Not surprisingly, the couple was taken aback from getting everything — multiple times — on the registry.  RGIII went to Twitter to thank fans, showing himself in front of all the boxes that had been delivered to them.  Not surprisingly, this set off a backlash by some who thought it unfair that a mega-rich NFL quarterback was getting gifts for his weddings.

(Boy, I hate to see the reaction of what he might get for Christmas…)

He later responded to apparent backlash he received by people who objected to the prospect of fans buying gifts for an NFL quarterback.

“I didn’t ask the fans to buy me anything,” he wrote.

“They found it on their own and decided to get what they could. SMH [shaking my head] at all these Debbie downers.”

He also tweeted: “Because you are rich you are not allowed to receive gifts and any gifts you receive should be donated to charity???? #WOW Smh …”

The pair is set to be wed somewhere on July 6. 

Would an alias had worked instead for the pair of 23 year old college sweethearts?  Maybe, but I for one don’t blame the pair for trying to be a normal couple.

Again, why the hell did the Washington Post decide it was newsworthy to post the registry in the first place?  Last time I checked, they weren’t a tabloid like the New York Post?

As for Griffin and his bride to be, good for them for donating the extras to charity; and many blessings on your upcoming nuptials.

Wisconsin employers, including hospitals and nursing homes, could no longer require workers to get flu shots under a bill pending in the Legislature.

Republican Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt, of Fond du Lac, says he began drafting the legislation after several hospital workers and health care contractors in his district complained they were fired after refusing to be vaccinated.

The bill would require employers to provide information about the risks and benefits of vaccination and allow employees reasonable time to consider it. They could not demote, suspend, discharge or discriminate against employees who refuse.

If passed, the bill would make Wisconsin the only state that bars employers of any type from requiring vaccinations.

Something tells that challenging the liberal mindset on “choice” wasn’t Rep. Thiesfeldt’s intent here.  I have two sisters and two sister-in-laws who work in health care to some extent and am fairly sure not all of them are thrilled with the side effects of getting their annual mandatory flu shots.  One or two of them have gotten the flu from their shots, not the patients they treat, and feel they would have been at work if not for it.

Frankly, they shouldn’t have to worry about getting terminated for not getting a shot if they are prone to certain side effects of the shot.

Understandably so, health care officials are worried about this law will put the public at risk since health care workers are the most likely to come in contact over and over again with those who have the flu.  I believe a compromise option is possible, perhaps allowing for those who decide not to get the shot to sign a legal waver holding them responsible for taking a series of added precautions to avoid the spread of disease.

Overall, however, I agree with the intent of the bill.  People should not be fired for declining to get a flu shot.

Perhaps the biggest shock here is that Yahoo had a billion dollars lying around.  They’ve been in rough shape for years, if not most of the decade.  One of my old co-workers at Heritage got his start at Yahoo prior to coming to D.C. and even in 2009, he was telling me horror stories of what was going on there.

I wish them the best with move, but frankly, given the way that Google has become so engrained into the culture that it is now a verb, you have to start wondering just how Yahoo is able to return to its former glory.  Buying up other pieces and companies just doesn’t seem like an intelligent long-term strategy in my opinion.

Yahoo is buying online blogging forum Tumblr for $1.1 billion as CEO Marissa Mayer tries to rejuvenate an Internet icon that had fallen behind the times.

The deal announced Monday represents Mayer’s boldest move yet since the Wausau native left Google 10 months ago to lead Yahoo’s latest comeback attempt. It marks Yahoo’s most expensive acquisition since the Sunnyvale, Calif., company bought online search engine Overture a decade ago for $1.3 billion in cash and stock.

Yahoo is paying all cash for Tumblr, dipping into some of its remaining stash from a $7.6 billion windfall reaped last year from selling about half of its stake in Chinese Internet company Alibaba Holdings Group. Taking over Tumblr will devour about one-fifth of the $5.4 billion in cash that Yahoo had in its accounts at the end of March.

Yahoo also says that “per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business” with David Karp staying on as CEO.

Tumblr, a service started six years by Karp, a high school dropout, now figures to play a pivotal role in Mayer’s attempt to reshape Yahoo. To take on the challenge, Mayer ended a highly successful 13-year career at Google, which she helped surpass Yahoo as the Internet’s most influential company. Since coming to Yahoo, Mayer has concentrated on improving employee morale, redesigning services and bringing in more engineering talent through a series of small acquisitions that have collectively cost less than $50 million.

Said to be first on Mayer’s agenda with the new acquisition — getting ads on people’s Tumblr blogs to increase revenue flow.

Currently, Tumblr has never allowed advertising.  It, like most online social start-ups, has let their users do what they want with ads.  Most of what has kept Tumblr going in recent years has been start up funding.  It explains why they only have 175 employees at the moment.

All yours for $9.

This is truly a unique item that one would find only in Milwaukee.  The Beast is a grilled bratwurst sliced in half and stuffed with a grilled hot dog.  Those two items are then wrapped in bacon and grilled to perfection.  Served with sauerkraut and grilled onions on–of course–a pretzel roll.  House made chips and a pickle are also served on the side.

Would be interesting to know what the calorie count is.

There’s always one guy who says “Man, we should have stocked up on toilet paper.  It’s got more value than gold right now!”

Who knew we only had to wait for a backwards socialist country like Venezuela to give us another kind of preview of that future?

First milk, butter, coffee and cornmeal ran short. Now Venezuela is running out of the most basic of necessities — toilet paper.

Blaming political opponents for the shortfall, as it does for other shortages, the embattled socialist government says it will import 50 million rolls to boost supplies.

That was little comfort to consumers struggling to find toilet paper on Wednesday.

“This is the last straw,” said Manuel Fagundes, a shopper hunting for tissue in downtown Caracas. “I’m 71 years old and this is the first time I’ve seen this.”

One supermarket visited by The Associated Press in the capital on Wednesday was out of toilet paper. Another had just received a fresh batch, and it quickly filled up with shoppers as the word spread.

“I’ve been looking for it for two weeks,” said Cristina Ramos. “I was told that they had some here and now I’m in line.”

Economists say Venezuela’s shortages stem from price controls meant to make basic goods available to the poorest parts of society and the government’s controls on foreign currency.

“State-controlled prices — prices that are set below market-clearing price — always result in shortages. The shortage problem will only get worse, as it did over the years in the Soviet Union,” said Steve Hanke, professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University.

The new President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro has of course blamed everyone else but his own policies for the shortages.

He did learn from the apparent master of that, the late Hugo Chavez.

If his government falls, it might be the first time the lack of toilet paper has been cited as the cause of any form of civil unrest in modern human history.

It was Scrubs star Zach Braff who announced that his new comedy – the follow-up to 2004’s well-received Garden State – could not get made without the help of fans’ financial support on crowdfunding site Kickstarter. But a month on from launching a high-profile campaign to raise funding for independent film Wish I Was Here, Braff has not only hit his $2m Kickstarter target but secured millions of dollars in extra support from a traditional film financier.

The Hollywood Reporter revealed on Wednesday that Worldview Entertainment is stepping in with extra funds that will take the film’s total budget to about $10m. “Zach has proven again that he is a creative force in independent film, and we were immediately drawn to his powerful and unique story,” Worldview CEO Christopher Woodrow told the site at the Cannes film festival.

Kickstarter is increasingly used by film-makers to raise finance for movies. Last month, producers of the Veronica Mars TV show secured a staggering $5.702m (£3.70m) to revive the detective series as a feature film. In September, the Charlie Kaufman–scripted stop-motion film Anomalisa raised a then-record $406,237 (£250,600).

Wish I Was Here is written by Braff and his brother Adam. Braff will direct and play the lead role of a father, actor and husband struggling to find his identity. Braff admitted in a video directed at fans as part of his Kickstarter campaign that he was close to a traditional financing deal to shoot the film, but didn’t want to give up the final cut and the right to pick the cast. In response, fans donated $2.6m.

But Twitter users and bloggers subsequently questioned why the actor, former star of the hugely successful, long-running sitcom Scrubs, did not simply use his own cash to make Wish I Was Here. Others wondered if it was reasonable to ask fans to contribute when they would not benefit if the movie became a surprise box office hit. News that traditional funding has been secured from a financier that will presumably want a return on its investment may further cloud the question.

In an interview with the LA Times about his Kickstarter campaign last month, Braff denied suggestions he had “Oprah Winfrey money”. He said: “I’ve done well in my career, but I am not sitting on $22m. I’m doing this so that one negative audience comment in a test screening won’t force me to change the end of my movie.”

He also said he felt fans were being well-rewarded for their contributions, with special early screenings and after-parties available to many.

Kickstarter is hit or miss for many independent filmmakers.  Kevin Smith has said he’s going to bypass “Clerks III” on Kickstarter partially because he wants to avoid the headaches Braff is now getting, he wanted to ‘return to his roots’ and fund it himself, like he did the first “Clerks”  and he believe Kickstarter should be there to “help the kind of up-and-coming filmmakers and entrepreneurs.”

Overall, I’m intrigued by what Kickstarter is allowing folks to do.  It’s giving a funding option for entrepreneurs, artists and bands they never would have gotten before.  Let’s be honest with ourselves, many banks aren’t handing out the small business loans like they were thanks in part to Dodd-Frank and Kickstarter is filling a void.

It also has been so successful, that it is legitimately making many wonder if the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) is even necessary since in 2012 it was reported that Kickstarter provided more money for more projects than the NEA did in all of 2011.  Kickstarter’s co-founder felt he had to apologize on Talking Points Memo for that — why, I have no idea?

Having helped fund a project or two on Kickstarter, I mostly do it not for a return on investment (Like $5 to $50 is really an investment for a $20,000 project?), but to get the idea off the drawing board and into the production phase.  If the guy with the idea ends up making a million dollars sometime down the road, so be it.  My goal is getting a product in hand at the end of the day during the early adapter phase.

In the past it was waiting for a comic book, now it’s waiting for a “Settlers of Catan” game board.

As for the Braff / Smith debate, I believe Smith is on to something when he says that Kickstarter should be reserved for the up and comers.  Guys like them have access to money and can get it with typically a call or two to a Weinstein.  You and me, who have hopes, dreams, a drawing board, a camera and dreams need something like Kickstarter.  The big guys don’t.