Never mind - got to it through intense debate

I tried going to your link but sadly, all I got was a "Sorry that user does not exist." but would REALLY love to hear your story.
I really think we all need to seek out those who either lived in or had relatives who live in Germany during the 30s ...

'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like. I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling 'Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine,' and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood. Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that It was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ. On the subject of Colonoscopies... Colonoscopies are no joke, but these comments during the exam were quite humorous..... A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies: 1. 'Take it easy, Doc. You're boldly going where no man has gone before!' 2. 'Find Amelia Earhart yet?' 3. 'Can you hear me NOW?' 4. 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?' 5. 'You know, in Arkansas , we're now legally married.' 6. 'Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?' 7. 'You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out...' 8. 'Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!' 9. 'If your hand doesn't fit, you must quit!' 10. 'Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.' 11. 'You used to be an executive at Enron, didn't you?' 12. 'God, now I know why I am not gay.' And the best one of all: 13. 'Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?'

The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on Andy?' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough. At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.. Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep. At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house. When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point. Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand. There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' had to be the least appropriate. 'You want me to turn it up?' said Andy, from somewhere behind me.

Amid all that is going on --- and the dangers that surround us ... I just thought I would share this ... it is not ominous - nor is it remotely political - being not liberal, nor conservative - Republican or Democrat ... not even independent or libertarian for that matter ---- maybe it is a bit medical - alright medical - but it may make you smile and sadly have to do this in multiple parts ... a piece written by Dave Barry (a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald.)
I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis. Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!' I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America's enemies. I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.
Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor. Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons). Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon. The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose, watery bowel movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground. MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but, have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet. After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep.

This is worth a listen --- draw your own conclusions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1YkWish83s

Actually - that is a great idea.
off the topic - But, do recommend two movies ... not recent - so readily available ... One is the remake of 1984
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087803/
and a British Film .. V for Vendetta (2005)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434409/

LOL ... no, it is pretty straight forward ... if a "survey" pops p just click X ...
And if the government wants my computer they can have it --- it is a crappy Dell ... and if the want to "share" it they would first have to triple its speed.

An fascinating website to visit, at least once a month, is the Department of Treasury’s FMS (Financial Management Service) site ... there you will find the monthly financial balance sheet ... revenues in - expenditures out. No matter what the central government thinks it can accomplish by raising taxes on the rich .. Hell, raise them through the roof on EVERYONE ... doesn’t matter ... each and every month the tax revenues are going down.
Here is the link
http://fms.treas.gov/
if you are an accounting type ... you can visit the site daily and look at the balance sheet, day by day

The great scholar of money and banking, George Selgin, has this splendid op-ed in yesterday’s Christian Science Monitor. Here are some key paragraphs:
“ But consider: the US economy has actually grown less rapidly since 1914 [the year the Federal Reserve began operation] than it did before. And inflation has been much worse, despite both the Civil War, which featured the nation’s worst inflation, and the Great Depression, which featured its severest deflation!

What’s more, the frequent downturns before 1914 were due, not to the lack of a central bank, but to foolish government regulations. Topping the list were bans on branch banking, initiated by state governments and then incorporated into federal banking law. The bans propped up thousands of undercapitalized and under-diversified banks – banks unfit to survive major local shocks, let alone macroeconomics ones. They also caused bank notes – competitively supplied counterparts of today’s Federal Reserve notes – to trade at discounts whenever they traveled far from the solitary offices of banks that issued them.

During the Civil War, state bank notes were taxed out of existence to make way for those of new national banks. Because national banks had to accept one another’s notes at full value, their currency was uniform. But national bank notes had to be backed by government bonds.

That requirement, designed to bolster the Union’s finances while the war raged on, proved disastrous afterward, when government surpluses led to a halving of the federal debt, and to a corresponding shortage of bonds for securing bank notes. The resulting currency panics – in 1873, 1884, 1893, and 1907 – prompted the Fed’s establishment.”

Defiantly worth the read

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0803/p09s01-coop.ht...