Mister P-Mosh

Pollution may or may not be the reason why. Although it's been mostly dropped from our news, the heart of the swine flu pandemic is the U.S. now (it has declined significantly in Mexico) and we have had over a million cases in the U.S., while our government does little and our media stopped covering it. However, it makes a great propaganda piece for China, and they have convinced their people that we are all hiding in our homes and how we are all dying from the swine flu here. Some Chinese friends have told me about their weird conversations with relatives about the swine flu and how the Chinese government/media makes it look over here.

Wow, just like Osama Bin Laden, or Kim Jong Il? I've never seen any valid criticism be attributed to Rush Limbaugh. He's a blowhard hatemonger and if he says something honest and true, it's purely by accident. Funny, I don't consider growing up in a family of lawyers and politicians as being "humble". He was born with money, he has worked in radio his whole life, and has never had a day of anything close to poverty. He fits the mold for rich privileged guy pretty firmly.

I guess I am surprised that you are surprised this sort of thing goes on. This is not even the worst of it. There are plenty of good Christians, and they are probably the majority of Christians. However, there are enough bad ones that we should take things like this seriously. I could totally see something like this happening under LCM's watch if this had been TWI, although it never would have been on video. I doubt many of us would have said anything against it in our TWI days, if that had gone on.

Basically, I left in 2001. My parents (who sort of left three years ago) and I have still never talked about it. I've talked about it with my siblings, but never my parents. They "raised me in The Word" so I'm not sure what I should or shouldn't say to them because I don't want to freak them out. They may not be in TWI anymore, but they still have many of the same beliefs and mentality.

Well, sorry to derail this thread somewhat, but my dad is a scumbag and has been my whole life. Basically, he abandoned my mother and I when I was a toddler, he stole his second wife from his friend who was her (his second wife's) husband, then abandoned her after a number of years. He sold drugs, he drank like an Irishman with a death wish, and he was never there for me in any way. This is why my stepfather, who is a good, albeit flawed, man, is the one who got a call from me wishing him a happy father's day. He's the one that my daughter calls "grandpa", and despite it being his fault that my mom and I ended up in TWI, he has been a mostly good influence in my life. Being a father isn't a birthright just because you are biologically a father. Being a father is about living up to the responsibility. My stepdad taught me that, and I am trying to live up to my responsibilities as a father with my daughter, and soon, with my son.

It's much easier to rewrite history to be in line with the "present truth" if you have no evidence of the past and nothing to key reminders in your mind.

I'm familiar with the site, so I'll check it out. I hadn't heard of the $200 more than Carmax thing before this so I'll see what they say.

Congratulations! What is funny to me is that there are some similarities in my daughter's name and the name of your granddaughter.

If you catch their name again let me know. I'm thinking that I can probably get more by going to a different Carmax (apparently their appraisal process is very subjective) but if there is another place that is worth a try too.

This is just a general warning for anyone looking to sell an older car. Previously, I had good luck with Carmax, but I think in these bad economic times, you have to be extra careful. I was planning on selling my wife's older car to them, and hoping for something close to the KBB value. I knew it wouldn't be near the top, but assumed a certain amount plus or minus a few hundred. Their offer was over $1,000 less than the minimum that I would have accepted. So we left without selling the car. Tonight, I got home and decided to do a search on Autotrader, and lo and behold, Carmax is there with a similar car, only about 3k miles less, and a different paint job. They are selling it for about $8,000 more than they offered us for my wife's car. So, I don't know if this is typically a problem now or not, but be careful. Their reputation of giving a fair value for your car should no longer be expected to be true. I guess I'm going to have to go through the hassle of selling it myself, but it's worth it if I get a thousand or two extra dollars out of it. I'd probably even be better off trading it in at a real dealership when I go to buy the new car instead if I can't sell it quickly.

I used to hate it. It was sort of embarrassing really, especially when I was a kid. I still remember showing up at a girl's house that I liked in school, and to have to be a religious nut in front of her wasn't exactly impressive.

I disagree, only because I've seen the effect of someone not maintaining their house to a minimum level (e.g. leaving rusting cars in their front yard, having a broken front door with a hole through it, and a blue tarp on their roof for nearly a decade) can have on the resale value of their neighbors. I also like the idea of having neighborhood playgrounds, clubhouses, swimming pools, tennis courts, etc. While I agree that the fascistic HOAs are a problem, I also think that if they are democratic, they can serve some value. The key, like any other form of government, is to require open elections on a regular basis, and open accounting and goings on. If the person in charge of writing the "tickets" for your neighborhood is a fascist, run against them in the election and you'll probably have a lot of your neighbors supporting you. Unfortunately, not all HOAs allow open government. In fact, mine has become a thorn in my side by not enforcing any of the rules and lowering their standards. At the last meeting I discovered that the owner of the majority of the property (this is a newly built, not yet fully developed community) is in charge of the HOA by themselves and no community input is really listened to. As a result, I'm considering starting a campaign to encourage people to not pay their dues until we get a voice in the HOA. My idea is to start a web site, pass out flyers and put up signs encouraging people to sign a petition and refuse to pay their dues. However, I want to 1) get my son born first, and 2) get my wife's citizenship completed in case I accidentally do something that results in me going to jail.

On the other hand, some like mine are worthless. There is a foreclosed house near my block where we walk and the weeds are taller than my wife (literally they are nearly six foot tall) and no forced mow has happened or anything. At the homeowners association meeting we were told that they basically would never enforce any rules because it costs money to pay lawyer fees. In this case, it is stupid, as it's his vehicle. If he were putting signs up all over his yard looking tacky that would be one thing, but this is different. Also, I wonder if this is true or not. It could be a mean prank or a hoax, only time will tell.

I guess the follow up question would be, where have you heard anything publicly stated by Muslims? If the answer is "the media", it follows the same problems anything else does. They don't cover good things, only bad. So if one person says, "Death to America!" that will make the news. If 5,000 Muslims say, "We don't agree with that guy. We like America." the media would never cover it because it is the status quo.

I stay anonymous because when I first signed up my parents were still in TWI. They no longer are, so the whole WayGB thing has lost it's power over me. However, there is still what others have brought up. I stay anonymous now because everything we write here is public, and I don't necessarily want my real name attached to what I write here for many reasons. However, there are people here that do know who I am and other personal information about me. I'm ok with that.

I used to work with a guy from Jordan who was of Palestinian descent, as well as a Lebanese guy from Africa. The Lebanese guy became an atheist, while the guy from Jordan had an arrangement where he could leave work early every Friday to go to church. He was pretty devout, while the other guy wasn't at all. They got along fine. While this is just a single example, based on all the other people I know that are Muslim, I don't see any of them having a real problem. They may be disappointed if someone leaves their religion, but I don't think they would get murderous about it. In my mind, the difference between true moderate muslims and the radicals is similar to moderates and radicals in any religion. You will probably never see someone driving a Lexus to a snakehandler church in the Appalachians, and you probably won't see many middle class muslims shouting for Jihad. The majority of radical religious extremists of any religion are going to be the poor, while a few spoiled rich people control them. In our country, for example, you can see extremely poor people turning to street gangs or cults like TWI or worse. The richer people maybe join up with the Earth Liberation Front or PETA. In many Muslim countries, you find that both of the classes listed below can actually work together in anti-Western groups. That doesn't mean they all join up with terrorist groups like al Qaeda, and I'm sure that some of them over there do nothing more than sit around and smoke up some hashish and complain about "the man." However, in extremely poor countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan, you're going to see more backwards behavior because of their poverty. That is a long way of getting to my point I guess, that in America, the majority of Muslims are going to be like anyone else because they are not suffering in poverty. They may not be rich (some are though) but they are generally ok, and when you are doing ok you aren't radical. You want to maintain the status quo.

Not at all. Since my wife is pregnant again, some people make statements like, "What? So soon?" I respond with, "Well, I don't have many hobbies."

I don't think that he believes people should be killed for anything other than things like murdering innocent people. We talk politics sometimes, and he's more of a live and let live type of guy. I know other Muslims as well to varying degrees and I'm pretty sure none of them think people should be killed for leaving Islam any more than most modern Christians believe in witch hunts or the inquisition.

If you're Christian. In my case, I'm effin for NULL.

I knew him from before then. He was a really good guy and I hope he and his family are out of TWI and living a better life.

I don't want to get too far off on a tangent, but you do realize this occurs in our country too, right? Here is one story on it, but there are many more.

The problem with this is that the vast majority of the country (this could apply to the U.S. or Mexico) don't have it. The second largest city in Mexico is Guadalajara, and there have been no reported cases at this time. In fact, I think only a couple of the states in Mexico have had it, with the highest concentration being in Mexico City itself. If I were taking a vacation to Mexico right now, I'd probably be ok providing I wasn't going to or transferring flights in Mexico City. I've been thinking about it, and the air is so polluted in Mexico City that it's possible that this flu is extra deadly there because of how bad the air quality is. I imagine if you give this flu to someone with asthma, for example, they are more likely to die than anyone else.

I've had the flu before, but generally don't get it. The thing I had was really, really bad. I seriously thought I was going to need the hospital, but toughed it out instead and waited until I could go to the doctor. I was running a temperature of around 103, I was shaking, I was wheezing, my head felt both horribly dizzy and achy, and I could not get out of bed. It started as a headache and sore throat and my throat got so clogged that even with Vicks, a humidifier, and Formula 44D I couldn't cough anything up. I was able to cough stuff up after a few days, but the cough lasted a few weeks. Then when my daughter, wife, and in-laws got it, some like my daughter were mostly ok except at night, my wife's grandmother never got sick, but everyone else was horribly sick and bedridden for days. Oh, and myself and my coworkers all got flu shots, and my wife got one as well, yet it offered no protection against this thing we had. That doesn't mean I know for sure that I had it, but I was seriously ill in a way that no normal flu had made me feel. Another interesting note is that there was a case of H1N1 confirmed by the CDC in Texas back in September 2008. I don't know why this hasn't been in the news as well, but it leads credence to the theory that like the 1918 flu, this one could be going around in waves, and only now in Mexico did it mutate into a stronger form that is causing deaths.

In Asia apparently that type of thing is common due to SARS, so they are probably already equipped to deal with it one way or another. Another interesting thing is that while we are focused on Mexico, Europeans are saying to not go to North America at all. I too don't think we're getting the full story, but I think it's due to disorganization and incompetence, not a conspiracy. Still, I can see why both here and in Mexico people think there is a conspiracy.

I think I already had it back in February/March. There was something nasty going around my office that caused us to have the exact symptoms listed by the CDC, despite most of us getting flu shots. In fact, if I were a conspiracy theorist, I would feel pretty guilty right now because after I got well enough, my wife, daughter, and I went down to Mexico. Then my daughter got sick with what I had, then my wife got sick, then my mother in law, my wife's aunt, the chauffeur, and I think one of the maids got sick. Then their neighbors went sick. One of the neighbors, while sick, went to Mexico City to visit family. Anyway, I don't seriously think that I caused this, because the timeframes don't line up right, but I was just curious what you all thought about the swine flu. Here is an interesting statistic though -- over 36,000 people die in the U.S. every year because of the flu. Nobody in the U.S. has died from the swine flu at this point, and as I said, I think it's much more widespread than being indicated by the CDC. While I feel bad for the families of those who have died in Mexico from this, I still think it's much less of a threat and much more of media hype at this point.