Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, The boxing superstar Floyd Mayweather has a lot to be thankful for this holiday. After 21 months off, took a dominant victory over Juan Manuel Marquez in September, not to mention a lot of money. Now, in recognition of his good fortune, he’s giving back to less fortunate residents of Las Vegas, through a toy drive and the Thanksgiving holiday.
“The holidays are the most important time to return,” said Mayweather. “No family should have to go hungry on Thanksgiving and that no child should go without a toy at Christmas. I do not think that food and gifts should be a luxury. It is a necessity and through our efforts, we want to this year’s holiday season happier than before for the residents of Las Vegas in need. ”
Now there can not be any doubt that Manny Pacquiao is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, after his display on Saturday with a dominating victory over world welterweight champion Miguel Cotto.
Manny stopped the Puerto Rican at 55 seconds of the 12th round at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Pacquiao is the only fighter ever history to win seven titles in seven weight classes, he put Cotto on the canvas twice and by the end Cotto was bleeding from cuts near both eyes as well as from his nose.
As the bell went for the start of the fight a huge roar went up from the crowd. Cotto startled Pacquiao with a shot to the head. It seemed in the early rounds every time Cotto threw a punch Pacquiao had moved from that spot. Cotto in the third went down on one knee with more of a stumble than a punch; however in round four, Cotto this time, went all the way down from a hard left to his chin.
Pacquiao continued to dominate the fight, and by round 7 the fight of the year was becoming the Manny show. By round 12 the fight was but over for Cotto, the referee stops the fight with 2 minutes left as Cotto was finished.
To read more on this story go to latimes.com. Tell us what you thought of the fight. Do you think Manny Pacquiao is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world?
I killed Gus Gus. Who’s that? Apparently the mouse from “Cinderella.” By the way, did you know that’s not really her name — Cinderella? We’ll get to that later.
First I need to come clean about the rodent homicide. No. I didn’t kill the actual cartoon mouse from the Disney classic, but I might as well have the way my friends are treating me.
Every fall, when the weather turns cold, I get a mouse in the house. Sometimes two. Now, I think mice are cute as long as they’re in a cage running on a little wheel. Running around my house while I’m asleep? Not so much. This year has been particularly bad because, after killing a couple of mice with the little poison pellets, a third one dropped by like an unwanted in-law intent on staying the whole winter.
Unlike his predecessors, he was smarter than the average mouse. I put the poison trays out and I watched him come out of his hole, smell it and scurry away. Understand, this was not a mouse who’d only show his beady little eyes in the cover of darkness, he came out during game four of the World Series to watch A-Rod smack a base hit to left field. He would literally run out into the middle of the room, watch a pitch and then run back. At one point, I hid behind the TV with a golf club hoping to swat him. It turns out, I’m as good at hitting a mouse as I am a golf ball, so Gus Gus was more than safe.
It wasn’t my idea to call him that by the way, but a good friend found my mouse musings amusing and kept telling me to “leave little Gus Gus alone.”
Since the poison wasn’t working, I went to my local True Value hardware store to bring in the big guns — a mouse trap. My friends kept telling me to be humane and buy a trap that doesn’t hurt him, then quote “release him into the wild.” What is this? A sparrow with a broken wing? No.
Mice are dirty varmints and, with my luck, he’d just turn around and come right back in. I thought about catching him and taking him for a long drive to the country, but that felt like an episode of “The Sopranos.”
They have a lovely selection of traps capable of sending Gus Gus to that big wheel of cheese in the sky. One was literally the size of a Volkswagen, but the man at the store told me that was for full-size rats and, unless Gus was packing an AK47, it might be overkill. So I purchased the tiniest trap, baited it with peanut butter and waited.
I sat on the couch with my flashlight, watching the trap, and Gus appeared. He smelled the trap, then walked away. I knew I should have gotten the Skippy peanut butter. Unsuccessful, I went to bed. The next morning, the peanut butter was gone but the trap never sprang.
He had licked it clean. I picked it up and it snapped in my hand, scaring me half to death. I’d swear I could hear Gus Gus laughing somewhere behind the wall.
The next night, I set it again, making sure it was on a hair-trigger release.
Unfortunately, when I went to place it down, it snapped, sending peanut butter into my hair. I didn’t feel like showering, but then I imagined waking up and finding a mouse gnawing on my head. After I toweled off, I reset it and went to bed.
I never heard the snap, but Gus Gus is no more. You’d think I’d feel guilty killing him, but when I saw his dirty little claws and black eyes — nope. I thought about burying him in a Yankees World Series commemorative jersey but, to my surprise, they don’t sell them in XXXXXXsmall. It was a nice ceremony though, attended by a local squirrel and chipmunk. Afterwards, we gathered near the trash can for peanut butter and crackers. I think Gus would have liked that.
I mentioned at the top that Cinderella’s name isn’t really Cinderella. Truth is, her name is Ella, but after falling asleep near the fireplace one night she woke up covered in cinders and ash. Her evil stepsisters teased her by calling her Cinder-Ella. Jerks!
Hmm, I wonder if they like peanut butter. I could lend Ella my mouse traps. Source saratogian.com/
(CNN) -- An owner of a 7-Eleven convenience store in Fort Hood, Texas, said Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan came in for coffee and hashbrowns most mornings, including the day he allegedly shot dozens of soldiers.
Surveillance video from the store obtained by CNN shows a man who, according to the store owner, is Hasan at the cashier's counter at about 6:20 a.m. Thursday (7:20 a.m. ET) -- about seven hours before the mass shooting -- carrying a beverage and dressed in traditional Arab garb.
"He looked normal, came in had his hashbrowns and coffee as you see in the surveillance video," the owner told CNN.
Another surveillance video from the store on Tuesday showed the man believed to be Hasan in scrubs.
While the owner said he was too busy to chat with Hasan whom he knows as "Major Nidal" on Thursday, he said that through his brief talks with Hasan he learned the officer's background was Jordanian, though he didn't speak Arabic well. He added that Hasan didn't wear a wedding ring and joked several times on whether the owner knew a bride for him.
Hasan would also ask the owner whether he planned to attend Friday prayers, a mainstay of Islam, to which the owner would say that he was too busy.
Since 2001, Hasan had been telling his family that he wanted to get out of the military but was unsuccessful, said a spokeswoman for his cousin, Nader Hasan. The Army officer told his family that he had been taunted after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the spokeswoman said.
"He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy," his cousin told the New York Times. "He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there."
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, who had been briefed by a general at the post, told CNN that Hasan was to have been deployed to Iraq and was unhappy about it.
Staff Sgt. Marc Molano, currently based at Fort Knox, Kentucky, told CNN that he was treated by Hasan for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) while at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington earlier this year.
"Dr. Hasan provided me with nothing but the best care," Molano said. "He was a very well-mannered, polite psychiatrist, and it's just a shock to know that Dr. Hasan could have done this. It's still kind of hard to believe."
Molano described him as "far and away one of the best psychiatrists I ever dealt with."
A soldier who served two tours in Iraq and is awaiting medical retirement for chronic PTSD and severe mental disorders called Hasan "a soldier's soldier who cared about our mental health."
But, he added, "Hasan hears nothing but these horror stories from soldiers who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan -- just hearing it I'm pretty sure would have a profound effect."
Mindy B. Mechanic, an associate professor of psychology at California State University, Fullerton, said listening to horror stories can indeed have an impact, but was unlikely to have such an extreme one.
The impact on therapists who work with traumatized individuals is known as vicarious traumatization or compassion fatigue, she said. "But they don't go out on shooting sprees," she said. "They might get depressed or have some emotional fallout from it, but to go on a shooting spree is not part of what happens to people from having to deal with trauma survivors all the time."
Mechanic, who did not know Hasan, said people don't just snap. "When you start looking back, there are crumbs that suggest everything was not hunky-dory."
A former neighbor of Hasan said he lived in a high-rise apartment complex in Silver Spring, Maryland, with another man, apparently his brother, and that the two appeared friendly.
"They had some Arabic signs out there, and I asked them what they meant," said the woman, who asked not to be identified. The other man, who routinely wore a chef's outfit, told her it was a prayer, she said. "They seemed like they were nice people," she said.
The two men moved out three or four months ago, which she noticed because the Muslim prayer had been removed from their door.
"Honestly, they seemed like very cool, calm guys, and religious guys," she said. "It's kinda strange."
According to military records, Hasan was born in Virginia, and a federal official said he was a U.S. citizen of Jordanian descent.
Military records show Hasan receiving his appointment to the Army as a first lieutenant in June 1997 after graduating from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, with a degree in biochemistry.
Six years later, he graduated from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences' F. Edward Hebert School Of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, and was first an intern, then a resident and finally a fellow at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Promoted to captain in 2003, he was promoted to major in May.
In 2009, Hasan he completed a fellowship in disaster and preventive psychiatry and was assigned to Darnall in July.
He had been awarded the National Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon, but was never deployed outside the United States.
Source cnn.com
I was watching BBC’s Newsnight when the story broke of a killing spree at a Texas military base and instantly wondered – as I’m sure did 99.99 per cent of its other viewers – whether this had anything to do with the Religion of Peace. Then a news update came in that the suspect’s name was ‘Hasan’. But the BBC’s reporter hastened to reassure us that there was “no evidence” to suggest this was an act of “terrorism”. Phew! Perish the unworthy thought.
Even today, the MSM is treading on eggshells regarding the killer’s possible motivation.
A motive for the shooting was hard to pin down last night. However, there were reports that Hasan, who was trained also in psychiatry and medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, was preparing for deployment to Iraq and was not happy to be going there. He had previously worked at the Walter Reed veterans hospital outside Washington.
Yeah, that would be it. You don’t want to be deployed to a combat zone so you do what any sane officer does under the circumstances. Not resign your commission obviously, but tool yourself up and take out a dozen a so of your unarmed comrades.
The BBC’s website takes a similar line, though it does at least (presumably in breach of all BBC guidelines) cheekily slip in the “M” word:
It is not clear what motivated the attacker, named as 39-year-old military psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan.
But some reports said the US-born Muslim was unhappy about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Interesting use of that word “unhappy”, mind.
The Guardian meanwhile, has a brave stab at the ‘trauma-crazed war vet goes tonto’ line, with the help of one of Hasan’s relatives:
One of Hasan’s cousins, Nader Hasan, told reporters the major was dreading going to war, having counselled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Next to the story, it provides a link to the story of another US veteran – Sergeant John Russell – who did just that, killing 5 of his comrades in May. Unfortunately, as it is forced to admit in a more detailed analysis, can’t have been traumatised by combat because, er….
He was not a soldier returning from deployment in either Iraq or Afghanistan, suffering from stress or combat fatigue. Hasan, although 39 years old, has never served in a war zone.
But that doesn’t stop the Guardian speculating desperately:
Instead, his horror of war came secondhand. He was a psychiatrist who listened to the harrowing stories of his comrades at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington DC, and latterly at Fort Hood, Texas.
Ah yes that will be it. A bit like passive smoking, the Major was suffering from passive combat stress.
My favourite example of liberal squeamishness, though, comes from the New York Times. Sure towards the bottom of its report, it manages to slip in such not-altogether-irrelevant details as Hasan’s former imam’s claim that he was “very serious about his religion” (so much so that he hadn’t been able to find a sufficiently fundamentalist wife) and that a man with the same name as him was under investigation from the FBI for putting up enthusiastic postings on a Jihadist website about the joys of suicide bombing.
But not before having first blamed those far more likely causes – white racism…
But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., began having second thoughts about a military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia.
And, yes, of course, that old favourite – passive combat stress:
Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying realities of war, said a cousin, Nader Hasan. “He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy,” Mr. Hasan said. “He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there.”
Gretchen Real Housewives, Gretchen Housewife of Orange County. Season 5 of The Real Housewives of Orange County is as crazy as ever and even more dramatic than the past 4 seasons – if that is possible.
Life is taking a turn for the ladies of the OC. Jeana, who will be leaving the show in a couple of weeks, is stressing out about money. She has her house on the market – after all moving into a 5,000 square foot house won’t be that bad. Tamara’s marriage is definitely hitting a rough patch. Her husband can’t say enough nasty things to her – and she looks like she is willing to do anything to keep the peace.
Gretchen who lost her fiance, Jeff, to cancer last year is getting her life back on track. Gretchen is dating Slade Smiley, Jo’s ex-boyfriend. Gretchen and Slade had been friends for 8 years before they started dating.
Lynne’s jewelry business is taking off – I am sure the publicity from the show is contributing to the success.
Vicki’s marriage was a mess last year. This year they are trying to focus on their marriage and enjoy their time together. It’s not a lot of time since the two of them are always traveling – just not together. I am sure the 6 1/2 carat diamond ring that Don bought Vicki has helped.
Vicki and Tamara are still bff. Jeana asked to borrow money from Vicki , Vicki said no and never heard from her again. Jeana later says that she was upset with Vicki for changing realtors when she knew that Jeana was going through a very difficult time. Tamara and Vicki discuss Gretchen’s naked photos that surfaced on the internet.
