tvc184

Well, I was 2/3's right.

IH10 to Beltway 8, north to IH45, west on 105 out of Conroe. If you don't get caught in rush hour traffic on the beltway, it should go fairly quickly.

I think that you are correct but it depends on how someone defines "Top Job". It is the winningest program or a well funded programs with good facilities, good pay scale for the head coach and community support? While some schools like Newton have a great tradition, how many top coaches in the state are going to beat down Newton's door when the job comes open? Some smaller school coaches looking to move up or an assistant looking for his first head coaching job are likelihoods. PNG has been not bad lately but not great either but look what they can bring in for applications when a job opening comes up. I think that the community, facilities and money have more to do with what a head coach is looking for rather than a winning past.

I've said it before and I will stick with it. Anyone that believes that Obama is not going to increase taxes dramatically on the middle class also believes that Elvis is alive and the moon is made of green cheese.... but it won't be on income taxes, just as he promised. The middle class keeps Coca Cola, Marlboro, Exxon-Mobile and Domino's Pizza in business. Does Bill Gates care if colas go up 15cents a can? Does he buy many anyway? Does Al Gore care if his SUV costs another $20 to fill it up and does that $20 deplete his weekly income? Will Obama care if pizzas go up $2 each in delivery charges? I doubt that with his personal chef, he is sending out for a late night Papa John's deluxe. There is no way to increase the USA budget spending by $1.5 trillion dollars and not raise taxes on everyone. So who is it going to hurt the most? So what if Bill Gates pays 60% of his income in taxes? He will only make $400,000,000 a year instead of an even billion? Wow, bet that hurts him to only make $400 million after taxes. Yep, we will get change. The blind foolishly believe that with the passing of his mighty hand, Obama will make the rich as common people and the poor will rise out of the projects and take their rightful place in society. .... and I have that land to sell at the beach, just as soon as the tide goes out.

Apparently Tasers and PCP don't mix well.

I believe in the case with the steroids, it was a rumor and rumors are not allowed about players, coaches, etc. Once it hit the news and the police went public with the names, it was allowed.

..... but apparently can't play golf.

$$$$$$$$ The insurance game. It is better to pay $10,000 in hush money than to spend $40,000 proving your innocence. Lawsuits can take many thousands of dollars simply in the preliminary stages before anything ever gets close to a courtroom. By the time you pay attorney fees, private investigator fees, legal processes and the hours spent in depositions, it can run into quite a tab. So a lawyer or firm will file a suit, ask for a large amount of money (or undetermined) and make the defendant risk losing six figures or more, let's say a request for $500,000 in damages and lost wages, etc. Obviously the city won't roll over and pay that. Now to fight it and prove no responsibility (or even potentially lose, no matter the facts) it might take the example of $40,000 in legal fees. Why not simply settle out of court for a fraction of the original lawsuit, maybe $10,000 or up to $30,000? The city and their insurance (who will have a huge bearing on the litigation since they will be paying probably at least half) would rather make the financial decision of paying less than it would cost to defend their actions. They could "win" a lawsuit for $40,000 in legal fees or pay a lesser amount and claim no responsibility. That is the lawsuit and insurance game. Make it so expensive to win that it is better to pay a ransom of a lesser amount. I am sure that some deal will be worked out where a lawsuit will be filed, the lawyers behind the scenes will work out a deal and the family will get some much smaller sum of money. They will claim victory and vindication and the city will save the taxpayers money by settling for less than it would cost to win.

I believe that eventually you will simply from the continued outcry from "victims". The Taser is a pain compliance defense tool. It is the same as OC (pepper) spray and a baton. People in custody have died from those applications of pain also and some in just fighting with the police with no weapons used. Apparently when the heart is stressed due to some kinds of intoxication, added stress can push it over the edge. There was the case of Nathaniel Jones in Cincinnati a few years ago. The guy was overweight and had taken PCP and cocaine. During a fight with the police, he died. The police used Pepper Spray on him and the autopsy stated that the stress of the fight and the spray caused his death. Also from that autopsy, it said that Jones had several "lethal" health problems and that the "struggle" caused his death. It was not that he was beaten to death and not that OC spray is lethal in itself but simply that a person that was overweight like Jones was and taking some potentially lethal drugs, the fight pushed him over the edge. The activists in the area blamed the OC spray. They demanded that the police buy Tasers in order to quickly subdue a person fighting and get away from the long lasting effects of the OC. Taser pain goes away immediately (I've been shocked with it three times). In that case, the OC was made to be the culprit. So while I would not be shocked to think that Tasers will eventually be regulated as some kind of deadly force, I don't see how it will help. Remember, a Taser is an alternative to deadly force. If you place a Taser in the same category of a pistol (which making it deadly force would do) then what would be the point of using a Taser and simply opt for the pistol instead? Tasers have saved many lives and very many injuries to both citizens and the police. I am sure that it will eventually be taken away and we will mainly go back to baton strikes to subdue people. I guess they will feel that is progress.

What I find that is interesting is his mother's comments in the Beaumont Enterprise. She is quoted as saying that she doesn't care what was in his body, it didn't cause his death and only the cops did. That shows her entire intent in this process. No matter the medical facts, no matter the circumstances, no matter what actually happened.... only that the cops can be shown to be at fault and that nothing that her son did could have contributed to his own death. It looks to me as if a person died entirely of his own actions and the family is attempting to take his self induced accidental death and trying to turn him into a martyr at the expense of the police and to the monetary benefit of the family.

And the next generation will be the gr-gr-grandfather...then the next will be the gr-gr-gr-grandfather, then the next...... No matter how many generations you look at (and it has been about 7 generations or almost 150 years ago), when do you move on? 200 years? 300?

Everytime that I have fished a bass tournament it was a two man team and two people maximum per boat. It is a team stringer.

Due to demographics, I don't think you will hear anyone claim that 90% of LaMarque are racists.

Here is your problem or your crutch DV, you assume that anytime anyone says anything against another person and the person happens to be black, then that must be the cause. Obama hasn't caught nearly the flak (yet) that Bill Clinton ended up catching. Was it because Clinton was.... what? He wasn't black so that can't be it. Maybe it was because he was from Arkansas... yeah, that's it. The people that don't like Obama is because they don't like spending even more tax money on bailouts (they didn't like it under Bush either), they don't like the cutting of military programs, they don't like his anti-gun stance, etc. Put a white guy in the same place (like Clinton) and you will get the same responses..... and did.

There's no dodging the history of slavery, land grabs and conquests. Anyone that portrays it as a one race venture however, is ignoring the truth. All have partaken in the feast.

I'm sure that I could do a google search and come up with some examples of Africans taking land. But I will leave you with this about Africans and the taking of something. When slave trade was big business, it wasn't white people going into Africa and trekking cross country capturing slaves. It was other Africans. Worried about land? How about people's lives? Black Africans captured and sold other black Africans for money. As despicable as slavery is, it was not a completely white venture but a collaboration between black tribal chiefs in Africa who captured and sold slaves for money to the (mostly) whites. Who is the most guilty party? Is it the people that bought slaves (many of whom were black themselves) or was it the people that went into the regions to capture them and turn them into slaves to be sold for profit? While looking it up, I found quite interestingly, the first black African that was declared legally a slave in a court in what is now the USA was in 1654. A man named John Casor went to court in the Virginia colony and was declared the legal property for life of Anthony Johnson. Who was Anthony Johnson? He was a free black man.

Yep, we bullied our way in and took some land. As I said in another post, every piece of land ever owned by any person or the government was taken by somebody that lived on or used the land. Every group of people and every race did it. Heck, even the American Indians did it to each other. So what's the big deal? That is the very way countries were formed from mere collections of huts, then cities and then countries. So yes, you are correct. The Constitution does guarantee liberty for everyone. I see no slaves today. The fact is that many people back then knew slavery was abhorring, it was the law of the land in this part of England, of which we were a part at the time of the Revolutionary War. It is true that many people let it go because of political expedience. They may never have gotten the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution passed if they drew a line in the sand and said no slaves. If there had been no slaves, then there may have been no country. The Constitution that did not free everyone immediately, eventually did. The Constitution did not create slavery nor did it condone slavery. It did leave slavery in place that was here long before the Constitution was ever thought up, before any war of indepence was ever contemplated and within 74 years of its signing, the country fought the Civil War that ended slavery. The United States of America (not counting the Confederate States) lost 140,000 soldiers killed during the Civil War. The USA lost more people in a battle to free the slaves than in World War I, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War combined. Think about that for a minute.

Truthful like how? Do you mean that politicians will spin things their way or maybe they will not tell the parts that they don't want you to hear? Yeah, maybe. A couple of Democratic backers in this forum have spent time blasting Bush for being untruthful (not proven, just blasting). So is that the answer? They all do it. Being politically truthful as in, I will only say what I want you to hear, is one thing. Covering up evidence is another. Pelosi was one of the ringleaders in calling for investigations and jail time for many Republicans not only for waterboarding but for suggesting it or knowing about it. After all to some extent, she is correct that it is against federal law to know of a felony and not report it. She claims that the waterboarding was a felony torture crime. Great stuff Nancy.. call for all of those evil Republicans to be jailed. The only problem for her now that she has called for jail time for anyone that knew... it looks like she knew. If that is true (and it is sure getting deep for her), it leads to two things that I can think of. First, it makes her a criminal and available for prosecution and prison time. Second, it makes her an extreme hypocrite. Anyone want to bet that soon she will come out with some statement like waterboarding was not a crime after all, now that she has looked into it or something similar to deflect the heat away from her? While I fully expect politicians to spin things their way or dodge questions or talk all around the answers without saying anything, I don't expect them to outright lie and/or commit crimes. Richard Nixon was not a bad president. He won (even during the Watergate scandal) by two of the largest electoral landslides in history. He opened up trade and a more peaceful existence with China and ended the Vietnam War. I have never seen where it was shown that he orchestrated the Watergate breakin but he sure as heck covered it up once it was discovered that it was his employees that did it. That made him a felon, not for the fact that he told them to break in but for the fact that he lied to cover up what he knew. The Democrats and many Republicans didn't let him off of the hook and forced him to resign or be impeached and removed from office. Well it appears as though Queen Nancy just got caught with her hand in the same cookie jar. With a Democratic Congress and President, I don't expect much in the way of actual charges against her. The President won't appoint a special and independent prosecutor (or if he does, it will shock me). I do think the heat "might" get bad enough for her to lose her Speaker of the House position but that is yet to be seen. The way the Democrats usually circle the wagons, they might cover for her long enough to hope that a bigger faux pas is on the horizon to take the heat off of her. For her sake, it had better come fast as the Obama administration through CIA Director Panetta has come out and said that she is not telling the truth. Heaven forbid if the Democrats caught a leading Republican in a lie right now. They would be on it like a bunch of rabid dogs. The clock is ticking Nancy. I'll bet she isn't sleeping well tonight.

A very good showing by Vidor. They came in as the fourth place team and took on a heavily favored BH and took then to game 3. With 4 innings left in the series it was all tied up. Then Vidor gets slammed by the BH bats and still fights back to take the game another inning after being down 10-0. Pretty good stuff in my book. The best team won and will move on but a very young Vidor team at least made them work for it before BH pulled it out the last few innings. Good job by Kyle Green and his Pirates.

I don't think a boat is illegal since it is open waterways but I looked up the Big Thicket NP website. This is their frequently asked questions page. It says there is no charge for hunting or fishing in the preserve so I am assuming that if you comply with state laws, you are okay. [Hidden Content] This is from that website. Q – What’s the charge for entering the preserve, hiking a trail, or going backcountry camping? A – There is no charge for any activity in the preserve, including hunting and fishing.

Which statement? The one where she was clueless or the one where she had heard about it but had not been briefed or the one where she had been briefed by a staffer or the one where she knew what "may" be done but thought nothing of it and the CIA then lied to her because there is no way that she would have known. Of course, Obama's head of the CIA, Clinton Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, came out and said they have documentation that she knew and that there was no cover up by the CIA. I suppose that only Nancy told the truth and everyone is just against her, including the Obama administration. :

That is something that many (or more likely, most) Texans don't understand about our legislative process. They only meet two once every other year and it is only for 140 days. That means that they have less than 4 months once every two years to make laws unless the governor calls a special session in case of an emergency. Legislators (House members and Senators) can file any bill or resolution that they want but it has to be in (I think) by the 90th day of the session. There are literally thousands of bills proposed and very few days to act on them. I hear a few people saying things like, my senator is filing a bill to get this taken care of. Well that may be true but the odds are that the bill will never even be heard in a committee. If it does get to be heard in the committee, it likely won't get out of the committee. If it gets out of the committee, it will then have a "chance" at passing on the floor. Then it has to go the other house for the same action. Then if there are any amendments in either version, they have to go through a compromise version that both houses accept and then it has to go back to the floor of both houses for a final vote. If it happens to pass that, it goes to the governor for a signature, veto or no action and hoping to beat the 10 day deadline for automatic passing. Assuming it gets past all of that, you pet bill will become law. Good luck but don't hold your breath. Not that anyone really cares about the process and I suppose that most would rather remain clueless. It does however say why there are always thousands of bills left to die without any action taken on them. Fortunately in my opinion, by meeting only once every two years and only having four months to take action, it weeds out a lot of the nonsene that many states with permanent or full time legislators face. They are always debating the hot story of the day instead of simply staying out of people's business. So that people don't think that Texas can take action if needed between sessions, the governor can call them back into session for an emergency if he feels that something needs to be passed quickly however it can be for a single purpose and he can't simply continue to call new sessions. Special sessions are rarely called as there are very few occasions where something can't wait for a pet project for another two years or less.

I think a lot of people shoot at carp also.

Yep. Now only down 3-1 and by only 11 total runs.

I think that you are okay as long as it is not game fish (Bass for example) or unless that law pending in the legislature passes about limiting bowfishing to one gar per day. I forgot what the outcome of that proposal was.