Category: News

El Paso No-vending zones get Defeated

Food Truck venders have been battling for their rights to sell people food they want to buy lately, which is a total abuse of government power. I’ve been hearing about the struggle here in California for a few years. Big Government even went as far as to ban new fast food restaurants from opening in South LA (sorry economy. sorry Los Angeles unemployment rate, including the 20% of LA’s black community that has not worked in the past year. You don’t have a say in the matter).

Now mobile venders in El Paso Texas have just won a big victory on this battlefield by getting a zoning restriction repealed after suing over their unconstitutional nature.

The reason the law wants to ban food trucks is to protect big businesses from small businesses. Insanity. Susie Diaz, EP of the Restaurant Association admitted on camera “We wanted this ordinance in place to help established restaurants keep their business”.

The Institute for Justice explained the fight in January:

Practiced since ancient times, street vending is more popular than ever. The Economist magazine predicted that in 2011 “some of the best food Americans eat may come from a food truck.” Vendors are the darlings of many food critics, and they even have their own reality show on the Food Network.

But El Paso, Texas, has recently made it illegal for mobile food vendors to operate within 1,000-feet of any restaurant, convenience store, or grocer. The city even prohibits vendors from parking to await customers, which forces vendors to constantly drive around town until a customer successfully flags them down–and then be on the move again as soon as the customer walks away.

Thus, while people across the country embrace mobile vendors for the vitality and creativity they bring to a local restaurant scene, El Paso has decided to threaten vendors with thousands of dollars in fines and effectively run them out of town. El Paso’s No-Vending Zone scheme is in place for one reason: to protect brick-and-mortar restaurants from honest competition. But economic protectionism is not a valid use of government power.

Grand Rapids isn’t Dying

Newsweek put Grand Rapids Michigan in a list of americas dying cities and a radio station pulled together 40 thousand bucks and a cast of 5 thousand citizens of Grand Rapids to go through the city lip dubbing a live version of American Pie. That’ll show em!

“The Grand Rapids LipDub Video was filmed May 22nd, with 5,000 people, and involved a major shutdown of downtown Grand Rapids, which was filled with marching bands, parades, weddings, motorcades, bridges on fire, and helicopter take offs. It is the largest and longest LipDub video, to date.

This video was created as an official response to the Newsweek article calling Grand Rapids a “dying city.” We disagreed strongly, and wanted to create a video that encompasses the passion and energy we all feel is growing exponentially, in this great city. We felt Don McLean’s “American Pie,” a song about death, was in the end, triumphant and filled to the brim with life and hope.” – Rob Bliss, Director & Executive Producer

*Note: The “NEW WORLD RECORD” designation refers to size and scope, not duration. Storyboards and concept art by Greg Oberle.

This $40,000 production was entirely financed by the generosity of local sponsors

Model Dies after 10-Story fall from hotel window due to “Play Wrestling”

Woman Dies after Fall from Hotel Room: MyFoxATLANTA.com

ATLANTA (AP) — A 30-year-old woman died on her birthday and another woman was seriously injured when they plunged from a 10th-story hotel window at a hotel early Saturday morning, investigators said.

Witnesses told police that 30-year-old Lashawna Threatt and second woman were “play wrestling” in a room at the W Midtown Hotel around 3:15 a.m. when they crashed into a window and fell four or five stories onto a slanted glass ceiling above a sunroom.

“They were play wrestling and the next thing you know, they went toward the window and through the window and out they went,” said Lt. Paul Guerrucci, commander of the Atlanta Police Department’s homicide unit.

 

NY Daily News:

Witnesses told cops the petite women were merely horsing around before they fell out of the window about 3:15 a.m.

“According to the witnesses, there was no arguing during the hours leading up to this, either, so it’s really a tragic accident,” Guerrucci said.

Threatt, who appeared at liquor promotions and in print ads, leaves behind a 15-year-old daughter.

“She was extremely charismatic. She could talk to anyone,” said her pal, Jomarys Castillo.

Sarah Palin is Not and will Not Run for President

Each month since January 2008 I keep thinking *this* will be the month that people come to their senses and admit or realize that former Governor of Alaska and failed Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin has no desire to be President of the United States and you are all creepy fantasy minded weirdos for pretending otherwise.


This is a more plausible explanation of what is going on with her bus tour than “it’s because she’s running for president”

Andrew Sullivan, a left wing blogger and columnist who has been obsessed with Palin from the beginning (focusing a great deal on a conspiracy theory that her son Trig is not actually her baby) showed the same Palin-fog view of her career in politics as her right wing fans regularly exhibit. Sullivan said on the Chris Matthews show that Palin is running for president and has been running since the 2008 election and that “there is no reason to believe” she isn’t doing so.

He got it exactly wrong.

There is no reason to believe she is running, there is no reason to believe she would run. and I maintain my painfully obvious prediction: that she WILL. NOT. RUN.

All of you people are blind or dishonest. You’re either deluding yourself over unrealistic hope that she’ll run for an office she’s shown literally no interest in, ever (including recent and current comments). The only time she ever talks about running is when answering constant questions about it, completely drummed up by the media. Her answer is always that she’s not opposed to it if she was needed, explaining that if no other candidates espouse her Tea Party esque principals then she would fill that gap for the sake of the country or whatever. She’s not needed and she won’t be, so why do any of you fool yourself into believing or lie to others to get them to believe that she wants to be president? She doesn’t. She’s Trump-ing you morons. Wake UP already… gad…

The Daily Show got it wrong too… sigh

I Support Rep Weiner

I support Rep Weiner even if this turns out to be true. it was supposed to be private, so who cares and carry on. Even though he’s my favorite congressman* and I hope he comes out of this okay, even I have to admit that this is amusing, though unfortunate, given his last name.

he’s my fave cuz I think he’s honest, he’s bold, actually explains what he believes and never shys away from opposition – always willing to take it to Fox or a right wing show that invites him on and battles it out like a champ. Stick it out and stay in office!

PS: yes, I admit that I am not going into detail and/or posting the pictures here because I like the dude. I’m biased, but I’m forthright about it…

Via ShortFormBlog:

Look, we don’t want the Weiner story to be true. But we’ve done enough tweeting in our day to know all the tricks for reading someone’s social media tracks. We spent a couple of hours digging through tweets to find out more info. And, to us, there seems to be some evidence pointing in both directions on this story. The key thing for us is the existence of the rogue tweet, which was captured by TweetCongress.org even after it was deleted. But there’s also stuff that makes us wonder. The patient zero — the first person to retweet Anthony Weiner’s NSFW tweet — was this guy, who we’ve found in our research to be overly fixated on the congressman even BEFORE the tweet in question. In fact, he posted about a cheating scandal just like this one over TWO WEEKS AGO. Really? How was he so quick to hit the trigger on this? Some other things we noticed from the scandal:

  • for On Twitter, Weiner noted the Seattle time of his Friday TV appearance. The recipient of the NSFW tweet, from Seattle, retweeted.
  • for The person at the center of the drama deleted her Twitter account — which was active as of yesterday — after the tweet.
  • for The girl in question said Weiner was her “boyfriend” in an April tweet. Yeah, so? Her and every other liberal teen female has!
  • against To disprove that the photo was of Weiner, Daily Kos has a testof the NSFW photo that suggested it was ‘shopped. Hm.

» The important things to take from this: We don’t think Weiner did anything wrong as of yet, but we do think that there is a lot to suggest one of two things: One, this was possibly a scandal planted by someone who had closely followed the congressman’s Twitter account (because, based on our research, people have), and there were somewhat bizarre things that may have connected Weiner to the girl. Given the track record of Big Journalism,where the story originated from, we’d like to see a better source tackle this thing, because we don’t trust Breitbart as far as we can throw him. We rate this an “inconclusive.”

-I don’t know what they’re talking about with Big Journalism’s track record and the author doesn’t elaborate. As far as I know, the site has a solid track record on facts (nothing has a solid record on opinion/commentary), but they may be referring to the Sherrod Brown thing, which was misreported by right wing outlets including Glenn Beck to claim Breitbart clipped a video out of context but the context was in fact present in the original post. Anyway: that part aside, I too am skeptical of this story, not because of inherit distrust of Breitbart but just cuz. Mostly cuz I want it to not be true. lulz. but whatever. Even if it is, I say if he doesn’t weasel out of it and just comes clean, he will get more support than before, including from some of his more fair minded critics. Maybe even Breitbart (who is being accused of making this whole thing up now). Actually, probably even Breitbart I’d bet. I’d put money on it that Breitbart would drop it and instead just note that no liberal would give a conservative the same free pass and move on.

UPDATE: I don’t know what any of this means but if it’s correct info then it is evidence in the direction of Weiners innocence.

UPDATE: oh wow… Breitbart issues challenge directly to Weiner and basically says exactly what I described his possible reaction being (though he might not be serious about it):

Did you know the US won Vietnam before we lost it?

I first heard that we won Vietnam on the ground but lost it in our government at home, years ago, but I never investigated and never fully believed it since it went against so much I thought I knew was just common knowledge about it. Watching this video is depressing. Usually I love finding out something I previously thought was wrong, because it’s a small accomplishment that shows progress (I heart accuracy). This, however, is not happy news. America had this conflict mure more in line than I thought I knew, and congress fucked it up to their forever shame.

More than a million South Vietnamese killed – not because we entered the war – but because of the way we left it. Horrific and inexcusable. And every movie I’ve ever seen a Vietnam scene in or a Vietnam veteran in makes it look like a drug filled slow conveyor belt to death for no reason.

Men like women who use “guy humor”

Time covers this story, saying “What do guys want? Themselves, apparently.”

Um. “Apparently”? Try “obviously”, ya big dopes. Me with boobs = perf. But Time goes on:

Or at least someone who has an identical sense of humor. According to a study of 331,138 eHarmony male users, the style of humor that men most appreciate from a woman is “sarcastic,” followed by “juvenile”, “geeky” or “raw.” (eHarmony defines those last three as “guy humor.”) While all of these terms are frustratingly vague, we can’t help but feel that they are describing our little brother. And somehow that’s sexy?


Here is the eHarmony info:

Oklahoma Governor has Oklahoma Shaped Pool

Most people have swimming pools shaped like Kansas and a select few mansions will have a nice infinity or swim-up-bar outfitted pool in the shape of California, but the Governor of Oklahoma as an Oklahoma shaped one, and that’s pretty kickass.

Here’s a night picture taken on the ground and for the opposite angle: Google Earths view of this token exercise in awesomery and reveals that the pan handle appears to be either a long jacuzzi or an endless pool for doing laps without the “doing laps” part. It’s also strange that the driveway to the mansion doesn’t even seem to be gated. You just take a turn off the street and you’re IN. Oklahoma is awesome now.

Nigerian loves all 107 of his eager to please wives

I like this Islamic loophole on being promiscuous (if you’re a guy): just “marry” the girl in order to bang her. An Islamic faith healer in Nigeria has married 107 women.

He fell in love with his first wife because she was sincere and eager to please.

His second wife, a cousin, was irresistible because she did everything he wished and nothing he didn’t.”That alone made me love her.”

His third wife won him because she submitted to his every request.

“I saw her, I liked her. I went to her parents and asked for her hand in marriage.”

Wife No. 4 was very obedient. So was wife No. 5. Wife No. 6, the same. As were wives 7 and 8 and 9 and …

Well, by then — it was the late 1980s — things had taken off for Bello Maasaba, an Islamic faith healer in this city in Niger state. He went from a wedding every few months to one every few weeks.

All told, the 87-year-old has married 107 women, which, even in a society with a tradition of polygamy, is on the high side. The Nigerian government is not amused. Neither are Islamic authorities in the state.