Apparently, this is an actual vehicle in Florida. You drive into the parking spot and no need to back out. Just drive right out!
Month: September 2013
IONIA, MI – Two men died Wednesday, Sept. 18, in a shootout that stemmed from a road rage confrontation, Ionia police said.
Ionia Department of Public Safety officers were dispatched to Wonder Wand Car Wash in the 400 block of South Steele Street shortly before 7 p.m. on reports of shots fired. Police arrived to find two men with gunshot wounds.
Initial investigation shows the Ionia men, ages 43 and 56, pulled into the car wash parking lot after a road rage incident. They exited their vehicles and eventually drew handguns and exchanged fire, police said. It wasn’t clear what the two men were arguing about.
Life EMS transported the men to Sparrow Ionia Hospital, where they were pronounced dead.
Police said both men, whose identities have not been released, held permits to carry concealed weapons.
The incident remains under investigation with the assistance of the Michigan State Police Crime Lab and the Ionia County Sheriff’s Department.
h/t M Live
Mr. Shaich agreed to try to get by on the average amount allocated to individuals in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as part of a hunger awareness campaign in which a number of corporate executives and politicians are taking part – September is Hunger Action Month — and to bring attention to a Congressional proposal to cut funding for the program.
Spending just $31.50 per week on food has turned out to be a lot harder than Mr. Shaich thought.
“I’ve been eating a lot of carbs and drinking a lot of water,” says Mr. Shaich, who started his SNAP diet last Thursday. “I drive by these restaurants I go to all the time and I can’t go in. I can’t even go into a Panera.”
One Panera sandwich alone can blow the entire daily budget.
“We’ve been involved in hunger issues for a long time and I realized I don’t really know what it’s about. One in six Americans didn’t know where their next meal was coming from at some point in the last week and I wanted to understand at a very personal level what that feels like,” he says.
In an effort to help provide an answer to the hunger problem, Panera has opened five Panera Cares Community Cafes across the country where people can pay whatever they can afford for a meal.
For breakfast this morning, Mr. Shaich had dry cereal and water and made chickpea soup for both lunch and dinner. “The only veggies I’ve had are the canned tomatoes in my soup,” he says. “It’s very hard to eat well. Money really provides choices.”
Senator John McCain is sometimes considered a Maverick for breaking away from following his party and, according to Sarah Palin, going rogue. Well he done gone and done it again! This time, McCain not only drifted off from his party, he drifted off from his nation.
At a time when the world is on pins and needles waiting to see what happens in Syria, and at a time when Vladimir Putin has finally decided to do the right thing and coach Syria into giving up their chemical weapons, John McCain has decided that this will be the perfect time to attack Putin. In beginning his piece in the Russian paper, McCain explained, “I am not anti-Russian. I am pro-Russian, more pro-Russian than the regime that misrules you today.”
Then he goes in:
President Putin claims his purpose is to restore Russia to greatness at home and among the nations of the world. But by what measure has he restored your greatness? He has given you an economy that is based almost entirely on a few natural resources that will rise and fall with those commodities. Its riches will not last. And, while they do, they will be mostly in the possession of the corrupt and powerful few. Capital is fleeing Russia, which – lacking rule of law and a broad-based economy – is considered too risky for investment and entrepreneurism. He has given you a political system that is sustained by corruption and repression and isn’t strong enough to tolerate dissent.
How has he strengthened Russia’s international stature? By allying Russia with some of the world’s most offensive and threatening tyrannies. By supporting a Syrian regime that is murdering tens of thousands of its own people to remain in power and by blocking the United Nations from even condemning its atrocities. By refusing to consider the massacre of innocents, the plight of millions of refugees, the growing prospect of a conflagration that engulfs other countries in its flames an appropriate subject for the world’s attention. He is not enhancing Russia’s global reputation. He is destroying it. He has made her a friend to tyrants and an enemy to the oppressed, and untrusted by nations that seek to build a safer, more peaceful and prosperous world.
President Putin doesn’t believe in these values because he doesn’t believe in you. He doesn’t believe that human nature at liberty can rise above its weaknesses and build just, peaceful, prosperous societies. Or, at least, he doesn’t believe Russians can. So he rules by using those weaknesses, by corruption, repression and violence. He rules for himself, not you.
Timing is everything. Any other time, I would agree with what McCain had to say. Putin has ruled Russia with a heavy hand. He is a ruler not at all interested in governing, so McCain is on point with much of what he had to say. But again, timing is everything.
Putin has taken a leading role in convincing Bashar Assad to take the necessary steps to end his chemical weapons program and in so doing, end the American threat of bombing Syria – a move that can further destabilize an already destabilized region and can signal the start of another world war.
John McCain on the other hand has taken the pro-war stance on Syria. McCain wants the fighting rebels to be armed by America, he wants President Obama to drop the bombs, no to drop nukes on Syria and end Assad’s reign. So imagine McCain’s frustration when Vladimir Putin and President Obama spear headed a peaceful resolution to Syria’s chemical weapons.
McCain clearly was not happy and he made his views known to the Obama administration and the American people in multiple television interviews. But the American people were tired of the wars and given the opportunity to get the same result through peace, they chose peace. McCain’s call for war was falling on deft ears. It is his contention that by not bombing Syria, Iran would walk away thinking they could go ahead with their nuclear ambitions. So McCain had to try something else. He had to do something he hadn’t done yet – attack Putin, one of the nucleus in a peaceful outcome where Syria’s weapons are concerned. And he hopes that with his attack, Putin backs away from the deal on Syria.
You think that’s a far fetched conclusion? Think again. We are talking about John McCain here, a pro war Republican senator who, when running for President in 2008 took to the podium in a town hall meeting and sang, Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran!
Timing is everything, and your timing now Senator speaks volume.
Russians responds.
‘Portway has pled guilty to some of the most vile and heinous crimes known to our society, namely participating in the sexual exploitation of young children through the possession and distribution of child pornography and soliciting the kidnapping of a child for the purpose of killing and consuming that child,’ federal prosecutors wrote in court documents, obtained by the Boston Herald.
The sentencing papers, filed yesterday, include frightening excerpts from online chats Portway had with like-minded child pornographers and potential killers, including Florida puppeteer Ronald Brown who planned to kidnap children he knew through his local church.
According to the Herald, Brown went as far as to send Portway a photograph of a young boy ‘with lines drawn on him to identify the different cuts of meat.’
The two chatted about kidnapping the boy, taking him to a rented house and eating him over several weeks before feeding the ‘leftovers’ to alligators. Brown has since been convicted.
In May, Portway pleaded guilty to solicitation to kidnap a child and to distribution and possession of child pornography. As a British national, he will likely be deported after serving his sentence.
Actor Terrence Howard is knuckling under in a legal dispute with his ex-wife, agreeing to stay far away from the brunette beauty following claims he was physically abusive.
Now appearing in the hit movie “The Butler,” Howard has promised to stay 300 yards away from Michelle Ghent for the next three years and pay $14,800 of her lawyer’s fees by next July.
He signed the court agreement Sept. 10, stating he did so “without admitting any liability.” A judge granted the order Tuesday.
The Republican House Speaker was responding to questions from reporters about his so-called leadership skills. And the criticism he’s getting over those imaginary skills.
“People say a lot of things about me,” Boehner told GOP lawmakers in a closed-door meeting, according to two people who attended. “People outside this room. People inside this room. I just let that s–t roll off my back.”
Boehner has been buffeted by criticism from all corners of the political world in recent weeks. Conservatives have rapped him for not pushing hard enough in fiscal fights, while Democrats have said he is allowing the Tea Party to push him around.
The Speaker alluded to the criticism as he addressed Republicans on Wednesday, reminding them that he sought the job not to occupy a “big office,” but to get things done.
Here are your three main problems Boehner.
- You have s–t on your back!
- You think it’s the media who’s putting the s–t on your back, when it’s really dropping from the Teaparty morons in your own party.
- Letting s–t roll off your back leaves s–t stains, and the smell remains!
A Chinese student slit his teacher’s throat in an act of revenge after his mobile phone was confiscated.
The student, named only as Lei in local news reports, had been discovered playing with his phone by his teacher Sun Wakang during a chemistry lesson at a school in in Fuzhou, eastern China’s Jiangxi province.
The following day Lei went to Mr Sun’s classroom where the teacher was sat marking papers, and slit his throat from behind.
The 32-year-old father-of-one died at the scene as the student fled.
Today young Lei called the local emergency number and confessed to the crime before turning himself in to police in Shanghai.
House Republicans are continuing their foolish efforts to appease the foolish section of their party by including a measure to defund Obamacare in the upcoming spending bill.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the GOP would take one more in a series of votes to do away with President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, an effort destined to die in the Democratic Senate. The vote is intended to appease conservatives who had vowed to force a government shutdown unless Obamacare was defunded; once the Senate dispels the legislation, negotiations to fund the government past Sept. 30 can begin in earnest.
Republican House Speaker John Boehner speaks to reporters Wednesday about the upcoming budget deadline facing Congress.
“We’re going to continue to do everything we can to repeal the president’s failed healthcare law,” Boehner told reporters on Capitol Hill. He said the House will pass a continuing resolution “that locks the sequester savings in and defunds Obamacare.”
The vote will be just the first in a series of maneuvers between House Republicans, Senate Democrats and Obama to both fund the government past the end of September, when it runs out of money, and later, approve new borrowing by the government to service its existing debts.
A 43-year-old married special education teacher has been arrested for allegedly having a sexual relationship with one of her students.
Amy Belliveau, who was in her first year of teaching for the district in Newington, Connecticut, allegedly had sexual contact with the 20-year-old student between April and June this year.
It is against state law for a school employee to have sexual contact with a student, regardless of the student’s age. Officials described the pupil as a ‘high-functioning’ special needs student.
An investigation into her conduct was launched after a tip from the school district on June 13.
She was placed on administrative leave from Newington Transitional Academy when the investigation was launched and she was fired following her arrest.
David Frum on The Daily Beast made the point that auto makers took the necessary steps to reduce fatalities in the auto industry, and asked why gun manufacturers won’t do the same.
Gun-rights advocates insist that the U.S. faces a choice between the status quo and the repeal of the Second Amendment and mass confiscation of firearms. That is false. Improved gun safety no more requires a gun ban than improved auto safety demanded the outlawing of cars. Gun design could be regulated to enhance safety. Those who wish to own guns could be required to take safety courses and pass a test. Individuals who are found to store their weapons unsafely could forfeit for a time their ownership rights. Persons convicted of drug offenses or drunk driving could be deprived of gun rights in their sentence, as felons now are deprived of the right to vote in many states. The classes of weapons associated with mass casualty shooting could be more strictly controlled.
It’s not all-or-nothing, not all-one-way or all-the-other way: moderate steps could achieve substantial results. The goal is not to reduce the level of gun violence to zero, any more than it is to stop all auto fatalities. The goal is to enhance safety while upholding legitimate rights. It’s been done before. It can be done again.
It was about 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning when Sarah McCartney heard a banging at her front door. The young mother, alone with her 1-year-old son, rushed to the door thinking that something might have happened to her husband. But the man standing there wasn’t her husband, but a young black man.
McCartney quickly shut the door and called 911 to report an attempted robbery.
“I need help. There’s a guy breaking into my front door, he’s trying to kick it down,” McCartney is heard pleading through tears on a recording of the 911 call released by WCNC.com, an NBC affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. on Tuesday. She told the dispatcher that her husband works nights and that he has guns at home but that she couldn’t find any.
“Oh my God,” McCartney says over and over. “He’s in the front yard yelling.”
“I need help,” she said, crying.
When McCartney saw the police outside of her home, she’s heard on the 911 tape saying, “Oh, please let them get him.”
They did.
Jonathan Ferrell, 24, was killed by police in a bizarre series of events that began with a car crash along a rural stretch of road near McCartney’s home, and ended not long after he dragged himself from the wreckage and found himself on her doorstep seeking help.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police say that three officers responding to
McCartney’s 911 call arrived at her home and found Ferrell nearby. When Ferrell saw the officers he advanced or ran toward them, police say, and one of the officers shot him with a Taser. When that didn’t stop him, Officer Randall Kerrick pulled out his gun and fired 12 shots at Ferrell, hitting him with 10.
Police say that Ferrell was unarmed at the time of the shooting and was no robber at all–just someone looking for help at the the first house he saw.