Archive for August, 2008

The following Dallas-area hotels are offering discount room rates to evacuees from Hurricane Gustav:

• MCM Grande Hotel, Desoto
• Days Inn, Garland West
• Pyramids Hotel, Allen
• Fairfield Inn & Suites, Las Colinas
• Studio 6, Dallas NW
• Hampton Inn, Las Colinas
• MCM Elegante, Dallas
• Howard Johnson Dallas
• Candlewood, Dallas Galleria
• Hampton Inn, Allen
• Candlewood Suites, Dallas and Arlington
• Staybridge Suites, North Dallas/Addison
• Wingate by Wyndham, Las Colinas
• Springhill Suites, Arlington
• Hampton InnDallas, Arlington
• Doubletree Club, Farmers Branch
• Candlewood Suites at Fossil Creek (a pet-friendly hotel)
• Hilton Garden Inn, Allen
• La Quinta Inn, Dallas LBJ
• Americas Best Value, Waxahachie
• Extended Stay Deluxe, Dallas Las Colinas
• Holiday Inn Express, Dallas NW Expressway
• Red Roof Inn, De Soto
• Hilton Bella Harbor, Rockwall
• Embassy Suites, Dallas Market Center
• Staybridge Suites, Dallas
• Fairfield Inn & Suites, Las Colinas
• Fairfield Inn & Suites, Denton
• Courtyard, Addison Midway
• Embassy Suites, Dallas Park Central
• Quality Inn Suites, Fort Worth
• Country Hearth Inn, McKinney
• Cattle Baron Quality Inn Suites
• Hotel Intercontinental, Dallas Addison
• Doubletree Hotel, Dallas Market Center
• Sun Suites, Dallas
• Sun Suites, Plano
• Sun Suites, Lewisville
• Hilton, D/FW Lakes
• Quality Inn & Suites, Fort Worth
• Sun Suites Extended Stay Hotel

Evacuees can also call 211 in Dallas for assistance in finding emergency shelters.

There are thousands of evacuees from the Gulf Coast / New Orleans area that are currently in Dallas or en route here.

The Volunteer Center of North Texas is organizing all the volunteers and an urgent request for help came out a few moments ago. If you have some time available tomorrow (Labor Day) or the next few days, take time to fill out this application and email or fax it back to them ASAP:

When deep fried s’mores become a plausibly obtainable snack option, the State Fair of Texas must be approaching.

The calorie-crammed twist to the campfire favorite was among eight finalists announced Wednesday in the Big Tex Choice Awards that honor the tastiest fried fare of the Texas fair.

The State Fair of Texas begins Sept. 26 and runs through Oct. 19. The winner will be announced Monday.

Other competitors are a fried banana split, fried chocolate truffles, a fried grilled cheese sandwich and fried Jelly Bellys.

Also making the cut are chicken-fried bacon strips and chocolate-covered strawberry waffle balls, served on a stick and obligatorily deep-fried.

Abel Gonzales, whose fried cookie dough took top honors last year, will defend his title with “Fire & Ice.” The dish is described as a pineapple ring battered and deep-fried, topped with banana-flavored whipped cream frozen from liquid nitrogen and ladled with strawberries and syrup.

Attendance figures for the fair aren’t released, but officials reported selling $29 million in food coupons last year.

Blazing heat, choking pollution and skyrocketing electric bills. What’s one way to combat all these problems at once? Plant trees.

Trouble is, compared to other large cities, the Dallas area doesn’t have nearly enough.

But a dedicated corps of volunteers stands ready to fulfill a mission that could make life better for us all: plant more trees and cool down our urban oceans of concrete.

They’re training to be “citizen foresters.”

To fully understand the benefits of trees in the city, you have to go where there are no trees in the city. When the outside temperature hits 100 degrees, the temperature on the pavement can hit 120 degrees. But where city streets are lined with trees, the temperature on the pavement can check in at 90 degrees. That’s almost 30 degrees cooler.

But how many trees should be planted? And where?

Other cities around the country have counted trees by hand. But that takes 10 years or more.

Eventually, a high-tech camera will fly over the city and identify the variety, quantity, and location of the city’s trees.

Armed with this information, the army of volunteers will be sent to places like Harry Hines Boulevard, where trees are few and far between.

And the planting can begin.

This was posted on FoxNews:

Illegal immigrants are returning home to Mexico in numbers not seen for decades — and the Mexican government may have to deal with a crush on its social services and lower wages once the immigrants arrive.

The Mexican Consulate’s office in Dallas is seeing increasing numbers of Mexican nationals requesting paperwork to go home for good, especially parents who want to know what documentation they’ll need to enroll their children in Mexican schools.

“Those numbers have increased percentage-wise tremendously,” said Enrique Hubbard, the Mexican consul general in Dallas. “In fact, it’s almost 100 percent more this year than it was the previous two years.”

The illegal immigrant population in the U.S. has dropped 11 percent since August of last year, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Its research shows 1.3 million illegal immigrants have returned to their home countries.

Some say illegal immigrants are leaving because a soft economy has led to fewer jobs, causing many laborers to seek work elsewhere.

Others argue that a tough stance on immigration through law enforcement has spread fear throughout the illegal population.

“There’s no question there’s a variety of suggestions that people are in fact returning,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “Remittances, which is the money immigrants send home to Mexico, have gone down dramatically over the past year. Again, probably part the economy, but also part enforcement, leading to fewer people being here.”

Advocates for immigrants are disturbed by the trend. Albert Ruiz, an organizer for the League of United Latin American Citizens, agrees that more undocumented immigrants are going home — but says families are being torn apart in the process.

If a father is deported, Ruiz says, his family members in America are forced either to fend for themselves or follow him to a country where they’ve never even lived.

“So the mother is saying we should return home with the breadwinner of the family to Mexico, and the children are saying, I don’t want to leave, I’m a U.S. citizen, I don’t know that country,” said Ruiz.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon plans to help returning nationals by providing food, medical care and temporary shelter if needed. But reports are already out in Mexico that the large number of illegal immigrants returning home could drive down wages and put pressure on social services — the same concerns many Americans have with illegals living and working in the U.S.

Starting today, your fresh vegetables may now be irradiated without your knowledge. The FDA has unleashed a new rule allowing food companies to secretly irradiate lettuce and spinach, and there is NO requirement that these foods be labeled with a warning label! The FDA is also looking to expand this to other vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers and onions. Soon, ALL vegetables may be irradiated.

Why does this matter? Because irradiation destroys phytonutrients, including anti-cancer nutrients that are protecting your health right now. With this rule, the FDA is literally killing the food supply!

This is a crucial issue for the survival of America. No nation can survive the destruction of its food supply. The FDA is determined to do what all the terrorists in the world could not: Use weapons of mass destruction against the food.

The media is focusing on the angle of “this protects us from e. coli”, they are NOT focusing on the issue of this is destroying our food supplies.

Contact the FDA today to let them know your feedback on this vital issue to the health of us all: http://www.fda.gov/comments.html.

Also, wherever you see a report on this issue whether it’s a mainstream site like CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc., leave comments in relation to this story. Also email the reporters of your local broadcast and print media that are covering this story.

One voice in a stadium may not be heard, but several thousand screaming at the same time will be heard.

Here is Dallas girl Jessica Simpson in full cowgirl get-up to promote beer.

No doubt the combination of a flash of cleavage, a very sexy pout, a roll in the hay and her flowing golden locks are enough to shift a good few extra crates of the Stampede lager.

But the real revelation here is not that Jess is giving it sexy to sell stuff, but that she actually owns part of the company.

She may be blonde but she’s certainly business savvy - Jess has a 15 per cent stake in Stampede Brewers.

In the advert Jess says: “I work out and take care of myself. But I also like a cold beer once in a while.”