter of time the Iranian Government will have to come to terms for a peaceful out come or a military response that could bring an all out war in the middle east. The Iranian Government as been a sponsor of terrorist and supporters of Hamas for many years. The Iranian's have no real Airforce, Navy, or the refining capacity to provide for their gasoline needs. They import the majority of their gas and would be cut off with a Naval Blockade, as well as US forces on two seperate borders. The US has the ability to launch raids from Iraq / Afgan. and the Sea. If we were forced to pursue a military option and provided we ingaged our enemy with the intent to win a complete victory, it would be over fairly quickly say no more than a few weeks. If past history is any indication the left will come to Irans defence and will gather in the streets of New York by the thousands, and will remind the world that Iran is a peace loving country and that Israel and the US are the true evil of the world. Cheers

And to think I heard it here first. Keep us / me informed of the developments. This is not something I'm hearing on the news.

Well I will say you are more savvy than most at your age when it comes to looking down the road. If I could add one last thing in this discussion. At age 29 you could have a $250,000 standard Non-Smoker policy which would cover your skydiving for about $42.52 in monthly premium. This would free up about $137.00 per month to invest. There are several Mutual Funds that I invest in that currently have performed very well at 11.44 percent over 40 plus years. If your where to buy term and then take the difference / savings in premium, you would over 35 years / 420 months mass a savings of $765,816.50. Although I will add there are no guarantees when it comes to investing in the market but we do have historical data that gives us a good indication that over time we have a very good chance of obtaining wealth. With the Cash Value Policy you would have to wait to age 99 or to age 100 before the policy would endow and be worth $250,000.00. > I don't want to retire rich, I just don't want to have to make a choice between buying medications or food. Most people don't realize that they will need more than a million saved if they wish to retire with any quality of life. With inflation running at around 4% if people don't gather the necessary assest they will be one of the 95 out of a 100 that are dead broke or still working. Cheers to ya, and thanks for the discussion.

jshatzkin, Money January 1995, had a very good article concerning Cash Value Policies. As you have mentioned you have a $250,000 Whole Life policy and annuity, is the annuity part of the policy such as a varible policy that has an underlining investment attached to it? or are the two seperate. As you may know there is no cash value in a whole life policy for the first two to three years. Its kind of like making deposits into your bank account and the bank keeps 100% of the deposits with no benefit to you or your family. As the cash value builds over time the only way you can get access to your so called cash (by the way its no longer your cash/money because you gave up ownership of it) is to borrow it and pay it back with interest. In your normal bank account that you pay bills with there is no such penalty, your money is your money. The cash value is actually part of the death benefit, and is designed to transfer the risk to the policy owner and away from the insurance company over time. Say for example: what does your family get if you die? $250,000 plus the cash value? (NO) they only get the one or the other. If say you have 30,000 in cash value over the next 20 plus years and you deside to borrow 25,000 out i.e. your money at any where between 5.5% to 8.5% depending on the company you place the policy in jeopardy of lapsing if you don't pay the large payment plus premium to keep the policy in force. (Note) Any unpayed loans plus interest will be deducted from the remain cash value. Trying to keep this simple. At death the company take $5,000 remaining cash value and $220,000 from their accounts and pay $225,000 because you have already taken 25,000 from the death benefit as a loan. But lets say you do not take a loan and you are killed in an accident the company takes your so called cash value $30,000 plus $220,000 from the company and pays the beneficiaries $250,000 provided there are no out standing loans on the policy. This is a win / win for the insurance company because they have free use of your cash and will make millions on the return over say 30 years and at the same time transfer the risk to you. One last thing, insurance companies go through reinsurers to transfer their risk and take out a term policy on your life at 12 to 15 times less than the payment your are making to them. Simply put, you are far better off purchasing Term insurance to cover your immediate cash needs say 20-35 year level term. Not only will this save you a great deal of money but will allow you to take the difference in premium to Invest for your own future and you have control over your life policy and your investment putting you into a position to gain wealth over time and not the insurance company. There is also a real possiblity that you may not be paying the targeted premium to keep the policy in force and my have a policy that will lapse without value in the near future.

Oh my acking butt, this thread still hanging around. Let it die already as it should.

I'm having some internal conflict at this very moment, I first thought I was reading a quote from Rush Limbaugh. So it is true that even Bill is a Ditto Head, a true sign of someone who has a thrist for the truth.

> Could they be hiding something, such as that maybe OBL was not available to make the recording??? There have been several reports and several articles written that OBL passed away from Kidney Failure last year. > I suspect that the lack of video & poor sound quality of the tape is there to hide something. I agree, and it might be that the bastard is dead.

> I would imagine that little pisses a terrorist off more than being irrelevant. I like that comment.

>Yep. Heck, even discuss a truce with him - but from inside a prison cell. Sounds as if he is on the ropes, and now is willing to discuss a possible truce. Something must be working, like having his friends blown up and that there is really no place to hide. Also there is a message being sent, if you harbor terrorists i.e. dinner party, you place your life as well as those of your family in jeopardy.

rehmwa, you can't have ultra-liberal religious right winger all in the same sentence. Post pictures of boobs!!, you know what they say about boobs, if you seen one you've seen two.

This tread is well on its way to the crapper, thats were I can do my best thinking.

Seems you had an ass for a man.

> If they do what? Enrich uranium to near 100% (i.e. bomb grade?) Then the inspectors note that... I suppose your under the assumption that the Iranian's are willing to disclose this possible weapons grade uranium enrichment to U.N. inspectors. It would be nice to think the Iranian's would be so willing to have a transparent nuclear program. The North Korean's just wanted a reator for their power grid, but also wanted the bomb/warhead and are well on their way.

> I don't know how many millions of pounds of missiles, shells and bombs we've let loose in that area - but it wouldn't seem hard to go for a little walk and find whatever sort of ordinance fragments you wanted for your purposes. There is no impack damage to the shell, so even if it was fused and fired and failed to explode it would not be so presteen.

We'll NEVER know.. Well I've read some articles that say from sources in the area that Osama has passed away due to Kidney Failure. We will have to wait and see.

All my guns were stolen as mentioned in a previous thread. I'm dependent on you and the government for my protection. Its a great plan, if your intent is to gather them all up when you finally have their locations and owners located.

Yea, I know, I was trying to spin it.