I think she liked me.

No it was the middle of the day. I was there for a consulting project with an oil company. We took off for lunch and out of nowhere comes this screaming. Yikes.

Probably I should have been wearing the hat and shades.

When I was in Canada it seemed very nice. But there was one crazy lady who picked me out of a crowd and started screaming across the street at me. Downtown Calgary. I was kind of surprised. Do you think she was jilted by a handsome gentleman who looked a lot like me?

Just keep those points up and I'll keep gawking.

Actually I think I agree with you Gyuipseei

Hey Cloudy, just so you think nobody read your article, I read it. Seems pretty problematic for the ol' political solution to me too. But I have had that opinion since they started going down the road of appeasement. Germany and France were very pro-Germany and France for a long time. Now France is looking a little at the bigger picture. That's good anyway.

Russia and China do not have any interest in Iran getting in line with the civilized world. For them, weakening the US is to their long term advantage. Having Iran creamed would probably be to their advantage as well so it doesn't matter too much either way. But I hardly think either country is going to applaud military action by the United States.

So there is no simple way to manage Iran. They will get bigger and stronger and meaner until someone smacks them. Then the world will set about rebuilding Iran and another country will come along and have to be the evil focus of international intrigue and ambition. Probably it will be Venezuela next. I think Syria will temper its ambition if Iran is hit. Wonder if that is true.

Hurray Plastina!!

What Petreas actually said was he didn't know and that was not his job to figure that one out. His job was to fight the war the best way he could. He followed it up later by saying that his belief was that it actually would help. So if you keep saying the same thing you are ignoring the truth. Its annoying but I can live with it just the same, so long as you know that I know.

As for whether terrorism has anything to do with us being in Iraq, it does, however the connections are a little more subtle than can be grasped by the common mind when it is busy refusing to understand.

Looking at the bigger picture is hard when you won't open your eyes. Does anybody pay enough attention to put things in a historical context. Ok obviously some of you do.

As for whether AlQeida is stronger now than before 911, Well they may be stronger, but I don't think so. They and the Taliban get their heads smacked every time they pop them up. There are still plenty to go around, but they are keeping their heads down a whole lot more.

There is an ideology of hate over there. They teach children to hate and to kill. Those children grow up and hate and kill. As long as they keep sending their children to hate and kill there are going to be these sorts of problems. Might as well face it. As the world becomes more well traveled, these people will blend into our society. We try to welcome them into our colleges and such, then some of them use their education and access to our country against us.

When we try to separate religion from government here it causes people to be rational in the education system. They do not have that in the middle east. When the teachers are zealots, the students will learn to be zealots.

Mostly the lot of anarchist, terrorists are the puppets of a bunch of greedy dictators anyway. The puppets go to their deaths in the name of religion and the puppet handlers go to the bank with oil revenue or drug money or the keys to a country, depending on their own personal greedy strength.

So really its not the puppets you are fighting, its just them you have to deal with in the bigger fight.

what are you doing with my girlfriend's picture in your profile?
mmm baby baby.

In the article it said the hate crime thing was negated because the girl was one of the guy's girlfriend at one time, which makes the motive other than a simple racial thing. Makes sense in its way.

Those guys are evil and cruel, that is hatred enough without making a race issue out of it.Seems to me it was a horrible crime and they should be punished accordingly.

Fitness you really like to stir up the filth don't you. Go find some more of the worst things you can find that have happened in our society and post them here so we can read them too. We never get enough of reading about the worst of our society. This is a behavior I usually would attribute to an a-ss. Surely this is an exception in your case though because you felt some personal attachment to the issue, and felt the need to have us all read about it and consider our own racial tolerance so we could compare ourselves to these criminals and condemn them as they deserve. I'll overlook it this time.

You might see from my tone that I am a little tired of people dragging out the race card whenever there is a crime between white and black or black and white. Crime is crime. When you label it as a race crime it promotes more racial intolerance, which in my opinion we do not need.

I thought witches were girls.

I am shaking my head about the claim that someone else made this post rather than Bl8tant. When I read the topic I thought it was 180 degrees from her usual sort of idealism. A platonic world view it is not. I thought the article to be thought provoking.

I wonder if others might recognize the scratch to the surface and the hint of depth. I'm going to reserve my views of Russia at this point because it would take too much time and nobody would likely read it anyway.

So congrats Bl8 on your post, even if you didn't make it yourself.

Not exactly it Fanta. I think that some lobby activities are harmful, but the legal stuff serves in some measure to communicate the needs of the people to the congress. So I'm not a turncoat to my principles, I simply see things differently.

I'll take a moment to mention that there is enough graft in the economy to buy all the politicians many times over. For this reason I expect we are unlikely to know a lot about who is getting money from where.

The average Joe does not have the chance to go see his politicians. Somebody has to fill that need. But if you think that means I forgive somebody giving a politician hundreds of thousands under the table for his support on a particular issue, no way. Discussions with your congressmen have to stand up on their own merit. If they don't, then you need to not waste his time. If they do, then graft won't be necessary.

would love to go out with you but I'm washing my tennis shoes.

Liar? I didn't see you lie about anything. I was wondering why you kept so quiet so long.

Yeah, another distraction. I think it is time to reread 1984.

I'm more interested in rereading WW3 though. I don't think anyone else ever read that book. But is gives a little interesting perspective on the present day. It was written in the 70s.

Our economy is in a tough crunch. Ten years ago I knew what they were doing to modify things and why. Now things are a lot more unclear. I was anti-protectionist for quite some time, but I'm changing my stripes on that score. I see more and more people unable to do the simplest manufacturing task, and unable to manage their way out of a paper sack. Its disturbing.

Where there once were families with a heritage to engage in one sort of business, now the fathers retire and the business goes to nothing. The children are starting in a new world with no career path defined. Whatever their parents did for a living is likely to be gone to another part of the world.

The fact that a young person can make as much as a waiter in a restaurant as working construction or manufacturing is largely because of the cheap labor issues in construction and manufacturing. Construction companies try to build things cheaper and to do so they hire lower paid workers, many from across the borders. Manufacturing companies simply close. To compete they have to pay very low wages or highly automate their processes, which is capital intensive.

Start-up whiz kids get brilliant ideas to build a new cog and nobody can afford to buy them, or if they can afford to, they prefer not, and will look for an overseas manufacturer to build the same thing. Even the oil industry is unforgiving. With the roller coaster cost of oil, an oil field service company is in good one day and out the next.

A boom in internet bits and bytes is not going to solve the problem.

Ummm, be sure she is 18.

Ask her to wait in the bedroom for you. Then when you get there have a nice intimate discussion with her about what you both want.

JUST DON'T MENTION THE BIRDS AND THE BEES!!

If you love her, marry her. If not consider whether you prefer to let her go. If neither, return to previous suggestion about waiting in the bedroom. Keep in mind that some girls who are virgins only want to give it up if they are with the man they intend to spend their lives with. Some girls want to give it up just to end that chapter in their lives. Some are anywhere in between.

Dang Davinci, You popped the cork there. What happened to 'speak no evil' that you had going there for a while.

I wish I had not read this post of yours. It is unfortunately very accurate as I understand things. Since it is so accurate I'll buy into a Fed policy issue for you here (feeling generous).

The Federal Reserve is taking steps to keep the American currency strong. In keeping the currency strong they make trade in American dollars attractive. Not to do that would be a problem for our economy. Outsiders invest in the American bonds and markets. So long as the currency is strong then this will continue to happen.

When the Fed behaves in this manner it is good for the individuals and groups who have large amounts of wealth, particularly in stocks and bonds. So by protecting the currency they are protecting the wealthy. They also protect the bond investors by assuring a margin of return on investment. Keep inflation under check, keep interest rates predictable, and keep the bond yields predictable, then you protect the wealthiest individuals and groups.

However by keeping the currency strong they limit our ability to compete in a global market on the basis of price. As this process continues long enough then eventually the local businesses take the hit. Manufacturing all goes off shore. Engineering goes with it. When those are well gone the work opportunities are all in the service industries.

This occurs in all the industries. At some point there has to be a meltdown of sorts. A country can not import everything and give nothing back except currency. Balancing the currency value will mitigate some of it, but the immediate effect will be huge loss of purchasing power. People will be poorer (their dollars worth less in a global economy).

In addition to this problem, other countries, most notably China, influence their currency in the opposite fashion in order to improve their competitiveness. By artificially holding their currency down they are able to gain larger and larger market share, all the while buying into the American investment pool.

The fox is minding the chicken coop here and nobody is paying much attention.

If we can not get some more savvy players watching and managing the American trade issues and currency issues, we will have more significant problems soon.

The libertarian approach to government sounds good, but what would you do with the trillion or so dollars the government spends every year if you got rid of all the governmental agencies? How would you keep the people who are presently employed by the government from starving when you laid them off? I think the libertarian view is sort of a peace-love-dope throwback to the 70's hippie culture. It sounds good, but you can't support your country on it. Neither can you protect your country on it.