MsGuy

Are you being clear in your exposition of the the problem? Yes. Does awarding retiring teachers full pay pensions w/o making any provision for paying them make sense? No. (and the unspoken question) Will the rest of the country bail out Cali so you can indulge yourselves in even more of this foolishness? NEVER! ---- Epigonos, the Miss. State Teachers Retirement Fund (fully funded, thank you very much) had the same 'problem' of excess assets back in the late '80s. The first thing they did was fight off a raid by the legislature and establish the money was theirs and not the state's. Later the teachers trustees set up a "13th payday". The Board annually determines a prudent sum to award retirees from the excess income of the Fund. Thanks to careful management of the assets this bonus payment has been roughly an extra month's pay for nearly 2 decades. The last couple of years the bonus payment has been about half that. And the Fund (and that of the State Employees) is still fully funded.

Three Olives is an English made brand, so I'm guessing the it's probably available in Canada. One of the benefits of your intense Anglophilia. Three Olives Vodka

"Prices at that time were 785 cents per case on Coca-Cola and 60 cents per case on bottled soda water. This started us off on the right track." I can see why Mr. Biedenharn was so enthusiastic about his new idea. I knew that Coke was first was first bottled in Vicksburg but had pictured it starting as a backroom adjunct to a retail soda fountain (which doesn't seem practical when you think it through). Starting life as a new product for someone already in the bottled soda water business makes much more sense.

So no sooner do I pooh pooh Lookin's suggestion than I'm staring at some funky looking, skinny glass coke bottles stacked by the checkout at my local Walmart. Sure enough, careful examination under bifocal magnification revealed Hecho En Mexico, sugar in the ingredients list and the disclaimer "no retornable". Who would have thought to find Mexican coke in Mississippi. You know it really does have a cleaner, crisper taste. But at roughly 4 x the cost per oz. as cans, I'll probably reserve it's use for fine dining & formal evenings.

Zipper, we can see your pix just fine (and mighty fine seeing they are, if I may say so ). But for obscure reasons of site policy, the MER software only allows logged-in members of the site to view your pictures; folks who haven't registered or who haven't logged in only see the link to the pix. At least I think that is the way it works. I think Lookin is mosstly talking about pics that decompose into a nasty "red X box", either immediately upon posting or, sometimes, after some delay period. Pondering why they might do this is far above my pay grade but I'm always interested in a quick fix magic spell to banish the red x demon back to whichever software hell it calls home.

hmmm (again )

Feel free to use as needed:

Ok, so if I load the URL into MER's image box and also put the URL as a link in the same post, I can (sometimes) work around a red X? Did I understand that correctly? Neat, now I've learned 2 new things (I hope). I'm on a roll!

TY, I can't find the link but this week I read somewhere I recall as a respectable source that Netflix alone accounts for nearly 30% of bandwidth usuage in the US during evening hours. If that's anywhere near true, I can see where Comcast and the rest would be getting a bit grumpy about not charging them some kind of extra tariff.

Ty, what puzzles me is how the bastard that was awarded control of xxx.com got away with charging so much more than the other domains (or whatever you tech guys call it). I will never believe that money is not changing hands for that little boondoggle. This stinks worse than the site selection committee for the Olympics.

Hmmm... ---- ok, I right clicked on the image (on the original site), copied the URL from properties, pasted it into MER's insert image box and presto! Seems to work w/o leaving a visible link in the post. Are we talking about the same thing? ---- , I was using my traditional technique for figuring out how to do something new postingwise: try out every possibility I can think of and see what, if anything, works.

As for me, I think he has about 1/2 inch too much chin to look right. On the other hand, maybe his butt makes up for any facial issues.

Wow, I didn't know that TY. Neat idea. I learned something today.

I'd love to do that, Lookin, but bodegas are kind of scarce hereabouts.

Back in the olden days, estates were held in fee (conditioned on service, usually military). By custom sons seceeded their fathers in service but the establishment of an inheritance by law was actually something of an advance in the eyes of those folks. Once the right of inheritance was established so many estates came to be held in fee tail (forced inheritance), it took an Act of Parliment to abolish it and empower parents to dispose of their own property. That's the super-simplified version but it's usually a mistake to attribute modern ideas and customs to folks who lived more than a few generations back. Now that's some excellant advice.

Beiber? Oh God, does that mean we're going to have go through all that Birther shit again?

Who knew? Damn, does that mean I need to cut down from 4 cans of coke a day?

I learned that jokes told 4,000 years ago were even dumber than the ones told today. > Sumeria circa 1900 BC (oldest recorded joke): "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap." > Egypt circa 1600 BC: "How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish." > England circa 950 AD: "What hangs at a man's thigh and wants to poke the hole that it's often poked before? Answer: A key."

THIS from MERDaddy? ROFLMAO

LOL!!

(just trying an experiment) http://www.flirt4free.com/images/_common/forums/emoticons/jerkoff.gif http://www.flirt4free.com/images/_common/forums/emoticons/jerkoff.gif ----- ok, great, I learned something today

KMEM, as far as Libya goes, I was pretty much on the side of tsk tsking and hoping for the best (from far far away). But I am also on the side of maintaining an active alliance with France and England. I am ok with Obama keeping our allies jolly about their relationship with us, giving them a little reminder of how much they are dependant on us to help police their own back yard and, incidentally, picking up a few markers we may need to cash in some day. As for Bush, I honestly believe any American president perceived as foot dragging on going after al Queda in Afganistan would have risked impeachment. In my lifetime I can't recall anything even remotely like the way folks got worked up about that 9/11 attack. And, near as I can tell, our European Nato allies (not to mention Russia and China) were just relieved the US didn't go totally berserk and start lashing out in all directions. As for Iraq II, for the life of me I couldn't figure out any sane rationale for the war, was queasy about the possible consequences from the git go and horrified by the incompetance of the idiocracy that was our post 'mission accomplished' administration of Iraq. What else is there to say?

LOL, the last serious riot in Wisconsin was when the Madison cops tried to close down the annual off campus Spring street beer party. UW students were fighting the cops, flipping police cruisers, starting fires, the works.

And to quote the Great and Wonderous Oz himself: ---Life is here, life is now. Life is soooo short... and sex is just too delicious! Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, Champagne and Strawberries in one hand, Diet Coke and Godiva Chocolate in the other, a personal bottle of Eros, A BOX OF TROJAN MAGNUMS, and a good Cuban cigar in the your pockets (ALL partially used), a wallet ALMOST empty of currency but noticeably used from the rainbow colors of THE SEVERAL bills THAT REMAIN from a multitude of countries and cards charged to the max from the joys of life, body thoroughly used up, OLD AS TIME ITSELF, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO - what a ride!--- TotallyOz Here's hoping you keep slip sliding through the good life for a good many more years, Oz.

Little known fact: While publicly still plumping for a negotiated solution, the US airlifted a substantial hunk of the war reserve of our latest and greatest air to air missiles to the Azores, where they were loaded aboard the Brit carriers on their way to the South Atlantic. W/O those, the subsonic English Harrier jump jets would have been completely out-classed by the French Mirages flown by the Argentinians. We don't talk about it, for our reasons; the English don't talk about it, for theirs. There were other munitions supplied via the Azores, but the air to air stuff was the sine qua non. I don't mean to minimize the US role in this but my impression is that we are limiting ourself to taking down the Libyan air, air defense, and C&C. Responsiblity for the armor and SP guns (& acting as the tactical air arm of the rebels ) is being tasked to France and England. Since we own all the Stealth and the bulk of the cruise missiles, most of the initial missions would naturally fall to the US. Which is exactly why the US has been foot dragging for the last 4 weeks. I'm hoping that Obama has positioned us for a "heads we win; tails, you send in the troops" end game in Libya. Kadaffy and Sons relocating the family business to Caracas? Dangling at the end of a rope? It's all good. And if we save a few thousand Libyan civilians in the process, why that's a nice bonus. (Yawn) C'mon, Alan, surely by now you know that we Americans know nothing and care less about Canadian politics.