Galen

I hope that you enjoy both the new home and the new deduction. Sorry to hear that the highest standard-of-living is not setting well with you. If you feel that your paying too much in SSA and income taxes, you likely should consider taking some courses. Tax-planning, tax-theory, and budgeting might likely help; in gaining control of this issue. Federal spending comes partly from income taxation, but not all. For the first 157 years of our Nation's history none of it came form individual income taxes. Now a little over a third does come from income taxes. What a shame.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ec414700-9bf4-11d...00779e2340.html

During 2005, no money was held back from my pay for taxes, My total "tax withheld from Forms W-2 and 1099" was zero. But my EIC amount was $1340 minus my tax obligation and we are getting $837. Just by filing our taxes, we made $837. We kind of like filing our taxes, it earns us money. I admit that generally most years in the past 30 years, we have maintained negative AGIs, this year we were not able to do that. We actually had a positive AGI this year, I goofed! and did not maintain enough tax-sheltering. But after a trip to the 'tax-tables' our tax would have been $503 for the year. But I just love that EIC. LOL Even with a positive AGI, we still got paid money for filing our taxes. :)

Ford, Agnew, Cheney; do I see a common trend here? Become VP and your instantly a clutz, tripping and tumbling down ladders and off speech platforms, beaning folks with golf balls, and now peppering elderly CEOs with shotguns. LOL

One realtor in the area told me that he keeps a spare car at the airport, with keys in it, just in case anyone needs to use it. His Real Estate office does not get locked either. I asked why, and he said that if anyone wants to come in and use his phone or computer, they are welcome to.

We have discussed this many times previously. I do agree that people should either stay out of debt [whenever possible], or they should seriously consider and be very careful each time they get into debt. My wife and I were active in TWI for 19 and 18 years respectively. We ran twig fellowships in each area that we were stationed in, and I led fellowships on each submarine that I lived on-board. We did have disagreements with WC leadership, almost everytime that we encountered them. However our mortgage debt was never a source of any of this disagreement. In California we owned a Multi-Family property and we leased homes out to members of our fellowship. We bought the property on a mortgage, and lived there in one of the houses ourselves, while running a fellowship and we made housing available to TWI followers. We ran PFAL classes, and were given much grief over running PFAL classes, as we were not WC and had to 'beg' for each PFAL beta tape, each time for each session. In Scotland, we owned a Multi-Family building, and we leased apartments to fellow sailors and ran a Twig out of our apartment. We ran PFAL classes while living there, and we had a wonderful fellowship with believers who lived in our building. The only real problem that we had with WC was each time we had to get a PFAL class together. Not getting new students, but rather borrowing the tapes. No WC ever asked, or said anything about how we had purchased the building, or whether we had bought it with a mortgage. In Connecticut, we bought a Multi-family building with a mortgage and we ran another Twig. We ran PFAL classes, and we offered apartments to the believers in the area, whenever we had an empty unit. We also had boarders living with us. Over the years we were there, we did have 'run-in's with WC. At one point the Limb Leader encouraged me to continue performing weddings for the believers in our twig, but when a new WC couple was brought in to to be Limb Coordinators, they did have an issue with weddings that I had been doing. Eventually I was thrown 'out' for serving to the needs of the believers in our twig. The WC limb leaders never said a word about us having a mortgage, and nothing about us having boarders, or renting apartments to believers. In Washington, we bought another building and ran a twig in our home, and on the boat I was stationed on. We again had boarders living with us and ran PFAL classes. No WC ever said anything to us about having a mortgage, or how we had bought our home. Eventually we were thrown 'out' again. Not due to the weddings that I was performing, but this time, it was due to a fellow believer, who was doing some painting for us, and he searched through our closets to find 'forbidden' books. A book written by Rev. Cummins and for owning this book, we were thrown 'out' once again. In Washington, we were never approached by any WC on the topic of our mortgage. :)

LOL LOL LOL Sometimes we have a very dirty gene-pool, with very stupid folks in it. Unfortunately they often breed. Crime breed of stupidity happens everywhere. I feel it is worse in the citys. This incident happened in a 'small town', where folks knew each other and knew where those tires were, and who they belonged to. In big citys, it would still happen, but nobody 'knows' anything, so the crime goes unpunished and the criminals would be un-caught. You are fortunate to live in a small enough town where when crime does happen society can make an attempt to better itself. [ie, the thief gets caught and faces a judge]. I too would feel bad for the mother. Here in the small town that we have moved to, the once a week local newspaper's police journal reads like the town gossip column. Everyone knows who you are, and what is going on. But everyone also knows who the thieves are, and who the good folks are. Bless you.

I remember a couple years ago, going to the mall to pick-up something from Sears, I took with me our foster-daughter and her new 'bestest-friend'. Both of these girls were 10 years old. Well I drove and listened to these two young girls as they talked and giggled. they both proclaimed that their 'goal in life' was to have a soft-top jeep when they each turned 16. I asked them why and they explain to me, so they could remove the top of their jeep and drive around flashing their breasts at boys to make the boys chase them.

I thought they played through an entire season.

Last year, I coached the fencing team at our local high-school. There was a fair amount of teens pairing up and playing "tonsil hockey", or "sucking each other's fillings" though Idont htink any more than when I was in high-school. but it was more out in the open. What did amaze me was that, on multiple occasions girls walked up to me [and by saying 'girls' these were each young ladies who had I seen on the street, I would have assumed they were hookers, by their state of un-dress and the manner in which they carried themselves]. But at least three times a girl would call out to me from across the hallway "Mister Young, are you Matt's dad?", "He is just so hot, I want to get into his pants". And with that they would try to start-up a conversation with me. These were different ladys, not the same one, and they were each high-school students. And each time, they would be telling me about how much they wanted to go to bed with my son [at the time a highschool Freshman of 15]. I dont talk that much about sex with my wife, and suddenly a partially dressed teenage girl is trying to have a conversation with me about how badly she wants to be sucking the chrome off my son's trailer hitch [if you understand the metaphor]. Society has changed somewhere. By the way, we moved out from that city and are now living in a more rural area, where it is a bit closer to our more conservative roots.

Is walmart 'good' or'evil'? I dont know. My wife follows the debate of which pharmacys sale the pill and which one's will not. She insists that we never shop at any drug-store who will not fill any prescription. ["If a doctor write's it, then who is a pharmacist to deny you"] She has attended 'Woman's Right marches" etc. I think that so long as we have other pharmacys around [and now with WWW-pharmacys everyone has acess to them]. then who cares? I would say, however that if any pharmasist ever took my script, refused to fill it, and then refused to hand it back to me [so that I could walk it over to another drug-store] I would seriously consider filing a police report for larceny. As far as Walmart squeezing Mom and Pop businesses out of business, we are often called a captalist culture. Invent a better mouse-trap and you will have the American dream! So if you can figure out a better way of doing a commercial store-front then go for you. What about Amazon? and now E-bay with all it's store-front offerings? If you stay in the mentality of operating an 1800's general store, then your not able to compete with a modern business model. That is capitalism, and we are suppose to support that! I wish we did have more protective tarrifs, and that we held manufactering jobs and engineering jobs, etc; right here in the good old USA. But Slick Willy got rid of any hope to hang on to jobs or businesses. :)

A cameraman documents a personnel boat transfer taking place on board the guided missile submarine USS Ohio (SSGN 726) in Puget Sound, Wash., Jan. 29, 2006. Ohio is the first ballistic missile submarine to complete conversion to the new class of guided missile submarines. DoD photo by Chief Journalist Dave Fliesen, U.S. Navy. (Released) Photo by: JOC(SW/AW) DAVE FLIESEN, FLEET COMBAT CAMERA, ATLANTIC Record ID No. (VIRIN): 060129-N-1464F-005

Hello, we are glad to have you here. Come over and have a seat in my booth, I have an empty placesetting. :)

We have only stopped running fellowships in our home for about a year now. We do anticipate doing it again someday. We have only recently moved and right now we are in a very small apartment, while building a new home.

I would imagine there should be some nive scenary in that area. We really like living here North of Bangor. :)

I enjoy your posts, happy birthday!

Okay, we have always gotten homes with a large living room and our household furniture includes three couches. So as we move around we have usually been able to arrange a big ring of couches. In fact bonnie and I have gotten so used to having a ring of couches [rather than a living room where all seating faces the TV], that when designing our new home [that I am currently in the process of building] we included a big sunken living room with couches on all four sides. . :)

It sounds more like America in 'pre-desert Star' years, when you could more commonly anticipate that everywhere you went civilians would either openly hate and dispise you, or else they would turn their heads away and ignore you. do you have anymore information on this?

I keep getting these calls, when I answer I am on hold, listening to their phone ringing. If a telemarketer can not invest the time to dial me in person, then they don't get the privilege of hearing me hang-up my phone on them, I set the receiver off the hook and let them hang-up on me. LOL

I agree with each point in the above. Having lived in other nations, I have seen where many people just dont document things and statistics are not available. 100 years ago, few American deaths were well documented, so even guessing why someone died is anyone's guess. People dont know, people dont want to discuss the topic, nor write down their family 'shame' for outsiders to read about.

I think that there are many who would be kind, loving and considerate; but in a crowd of rude inconsiderate people the first group stays silent.

I see contradcitions in our society. As foster parents a set of siblings that we had, were doing visitations with their bio-parents. One of the bio-fathers was the convicted molester who was convicted of molesting the little girl that we had living in our home, back when she was five. It was not DCF policy to tell the children that it was their option if they wanted to see these parents or not, the State case-workers would just show up and the kids were in the habit of just going wherever they were taken. But at the time, six years after the offense, this little girl was still being dragged to the prison for a visitation with her attacker every month. Right now we live across the street from a registered-sex-offender, he is in his thirtys. When he turned 18 his girl friend was a teen and her parents filed the complaint. This guy is mentally rertarded and I am not sure how many jobs he could get under any circumstances. I also must wonder, if a released sex-offender is not allowed to live, work or shop within 1500 feet of any minors; how many places in America cold he possibly live, work or shop? You would pretty much have to locate an 'adult-only' community somewhere. ???

In 1980, when I first met my wonderful bride, I was staying in a boarding house with believers [whenever I was not underwater]. Fellowship was from the time each of us got home, through dinner, through Bible study, through refreshments, and finally around a fireplace with drinks for jsut those of us who lived there. Once married, we rented an apartment with an extra bedroom and had another couple living with us, plus according to which boats were in port, we commonly had various other sailors living on the couches [it mandated multiple couches]. Then each place we moved to, we kind of reproduced that. Even buying apartment buildings, so that believers could rent from us in the same building, and more easily spend time with each other. On the rare occasion that we were exposed to WC, they would sometimes like it, but would eventually grow to dis-like it, thus I was 'thrown-out' multiple times. Which was fine as God worked it out so that each time I was thrown out, was at the same time I was being transferred to another area. So it lessened the heart-break of being thrown out. Nobody ever did get into my face over owning the apartment buildings. The only guy [leader over us] to ever really question, how we ran twig, or why so many believers lived with us, was in Scotland and it was Chris Kent. We did experience one WC couple who was on probationary status, and was assigned to our twig, who was very upset about it, and they tried to "rat us out every week". :)

meal, prayer, songs, someone shares what they have been studying, announcements, more prayer, manifestations, coffee.

"Wow now that is ugly!" [i would sincerely hope that such is not possible without steroids. Assuming such; I would support any general effort to dis-allow steroid access among competing body-builders.]