RiverKings trade Banga for pair of Killer Bees

The Memphis RiverKings announced today that the team has traded the rights to center Travis Banga to the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees for the rights to forward Matt Reynolds and defenseman Ryan Carrigan.

Reynolds, 6-foot, 200 lbs, played the 2005-06 season with the Fort Worth Brahmas and was originally signed last off-season by the Rocky Mountain Rage. The Athens, Ontario native was traded to Rio Grande Valley on September 11, 2006. Last season with the Killer Bees, the second year professional scored 17 goals and had 28 assists in 56 games. Prior to turning pro, Reynolds played college hockey at York University in Toronto and major junior hockey in the Ontario Hockey League.

Carrigan, 6-foot-1, 203 lbs, played his second pro season and his first with the Killer Bees in 2006-2007. He started his professional career with the Rockford IceHogs before signing with Rio Grande Valley prior to last season. In 62 games with the Bees, the Burlington, Ontario product scored six goals and assisted on 15 others in 62 games.

Banga finished his third season with the RiverKings in 2006-2007. The High River, Alberta native scored 26 goals and had 32 assists in 58 games. Over his three seasons with the RiverKings, he played in 163 games, scored 84 goals and collected 106 assists for 190 points. His 84 goals are fourth on the team’s all-time list while his point total is sixth. He led the team in goals scored last season with 34 and was named to the CHL All-Star Game for the first time this past January.

The Panthers done this one right.

Last week she was having a thermo-nuclear meltdown in a committee meeting, this week she’s missing meetings and ripping clothes off cabbies!

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From WMCTV

Fellow lawmakers worried about Ophelia Ford’s health
Reported by Janice Broach
May 22, 2007 03:46 PM

Fellow state legislators of Ophelia Ford gave the controversial senator mixed reviews at the capitol today, while her family works to prepare an intervention.

Some people are wondering if Ophelia Ford needs help. Ford didn’t show up for Monday’s senate session.

She told us by phone she was not feeling well.

“It’s been really really rough today and I couldn’t, I couldn’t. I tried and I tried and I tried but the rest of the week I can make it to all of them my committee meetings in the morning,” Ford told Action News 5’s Janice Broach Monday night.

Senator Ford said she would make it to her committee meetings on Tuesday.

But there’s a catch: She had no committee meetings scheduled.

Her staff confirmed that and said she would not be at the Capitol on Tuesday morning.

Ford blamed her problems on her anemia.

“I haven’t been eating. Why haven’t you been eating . I don’t want nothing to eat. Has the doctor given you something so you can eat? That’s what my doctor had said to me, ‘you gotta eat, you gotta eat’,” she told Broach Monday night.

Broach and a photographer went to the hotel in Nashville where Ophelia Ford is staying to see if she would do a face-to-face interview. She wouldn’t do it and told us not to call her again.

Read the rest here

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And for her cabbie assaulting antics~

From The Tennessean

Cabbie says drunken Ophelia Ford grabbed his collar
Senator says she’s too weak to do that

Friday, 05/25/07
By SHEILA BURKE
Staff Writer

A Nashville cab driver has accused state Sen. Ophelia Ford of tearing off his shirt button during a drunken altercation in his taxi — the latest in a string of bizarre incidents involving the Memphis Democrat that have led some to publicly question her health and sobriety.

Ford, 56, declined a request Thursday by The Tennessean to discuss the incident but told The Associated Press that she was not drunk and would not have grabbed the driver intentionally

“If I did, it was to hold on,” Ford said. “I’m not strong enough to do that,” referring to being weak from a chronic illness.

The driver, Habib Hashi, told police he picked up Ford and an unidentified woman from the Wildhorse Saloon in downtown Nashville on Tuesday.

Ford, Hashi said, was intoxicated and brought out to the cab under a blanket to keep the public from seeing her.

“She said ‘Take me to my (expletive) hotel, (expletive),’” Hashi said, during an interview Thursday. “She kept saying, ‘I will fire a lot of people tomorrow.’ I didn’t know who she was talking about.”

During the ride, Hashi said, Ford grabbed the collar of his shirt from behind and pulled it back, tearing a button off.

According to what he told police, the woman with Ford had to pry the senator’s hands off the cab driver’s shirt.

The driver said he took Ford to the Holiday Inn Select on West End, where he and her friend helped Ford to her room. He realized afterward that Ford left her shoes in the cab.

Driver may seek charges

Hashi said he plans to pursue criminal charges.

“I will do it, definitely, because I’m scared, believe it or not,” he said. “I’m scared about what she did. She choked me. I could’ve had an accident.”

Read the rest of this bizarreness here
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Me personally, I can’t wait to see what she does next!!!~Chris

From CNet News

Net taxes could arrive by this fall

By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: May 23, 2007, 10:10 PM PDT

The era of tax-free e-mail, Internet shopping and broadband connections could end this fall, if recent proposals in the U.S. Congress prove successful.

State and local governments this week resumed a push to lobby Congress for far-reaching changes on two different fronts: gaining the ability to impose sales taxes on Net shopping, and being able to levy new monthly taxes on DSL and other connections. One senator is even predicting taxes on e-mail.

At the moment, states and municipalities are frequently barred by federal law from collecting both access and sales taxes. But they’re hoping that their new lobbying effort, coordinated by groups including the National Governors Association, will pay off by permitting them to collect billions of dollars in new revenue by next year.

If that doesn’t happen, other taxes may zoom upward instead, warned Sen. Michael Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, at a Senate hearing on Wednesday. “Are we implicitly blessing a situation where states are forced to raise other taxes, such as income or property taxes, to offset the growing loss of sales tax revenue?” Enzi said. “I want to avoid that.”

Read the rest here

Wow, this makes me really like Rosie O’Donnell. Or it could just be that I hate Elisabeth what’s-her-name. Either way, I’m rooting for the brunette.

Somebody remind me to make a new category for political rants……

Click to view full size

From CNN Money

Record gas price: Dirty dozen
Gallon approaches $3.23 to set 12th-consecutive record high; widespread increases continue ahead of the Memorial Day holiday weekend.
By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer
May 24 2007: 7:26 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Gas prices hit record highs for the 12th straight day Thursday, as drivers prepared to hit the road for the Memorial Day holiday and the start of the summer driving season.

There is no immediate relief in sight, as prices continue to rise in most of the country. Midwest prices continue to soar, resulting in the three most expensive states in the nation being in that region.

The latest reading from AAA Wednesday showed that the nationwide average for a gallon of regular unleaded hit $3.227, up from $3.221 on Wednesday.

The motorist group’s survey of 85,000 gas stations, by far the broadest sampling of gas prices, has been showing a series of record highs starting May 13.

The national average has now been above $3 a gallon since May 4. That’s the longest stretch with prices above the $3 mark; a 19-day period was reached last August following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. That was the previous longest spike in gas prices.

The AAA national average now shows prices up 3.6 percent over the course of the last week, along with an increase of 13 percent during the last month.

And higher prices could be on the way during the crucial summer driving season.

Read the rest here

I put this pic up when I got it back in April, but now you can actually rate it at Rate My Ink

Well, it’s happened again. Just when I think I’ve reached the height of geekiness, someone has to come along and humble me. Apparently there are folks out there doing Star Wars and Star Trek marriages (yes, those are links for the any non-geek that might happen to stumble upon this site). Be sure to head over to Mental Floss to see more photos and footage from actually super geek weddings. Proof that sometimes the geek DOES get the girl. Hell, sometimes the geek is the girl.

What I don’t get is how Will and I are both huge Star Wars fans, and moderate Trekkies, so why didn’t we think of this?

From the Seattle Times

MySpace agrees to share sex offender data

RALEIGH, N.C. — Faced with legal demands from state attorneys general, MySpace.com said today it will release data on registered sex offenders it has identified and removed from the popular social networking Web site.

The company, citing federal privacy laws, initially rebuffed a demand from North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper and colleagues in seven other states who last week asked for data on how many registered sex offenders are using the site and where they live.

MySpace agreed today to provide the information to all states after some members of the group filed subpoenas or took other legal actions to demand it. The company said last week such efforts were required under the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act before it could legally release the data.

“Different states are going about it different ways,” said Noelle Talley, spokeswoman for Cooper, who filed a “civil investigative demand” for the information.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal used a subpoena that “compels this information right away — within hours, not weeks, without delay — because it is vital to protecting children,” he said.

“Many of these sex offenders may have violated their parole or probation by contacting or soliciting children on MySpace,” Blumenthal said.

Read the rest here

Manny likes to sleep up against his people, but in case he can’t, any old crack or crevice will do.

Here he is, wedged into the gap between the couch cushion and the couch.

Oh, and of course, I’ve already hooked him up with his own Catster page.