I have one of the previous models. My only beef with this camera (despite that its not HD) is that there is no headphone jack, or so it says on BH. This is odd seeing as how my model does. Does it or doesn't it have a headphone jack Gary? I love my Panasonic. Gary do you have any focusing problems with yours? We have a lot of focus problems when attaching the wide angle lens adapter.

Gary...you have to have to have to see this video on youtube about the current financial crisis....really important...and a wake up call for those who are NOT LISTENING TO YOU!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaxdUPNYj2s

Hey Gary!

     I know you get bombarded with e-mails so I thought I'd try commenting and hopefully you'll see this. :) The videographer from our wedding said that our church coordinator asked him if you have any great shots of our minister presiding at our wedding - which you do - but they need a shot of her for some marketing materials or upcoming publications I think. Obviously our Pictage site is down now and we don't have a CD so we were wondering how to go about ordering a pic and we wanted to get your permission for them to use a photo of her. Let me know, thanks!
Erin
www.erinhession.com

Gary, This is off the subject here but as you are intrested in the economy, I thought you would like to see this. This came to me via an e-mail, I have not verified that any of this is true and a lot of it may be opinion but it makes for intresting reading anyway. It follows...

  Impending Destruction of the US Economy
>
>             By Paul Craig Roberts
>
>             11/28/07 "ICH" -- --- Hubris and
> arrogance are too ensconced in Washington for
> policymakers to be aware of the economic policy trap
> in which they have placed the US economy.  If the
> subprime mortgage meltdown is half as bad as
> predicted, low US interest rates will be required in
> order to contain the crisis.  But if the dollar's
> plight is half as bad as predicted, high US
> interest rates will be required if foreigners are to
> continue to hold dollars and to finance US budget
> and trade deficits. 
>
>             Which will Washington sacrifice, the
> domestic financial system and over-extended
> homeowners or its ability to finance deficits? 
>
>             The answer seems obvious.  Everything
> will be sacrificed in order to protect Washington's
> ability to borrow abroad.  Without the ability to
> borrow abroad, Washington cannot conduct its wars of
> aggression, and Americans cannot continue to consume
> $800 billion dollars more each year than the economy
> produces.
>
>             A few years ago the euro was worth 85
> cents.  Today it is worth $1.48.  This is an
> enormous decline in the exchange value of the US
> dollar.  Foreigners who finance the US budget and
> trade deficits have experienced a huge drop in the
> value of their dollar holdings.  The interest rate
> on US Treasury bonds does not come close to
> compensating foreigners for the decline in the value
> of the dollar against other traded currencies.
> Investment returns from real estate and equities do
> not offset the losses from the decline in the
> dollar's value.
>
>             China holds over one trillion dollars,
> and Japan almost one trillion, in dollar-denominated
> assets.  Other countries have lesser but still
> substantial amounts. As the US dollar is the reserve
> currency, the entire world's investment portfolio is
> over-weighted in dollars.
>
>             No country wants to hold a depreciating
> asset, and no country wants to acquire more
> depreciating assets.  In order to reassure itself,
> Wall Street claims that foreign countries are locked
> into accumulating dollars in order to protect the
> value of their existing dollar holdings.  But this
> is utter nonsense.  The US dollar has lost 60% of
> its value during the current administration.
> Obviously, countries are not locked into
> accumulating dollars.
>
>             The reason the dollar has not completely
> collapsed is that there is no clear alternative as
> reserve currency.  The euro is a currency without a
> country.  It is the monetary unit of the European
> Union, but the countries of Europe have not
> surrendered their sovereignty to the EU.  Moreover,
> the UK, a member of the EU, retains the British
> pound.  The fact that a currency as politically
> exposed as the euro can rise in value so rapidly
> against the US dollar is powerful evidence of the
> weakness of the US dollar.
>
>             Japan and China have willingly
> accumulated dollars as the counterpart of their
> penetration and capture of US domestic markets.
> Japan and China have viewed the productive capacity
> and wealth created in their domestic economies by
> the success of their exports as compensation for the
> decline in the value of their dollar holdings.
> However, both countries have seen the writing on the
> wall, ignored by Washington and American economists:
>  By offshoring production for US markets, the US has
> no prospect of closing its trade deficit.  The
> offshored production of US firms counts as imports
> when it returns to the US to be marketed. The more
> US production moves abroad, the less there is to
> export and the higher imports rise. 
>
>             Japan and China, indeed, the entire
> world, realize that they cannot continue forever to
> give Americans real goods and services in exchange
> for depreciating paper dollars.  China is
> endeavoring to turn its development inward and to
> rely on its potentially huge domestic market.  Japan
> is pinning hopes on participating in Asia's economic
> development.
>
>             The dollar's decline has resulted from
> foreigners accumulating new dollars at a lower rate.
>  They still accumulate dollars, but fewer.  As new
> dollars are still being produced at high rates,
> their value has dropped.
>
>             If foreigners were to stop accumulating
> new dollars, the dollar's value would plummet.  If
> foreigners were to reduce their existing holdings of
> dollars, superpower America would instantly
> disappear.
>
>             Foreigners have continued to accumulate
> dollars in the expectation that sooner or later
> Washington would address its trade and budget
> deficits.  However, now these deficits seem to have
> passed the point of no return. 
>
>             The sharp decline in the dollar has not
> closed the trade deficit by increasing exports and
> decreasing imports.  Offshoring prevents the
> possibility of exports reducing the trade deficit,
> and Americans are now dependent on imports
> (including offshored production) for which there are
> no longer any domestically produced alternatives.
> The US trade deficit will close when foreigners
> cease to finance it.
>
>             The budget deficit cannot be closed by
> taxation without driving up unemployment and
> poverty.  American median family incomes have
> experienced no real increase during the 21st
> century.  Moreover, if the huge bonuses paid to CEOs
> for offshoring their corporations' production and to
> Wall Street for marketing subprime derivatives are
> removed from the income figures, Americans have
> experienced a decline in real income.  Some studies,
> such as the Economic Mobility Project, find
> long-term declines in the real median incomes of
> some US population groups and a decline in upward
> mobility.
>
>             The situation may be even more dire.
> Recent work by Susan Houseman concludes that  US
> statistical data systems, which were set in place
> prior to the development of offshoring, are counting
> some foreign production as part of US productivity
> and GDP growth, thus overstating the actual
> performance of the US economy.
>
>             The falling dollar has pushed oil to
> $100 a barrel, which in turn will drive up other
> prices. The falling dollar means that the imports
> and offshored production on which Americans are
> dependent will rise in price.  This is not a formula
> to produce a rise in US real incomes.
>
>             In the 21st century, the US economy has
> been driven by consumers going deeper in debt.
> Consumption fueled by increases in indebtedness
> received its greatest boost from Fed chairman Alan
> Greenspan's low interest rate policy.  Greenspan
> covered up the adverse effects of offshoring on the
> US economy by engineering a housing boom.  The boom
> created employment in construction and financial
> firms and pushed up home prices, thus creating
> equity for consumers to spend to keep consumer
> demand growing.
>
>             This source of US economic growth is
> exhausted and imploding.  The full consequences of
> the housing bust remain to be realized.  American
> consumers lack discretionary income and can pay
> higher taxes only by reducing their consumption.
> The service industries, which have provided the only
> source of new jobs in the 21st century, are already
> experiencing falling demand.  A tax increase would
> cause widespread distress.
>
>             As John Maynard Keynes and his followers
> made clear, a tax increase on a recessionary economy
> is a recipe for falling tax revenues as well as
> economic hardship.
>
>             Superpower America is a ship of fools in
> denial of their plight.  While offshoring kills
> American economic prospects, "free market
> economists" sing its praises.  While war imposes
> enormous costs on a bankrupt country,
> neoconservatives call for more war, and Republicans
> and Democrats appropriate war funds which can only
> be obtained by borrowing abroad. 
>
>             By focusing America on war in the Middle
> East, the purpose of which is to guarantee Israel's
> territorial expansion, the executive and legislative
> branches, along with the media, have let slip the
> last opportunities the US had to put its financial
> house in order.  We have arrived at the point where
> it is no longer bold to say that nothing now can be
> done.  Unless the rest of the world decides to
> underwrite our economic rescue, the chips will fall
> where they may.
>
>             End
>
>             Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of
> the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan
> administration.  He is credited with curing
> stagflation and eliminating "Phillips curve"
> trade-offs between employment and inflation, an
> achievement now on the verge of being lost by the
> worst economic mismanagement in US history.
>

sobering. True.