local { Krispy Kreme leaves Minnesota

Krispy Kreme leaves Minnesota. I can't say this surprises me. The one that opened here in Rochester closed before a year even passed. Besides the slaughtering of the spellings of crispy and cream for the sake of a brand name, I found them distasteful because the donuts really were not that great a pastry. They were greasy. They were sickly sweet. The coffee they sold sucked. They're no Tim Horton's.

Here in Rochester, I chalked the closure up to the mistake of opening 1/2 block from a local (and outstanding) bakery, Daube's.

On a side note, last night KTTC, the local JV quality NBC affiliate, whose 10pm newcast I can't stop watching...its sooo bad...ran a 5minute equivalent of an infomercial because Starbuck's closed early for training of its employees on how to make a good cup of coffee. Well good for Starbuck's, but I guess I can't see how this is news. It smelled a helluva a lot like a paid commercial, sneaked into the newscast as news. But there was a nugget at the end, Starbucks will be closing 100 under-performing stores. Which is about time, I think they hit saturation point about 10 years ago. When we went to San Francisco in 2005, literally, there were areas of downtown San Fran where three of the four corners of the intersection had a Starbucks. It was obvious the reason they were so dense was they bought out or pushed out a local shop that was in that location previously.

P.S. KTTC, your 10pm newscast could improve greatly by getting rid of Tim Overlie. You made a vast improvement by getting rid of Betsy Singer and replacing her with Rachel Wick. (We ran into Betsy Singer one night going to a movie at Chateau, she was fronting some evangelical christian jesus-fest activity that involved a lot of screaming kids and a ball bin).

In politics, last night KTTC ran a commercial, and I really wish I could remember the name of the organization that paid for this, it had one of those innocent sounding names, yet the organization is pure evil type things like Americans for a Democratic Society.

UPDATE: Found it, the group is 'Defense of Democracies'. Here is the FUD ad. WARNING, this ad contains Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt as well as unhealthy amounts of Jingoism with no facts.




The commercial is a FUD piece saying the Senate had shown true leadership and concern for the safety of this country by voting FOR the new FISA bill (which is the bill the Bush Administration wants that include Telecom immunity), while the House ducked its responsibility and went on vacation. It showed a whole bunch of scary images and pro-American jingoism, terrorist bad bullshit common in these times thanks to the Bush Adminisration. The end put up Tim Walz's picture and contact information (which isn't on the YouTube version, and must have been added regionally for each member of Congress targeted) and urged people to call him and tell him to vote YES for security! Vote FOR the FISA bill (now with new and improved Telecom Immunity!). I won't go into why this ad is wrong on so many levels, as it makes me so enraged I get even more incoherent. But sufficed to say, the new FISA bill will not make us safer, the old FISA legislation (which had been updated) protects us and our civil liberties by requiring judicial oversight and review (even after the fact if time of the essence) and the new bill weakens civil liberties and expands the power of the Administrative Branch by weakening the checks and balances. The fact this ad could give no facts and only provide push-button emotional rhetoric should illustrate why everyone when they see something like this should, in the words of Buffalo Springfield, 'there's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear...stop children, what's the sound? Everybody look whats goin down...'