What Can We Eat?

• Can't Eat Pork, Swine Flu...
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• Can't Eat Chicken, Bird Flu...
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• Can't Eat Beef, Mad Cow....
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• Can't Eat Eggs, Salmonella...
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• Can't Eat Fish, Heavy Metal Poisons In Their Waters...
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• Can't Eat Fruits And Veggies, Insecticides And Herbicides...

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I Believe That Leaves Chocolate And Ice Cream!

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Remember - - - 'Stressed' Spelled Backwards Is 'Desserts'

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How To Tell If You Grew Up Jewish!

* Every Sunday afternoon of your childhood was spent visiting your grandparents.

* You've experienced the phenomena of 50 people fitting into a 10-foot-wide dining room trying to get to a deli tray.

* You can look at gefilte fish and not turn green.

* You can understand Yiddish but you can't speak it.

* You feel a sense of pride after seeing a Steven Spielberg movie.

* You grew up thinking it's normal for someone to shout, "Are you okay? Are you okay?" through the bathroom door if you're in there for more than 3 minutes.

* You know how to pronounce numerous Yiddish words and use them correctly in context, yet you don't exactly know what they mean. Kenahorra.

* You spent your entire childhood thinking that everyone called roast beef "brisket."

* You thought pasta was used exclusively for kugel, kasha, and bowties.

* You thought that wine is supposed to taste like year-old cranberry sauce and have the consistency of syrup.

* You thought that yelling was normal.

* You thought whitefish salad and lox were the quintessential party foods.

* You watched Ed Sullivan every Sunday night and were forced to watch Eddie Cantor's show.

* You were as tall as your grandmother by the age of seven.

* You were proud when Elizabeth Taylor converted.

* You were told that Eddie Fisher was the greatest singer of all time.

* Your body was saturated with Vicks, over the years.

* Your family dog responded to Yiddish.

* Your grandparents' furniture smelled like mothballs and you kept sliding off the plastic cover.

* Your mother smacked you and then made you feel guilty for hurting her hand.

How to Stay Young!

1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctors worry about them. That is why you pay 'them'

2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.

3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever. Never let the brain idle. 'An idle mind is the devil's workshop.' And the devil's name is Alzheimer's.

4. Enjoy the simple things.

5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.

6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person, who is with us our entire life, is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are alive.

7. Surround yourself with what you love , whether it's family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever.Your home is your refuge.

8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.

9. Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, even to the next county; to a foreign country but NOT to where the guilt is.

10. Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity.

QUOTES FROM 1960 : For Your Whiny Teenagers and Adult Children Who Know How To Read:

* Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging a dime just to mail a letter?

* Did you see where some baseball player just signed a contract for $75,000 a year just to play ball? It wouldn't surprise me if someday they'll be making more than the President.

* Have you seen the new cars coming out next year? It won't be long before $2,000.00 will only buy a used one.

* I'll tell you one thing, if things keep going the way they are, it's going to be impossible to buy a week's groceries for $20.00.

* I'm afraid the Volkswagen car is going to open the door to a whole lot of foreign business.

* I'm afraid to send my kids to the movies any more. Ever since they let Clark Gable get by with saying DAMN in GONE WITH THE WIND, it seems every new movie has either HELL or DAMN in it.

* I never thought I'd see the day all our kitchen appliances would be electric. They are even making electric typewriters now.

* I read the other day where some scientist thinks it's possible to put a man on the moon by the end of the century. They even have some fellows they call astronauts preparing for it down in Texas

* If cigarettes keep going up in price, I'm going to quit. A quarter a pack is ridiculous.

* If they raise the minimum wage to $1.00, nobody will be able to hire outside help at the store.

* If they think I'll pay 50 cents for a hair cut, forget it.'

* It's too bad things are so tough nowadays. I see where a few married women are having to work to make ends meet.

* It won't be long before young couples are going to have to hire someone to watch their kids so they can both work.

* Kids today are impossible. Those duck tail hair cuts make it impossible to stay groomed. Next thing you know, boys will be wearing their hair as long as the girls.

* Marriage doesn't mean a thing any more, those Hollywood stars seem to be getting divorced at the drop of a hat.

* No one can afford to be sick anymore, at $35.00 a day in the hospital it's too rich for my blood.

* The drive-in restaurant is convenient in nice weather, but I seriously doubt they will ever catch on.

* There is no sense going for a weekend, it costs nearly $15.00 a night to stay in a hotel.

* When I first started driving, who would have thought gas would someday cost 29 cents a gallon. Guess we'd be better off leaving the car in the garage

SourDough Speaks Out On Wealth And Legislation

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You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation.

You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

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Up

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• How do non-natives ever learn all the nuances of English?
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• There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is "UP."
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• It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?
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• At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?
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• Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
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• We call UP our friends and we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, warm UP the leftovers, and clean UP the kitchen.
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• We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.
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• At other times the little word has real special meaning.
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• People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
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• To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.
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• And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.
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• We open UP a store in the morning, but we close it UP at night.
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• We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!
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• To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.
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• In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.
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• If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used.
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• It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.
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• When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.
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• When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.
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• When it rains, it wets UP the earth.
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• When it doesn't rain for a while, things dry UP.
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• One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so ...
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• Time to shut UP!

Economy State : Who's Really Responsible!

These operators capitalized on regulatory gaps and used financial gimmicks to engineer quick profits and inflate share prices. Then they cashed out—leaving the rest of us with the bill. Among the notables:

• Joe Cassano
  As president of AIG's financial products division, Cassano pioneered the insurance giant's sale of credit-default swaps, which allowed investors to buy insurance on packages of risky subprime loans they didn't even own. In one 2007 investor conference call, Cassano boasted that "it is hard for us … to even see a scenario that would see us losing one dollar in any of those transactions."
  
  Cost so far to U.S. taxpayers: $180 billion. Cassano made $300 million before leaving AIG last year.

• Angelo Mozilo
  Under Mozilo, Countrywide Financial lured thousands of people into adjustable rate, subprime mortgages they couldn't afford and often didn't really understand.
  
  In 2007, Mozilo unloaded $121 million in options. That same year, the company announced it had lost $704 million, and the share prices tanked. The SEC has launched an insider trading investigation. (Mozilo has denied any wrongdoing.)

  Last fall, Countrywide's new corporate owner agreed to pay up to $8.7 billion to settle a massive predatory lending suit.

  

  
  

  Boom-time bum Angelo Mozilo lured thousands to take on mortgages they couldn't afford.
• Frank Raines and Daniel Mudd
  Government-sponsored mortgage giant Fannie Mae is supposed to help Americans purchase homes by providing?stability and liquidity to the mortgage industry. Today, banks are in lockdown mode, and many Fannie-backed loans are in default.
  
  Credit Raines, who was in charge from 1998 to 2004, for aggressively ?investing in risky subprime mortgages. Some?suggest he was trying to inflate profits—and thus the executive bonuses tied to them. In 2006, Fannie paid a $400 million civil fine to settle charges that Raines and others?overstated earnings. Raines admitted no guilt. Still, he walked away from his six-year tenure $91 million richer. Starting in 2005, successor Mudd continued the reckless policies. He left last year more than $10 million richer. Your bill: tens of billions.

The Watchdogs Without Bite
Some politicians shamelessly carried the water for the companies they were supposed to regulate.

• Senator Chris Dodd
  Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, Dodd was behind bailout language that protected bonuses for Wall Street companies—including that shocking $218 million given to AIG execs.
  
  But that's not his only qualification here. In 2003, he accepted two special "VIP" mortgages from Mozilo's Countrywide, reportedly saving up to $70,000. Dodd has protested that he wasn't even aware he'd gotten a VIP deal. Maybe so, but it sure looks bad.
  
  
• Phil Gramm
  "Some people look at subprime lending and see evil," Gramm, then the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said in 2001. "I see the American Dream in action." The Texas Republican, who has since retired from the Senate, fought to deregulate those infamous credit-default swaps that brought down AIG and other derivatives. He also blocked attempts to limit the kind of predatory lending that wiped out thousands of families. Today, Gramm is a well-paid executive at Swiss banking giant UBS.

• Federal regulators
  The Federal Reserve and the SEC failed to stem the reckless behavior of big banks—despite clear warning signs of potential collapse as early as 2006. That was the conclusion of a March 2009 report by the U.S. General Accountability Office. One problem: Regulators took at face value assurances from banks that they had enough capital to back up their financial gambles.

The Cheerleaders in Denial
There was no limit to the rosy economic predictions made by prominent people, right up until those predictions blew up in their faces.

• Alan Greenspan
  The Federal Reserve's former chairman?dismissed the idea of a nationwide housing bubble as "most unlikely" while further fueling home sales with?low interest rates. In 2004, he even encouraged home buyers to pursue risky adjustable rate mortgages against the advice of other experts. And he opposed attempts to regulate the exotic financial instruments at the heart of the current mess. Greenspan recently admitted that he has "found a flaw" in his worldview, which strongly favored unrestrained markets. Now he tells us.
  
  
• Jim Cramer
  "Bear Stearns is not in trouble," the host of CNBC's Mad Moneyshouted on March 11, 2008. "Don't move your money from Bear!" The Wall Street bank collapsed days later. Cramer made similarly bad calls about Lehman Brothers and Bank of America.
  
  His excuse? He relied too heavily on personal assurances from insiders at those banks.

• Us
  Many of us borrowed too much and bought homes we knew we couldn't afford. And by not paying attention to and not participating more in our political system, we made it too easy for those in Washington to get in bed with corporations and special interests.
  
  It's time for all of us to wake up, live more responsibly, and put pressure on our leaders to have greater accountability. Naming—and shaming—some of the key culprits is only a start. Preventing another disaster will require us all to be more responsible—and vigilant.

Rancher Jake -&- Peter the Saint

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Jake, the rancher, went one day
To fix a distant fence.
The wind was cold and gusty
And the clouds rolled gray and dense.

As he pounded the last staples in
And gathered tools to go,
The temperature had fallen,
The wind and snow began to blow.

When he finally reached his pickup,
He felt a heavy heart.
From the sound of that ignition
He knew it wouldn't start.

So Jake did what most of us
Would do if we had been there.
He humbly bowed his balding head
And sent aloft a prayer.

As he turned the key for the last time,
He softly cursed his luck
They found him three days later,
Frozen stiff in that old truck.

Now Jake had been around in life
And done his share of roaming.
But when he saw Heaven, he was shocked --
It looked just like Wyoming
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Of all the saints in Heaven,
His favorite was St. Peter.

So they sat and talked a minute or two,
Or maybe it was three.
Nobody was keeping' score --
In Heaven, time is free.

'I've always heard,' Jake said to Pete,
'that God will answer prayer,
But one time I asked for help,
Well, he just plain wasn't there.'

'Does God answer prayers of some,
And ignore the prayers of others?
That don't seem exactly square --
I know all men are brothers.'

'Or does he randomly reply,
Without good rhyme or reason?
Maybe, it's the time of day,
The weather or the season.'

'Now I ain't trying to act smart,
It's just the way I feel.
And I was wondering, could you tell me --
What the heck's the deal?!'

Peter listened very patiently
And when Jake was done,
There were smiles of recognition,
And he said, 'So, you're the one!!'

That day your truck, it wouldn't start,
And you sent your prayer a flying,
You gave us all a real bad time,
With hundreds of us trying.'

A thousand angels rushed,
To check the status of your file,
But you know, Jake, we hadn't heard
From you in quite a long while.

And though all prayers are answered,
And God ain't got no quota,
He didn't recognize your voice, and
Started a truck in Alaska .....

BETTER KEEP IN TOUCH!

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...You Can

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• Do all the good you can...
  
  
• In all the ways you can...
  
  
• To all the souls you can...
  
  
• In every place you can...
  
  
• At all the times you can...
  
  
• With all the zeal you can...
  
  
• As long as ever you can...

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The Mousetrap

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A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package.

"What food might this contain?" the mouse wondered.

He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning : "There is a mousetrap in the house. . . . . There is a mousetrap in the house"

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised his head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it"

The mouse turned to the goat and told him, "There is a mousetrap in the house . . . . . There is a mousetrap in the house"

The goat sympathized, but said, "I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers"

The mouse turned to the cow and said, "There is a mousetrap in the house. . . . . There is a mousetrap in the house"

The cow said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse, I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose"

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap. . . . . all alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house -- like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.

The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught.

The snake bit the farmer's wife.

The farmer rushed her to the hospital, and she returned home with a fever.

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient.

But his wife's sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock.

To feed them, the farmer butchered the goat.

The farmer's wife did not get well; she died.

So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn't concern you, then

Remember This:

When one of us is threatened, we are all at risk.

We are all involved in this journey called life.

We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another.

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