Your Next Vacation (Really) October 17, 2001February 20, 2017 But first: I just read CALTON‘s (CN) quarterly report, and it’s evident this former cash play is now a complete crapshoot. (Sorry about that.) That’s no guarantee of failure, and I am stubborn enough to hold on to all or most of mine. But with that nice $5-a-share cash distribution behind us, and its high-tech ventures bleeding cash, the possibility of a total wipeout seems very real. Ah, but why worry about money when you can get to Hawaii for a buck and a half? When you can get 4-star hotel rooms just about anyplace for $79 with Priceline.com? But how about something more than just lying on the beach, even if it’s no bargain in the traditional sense? Muriel Horacek: ‘As you know, I am an Earthwatch Institute volunteer Field Rep, which entails recruiting people to assist scientists in field research. I also go on at least three field expeditions myself each year. We pay our own way, but it’s tax deductible. I have done 30 expeditions on six continents, and have no intention of canceling my next one, in November, to Kenya. If I opted out I would feel that the terrorists have won! ‘I was concerned that many people would be afraid of flying long distances and working in, and with the local people, in Third World countries, which offer little protection compared to our secure haven at home. However, I am heartened to learn from the Earthwatch HQ that, on the contrary, people are calling and saying that we need more contacts like this. I have found that many citizens of these countries are surprised that Westerners would pay for the opportunity to work on their hands and knees in an archeological dig, walking through jungles on bird or animal surveys, walking the beach all night protecting nesting 1,000 lb turtles, teaching maternal and child health in Africa or Asia, or monitoring behavior of dolphins, monkeys, macaws or a host of other animals. ‘We cannot compare with the good work the Peace Corps does, but for those who do not want to commit two years, Earthwatchers who give 2 to 3 weeks a year learn a lot, give a lot, and make lifetime friends with both the locals and volunteers from many countries.’
Your Next Vacation October 16, 2001February 20, 2017 But first: Did some of you buy TIPS – Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities – at last week’s auction? These were first covered here May 12th and 15th last year, and I’ve mentioned them a few times since because they are, along with I-Bonds, about the safest investments in the world: guaranteed by the US Treasury, protected from inflation and, at least to a degree, from deflation. At last week’s auction, the bonds maturing in 2032 were issued with a 3.375% coupon and each bond was sold not for $1,000, like most bonds, but for $983.14. So the $33.75 in interest each bond will pay works out to a rate of slightly more . . . 3.433%. And because each $983.14 bond will be redeemed for at least $1,000 in 30 years, that bumps the ‘yield to maturity’ even a teensy tiny fraction of a hair higher. But the real appeal of these is that their $1,000 face value – and the amount on which that 3.375% is calculated each year – will rise with inflation (or fall with deflation, but not below $1,000). Let’s assume we average 3% inflation for the next 30 years. That $1,000 bond will then be redeemed for $2,430 instead of $1,000 . . . and the semi-annual interest payments you get will be based on each year’s higher principal. So in that final year, instead of getting $33.75 on each $1,000 bond, you’d be getting about $82 on each $2,430 bond. All this is rotten in a taxable account, because the ‘accreted principal’ – namely, the inflation adjustment – is taxed as income even though you didn’t receive it in cash. But, in these nervous times, it doesn’t seem too bad at all inside the shelter of a retirement fund. (For non-sheltered money, you might want to consider I-Bonds. Or buying shares in one of the mutual funds that specialize in inflation adjusted bonds – I think Vanguard has one – and that pay out the inflation adjustment in cash each year. You’d still have to pay tax, but at least it’s on something you actually got.) If you’re 25, with $3,000, I wouldn’t bother with any of this. But if you’re 55 or 65, or your folks are, this might be a place for a portion of your (or their) retirement money. Now that the auction is over, you will probably have to pay a bit more to your broker to buy them in the secondary market. When I called to get a quote for you yesterday, my full-service broker offered them at $99.25. (Bond prices are quoted in ‘cents on the dollar,’ even though they are denominated in $1,000’s. At $99.25, each bond would cost you $992.50.) It’s not that they had jumped nearly a dollar each, from $98.31 to $99.25. It’s that the firm was marking them up a about dollar – an extra $10 a bond. Had I been in the market to buy $1 million worth, this would have yielded my broker and his firm $5,000 each. I wasn’t in the market to buy $1 million worth, sadly, and you may not be either. But in any event, if you get the bonds for anything ‘under par’ – less than $1,000 each – I wouldn’t obsess too terribly over the spread your broker takes. Over 30 years, it won’t amount to much. (If you sell before maturity, you can expect your broker to lighten your proceeds by at least as much again, if not more.) TIPS are no way to get rich, but a pretty good way, inside a retirement account, to hang on to what you have. Oops – Time’s Up. Tomorrow: Your Next Vacation
You’ve Lost Weight! October 15, 2001January 26, 2017 Peter Westre: ‘I have been on the Atkins diet for almost 2 years. I lost about a hundred pounds and feel fantastic. I had blood work done in April and my overall cholesterol was 149.’ Jack Ratcliff: ‘Another downside to the statin family of drugs is that in addition to blocking the production of cholesterol in your liver, they also inhibit the natural production of coenzyme Q10. CoQ10 is an essential substance for producing energy in your cells, especially your heart cells. If you decide to continue with Lipitor you should surely begin taking a CoQ10 supplement. Do consider that from 1989 to 1999, the number of congestive heart failure patients nearly doubled. — could statin drugs, which came into wide-spread use during this period, have played a part? ‘Dan Stone gave some great advice about trying diet and exercise for six months before taking any statin drug. He is also correct in suggesting that homocysteine may be just as dangerous as cholesterol. Happily, no risky drugs are needed to address elevated levels of homocysteine. It is due to a deficiency in the B complex vitamins, especially folic acid. In fact, numerous scientific studies have shown that folic acid is North America’s number-one vitamin deficiency so do yourself a favor and get on the B’s. ‘Will diet, exercise and supplements work? They surely did for me. I wrote you several months ago raving about my new Lo-Carb Diet. New tests I had in August showed my cholesterol down from 198 to 162 and give me confidence that I was correct to abandon my ten-year (!) low-fat diet. All I really had to do was substitute a lot of the sugar-laden foods with additional meats, fish, nuts and fresh fruits/veggies. I now eat eggs, which I had avoided like the plague. I work out 3 or 4 times weekly and take lots of supplements that I learned about in Dr. Robert Atkin’s Age-Defying Diet book. I enjoy my diet much more than the low-fat one. I also have to eat a little extra to avoid dropping below my ‘desirable’ weight range — some 20 pounds below my ten-year average weight. I am the first to admit, this low-carb diet, might not work so well for everyone. My doctor was skeptical when I first told him about it but now has to admit ‘it works for some people.” Marc A. Armstrong, MD: ‘For what it’s worth, I agree with Doctor Stone.’ Emerson Schwartzkopf: ‘One of the marvels of human beings is that we can all be different. After her first diagnosis of heightened bad cholesterol and high blood pressure, my spouse increased her exercise and put both of us on a close-to-no-fat diet (3 grams a day, at times). After three months, she experienced virtually no change. My cholesterol and blood pressure, meanwhile, dropped from acceptable levels to incredibly healthy measurements, although I’m still classified as 25 pounds overweight. She then started on Liptor and blood-pressure medication with immediate and positive results. What works for some people doesn’t work for others, and folks like you and my spouse are healthier and happier now. Exercise and good diet are wise choices in any case, but it’s dangerous to assume that sensible habits fix everything.’ John Mandeville: ‘I lift weights 3 times a week (not free weights) and I do aerobics 6 days a week. I do the weights at 6 am for an hour at a time and the aerobics at 5 pm for an hour. I ride bikes (inside and outside), do stair steppers, and walk. I’m 66 yrs old and cholesterol is about 175 and pressure is 110/70. It is easy for me, because I like it. For those who just don’t like to exercise, it is a lot tougher to get the routine. However, it can be done. One has to stick with it for at least a year. Now if you want your heart to reallllllly feel better, try Habitat For Humanity. It won’t get you to Heaven, but it will give you a big ‘high’ every time you do it.’ ☞ Six am? Six am? Laura Schultz: ‘As a Pfizer shareholder, I was delighted to see you tout the wonders of Lipitor. As a reader concerned about your health, I was extremely disappointed. There is no such thing as a free lunch, or a free ride for that matter, so get out there and walk for your health.’ Tomorrow: Your Next Vacation
Second Opinions October 12, 2001January 26, 2017 Georgia McGrath: ‘Andrew, shame on you! Get out there and go for a walk each day, and make a few semi-slavish dietary sacrifices – and you won’t need to take the Lipitor! (Did you read the fine print that came with it, about the possible side effects?)’ Jack Kouloheris: ‘I’m 41 and have been on Lipitor about 3 years now, mainly because of a family history of heart disease. I got the same amazing results. It’s Magic! The only downside is that you do have to have periodic liver function tests to make sure no damage is occurring. Then there was the famous stock price crash that happened to Bayer when their Baycol drug, in the same class as Lipitor (a statin), caused potentially deadly muscle damage and had to be withdrawn. Lipitor makes literally billions for Pfizer.’ Dan Stone: ‘I am an internist. The heart scan test is a worthwhile test, but useful only in the context of overall risk. In other words, the implication of your column that anyone with any degree of positivity on a scan would benefit from Lipitor is not correct. Cholesterol is only one risk factor for coronary artery disease. Others include smoking, hypertension, male sex, a family history of early heart disease and age. Homocysteine (a blood amino acid) probably plays an important role–perhaps as much as cholesterol–and others such as depression, “type A” personality, etc., likely do as well. ‘Lipitor does have side effects and the medications in its class have been out for all of about twelve years. Although a fabulous tool for treating coronary disease, its role in otherwise low risk persons with elevated cholesterol remains to be clarified. Your life expectancy is probably several fold greater than the time that these drugs have been available and Lipitor is one of the newest. You are looking at decades taking a drug for which long term data simply does not exist. Is that risky for an otherwise healthy person? The answer is pretty obvious. ‘You know enough about ‘if it’s too good to be true…’ to know that there is more to this issue than taking Lipitor and not worrying. At least six months of dietary therapy would be appropriate prior to considering a drug like Lipitor. After all, what’s six months when we’re talking about treating you for the rest of your life? Also, if you get a physiologic as opposed to an anatomic test (a treadmill), data shows that a normal study (if you achieve target heart rate) confers a five year mortality rate near zero due to cardiovascular causes. So you may not need to worry about a rogue twenty percent lesion in one vessel. The risks of it are probably very, very low if your other risk factors are controlled. ‘SO: Repeat after me, the health mantra equivalent to dollar cost averaging in no-load mutual funds: ‘diet and exercise, diet and exercise, diet and exercise…’ (Sorry.)’
Don’t Worry — Be Happy! October 11, 2001February 20, 2017 Easy for me to say, I know. Bombs, anthrax, lord knows what else. But I would respectfully suggest that you spend no more than half an hour a day worrying, for three reasons: Statistically, the chances that anything will happen to you are very small. Get on an airplane, for heaven’s sake. Visit New York or Hawaii or any other place you’ve always wanted to go. You’ll have a great time, snag a bargain, and in your own small way you’ll be defying the terrorists. Could something awful happen? Sure. But that’s true every time you get behind the wheel of your car. (Have you seen how people drive in Boston?) More than forty thousand people are killed in auto accidents each year. And you actually leave your house? Worrying doesn’t help. Yes, you should do the basics – stock your home with the same kinds of things you should have had all along, in case of a hurricane or an earthquake, a flood or an ice storm. It’s almost an obligation that we enjoy life. Not to do so dishonors all those who struggled and died these past two centuries so that we might. I don’t mean we should ignore what’s going on. We should be better citizens than ever, informing ourselves and joining in a civil discussion of how best to meet the challenges. But to be worried and unhappy all the time? Bad plan. I would not, however, be complacent about the stock market. At the very least, look at your investments and consider whether they offer compelling fundamental value. If you have no idea how to evaluate fundamental value, consider whether you should be picking stocks at all, or turning the job over to, say, a value fund like one of those offered by Tweedy, Browne, or else an index fund (fully prepared to dollar-cost-average down, if and as the markets fall further).
Take Heart! October 10, 2001March 25, 2012 Your faithful correspondent is up for just about anything healthy that involves no inconvenience or discomfort, and so when he found out that for $550 he could lie down fully clothed for 90 seconds and discover the state of his arteries – with no more radiation exposure than the equivalent of a single chest x-ray – out came his credit card. Three of his four arteries, the Ultra-Fast CT Scan color photos and report showed a few days later, were as clear as Colorado mountain air – spectacular, really – the kind of pipes used in the finest organ. The fourth, however, had some calcium build-up. This could conceivably have been related to the tuna fish salad sandwiches ‘on a buttered role with extra mayonnaise’ that decades ago were his staple. ‘There’s mayonnaise in the tuna salad,’ the counterman would explain. ‘I know,’ I would say, ‘but please – butter the roll, and then slap on extra mayonnaise.’ That fourth pipe wasn’t 90% blocked or anything, but my doctor showed how, oddly, it’s the 20% blockages that often surprise you the worst – he drew pictures of lipids escaping from plaque nodules and doing terrible things – and so we drew blood to check my cholesterol and he gave me a prescription for a little pill called Lipitor, at the lowest 10mg dosage, that you take each night before you go to sleep. I’d take it for a month, eat a bunch of salmon to get my good cholesterol up, and see what effect that had on my ‘bloods.’ (If this is vastly more than you ever cared to know about me, the point is that this is ultimately about you, and your loved ones, so hang on.) For a long time my cholesterol had been around 210, but heavy on the HDLs – the good cholesterol you get from shrimp cocktail and olive oil, as opposed to the bad cholesterol you get from French fries and pig lard. But have you ever had Charles’s cooking? No? Who can resist? It is to die for. So there were my new scores, pre-Lipitor: 253 overall cholesterol, with 40 HDLs (the barely acceptable minimum) and 289 for the triglycerides, which I believe are a family of trolls who live in rocks and you want to have as few of them as possible. A month later, I went for a second blood test. And now the results are in. With more salmon but (just to see what I could get away with) no slavish dietary sacrifices . . . the only big change being these little Lipitor tablets once a day . . . it seems that the overall cholesterol, 253 last month, has dropped to 144; the 40 HDLs, which you want high, have climbed to 48; and the 289 rock trolls are now 96. I am astonished. And I am . . . heartened. And my point is simply this: even more practical than buying a gas mask or Cipro these days may be to check out your pipes (there can be blockage even if cholesterol is low) and your ‘bloods.’ Or, if you’re 26, to get your folks to do it. And then, if need be, toss a Lipitor down your throat each night. Better living through chemistry.
Take a Tax Loss But Stay in the Game? October 9, 2001February 20, 2017 Lanny Gilbert: ‘I have followed your common sense approach since about 1985 when I got a copy of [your book]. Well, I departed from that fundamental advice and put about $25,000 into two ‘hi-tech’ mutual funds in February 1999, just before the bubble broke. These two funds together are worth about $5000. So, should I try and ride this out, or just sell and take the tax loss and the lesson learned the hard way? All of my other investments are in much more conservative funds and index funds.’ ☞ I would sell for the tax loss and put the $5,000 in a different hi-tech fund (or at least high-volatility fund, like American Century Growth) . . . or possibly even, if you can afford it, $10,000. If that $10,000 then drops to $2,500, say, sell for a loss and find another $10,000 to do the same. Sooner or later, the tech sector will bottom, and you’ll probably recoup much of what you lost – not because we will ever go back to the same crazy heights, which we will not in our lifetime, but because going 20% of the way back up, in this fanciful example, would give you an overall profit. (For the sake of the math, assume the funds you bought were selling for $1,000 a share and you bought 25 shares. They dropped 80% from $25,000 to $5,000, and then a further 75% in this example. You’ve put in $25,000, added $5,000, and then $7,500, for a total of $37,500 . . . less the tax benefit from switching among funds and taking $27,500 in losses. Now, years later, the $1,000 fund, which after the 80% drop was $200 a share, and after the subsequent 75% drop was $50 a share, has struggled 20% of the way back up from $50 to its one-time $1,000 peak, which puts it at $240. At $50, you were able to buy 200 shares with your $10,000, and now, at $240, you have $48,000 worth. Yes, you have a hefty taxable gain if you sell. But no one says you have to sell. And if you do, the gain will be lightly taxed as long-term.) Note that doing this with mutual funds is less risky than doing it with individual stocks. It is not at all improbable that high-flying stock after high-flying stock might go all the way to zero. I have had several do this already. But it’s dramatically less likely the American Century Growth fund would ever go to zero. George Hamlett: ‘Thanks for the paperboy site. For research, reference, newspapers and other stuff, here’s a gem that might have escaped your attention.’ Tomorrow: Take Heart!
I-Bonds, Idea, Iran, I Am that I Am October 8, 2001January 26, 2017 Peter: ‘This past year I gave my 3-year-old nieces I-bonds as birthday gifts, with the idea that they could use them for College. However now that I have re-read the rules, it almost seems that only their parents can purchase them, and then apply them towards their child’s education. Can you clear this up for me, before I purchase more?’ ☞ For I-bonds to be used to pay for college free of tax, the I-bond buyer MUST be one of the parents (and be at least 24), must hold the bonds personally (not gift them to the children) and must spend the money on their college educations while the children are still their dependents. On top of that, the tax benefit phases out if the parents’ income is too high. Instead of I-bonds, you might consider setting up 529 plans for your nieces. See savingforcollege.com. Michael Joy: ‘I LOVE that idea [capturing bin Ladin, giving him a sex change operation, and returning him to live under Taliban rule as a woman]. If he thinks that’s the right way to treat women, let HIM live that way for a while! Would his new name be Osama bin Lady?’ Kevin Clark: ‘I don’t see the harm of admitting that America makes mistakes, as long as we’re not paralyzed by agonizing over things we can no longer change. One thing we all need to keep in mind, though, is that just because some action had bad consequences doesn’t necessarily mean that there was a ‘right answer’ that we missed. Take the Shah of Iran, for example. Maybe supporting him wasn’t a great option, but we’ll never know how the alternatives would have turned out. Maybe if we hadn’t supported him the Soviets would have conquered a path to the Gulf and the Cold War would have turned out differently. I’m not claiming that would have happened; my point is simply that we don’t and can’t know. Life is not a textbook exercise with the answer in the back. Currently it’s very unclear to me what the best option is with regard to the ‘moderate’ Arab states, e.g. Saudi Arabia. If we don’t support the existing governments then we’re an undependable ally (with all that implies for forming future relationships) and there’s no guarantee that replacement regimes will be any better. If we do support them then we’re to some degree accomplices in the repression of their own populations thereby fueling anti-American sentiment. Either choice will inspire decades of second guessing. Whatever we end up doing, I hope everyone keeps in mind all the things we could have done worse as well as those we could (with benefit of hindsight) have done better.’ Doug Simpkinson: ‘Tom Bolger writes: <<It’s the SAME God. They branch off at ‘the Second Coming of God.’ The Christians believe that the second coming was Jesus Christ (who was a Jew). The Muslims believe it was Mohammed. The Jews are still waiting.>> Muslims do not believe Mohammed was God, or the second coming of God. Mohammed was the last, greatest prophet. Muslims do, however, accept Jesus as a prophet.’ Brian: ‘But if we all share the same God and I pray to be protected from terrorists and the terrorists pray for success in their terrorism and they succeed in their terrorism, what rationalization shall I use to avoid concluding that God is on the side of the terrorists?’
Osama bin Laden — a Transsexual? October 5, 2001February 20, 2017 My pal Alan Rogowsky suggests The Paper Boy web site. Did you know Miami has a Finnish newspaper? The Paper Boy looks like a good research tool. And then Alan passed on this anonymous analysis that’s been ricocheting round the Net: ‘Killing Bin Laden will only create a martyr. Holding him prisoner will inspire his comrades to take hostages to demand his release. Therefore, I suggest we do neither. Let the Special Forces, Seals or whatever, covertly capture him, fly him to an undisclosed hospital and have surgeons quickly perform a complete sex change operation. Then we return her to Afghanistan to live as a woman under the Taliban.’ I like it. Speaking of sex changes – or at least changes when it comes to sex – I just came back from the Empire State Pride Agenda dinner, 1200 snappily turned out gays and lesbians assembled to hear Governor Pataki and Mayor Giuliani express what by now appears to be their very genuine support for equal rights for gays and lesbians. Pataki has come a long way in six years; and Giuliani, as has been widely reported, has been living as the guest of a gay couple, long-time friends of his, since being kicked out of Gracie Mansion. And suddenly there is an openly gay ambassador to Rumania. When did that happen? Just breezed through the Senate, apparently. Secretary of State Colin Powell swore in Ambassador Michael Guest on September 19 and acknowledged his partner, Alex Nevarez, who will be accompanying the Ambassador to Rumania, in the audience. If Jesse Helms is fuming, we haven’t heard about it. Good for the Bush administration. (You will recall that the first-ever openly gay American ambassador was James Hormel, whose posting to Luxemburg was nixed by the Republican Senate, and then effected anyway – to howls of fury – by President Clinton.) Finally, as several of us have been advocating in this space ‘bombing them with butter’ at the same time as we do everything we can to destroy the terrorists (or spirit them off for sex changes), it was heartening to see the announcement today of very much that sort of approach – $320 million in aid for the Afghani people, at the same time as we pursue the terrorists with what one assumes will be deadly force. And the Bush administration has done a fine job of gathering support from around the globe, so this isn’t them against us, but, rather, them against virtually everybody. So far, so good. Has all this turned me into a Dick Armey / Tom DeLay Republican? Or even a George W. / Dick Cheney Republican? No, no, no, no, no. Resoundingly not. Up until this crisis, it seemed to me they had done just about everything wrong. In many instances, terribly, perhaps even callously, wrong. Going forward, the plan to stimulate the economy by cutting the capital gains and corporate tax rates is equally misguided. (We could wisely have a zero percent rate on capital gains, if it were narrowly targeted only to purchases of newly issued stock and bonds, not trading profits. But that has not been proposed.) But let’s give credit – enthusiastically – where it is due. And on the hugely important issue of the war on terrorism, as well as the tiny but meaningful issue of gay ambassadors, the Bush administration deserves our applause.
Fly Someplace, by God! October 4, 2001January 26, 2017 PRICELINE’S COMPETITION Eric E. Haas: ‘You mentioned recently using Priceline. I hope you didn’t book your flight through them. Because you can ALWAYS get a better deal with lesser restrictions from Hotwire.com. Here’s how it works: Like Priceline, you can’t choose time of day or airline — you must have that flexibility in your travel schedule. Priceline requires you to ‘guess’ what the lowest fair will be and commit to it in advance. If you guess too low, you are locked out from guessing again until one week later. If you guess too high, you pay too much. Hotwire just plain tells you the lowest price up front. And you don’t have to commit in advance. Once they tell you the price, you have 30 minutes to accept it. I’ve used hotwire several times. Most recently to fly from Grand Rapids, MI to Washington DC round trip for $103.’ ☞ Or just visit Southwest – and then, if you have a favorite airline that flies to one of the cities Southwest serves, check to see whether they might not be matching these incredible fares. Also: Jet Blue. I haven’t used Priceline for airline tickets, only hotels. American takes such good care of me, I try to fly them whenever I can, using miles when the fare is too steep. But here’s a little twist on the part about having to wait a week to make another Priceline bid. First, if you haven’t tried it lately, you’ll see Priceline has added a neat little feature that shows you graphically your chances of having your bid accepted – I just bid $250 for a quick round-trip to Paris next week (no Saturday stay), and it gave me a 7% chance of being accepted – but showed that at $355 I had a 50% chance and at $455 I had an 80% chance. So if I had proceeded at $250, I would likely have been rejected. But the way not to have to wait a week to make another try is to alter something. Leave a day later or come back a day later, for example. Or even – if I read the fine print correctly – tell them, when you make your first request, that you will NOT accept a prop-jet . . . but then tell them that you WILL accept a prop-jet if you need to make a second request. I can’t imagine any carrier flies props to Paris these days, or on any other long flight, so it won’t have a material effect on your trip (of course, if you can’t stand the idea of flying short distances on a prop, that’s a different story) . . . but will meet the requirement for altering your request. Instead of waiting 7 days, you’ll be able to raise your bid just moments after having had your first one rejected. GOD BLESS AMERICA David wrote ‘The ending ‘salutation’ to the US Air Academy letter Friday – ‘God Bless America’ – is the part of this that bothers me the most. Whose God? The Christian one? The Jewish one? The Muslim one?’ To which you replied: Bill Jones: ‘David, you may very well want to ‘leave God out of it.’ Fair enough. Feel free to leave Him out of your personal analysis of the situation. But, let’s respect Dr. Kern’s right to invoke His blessings if Dr. Kern chooses to do so. Freedom of religion does not mean freedom from religious points-of-view in public discussions.’ ☞ Not to speak for David, but my guess is that he would say he very much defends Dr. Kern’s right to express his views . . . but that he, David, has every right to be troubled by them. Arthur Kimes: ‘Dave is in luck. All three religions he mentioned share the SAME God. There may be strong disagreements on who is and isn’t a PROPHET but it’s the same God.’ Tom Bolger: ‘It’s the SAME God. At a rudimentary level, all three religions believe in the Old Testament. They branch off at ‘the Second Coming of God.’ The Christians believe that the second coming was Jesus Christ (who was a Jew). The Muslims believe it was Mohammed. The Jews are still waiting.’ ☞ We are a very patient people.