Whoops: Charity homes funded by Hollywood names and built by former Prez Jimmy Carter are crumbling.
Well, at least a lot of big names felt good about their work. At the time.
And, I didn’t know that these homes had a mortgage attached; I thought they were free.
Steve’s Gastronomic Homepage is hands-down the finest food blog in the El Paso area (OK, that’s not saying much since he pretty much owns the space, we just eat in it). But besides, it’s about a thousand times better than you know who posting you know what at the El Paso Times. Steve has posted his “Best Of” for El Paso dining in 2008.
It seems he’s in Oklahoma much of the time these days, but his local reviews still ring true for this year, in my opinion.
Chopes, check.
Tacos Santa Cecilia, check.
Los Jarrones, check.
Carnitas Queretaro, check.
L&J, check.
Little Diner, check.
Moon Star and Moon Day, check.
True Thai, check.
India Palace, check.
Hello Pizza, check.
Bella Sera, check.
State Line (ribs), check.
Cattleman’s, check.
I’d go a little different with a few places. I like Pho Tre Bien for pho; and I like Frisco’s better than Roscoe’s because of the better dining room (I’ve heard some rumors about how Frisco’s started, but don’t really care once I dig into a cheeseburger basket).
Sadly, as Steve thought, Edelweiss is closed. The dining room was horrible, but geez, the food was excellent; take it from a long-time Germany resident. I’d like to hire that cook to move into my house. Well, maybe not, because I’d rather hire whoever is running the spit at Tacos Santa Cecilia.
Now I gotta check out Cafe Mayapan.
You ought to check out Steve’s El Paso restaurant reviews; they are remarkably complete, with a rating system, lots of photos, and none of that high-falutin’ language about “triumphs” and so on that is used by you know who posting you know what at the El Paso Times. This 2008 roundup is better, for that matter, than the Times’ vote early, vote often, “Best of the Border” extravaganza, even though yours truly benefited from it (no, we didn’t vote for ourselves, mainly because since we can’t afford to hire the spit guy from Santa Cecilia, we certainly can’t afford to hire a Java guru who would allow us to out-vote and beat Jay Koester and Roy “Mr Multimedia” or better, “Blog-H8TR Blogger” Ortega. Or for that matter, don’cha know, that triumph of a you know who posting you know what about El Paso dining at the El Paso Times).
Well, at least, Steve’s 2008 review really is a triumph. The El Paso Times ought to hire him.
Because, you know, I can’t afford to.
El Paso Times’ Roy Ortega, the blogging anti-blogger, might benefit from this Instapundit post. Instapundit writes, It seems that often when big-media types write about the failings of blogs, they engage in the kind of lazy inaccuracy they condemn.
Well, F7, my personal online spell-checker (which also includes grammar and punctuation options), gives The El Paso Times a C for English comprehension, and a B for effort. On the curve of local online and print publications, that takes them to a D for comprehension and, oh hell, a B for effort (we’re talking CSS effort here, not Web 2.0 effort).
Now as for that defunct AM drive-time radio show he appeared on, well Ortega’s multi-media companions got an F all around. Except for Amber Sullens; she got an A- (dropped down for not always being ready for the timing miscues of the station’s staff), and an A+ for effort — for the effort of putting up with the F Troop of El Paso radio for so long.
It’s unheard of. Remember, these citizens overwhelmingly and repeatedly chose Code Pink, Palestine, Iran and Pelosiboxerstein.
UPDATE: From a commenter at SF Gate, the online portal to the liberal San Francisco Chronicle Commenter mexilad speaks for the community: “Same old story. All of these folks are economically poor (Or they should not be getting assistance). But, a god [sic] portion of them are poor in character and values. They make it bad for everybody. Color and race have nothing to do with it. It is a about class. Some folks just don’t have any. There is nothing wrong with helping people out and getting rid of them if they cause problems. Rock on.”
They, them, they them. I especially like the part about “getting rid of them.” But, where would they go? Presumably, to a less-white part of the Bay Area, where their lives can go under-reported by the Bay Area’s MSM. That would certainly relieve the consciences of BA liberals, as they strut about crime-free and black-free Antioch, resplendent in their 1990s-era Malcom-X baseball caps.
I’ve been pondering President Bush’s work toward bailing out lenders, auto makers and other low-rent purveyors of Made-in-USA crap.
For the record, these leading lights of free-market enterprise make Chinese producers of melamine-soaked and lead-covered products look like Swarovski crystal figurines for sale in a Paris salon.
And after much time spent on my recently-returned plastic-and-wood bench that sits out in front of my high-class Upper Valley hacienda, I have come to conclude that Bush is the greatest Presidential pardoner this country has ever seen.
He has, in fact, forgiven more — in terms of time served and monetary value, than all other Presidents combined, including Warren Hardinge, who pardoned “priests and prostitutes alike,” and the notorious Ulysseses Grant, who pardoned two turkeys right before Thanksgiving because he was sloshed and seeing double after cavorting with, well, prostitutes and priests.
Here in West Texas, a lot of cavorting goes on — some of it is fun and some of it is legal. But folks around here lack the high morals of Capitol Heights, the financial capital of fiscal Fred Flintstones, and the political wherewithal of party-centric wingnuts (both left and right) to really do it big. First off, you’ve got to put on a dull suit with a bright tie and head to DC to even get near the door of an Official Administration Pardoning. And the Men’s Wearhouse off Sunland Park Drive just doesn’t cut it with the elites.
Did you get that, Anthony Cobos? or any other of you get-the-vote-out by having your relatives shill for you on street corners near voting stations rednecks?
I mean, who wants to do all that expensive haircut, multiple suit-fittings, acne-reducing-medications-from-a-TV-ad stuff, when every house in the neighborhood is putting on tamales and posole for New Year’s, and the fridge on the back porch is full of Bud Light plus a 6-pack of that weird microbrew the egg-head son brought back from Austin?
Not me, not even if being in the political mix is valuable to a New York Times blogger who laments Obama’s break with tradition during his Hawai’i holiday. Heh — didja read that, Roy Ortega? An MSM icon has a regular blog — kinda like yours but, well, without the anti-blog attitude, though that MSM icon bitches about as much as you did recently, only with a better thesaurus.
Am I off-track already? Must be the wood splint in my backside from that bench. Need upgrade to varnish, I guess.
Now. I’m sitting here on one buttock and wondering where the bailout for unfairly-convicted and really unfairly-sentenced US Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Campeon is. I hope it’s not locked up in Committee, in some back-alley klaven Komittee led by our famous Border Patrol alum, US Congressman Sylvestre Reyes. If Reyes is weighing in on anything more than where Pitt players should go for good food in El Paso, then Ramos and Campeon are screwed. Hell, who knows what Reyes is up to these days. His “blog” (cue interest from Roy Ortega) is even worse than Ortega’s, but yet better, since he doesn’t slag off bloggers on a blog.
Reyes must be in a really bad place about Ramos’ and Compean’s convictions. On the one hand, he understands — better than anyone else on Capitol Hill — the pressures of the Border Patrol agent’s job, as well as the scum that USBP agents deal with every day. The lies, the drugs, the violence…
On the other hand, he has to have learned, by now, some rudimentary sense of politicking.
The man must be just torn apart by all this.
Or not. Silver knows who butters his bread (that’s anyone with a higher IQ than he has, which is about 434 other Congressmen), and he must know who won’t allow him sit on a plastic-and-wood bench in front of a high-class hacienda in the Upper Valley.
So we all make our choices, and so does he. Border Patrol Agents make choices every hour of every day they’re on duty. Reyes makes choices. His political handlers, the California idiot Pelosi and the California idiot Feinstein, call his shots more than he calls for shots at Acetunas.
Now. Is there a pardon out there for a New York Times MSM blogger who thinks he has the right to follow Obama all over the white sandy beaches of Hawai’i? Is there a pardon floating down for a guy in a bad suit hoofing it to Congress to ask for a few billion for his dumb American car company that makes cars Americans don’t want and who indirectly supports a golf club-owning union that car customers aren’t allowed to visit?
Hell, is there a pardon for a plastic-and-wood bench that sits outside a high-class hacienda in the Upper Valley, for sticking it (so to speak) to not only its owner but any politician who happens by? Is there a pardon for a politically-obsessed, under-performing, Border Patrol agent-prosecuting, wannabe up-and-comer attorney named Johnny Sutton, whose traditional resignation (as is traditional for all US Attorneys when a new Administration comes into office) should not only be accepted, but accompanied by a deportation order?
And mostly, is there a pardon for US Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, two of the most wrongfully-convicted and over-sentenced citizens, who got ten years for what should have been, at best, misdemeanors, or, more likely, administrative findings?
Dept. of “No Kidding?”:Wacky Yearning For Zion Ranch kooks in Eldorado, TX, abused kids.
Well, in some cultures in the Middle East and Africa, this is the norm, not abuse.
Disinterested Democrat Caroline Kennedy says, at the end of 2008, that 9/11 got her interested in politics. She says she’d like to put her good relationships with the DC political crowd to work. No doubt.
It’s funny how her voting record (or lack thereof) had to be brought to her attention: “I was really surprised and dismayed by my voting record,” she said. “I’m glad it’s been brought to my attention.”
Good Lord.
Heh. Disaffected political pool member is upset about being left out of Obama’s Hawai’i vacation. “Long-standing protocol,” indeed. Just another example of the death of Mainstream Media.
UPDATE: It gets worse for the pool of MSM excludes; they didn’t have power, so to speak, to file their complaints.