My cousin sent me this today, makes a lot of sense with some of the headlines we have been reading. Maybe 'mascot' would have been a better word to use than 'symbol'. 'Mascot' is a bit more endearing, and it is rather a cute little guy.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
NOWHERE TO RUN
Poetic justice!!! All I can say is Don't Mess With Texas; perhaps we should give Bernie Madoff a 5 minute head start, legs duct taped together of course, and let this Texas grandmother loose on him. . .just a suggestion.
GRANDMOTHER RUNS DOWN PURSE SNATCHER WITH CAR
Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press
A 65-year-old Texas grandmother says she chased down a man who had just snatched her purse, hit him with her car and held him until police arrived.
"I was madder than hell is what I was," Val Renfro said. "I didn't think about anything else except, 'He's not going to get away with this.'"
"The next thing I know, somebody just blindsided me," Renfro said. She grabbed her cell phone, which she carries in her bra, and called 911 as he fled. "Someone just grabbed my purse out of the car," she told the operator. "I'm going to chase him down."
Renfro said she got in her car and screeched out of the parking lot. She spotted the man in front of a nearby movie theater. Her confrontation with the man was recorded in her 911 call.
"Where's my purse?" she yelled. "You give it to me now. I got the police on the phone right now. You give me my purse."
Sample tried to walk away.
"And I thought, 'I'm going to lose this man, and the police aren't here,'" Renfro 
She said he flipped up in the air. "I hit him," she told the 911 operator. Sample kept running, she said. Like a scene out of a movie, customers leaving the theater joined in the chase. "Now there's others chasing him," Renfro told the 911 operator.
Jason Hughes, who was at the movie theater, said it was "pretty crazy."
"When somebody says she just got robbed, and you see a guy running at you with a purse, it's kind of like the first reaction," he said.
Several other people also joined in and corralled the man. "They've got him," an excited Renfro told the operator. Police arrived minutes later and arrested Sample in connection with the theft.
Sample, 47, has previously been convicted of thefts, burglaries and drug possession. "I'm lucky," Renfro said. "I'm very, very lucky that no one was hurt and that I got my purse back."
Later, when she saw the man again outside the police station on his way to jail, he apologized, Renfro said.
"Apology accepted," she replied. "God bless you."
Monday, March 2, 2009
LET'S BRING BACK PUBLIC PUNISHMENT
The arrogance of Bernie Madoff is beyond belief. He seems not to care a bit about the thousands of peoples' lives he has ruined, but sure is concerned about his own penthouse, stocks, money and bonds. I am not sure HOW he knows which money is his or his wifes, or the ruined people he left in his high living wake. I think it is time for some old fashioned public punishment combined with a good dose of humilation. My first nomination for The Stocks, or Tar and Feathering, perhaps The Pillory, and of course a mandatory sign for him or her to wear explaining the foul deeds done is Mr. Bernie Madoff.
MADOFF SAYS: NYC PENTHOUSE AND 62 MILLION ARE MINE MINE MINE!!!
Disgraced Money Manager Claims Place Where He Lives Under House Arrest Should Not Be Subject To Seizure
NYCBS WCBSTV.COM
His lawyers are arguing that Madoff should be entitled to keep the $7 million apartment he's currently being held in while under house arrest and $62 million, including $45 million in municipal bonds.
Court papers filed on Monday state that Madoff and his lawyer say the Manhattan penthouse and the millions held in accounts of Madoff's wife, Ruth, are not subject to seizure.
The court papers say Madoff claims the apartment and the money are
unrelated to a $50 billion fraud Madoff has been accused of carrying out.
The FBI arrested Madoff in December after investigators said he confessed to his sons that he had swindled investors of $50 billion in a Ponzi scheme. The 70-year-old former Nasdaq chairman remains confined to his Manhattan apartment under house arrest.
The court papers say Madoff claims the apartment and the money are
unrelated to a $50 billion fraud Madoff has been accused of carrying out.The FBI arrested Madoff in December after investigators said he confessed to his sons that he had swindled investors of $50 billion in a Ponzi scheme. The 70-year-old former Nasdaq chairman remains confined to his Manhattan apartment under house arrest.
He was arrested and charged with securities fraud after authorities said in court papers that he confessed to his sons that he had carried out a giant Ponzi scheme for years, using new money from investors to pay off early investors while bogus statements claimed consistent gains.
The bonds in an account held by Ruth Madoff at COHMAD Securities Corp. and about $17 million held by her in a Wachovia Bank account "are unrelated to the alleged Madoff fraud and only Ruth Madoff has a beneficial interest in these assets," Bernard Madoff and lawyer Ira Sorkin say, according to the papers.
Sorkin declined to comment Monday.
Sorkin declined to comment Monday.
A court-appointed trustee overseeing the liquidation of Madoff's assets has said the apartment and other property used to secure bail was off limits for now. But if there's a conviction, those assets and possibly property of Madoff "insiders" could be seized to help pay claims by alleged victims, which so far total about $1 billion.
"We are looking at every member of the Madoff family," David Sheen, an attorney representing the trustee, said recently regarding the personal property.
The information was contained in an order of consent asking a judge to grant the federal government authority to seek forfeiture of assets involved in any fraud. It was filed in a case brought by the SEC against Madoff.
The request was made by Madoff, his wife, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Securities Investor Protection Corp. and trustee Irving H. Picard. Judge Louis L. Stanton signed the order Monday afternoon.
The information was contained in an order of consent asking a judge to grant the federal government authority to seek forfeiture of assets involved in any fraud. It was filed in a case brought by the SEC against Madoff.
The request was made by Madoff, his wife, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Securities Investor Protection Corp. and trustee Irving H. Picard. Judge Louis L. Stanton signed the order Monday afternoon.
Picard has said that nearly $950 million in cash and securities has been recovered for investors so far
INDEPENDENCE DAY THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS
March 2, 1836, the Texas Declaration of Indepence was signed in Washington-on-the-Brazos. The Declaration is rather long, but is interesting in light of men's continual longing for freedom, and what is happening now.
The following is from the Texas Almanac:
One of the most important documents in Texas history is the Declaration of Independence, adopted in general convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos, March 2, 1836. Richard Ellis, president of the convention, appointed a committee of five to write the declaration for submission to the convention. However, there is much evidence that George C. Childress, one of the members, wrote the document with little or no help from the other members. Childress is therefore generally accepted as the author.
The text of the declaration is followed by the names of the signers of the document in the style in which they signed the document.
Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Texas
UNANIMOUS
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE,
BY THE
DELEGATES OF THE PEOPLE OF TEXAS,
IN GENERAL CONVENTION,
AT THE TOWN OF WASHINGTON,
ON THE SECOND DAY OF MARCH, 1836
When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted; and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression; when the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood – both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, and the ever-ready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants; When long after the spirit of the Constitution has departed, moderation is at length, so far lost, by those in power that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms, themselves, of the constitution discontinued; and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons; and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet. When in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication, on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements: In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation – the inherent and inalienable right of the people to appeal to first principles and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases – enjoins it as a right towards themselves and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness. Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts to the public opinion of mankind. A statement of a part of our grievances is, therefore, submitted to an impartial world, in justification of the hazardous but unavoidable step now taken of severing our political connection with the Mexican people, and assuming an independent attitude among the nations of the earth.
The Mexican government, by its colonization laws, invited and induced the Anglo-American population of Texas to colonize its wilderness under the pledged faith of a written constitution, that they should continue to enjoy that constitutional liberty and republican government to which they had been habituated in the land of their birth, the United States of America. In this expectation they have been cruelly disappointed, inasmuch as the Mexican nation has acquiesced in the late changes made in the government by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who, having overturned the constitution of his country, now offers us the cruel alternative either to abandon our homes, acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all tyranny, the combined despotism of the sword and the priesthood.
It has sacrificed our welfare to the state of Coahuila, by which our interests have been continually depressed, through a jealous and partial course of legislation carried on at a far distant seat of government, by a hostile majority, in an unknown tongue; and this too, notwithstanding we have petitioned in the humblest terms, for the establishment of a separate state government, and have, in accordance with the provisions of the national constitution, presented the general Congress, a republican constitution which was without just cause contemptuously rejected.
It incarcerated in a dungeon, for a long time, one of our citizens, for no other cause but a zealous endeavor to procure the acceptance of our constitution and the establishment of a state government.
It has failed and refused to secure on a firm basis, the right of trial by jury; that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe guarantee for the life, liberty, and property of the citizen.
It has failed to establish any public system of education, although possessed of almost boundless resources (the public domain) and, although, it is an axiom, in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self-government.
It has suffered the military commandants stationed among us to exercise arbitrary acts of oppression and tyranny; thus trampling upon the most sacred rights of the citizen and rendering the military superior to the civil power.
It has dissolved by force of arms, the state Congress of Coahuila and Texas, and obliged our representatives to fly for their lives from the seat of government; thus depriving us of the fundamental political right of representation.
It has demanded the surrender of a number of our citizens, and ordered military detachments to seize and carry them into the Interior for trial; in contempt of the civil authorities, and in defiance of the laws and constitution.
It has made piratical attacks upon our commerce; by commissioning foreign desperadoes, and authorizing them to seize our vessels, and convey the property of our citizens to far distant ports of confiscation.
It denies us the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own consciences, by the support of a national religion calculated to promote the temporal interests of its human functionaries rather than the glory of the true and living God.
It has demanded us to deliver up our arms; which are essential to our defense, the rightful property of freemen, and formidable only to tyrannical governments.
It has invaded our country, both by sea and by land, with intent to lay waste our territory and drive us from our homes; and has now a large mercenary army advancing to carry on against us a war of extermination.
It has, through its emissaries, incited the merciless savage, with the tomahawk and scalping knife, to massacre the inhabitants of our defenseless frontiers.
It hath been, during the whole time of our connection with it, the contemptible sport and victim of successive military revolutions and hath continually exhibited every characteristic of a weak, corrupt and tyrannical government.
These, and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas until they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. We then took up arms in defense of the national constitution. We appealed to our Mexican brethren for assistance. Our appeal has been made in vain. Though months have elapsed, no sympathetic response has yet been heard from the Interior. We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion that the Mexican people have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therefor of a military government – that they are unfit to be free and incapable of self-government.
The necessity of self-preservation, therefore, now decrees our eternal political separation.
We, therefore, the delegates, with plenary powers, of the people of Texas, in solemn convention assembled, appealing to a candid world for the necessities of our condition, do hereby resolve and DECLARE that our political connection with the Mexican nation has forever ended; and that the people of Texas do now constitute a FREE, SOVEREIGN and INDEPENDENT RE-PUBLIC, and are fully invested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to the independent nations; and, conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the decision of the Supreme Arbiter of the destinies of nations.
| RICHARD ELLIS, president of the convention and Delegate from Red River. | |
| Charles B. Stewart Thos Barnett John S.D. Byrom Franco Ruiz J. Antonio Navarro Jesse B. Badgett Wm D. Lacey William Menefee Jn0 Fisher Mathew Caldwell William Mottley Lorenzo de Zavala Stephen H. Everitt Geo W. Smyth Elijah Stapp Claiborne West Wm B. Scates M.B. Menard A.B. Hardin J.W. Bunton Thos J. Gasley R. M. Coleman Sterling C. Robertson Benj. Briggs Goodrich G.W. Barnett James G. Swisher Jesse Grimes S. Rhoads Fisher John W. Moore John W. Bower | Saml A. Maverick from Bejar Sam P. Carson A. Briscoe J.B. Woods Jas Collinsworth Edwin Waller Asa Brigham Geo. C. Childress Bailey Hardeman Rob. Potter Thomas Jefferson Rusk Chas. S. Taylor John S. Roberts Robert Hamilton Collin McKinney Albert H. Latimer James Power Sam Houston David Thomas Edwd Conrad Martin Parmer Edwin O. LeGrand Stephen W. Blount Jas Gaines Wm Clark, Jr. Sydney O. Penington Wm Carrol Crawford Jno Turner Test. H.S. Kimble, Secretary |
Sunday, March 1, 2009
ARE MEN SLOPPY KISSERS???
Not too sure if I like the use of 'sloppy' in this article. Certainly there are kisses on the cheek, and then kisses that make your toes curl, and all varieties of kisses in between. And of course the more passionate both people are, hopefully with each other, the more mutually 'sloppy' the kisses are. So what about it ladies, are men sloppier kissers as the study seems to conclude??
WHY MEN ARE SLOPPY KISSERS
Christine Dell'Amore -- National Geographic News
SLOPPY MALE KISSERS MAY HAVE A METHOD BEHIND THEIR MESSINESS
This could be because modern males are instinctually using kisses to pick up traces of estrogen in a woman's saliva and thus gauge her fertility.
Wet kisses could also be an unconscious attempt to transfer testosterone to the woman, which would stimulate her sexual interest, Fisher said Friday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago.
"Men see kissing early in a relationship directly as a step to copulation," she said.
Sloppy smooching could therefore be an "all-purpose mechanism" to get the reproductive juices flowing.
Kiss of Death
Kissing may also serve as a way to assess the quality of a mate, said Wendy Hill, a neuroscientist at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.
Technique aside, the chemical cocktail of saliva may tell us if the person we're kissing is a genetically appropriate choice to mate with.
"It's a wonderful addiction when [a relationship is] working well—but perfectly horrible when it's working poorly."
Now why didn't I think of SHUT UP AND KISS ME when I first posted the playlist??!! Thanks for the suggestion Linda, and I can shut up anytime you want me too!!
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