This, I received via an email forward.

Written by an Australian Dentist

To Kill an American

You probably missed this in the rush of news, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper, an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.

So an Australian dentist wrote an editorial the following day to let everyone know what an American is . So they would know when they found one. (Good one, mate!!!!)

‘An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish , Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani or Afghan.

An American may also be a Comanche, Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans.

An American is Christian , or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan . The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.

An American is also free to believe in no religion……. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the world..

The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence , which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.

An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return………..

When Afghanistan was over-run by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country!

As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan ..

The national symbol of America , The Statue of Liberty , welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America

Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11 , 2001 earning a better life for their families. It’s been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 different countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.

So you can try to kill an American if you must.. Hitler did. So did General Tojo , and Stalin , and Mao Tse-Tung, and other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world. But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself . Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.

Instant Fortunes, and Sudden Headaches

By CAITLIN KELLY

Published: December 29, 2007 – The New York Times

So what would you do if you got your wish and suddenly came into a lot of money — by winning the lottery, perhaps, or getting a six-figure insurance settlement or a long-awaited inheritance? Financial freedom, right?

Ken Jennings, a 33-year-old former software engineer who earned more than $2.5 million by winning 74 consecutive games on “Jeopardy” in 2004, says it is not that simple.

“For a long time, I was paralyzed,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do. I was depositing a $1.5 million check into an account that had never had more than $5,000 in it.” What he did was quit his job. Eighteen months later, he moved his family from Salt Lake City to a larger home in the more expensive city of Seattle, bought a widescreen television and has become an author and developer of board games. Initially, he said, “it was a very lonely feeling. I was getting junk mail from all over the world and begging letters.”

He added: “For a lot of people, the money is the end. But that’s just the beginning. You need to decide what your goal is and stick to it.”

Laurel Touby, 44, an entrepreneur based in New York City, made her money last summer by selling mediabistro.com, a Web site for job-seeking media and creative professionals that she had founded in 1996. She sold it for $23 million — leaving $9 million to $11 million, she said, in her bank account after taxes. One of her concerns, she said, was losing friendships. “I’ve tried to be really direct, and I try to be really sensitive to their needs,” she said. “Otherwise you do have a separation and scare people off.”

Like Mr. Jennings, Ms. Touby and her husband, Jon Fine, a journalist, are feeling their way in an unfamiliar new world of money with little guidance.

“I had all kinds of illusions about how far the money would go and what I would enjoy, but they’re not true,” Ms. Touby said. “I thought, ‘O.K., a car and driver and a new apartment and a whole new life.’ In fact, I can only afford two out of three.”

She said she interviewed 20 wealthy people for advice and quickly found out about the deep divide between the truly wealthy — for whom private jets are the norm — and people in her new station.

Robert Frank, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal who wrote the book “Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich” (Crown, 2007), drew the same dividing line as Ms. Touby. From 1995 to 2003, the number of millionaire households more than doubled to more than eight million, he wrote in his book, with many of those households worth far more than $10 million.

For people who did not grow up wealthy, suddenly having to figure out how to conserve and build on a seven- or even eight-figure windfall is not easy. Nor is it easy to find smart, solid advice for handling it.

“If you have list of 10 things you think you’ll be able to do with all your money, you’ll only be able to do two,” Ms. Touby said. “There’s a knockdown period when the accountants tell you what’s really possible.” She remains determined to buy a Manhattan loft apartment, which will consume half her money, and must still earn $100,000 a year to maintain it, she said.

Elwood Bartlett, a 41-year-old accountant in Westminster, Md., won $84 million in a lottery last summer — $33 million after taxes. He gave away $200,000 to the Special Olympics while fending off hundreds of strangers pleading for his aid or investment.

“I went from being ‘Elwood Bartlett the individual’ to ‘the corporation’” he said. He incorporated himself to gain protection from a frivolous lawsuit. “Someone could see my face on TV and walk in front of my car,” he said.

Mr. Bartlett’s wealth has allowed him access to investments available only to those with $2 million to $5 million, like certain hedge funds. “I’ve bought a number of properties and I’ve made some opportunities for people,” he said. He has hired a full-time personal trainer, property manager and personal assistant, paying each an annual salary, with health benefits, of $30,000 to $60,000.

Mary Sue Donohue, a lawyer in Boca Raton, Fla., who has specialized in wills, trusts and estates for 25 years, advises caution. Many of the newly wealthy immediately want a larger house, she said. “It’s a pattern we regularly see, and it’s not a wise choice. It’s not necessary — they already have a place to live.”

Ms. Donohue advises clients to spend 5 to 10 percent at once, to have a little fun. “For anyone with a net worth of $250,000 or less, a windfall can be a real shock,” she said.

Patricia MacGregor, of Wellington, Fla., who has written 26 thrillers as T. J. MacGregor, used a $100,000 inheritance to pay down credit card debt and buy her daughter a used car. She put the rest into certificates of deposit earning 5 percent. Ms. MacGregor, whose husband, Rob MacGregor, is also an author, said the money “basically made life easier,” adding, “We have no steady income so if we have a slow year,” interest income on what is left can help pay the bills.

A windfall need not be six figures to make a difference. Janice Moore, for instance, ended up with $8,000 by selling a rare Beatles album. Her copy of “Yesterday and Today,” which she bought in 1966 at a Sears store, bore the “butcher” cover that had been recalled by the record company. She had not paid it much attention until a relative mentioned a couple years ago that the album might be worth a lot of money.

Experts on “Antiques Roadshow” on PBS confirmed that the record was valuable. She spent half the proceeds from the sale on repairing her roof and the rest on her first trip to Europe, including a walk on Abbey Road, made famous by another Beatles album.

Initially, conceded Ms. Moore, an administrative assistant in Schaumburg, Ill., “I didn’t know what to do with it.”

For those who had gotten much more money, investing in C.D.’s, mutual funds and real estate was attractive, but making the bigger choices remained daunting, sometimes for months.

Mr. Jennings said, “The fun part for me was seeing my face with some seven-figure number below it,” when he was on “Jeopardy.” “It was like playing Pac-Man. It never felt real, but when Alex Trebek pulled a seven-figure check from his pocket, I almost fainted. It wasn’t a video game score. I was now ‘the millionaire guy.’”

His advice now? “Put your money somewhere not idiotic and leave it alone as much as possible.”

On The Net : The New York Times

The Sales Profession: Attention Must Still Be Paid

By BEN STEIN
Published: April 25, 2009

ASIDE from some gardening and baby-sitting in my neighborhood when I was a child, my first summer job was in the summer of 1962, just before my first year of college. It was at Shoe Giant, a large discount shoe store in Langley Park, in Prince George’s County of Maryland, and I got the job thanks to a high school pal who also worked there.

The job entailed selling shoes. The shoes were tossed about in giant bins and some were stored in boxes. Once the customers had picked out the kind of shoes they wanted, my task was to find the right size, close the sale, write up a receipt with my sales clerk number on it and escort the customer to the cashier. (A pair of shoes there was rarely more than $10 — and was often less.)

I made not much more than a dollar an hour, as well as a small commission. I recall that my first week’s paycheck was about $70.

I did not stay at that job for long. Later that summer, my mother found me a job at the Civil Service Commission, where I sat at a desk and added numbers on an ancient Marchant machine with a crank, to find Civil Service health insurance payment data for various kinds of injuries and sicknesses. I hated that job, but I did it anyway. I missed Shoe Giant. I missed the drama of selling.

Even after all these years, and after many other jobs, my mind often returns to my brief stint as a shoe salesman. It was then, amid that tangle of sandals, sneakers, oxfords, high heels and brogans, that I discovered the ballet that is sales. Forever after, I have had a deep respect for selling and for salesmen and saleswomen.

Sales — when done right — is more than a job. It is an art. It is a high-wire act. It is, as Arthur Miller immortally said, being out there “on a smile and a shoe shine.” It is learning the product you are selling, learning it so well that you can describe it while doing a pirouette of smiles for the customer and talking about the latest football scores. It is knowing human nature so well that you can align the attributes of your product or service cleanly with the needs and wants of your customers.

At its best, selling is taking a doubt and turning it, jujitsu style, into a powerful push. Selling is making the customer feel better about spending money — or investing it — than he would have felt by keeping his wallet zipped.

I have special memories of people who have sold brilliantly.

In 1976, when I moved to Los Angeles, I desperately wanted a Mercedes 450 SLC, a car that was — even in used form — far more than I deserved or could afford at my entry-level, highly tenuous work as a scriptwriter. My salesman at Mercedes-Benz of Beverly Hills, Larry Anish, listened to my objections and simply asked, “Don’t you believe in your own future?” Of course, I bought the car.

Many years later, an insurance broker came to call on my wife about disability insurance. I scoffed at him and told him how incredibly unlikely it was that a healthy woman like my wife would ever be disabled. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what we think, too. That’s why it’s so cheap and pays so much if she does get disabled.”

I bought the policy, and when my wife did get temporarily disabled, it paid off magnificently and we needed it.

When in doubt about any aspect of human interaction, I always consult the best salesman I have ever known, Barron Thomas, real estate and airplane salesman extraordinaire, and occasional writer, who could sell oil to the Saudis.

In particular, I’ve come to love insurance sales representatives. After many years of skepticism, and despite many warnings from consumer “experts,” I have come to believe that you can rarely have too much insurance, and that whatever insurance you don’t have is exactly what you will wind up needing. The fact that so many people in insurance sell you what’s good for you, even when smart alecks are telling you not to buy it, makes their work extremely impressive. I wish I had paid more attention to them.

People who work in sales often sit next to me on airplanes, which are my true home. In “Death of a Salesman,” Arthur Miller also wrote: “A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.” Those who are in sales are always aware that the next sale is behind the next door, and they are always great companions. They are where the rubber of production meets the road of consumption, whether in a showroom or a studio or on the phone or calling you at home. When the recovery starts, they will be the ones making purchases happen.

Lawyers and doctors and dentists and politicians and accountants and actors — all of us sell something, every day and every time we meet someone. For me, it all goes back to Shoe Giant, 47 years ago, and I wish that every 17-year-old I know could have that experience. It takes some ability at sales to believe in your own future, no matter what that future may be.

Ben Stein is a lawyer, writer, actor and economist. E-mail: ebiz@nytimes.com.

On The Net : The New York Times

Susan Boyle – This world learned a simple lesson in humility, love and appreciation. So much for ‘What you see is what you get!’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luRmM1J1sfg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY