Saturday, January 28, 2012

'American' Products That Aren't American - Yahoo! Finance

What does being "American" mean in the marketplace?

If you're a U.S. consumer, it's apparently a huge incentive. According to a 2010 survey by Adweek Media and Harris, 61% of Americans say they are more likely to buy a product when an ad says it's "Made in America." That includes 75% of Americans 55 and over, 66% of those 45 to 54 and 61% of those 35 to 44.

It also indicates a premium those same Americans are willing to pay for those products. After toys from China entered the country in 2007 laden with toxic levels of lead, pesticides and chemicals, a Gallup poll found that 82% of Americans would rather spend more money on a toy if it were made in the United States. That percentage jumped to 94% when survey participants were asked if they'd pay extra for food produced in the U.S. to avoid Chinese imports.

That consumer patriotism is great and all, but does it do any good when buyers are given conflicting messages about what is and isn't made in this country? Does a beer can draped in the colors of the American flag necessarily indicate an American brewer? Does a truck rambling through the rugged American landscape as a song about "our country" plays in the background necessarily indicate an "American-made" vehicle?

Does the presence of the word "American" in the product's name or in its producer's core marketing agenda make that product "American"?

Any good, American skeptic knows the answer. Putting on a topcoat of red, white and blue and hiding behind a heavy layer of jingoism can't hide a product's true identity. That made it pretty easy to put together this checklist of 10 "American" products that have dual citizenship at best or are hiding their true colors at worst:

Budweiser
Anheuser-Busch InBev really wants you to believe that the only way to get something more American into a beer can is to brew it with grain grown on the battlefields at Lexington and Concord and water piped from the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall.

The company spent more than $1 billion on its NFL sponsorship alone and has plowed $239 million more into Super Bowl ads over the past decade. Its Clydesdales are American commercial icons and Budweiser's red, white and blue cans send a not-so-subtle message that despite the brewery's German roots, it's American to the last drop.

That facade came crashing down in 2008, when Brazilian-Belgian brewing company InBev took over Anheuser-Busch for $52 billion. Though the company still has a dozen breweries in the U.S., there have been a whole lot of layoffs stateside in an attempt to make the brewer a leaner, more cosmopolitan international player.

Budweiser, Bud Light and Michelob are still feature players in the stable, but now they're sharing shelf space with brewery mates such as Boddington's, Lowenbrau, Hoegaarden, Spaten and Labatt.

Bud's not even the brewer's only big gun anymore, as it made clear by airing a Stella Artois ad featuring Adrien Brody during the Super Bowl a few years ago. It still throws around that "King of Beers" title here in the states, but its recent relegation to third place among U.S. beer brands indicates that crown is slipping. Don't blame Bud for talking tough and acting aggressively on football Sundays; when the game's over, it goes home to multinational masters that consider it their American Beck's.

Chevrolet Silverado
You're right, John Mellencamp, this is our country. Just make sure you're including all of North America in that grouping.

The Chevy Silverado and its doppelganger, the GMC Sierra, have all the makings of a big, durable, contractor-friendly, all-American truck. It's just that last adjective that General Motors still has a bit of trouble with. Sure, some of the trucks are assembled at plants in Flint, Mich., and Fort Wayne, Ind., but a sizable number are also made in Silao, Mexico.

Even those made north of the border aren't quite "American." Auto pricing site Cars.com booted the Silverado and Sierra out of the Top 10 of its American-Made Index after its pieces slipped below the list's cutoff of 75% domestically produced content to only 61%.

That's no knock on the Silverado's quality, just a reminder that it takes a global village to raise a Chevy pickup.

Coors
What is the only thing worse that playing "American" while not being produced by an American company anymore? Putting on that costume while being produced by two foreign brewing juggernauts.

Such is the case for Coors, which stopped being solely a Rocky Mountain resident in 2005 when it merged with Canadian megabrewer Molson. That lumped the Coors brands in with a stable that includes the Molson products, England's Carling and Dutch-derived Grolsch. Still, it needed a little something extra to compete in the American marketplace.

This is where Coors' branches on the family tree get complicated. SABMiller -- formed in 2002 when South African Breweries bought U.S.-based Miller Brewing -- teamed with MolsonCoors to market both companies' beers in the U.S. under the MillerCoors joint venture.

While it's nice that Coors Light recently took the No. 2 spot in the American market from Budweiser, saying it's the No. 2 American beer brand is a bit of an oversimplification. At this point, Coors in the U.S. is equal parts American, Canadian, British and South African. You'd have to dig down through the beer ranks to Yuengling or Boston Brewing

Ford F-150
Didn't think you were going to get away that easily, did you, Ford ?

No, Ford didn't take any of the U.S. government's bailout money and doesn't assemble any of its U.S.-sold F-150s beyond U.S. borders. That doesn't mean that a big chunk of the F-150 isn't made elsewhere.

The F-150 may roll off the lines in Kansas City, Mo., and Dearborn, Mich., but only 60% of its parts are made in the U.S. That's actually a great statement on the F-150's quality and demand, considering that 90% of its parts were made in the U.S. before volume increased nearly 11% in the past year alone. Unfortunately, the F-150's popularity forced Ford to outsource parts and cut costs.

If you're looking for something a bit more American, however, Cars.com says the San Antonio, Texas-built Toyota Tundra has the most American-made parts of any truck on the market while keeping assembly line jobs in-house.

Rawlings baseballs
As American as mom, baseball and apple pie? Not so fast, baseball.

St. Louis, Mo.-based Rawlings has been the official baseball supplier of Major League Baseball since 1977, but hasn't sewn a single stitch into cowhide stateside during that time. Well before Rawlings was called up to the majors, the company had outsourced its production to other spots in the northern hemisphere.

Though founded in St. Louis all the way back in 1887, Rawlings moved its baseball manufacturing plant to Puerto Rico in 1969. That was followed by a move to Haiti shortly thereafter. Finally, the company settled down in Costa Rica, where it has been sending its cowhide, cores and twine ever since. Now part of Jarden -- the same folks who own the Crock-Pot, Mr. Coffee, Oster, Rival and Sunbeam brands -- Rawlings is just a small cog in a really big conglomerate.

It just happens to have the misfortune of providing a key element of the national pastime from the warm tropical confines of another nation entirely.

Levi's
Wear them to the fall of your totalitarian government, name drop them in your protest songs, but just don't call Levi's blue jeans Yankee made. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Levi Strauss & Co. bears little resemblance to the little outfit that cropped up in San Francisco during the late 1800s, outfitted the American counterculture in the mid-20th century and became the symbol of all things American by the time the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. By that time, the company itself was crumbling under pressure from cheaper overseas manufacturers and started shutting down its U.S. manufacturing operations.

Those "American" blue jeans started coming with "made in" tags as diverse as a soul-searching exchange student's passport stamps. They're made it Japan, Lesotho, Mexico, Cambodia, Turkmenistan, the Philippines and a whole lot of other places far beyond U.S. borders.

The company still maintains a headquarters in San Francisco, but other outposts in Belgium and Singapore as well as manufacturing facilities spread throughout the globe indicate Levi's American identity hangs by a thread, if it hasn't frayed away completely.

American Girl dolls
Hey kid, wanna buy a $100 doll?

Don't worry, they're totally educational, have huge boutique stores and restaurants that you can spend hundreds more dollars in and are nothing like that morally reprehensible Barbie. Mattel should know, as it's owned American Girl since 1998 and has made American Girl and Barbie products in China since roughly that time.

Not that American Girl dolls were all that American before Mattel got involved. The original dolls were made in Germany and weren't made any less pricey by the switch. But quibbling over the doll's price or manufacturing location is of little interest to American Girl, which views its mission as retelling American history through the eyes of pieces of plastic molded into the shape of 9-year-old girls and outfitted like audio-animatronic rejects from Walt Disney World's Hall of Presidents.

Actual American girls should consider themselves fortunate for the experience. After all, who can give a less biased view of the messy intricacies of American history than a smiling, disconnected friend from a foreign country?

Craftsman tools
Sears may be in trouble now with hundreds of stores facing closure and the fate of the entire company very much in doubt, but it's been through bad times before.

Consider the case of its trademark Craftsman tool brand. Before you could just snap them up at any Ace Hardware, Craftsman was one of Sears' big draws and its finest example of durable American products.

That little fable was all well and good until 2004, when a class-action suit accused Craftsman of not living up to its "Made in the USA" label. The suit accused Sears of using metal parts from Austria, Denmark, China, India and Mexico in its Craftsman products. That's a big no-no when the Federal Trade Commission says goods can be called American-made only if they're made entirely in the U.S. or made in the U.S. with an overwhelming majority of U.S.-made parts.

The claimants lost not because they were wrong, but because they failed to prove any injury from the mislabeling. While a whole lot of Craftsman products are still made in the U.S., some Craftsman products are now labeled "Made in China."

-- Written by Jason Notte in Boston.

>To contact the writer of this article, click here: Jason Notte.

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Friday, January 27, 2012

Chicken Nuggets: How Bad Are They? | Yahoo! Health

When the kids are wailing, the boss wasn’t happy with your presentation, and the kitchen is anything but pristine, what mom hasn’t thrown up her hands and given in to demands for chicken nuggets? Like, three times a week?

Maybe Mom should tell the kids: Be careful what you wish for.

Read about celebrities who dealt with eating disorders.

This week 17-year-old British factory worker Stacey Irvine was rushed to the hospital when she collapsed, struggling to breathe. During the exam, doctors were stunned to learn that Ms. Irvine had never in her life eaten fruit or vegetables; instead she had eaten almost nothing but fast-food chicken nuggets since she was two years old.

Her mother, Evonne Irvine, told reporters she had gone to great lengths to try to feed her daughter more nutritious food, at one point even trying to starve the girl, but it hadn’t worked. Stacey responded that, once she started eating nuggets, she “loved them so much they were all I would eat.”

Learn to grow your own fruits and vegetables.

What’s so bad about nuggets?

They would be bad enough if they were merely chunks of chicken that had been breaded and deep-fried in oil. One documentary describes McDonald's nuggets as chickens “stripped down to the bone, and then 'ground up’ into a chicken mash, then combined with a variety of stabilizers and preservatives, pressed into familiar shapes, breaded and deep fried, freeze dried, and then shipped to a McDonald’s near you.”

Aside from chicken and oil, those “stabilizers and preservatives” are said to include dimethylpolysiloxane, a form of silicone also used in cosmetics. Another additive is tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), a form of butane. According to one report, chicken is only about 50 percent of a McNugget; the remainder is a mixture of corn-derived ingredients, sugars and synthetic substances.

If a four-piece serving of Chicken McNuggets carried a nutrition label, at first glance it wouldn’t seem too scary: 190 calories, 12 grams of carbs and 12 grams of fat. But consider that more than half of those calories (56 percent) are from fat—and protein accounts for a mere four percent. Add a whopping 360 mg sodium, and its image as “the more nutritious fast-food snack” fades.

Read about 15 surprisingly healthy fast food picks.

What’s the worst that can happen?

Aside from collapsing and gasping for air, as Stacey Irvine did? Doctors also discovered that the veins in Ms. Irvine’s tongue were swollen and she was diagnosed with anemia. Further, such a high salt intake can increase a person’s blood pressure (which ultimately can put them at risk for a stroke or heart attack).

McNuggets are low in nutrients everyone needs, such as calcium, fiber, vitamins, antioxidants and healthy fats, so a steady diet of nuggets means missing out on the health benefits of those ingredients.

Find out which vitamins you really need.

So what’s a parent to do?

If your kids are hooked on nuggets, experts offer these suggestions for steering them towards healthier eating:

  • Serve a variety of healthy foods at home to prevent “picky eater” habits from forming. Taking them grocery shopping, teaching them to find and choose foods, and involving them in meal planning tells them you want to prepare meals they will enjoy. 
  • Set realistic goals. If the child bristles at eating a side portion of veggies, make a game to get him to take one bite of the new-tasting food. 
  • Make your own chicken snacks at home, using healthy dipping sauces like marinara sauce, yogurt or mustard. If you must bread the nuggets, dip them in an egg, roll them in cornflake crumbs and bake, don’t fry. 
  • If you’re eating out, cut out half of the trans and saturated fat by ordering a grilled chicken sandwich instead of nuggets. Order for your child from the adult menu, or share your sandwich with her, so the nuggets issue doesn’t come up. 
  • Be consistent and firm, but encourage and praise the child every time she tries a new, healthier food. And be a good role model—don’t expect children to eat healthy when one or both parents snack on salty chips or fatty, processed foods. 
  • Keep healthy foods in the meal, even when you give in and allow your child to order nuggets. Serve it with a side salad, fruit, or a slice of whole-grain bread. 

Learn about the 7 superfoods you should be eating.

——————————

Get the information you need to improve your health and wellness on Healthline.com.

Erectile Dysfunction Causes. Learn about breaking the barriers between you and a healthy sex life.

 

Migraine Learning Center. Learn about the disorder characterized by chronic, severe headaches of intense throbbing or pulsating pain.

 

Understanding Schizophrenia. Learn to understand the myths and symptoms of this complicated disorder.

 

 

Treat Psoriasis at Home. Follow these helpful tips to manage your condition every day.

 

 

Tour the Body in 3D. Explore different layers of the human body.

 

 

More Resources: Famous Faces of Diabetes...Are Artificial Sweteners Safe?...Interview with Camille Grammer

Norway Arts Festival | Western Maine Art Group

Monday, January 23, 2012

Arkansas Democrat's cat killed, painted with "liberal" - Yahoo! News

LITTLE ROCK, Ark (Reuters) - A cat belonging to an Arkansas Democratic campaign manager was found dead on Sunday night with the word "Liberal" spray-painted across its side, the campaign manager said.

The cat was a pet of Jake Burris, who manages Democrat Ken Aden's bid for Arkansas' 3rd Congressional District. Aden is running against incumbent Republican Representative Steve Womack.

Burris was returning to his Russellville, Arkansas home with his four children when he found the cat on his doorstep, the Aden campaign said in a press release on Monday.

The mixed-breed Siamese cat had one side of its head bashed in to "the point the cat's eyeball was barely hanging from its socket," the release said.

Aden told Reuters that the event was "horrible, to say the least."

"Thankfully, there are not that many people who want to do something like this," Aden said. "The majority of people in this district are hard-working folks, but you get the occasional crazy individual out there."

The Russellville Police Department is investigating the incident as an animal cruelty case, according to a police official. Russellville is 80 miles west of Little Rock.

Aden and Burris said they did not believe Womack or his re-election campaign were involved in the incident.

Arkansas' 3rd District is heavily conservative Republican and has been held by a Republican since the 1966 election. Womack first won the congressional seat in 2010 with 72 percent of the vote.

The Womack campaign denounced the violence on Monday.

"The thought of brutalizing any animal for the sake of making a political statement is beyond any standard of decency and the person or people responsible for this act should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law," said Beau Walker, Womack's chief of staff.

(Editing by Corrie MacLaggan and Greg McCune)

6 hurt during shooting at Calif. teen's party - Yahoo! News

ANTIOCH, Calif. (AP) — Six people, including five teens, were injured when gunfire erupted at a girl's 16th birthday party in the San Francisco Bay area, authorities said Sunday.

Police in Antioch believe three or four male partygoers opened fire Saturday night when two groups began arguing, said police Lt. Scott Willerford. Violence is not common in the neighborhood in Antioch, which is about 38 miles northeast of San Francisco.

"Weapons were brandished and numerous shots were fired from multiple guns," Willerford said.

The gunfire wounded a 13-year-old boy, two 16-year-old boys, two 18-year-old men and a 21-year-old woman, police said. Their injuries ranged from a minor grazing wound to an abdomen wound, police said. Police did not say how many shots were fired, or specify what kind of weapons were used.

Three of the wounded have been released from hospitals, but the 13-year-old, an 18-year-old and the woman remained in serious but stable condition, police said. Their names have not been released.

Police are looking for three or four suspects described as "young men," but acknowledge they haven't been able to obtain more detailed descriptions. Willerford said callers reporting the shooting had said between 70 and 80 people were at the party, but many of them ran away when the gunfire broke out.

Authorities said the party was being thrown by the girl's parents.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Tally's Healthy Blog - Independent Reliv Distributor

Check out this website I found at tallyshealthlyblog.blogspot.com

Why Gay Parents May Be the Best Parents - Yahoo! News

Gay marriage, and especially gay parenting, has been in the cross hairs in recent days.

On Jan. 6, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum told a New Hampshire audience that children are better off with a father in prison than being raised in a home with lesbian parents and no father at all. And last Monday (Jan. 9), Pope Benedict called gay marriage a threat "to the future of humanity itself," citing the need for children to have heterosexual homes.

But research on families headed by gays and lesbians doesn't back up these dire assertions. In fact, in some ways, gay parents may bring talents to the table that straight parents don't.

Gay parents "tend to be more motivated, more committed than heterosexual parents on average, because they chose to be parents," said Abbie Goldberg, a psychologist at Clark University in Massachusetts who researches gay and lesbian parenting. Gays and lesbians rarely become parents by accident, compared with an almost 50 percent accidental pregnancy rate among heterosexuals, Goldberg said. "That translates to greater commitment on average and more involvement."

And while research indicates that kids of gay parents show few differences in achievement, mental health, social functioning and other measures, these kids may have the advantage of open-mindedness, tolerance and role models for equitable relationships, according to some research. Not only that, but gays and lesbians are likely to provide homes for difficult-to-place children in the foster system, studies show. (Of course, this isn't to say that heterosexual parents can't bring these same qualities to the parenting table.) [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]

Adopting the neediest

Gay adoption recently caused controversy in Illinois, where Catholic Charities adoption services decided in November to cease offering services because the state refused funding unless the groups agreed not to discriminate against gays and lesbians. Rather than comply, Catholic Charities closed up shop.

Catholic opposition aside, research suggests that gay and lesbian parents are actually a powerful resource for kids in need of adoption. According to a 2007 report by the Williams Institute and the Urban Institute, 65,000 kids were living with adoptive gay parents between 2000 and 2002, with another 14,000 in foster homes headed by gays and lesbians. (There are currently more than 100,000 kids in foster care in the U.S.)

An October 2011 report by Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute found that, of gay and lesbian adoptions at more than 300 agencies, 10 percent of the kids placed were older than 6 — typically a very difficult age to adopt out. About 25 percent were older than 3. Sixty percent of gay and lesbian couples adopted across races, which is important given that minority children in the foster system tend to linger. More than half of the kids adopted by gays and lesbians had special needs.

The report didn't compare the adoption preferences of gay couples directly with those of heterosexual couples, said author David Brodzinsky, research director at the Institute and co-editor of "Adoption By Lesbians and Gay Men: A New Dimension of Family Diversity" (Oxford University Press, 2011). But research suggests that gays and lesbians are more likely than heterosexuals to adopt older, special-needs and minority children, he said. Part of that could be their own preferences, and part could be because of discrimination by adoption agencies that puts more difficult children with what caseworkers see as "less desirable" parents.

No matter how you slice it, Brodzinsky told LiveScience, gays and lesbians are highly interested in adoption as a group. The 2007 report by the Urban Institute also found that more than half of gay men and 41 percent of lesbians in the U.S. would like to adopt. That adds up to an estimated 2 million gay people who are interested in adoption. It's a huge reservoir of potential parents who could get kids out of the instability of the foster system, Brodzinsky said.

"When you think about the 114,000 children who are freed for adoption who continue to live in foster care and who are not being readily adopted, the goal is to increase the pool of available, interested and well-trained individuals to parent these children," Brodzinsky said.

In addition, Brodzinsky said, there's evidence to suggest that gays and lesbians are especially accepting of open adoptions, where the child retains some contact with his or her birth parents. And the statistics bear out that birth parents often have no problem with their kids being raised by same-sex couples, he added.

"Interestingly, we find that a small percentage, but enough to be noteworthy, [of birth mothers] make a conscious decision to place with gay men, so they can be the only mother in their child's life," Brodzinsky said.

Good parenting

Research has shown that the kids of same-sex couples — both adopted and biological kids — fare no worse than the kids of straight couples on mental health, social functioning, school performance and a variety of other life-success measures.

In a 2010 review of virtually every study on gay parenting, New York University sociologist Judith Stacey and University of Southern California sociologist Tim Biblarz found no differences between children raised in homes with two heterosexual parents and children raised with lesbian parents.

"There's no doubt whatsoever from the research that children with two lesbian parents are growing up to be just as well-adjusted and successful" as children with a male and a female parent," Stacey told LiveScience.

There is very little research on the children of gay men, so Stacey and Biblarz couldn't draw conclusions on those families. But Stacey suspects that gay men "will be the best parents on average," she said.

That's a speculation, she said, but if lesbian parents have to really plan to have a child, it's even harder for gay men. Those who decide to do it are thus likely to be extremely committed, Stacey said. Gay men may also experience fewer parenting conflicts, she added. Most lesbians use donor sperm to have a child, so one mother is biological and the other is not, which could create conflict because one mother may feel closer to the kid.

"With gay men, you don't have that factor," she said. "Neither of them gets pregnant, neither of them breast-feeds, so you don't have that asymmetry built into the relationship."

The bottom line, Stacey said, is that people who say children need both a father and a mother in the home are misrepresenting the research, most of which compares children of single parents to children of married couples. Two good parents are better than one good parent, Stacey said, but one good parent is better than two bad parents. And gender seems to make no difference. While you do find broad differences between how men and women parent on average, she said, there is much more diversity within the genders than between them.

"Two heterosexual parents of the same educational background, class, race and religion are more like each other in the way they parent than one is like all other women and one is like all other men," she said. [6 Gender Myths Busted]

Nurturing tolerance

In fact, the only consistent places you find differences between how kids of gay parents and kids of straight parents turn out are in issues of tolerance and open-mindedness, according to Goldberg. In a paper published in 2007 in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Goldberg conducted in-depth interviews with 46 adults with at least one gay parent. Twenty-eight of them spontaneously offered that they felt more open-minded and empathetic than people not raised in their situation.

"These individuals feel like their perspectives on family, on gender, on sexuality have largely been enhanced by growing up with gay parents," Goldberg said.

One 33-year-old man with a lesbian mother told Goldberg, "I feel I'm a more open, well-rounded person for having been raised in a nontraditional family, and I think those that know me would agree. My mom opened me up to the positive impact of differences in people."

Children of gay parents also reported feeling less stymied by gender stereotypes than they would have been if raised in straight households. That's likely because gays and lesbians tend to have more egalitarian relationships than straight couples, Goldberg said. They're also less wedded to rigid gender stereotypes themselves.

"Men and women felt like they were free to pursue a wide range of interests," Goldberg said. "Nobody was telling them, 'Oh, you can't do that, that's a boy thing,' or 'That's a girl thing.'"

Same-sex acceptance

If same-sex marriage does disadvantage kids in any way, it has nothing to do with their parent's gender and everything to do with society's reaction toward the families, said Indiana University sociologist Brian Powell, the author of "Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans' Definitions of Family" (Russell Sage Foundation, 2010).

"Imagine being a child living in a state with two parents in which, legally, only one parent is allowed to be their parent," Powell told LiveScience. "In that situation, the family is not seen as authentic or real by others. That would be the disadvantage."

In her research, Goldberg has found that many children of gay and lesbian parents say that more acceptance of gay and lesbian families, not less, would help solve this problem.

In a study published online Jan. 11, 2012, in the Journal of Marriage and Family, Goldberg interviewed another group of 49 teenagers and young adults with gay parents and found that not one of them rejected the right of gays and lesbians to marry. Most cited legal benefits as well as social acceptance.

"I was just thinking about this with a couple of friends and just was in tears thinking about how different my childhood might have been had same-sex marriage been legalized 25 years ago," a 23-year-old man raised by a lesbian couple told Goldberg. "The cultural, legal status of same-sex couples impacts the family narratives of same-sex families — how we see ourselves in relation to the larger culture, whether we see ourselves as accepted or outsiders."

 You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Apple CEO Cook received stock award worth $376 million - Yahoo! Finance

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Friday, January 6, 2012

Tally's Reliv Blog

Check out this website I found at relivoxfordhills.blogspot.com

After Texas school shooting, many questions loom - Yahoo! News

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — The Rev. Jorge Gomez was counseling worried parents and frightened students late into the night the day police fatally shot an eighth-grader brandishing what appeared to be a handgun inside his South Texas school. The parents said their children weren't eating, some were running fevers, and needed to talk to someone.

The death of 15-year-old Jaime Gonzalez has shaken this neighborhood along the U.S.-Mexico border, where parents already burdened by economic woes and street gangs are now faced with explaining the tragedy to their children.

Making it especially hard: It remains unclear to his parents and investigators why Jaime — a drum major who danced in his church's annual religious festival, stayed out of gangs and had two parents who closely watched him — could swerve off course and bring a weapon to school. The weapon, police later determined, was a pellet gun.

Gomez, who officiated a wake Thursday night that drew hundreds of mourners to Holy Family Catholic Church, a block from the Gonzalez family home, said parents had called him seeking his guidance Wednesday.

"Probably the last (child) left at midnight," Gomez said. "The parents are very concerned. How is this going to affect the community and their kids?"

Jaime was fatally shot in a hallway of Cummings Middle School during first period Wednesday, following frantic calls to police from school officials who, along with responding officers, believed the boy had a handgun. According to a recording of the emergency call, Jaime refused to drop the weapon.

Among the roughly 400 people at the Thursday night service was Delfina Cisneros, a teacher at nearby Longoria Elementary School. Standing in the back of the church with some of the school's young students, she said she taught Jaime in fourth grade, when his family had just moved from the Houston area.

"The parents were trying their best," she said, adding that Jaime was always respectful and polite. "Check out the neighborhood. That will tell you a lot."

Norma Ponce, an assistant principal when Jaime attended Longoria, said many single-parent homes headed by working mothers are in the neighborhood, which is barely a mile from the main bridge connecting Brownsville to Matamoros, Mexico. Many children whose parents remain across the border in Mexico live here with guardians, she said.

Jaime never got into major trouble, Ponce said, and attributed his visits to her office to "mischievous" things for which he always apologized. She said his parents were supportive if called for any reason.

His parents have lamented police for their actions Wednesday, saying they could have taken non-lethal action. But there was broad agreement among law enforcement experts: If a suspect raises a weapon and refuses to put it down, officers are justified in shooting to kill.

Brownsville interim Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez defended his officers, saying the boy pointed the pellet gun — which was black and resembled a real gun — at police and repeatedly defied their commands to put it on the floor.

Rodriguez said the preliminary autopsy report showed the boy was shot twice in the torso. Family members initially thought he was shot in the back of the head, but that wound turned out to be a cut from a fall.

"It really doesn't change anything at all," his father, Jaime Gonzalez Sr., said after being told of the preliminary autopsy results at the vigil for his son. "If it is a wound from his fall, why shoot him at all? Wound him. Do something else. Use another method."

In a recording released Thursday of the 911 call from the school, the assistant principal says a student in the hall has a gun, then reports that he is drawing the weapon and finally that he is running down the hall.

Police can be heard yelling: "Put the gun down! Put it on the floor!" In the background, someone else yells, "He's saying that he is willing to die."

Before police arrived, school administrators had urged Jaime to give up the gun. When officers got to the school, the boy was waiting for them, Rodriguez said.

Moments before he was killed, Jaime began to run down a hallway, but again faced officers. Police fired down the hallway — a distance that made a stun gun or other methods impractical, Rodriguez said.

If the situation had involved hostages or a gunman barricaded in a room, police might have tried negotiations. But instead, Rodriguez stressed, this was an armed student roaming the halls of a school.

The two officers who fired have been placed on administrative leave — standard procedure in police shootings. Rodriguez expected them back at work soon.

Jaime's father has said he didn't know where his son got the pellet gun. Police believed it was a gift, and a friend of the boy's said Jaime told her that but she didn't know who gave it to him.

The school was closed Thursday while police finished their crime-scene investigation. Students were bused instead to a new elementary school that was recently completed on the outskirts of Brownsville but had not yet been used.

District spokeswoman Drue Brown said 17 counselors were working with students and staff. Cummings has a student body of about 750, but only 200 students came to classes Thursday.

Before the church service began that night, dozens of children and teens in white shirts left the church and gathered outside. They chanted Jaime's name and shouted that they loved him. Some sported tattoos, while others were clean cut. One girl who appeared older than the others yelled that if anyone spoke badly of Jaime, she would make them pay.

Gomez said some of the young people at the service were likely gang members, but said many teens in the neighborhood managed to stay out of gangs.

"I know the parents worry a lot to see their kids involved in violent activities, but I'm sure it's not the only neighborhood in the city or in the Valley like this," he said.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

How to Keep Your New Year's Resolutions - 5 Tips to Increase Your Self-Discipline | Maine Kyokushin Karate

self discipline

We are not born with self-discipline. We have to work at it.

You all know you make them. But like millions of other Americans, you just make empty promises to yourself. I know you really want to improve your fitness level, lose weight. I know you want to ace your next belt promotion. But just because your a martial artist, does not mean that you automatically know how to control your diet, become disciplined in your workouts or become focused enough to reach your goals.

This post is the first in a series to help karate students actually achieve their goals. But it’s not enough to just read the post. You can’t expect to improve your self-control or any other aspect of life without actually taking action. I’ll give you the information…you have to take the first step…

Tip #1 – Don’t Wait to Improve Self Discipline (start today!)

I had a heart attack. So I cut back on stress and decided to eat healthier.

Great. But why do people start making changes AFTER they damage their health?

Many times people don’t pursue more self- discipline until they’re in trouble. For example, the person who is a workaholic thrives on a busy schedule, that is, until they have a heart attack. Then they see the need to learn self-control and change their lifestyle. As a result, they take action and make it happen.

Set doable goals. To reach a goal it needs to be realistic, otherwise it can be a step back instead of forward. If the goal is set too high then you will fail and think its proof of the fact that you can’t do it. Whereas, if there would have been several small goals that led to the larger one you would have kept going forward.

Tip #2 – Change Your Bad Habits Now

I don’t know why I gain so much weight. I guess it could be the cookies, chips & ice cream I buy at the grocery store.

Really? You think?

It’s the bad habits that get in the way of self- discipline. A person who wants to lose weight can’t keep the bad habit of getting in the fridge every night at 10:00 to eat cookies and milk. This bad habit has to go!

Stop temptation in its tracks!

If you eat cookies and milk at night, don’t buy the cookies in the first place. Don’t get home and change into your pajamas; change into your dogi. You’ll be more likely to make class if you’re not lounging on your couch playing video games.

Set a doable goal of eating right and/or working out. Twice a week. Then three times a week. Throw out junk food that you KNOW you should not be eating.

Tip #3 – The First Step is Always the Hardest

But change is hard.

Well, obviously.

But if you make it a habit, it becomes much, much easier. Do something you know you should do daily, but don’t. Self-discipline is all about doing what you don’t want to do, but need to do. Things that will give you a better quality of life are worth pursuing. This could be exercise, eat healthier, get more sleep, read, time with family and so forth.

Plan the day and activities. If you’re not used to planning then start simple. Write down five things that you want to accomplish the night before for the next day. Then the next day mark them off as you do them this is basic self-discipline. It’s also forming new good habits and tracking progress.

Tip #4 – If You Fall Off the Wagon…Get Right Back On

I just had 5 pieces of pizza and finished it off with Ben & Jerry’s. It’s all over now. I’m a complete failure.

Quoting the ever-wise Miley Cyrus…”Everybody has those days”

We all make mistakes. Skip workouts, indulge in cheesecake when we should be having a salad. Whatever your “mistake” may be, don’t let it ruin all the progress you have made. EVERYONE has days where they lose control. The trick is to get back on track as soon as possible.

Don’t beat yourself up over it, just make better choices next time.

Tip #5 – Stop Making Excuses & Whining About It

I’m not fat, I’m just big boned. (Really, just ask my mom)

I don’t have time to workout. (But I do have time to watch the… Kardashians? Red Sox? American Idol? Or perhaps play Halo?)

I don’t have enough money. (But I have enough for ……..Smokes? A six pack? New shoes?)

EVERYONE can make excuses for every action they should be taking. EVERYONE has issues, problems, stress, family commitments, etc. You are not the only one and the rest of us do not have all the answers.

Stop giving excuses for your bad behavior. If you want to improve your self-discipline, you are the ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD that can make that happen.

If you want to lose weight, do something that will put you on the right path. If you want to increase your fitness level, you have to workout. If you want your Black Belt, go to class. Period.

The solution is easy. Implementation is not. So what are you going to do today to implement more self-defense into your life?

The Six Most Common Mistakes Artists Make When Approaching Galleries | Western Maine Art Group

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