It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.

SEROQUEL, SERTRALINE, WHO KNEW…? Clearly the pharmacist at Todd Beathard”s Walmart had no George Bailey to watch over business. Should Beathard have been more careful? Have checked the label or even compared the pills against the picture in The Pill Book or an online source? Perhaps. Do you? Keep reading…

WILL WALMART SAVE THE SMALL FARM…? Cleveland is getting hammered by snow this morning, so I”m posting on the fly. I”ll read the entire Atlantic article at home and post more tomorrow. The Atlantic is a trusted publication, but I am skeptical. For now, here”s the accompanying video. Keep reading…

THE VIEW FROM A WALMART PARKING LOT… If you want to see and speak with a lot of people at any one time, you could a lot worse than standing in any Walmart parking lot as the anonymous Lexington did. Speaking with a lot of people, however, is not the same as speaking with a representative sample. Keep reading…

IS WALMART GETTING FOOD RIGHT…? I read The Atlantic story I posted about yesterday. Based on Cory Kummers words, I”d say he”s giving Walmart a C+/B- for its grocery aisles. I fault him for focusing so narrowly and not asking how Walmart helped to get us where we are today. Keep reading…

FABRIC, AMMO AND BOBBERS… Full-disclosure warning: there is no credible evidence that Walmart intends to stop selling fishing supplies in its stores. Having said that, in rural and small town America there is perhaps no more popular male pastime than fishing. Keep reading…

OH, YOU WANT STRAIGHT TALK…!
Marketers are famous for selecting names and phrases that they believe will inspire confidence and comfort among consumers of their products, and the strategy normally works. Walmart”s Straight Talk cell phone service, however, is blowing up. Keep reading…

THE CHRISTIAN THING TO DO…? This story bears much deeper consideration than this video, but I want to get it out there so that we can all consider and commet. I don”t know how many ministers there are in Chicago, but 200 is not a number you lightly dismiss. Keep reading…

What a time for Andrew Sullivan to be on vacation.

Sully’s able assistant Patrick Appel, however, notes this very Catholic announcement.

Normally I allow Ralph Solonitz’s political cartoons to stand on their own, but this morning I want to make sure people read the story in the The Nation that he links to.

I’ve read Representative Ron Paul’s book, (R-Texas) and while I recognize that his wheels leave the tracks in a number of places, his underlying message is spot on. In calling for transparecy in the Federal banking system, Paul said on the floor of Congress:

Since its inception, the Federal Reserve has always operated in the shadows, without sufficient scrutiny or oversight of its operations. While the conventional excuse is that this is intended to reduce the Fed’s susceptibility to political pressures, the reality is that the Fed acts as a foil for the government. Whenever you question the Fed about the strength of the dollar, they will refer you to the Treasury, and vice versa. The Federal Reserve has, on the one hand, many of the privileges of government agencies, while retaining benefits of private organizations, such as being insulated from Freedom of Information Act requests.

Paul is joined in his opposition to the current set of tracks laid down for the Fed by Senator Barry Sanders (D-Vermont):

Sanders”s audit-the-Fed bill, which mirrors that of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), already has 30 co-sponsors in the Senate, spanning the political spectrum from California liberal Barbara Boxer to South Carolina conservative Jim DeMint. The increased media attention sparked by a drawn-out confirmation debate could inspire more support for the measure, which Bernanke is lobbying hard against.

A coalition of activists from the left and right is working to make sure that”s the case. Jumping on the news of Sanders”s hold, Campaign for America”s Future, a progressive group, blasted out a copy of a letter sent to senators Wednesday urging them to delay Bernanke”s confirmation until they pass audit-the-Fed legislation.

The signatories make up a mind-bending group: on the right, conservative kingpin Grover Nordquist and Phyllis Schlafly; on the left, liberal economist Dean Baker and Jane Hamsher – founder of the liberal Firedoglake blog, who just launched an attack on the anti-abortion Stupak amendment.

“In the last two years, the Federal Reserve Board has lent several trillion dollars to banks and other private companies, financial and non-financial institutions through a series of special lending facilities,” the letter says. “At this point, neither the public nor members of Congress has any information about who benefited from these loans, guarantees, and swap arrangements….

“Without this audit, Congress lacks the information it needs to evaluate Mr. Bernanke”s performance.”

How’s your coffee this morning?

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog video excursion I present: From My Dad.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Well, your first chapter is the lead paragraph of your novel. Mickey Spillane has said more than once that the first chapter sells the book and the last chapter sells the next book. I wouldn”t dream of arguing with that. p. 145

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

In the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where teenager Wesley Crusher applies to the Star Fleet Academy, he is forced, as a test, to face the fact that he can’t save everyone every time and must tell a man he thinks is doomed that he has to try and help himself.

That’s the image I have in my head reading Aung Din’s Wall Street Journal op-ed piece.

The news from Burma, my home country, seems to only go from bad to worse. Last week, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi was denied yet another appeal and will remain under house arrest. Last month, Burmese-American human-rights activist Kyaw Zaw Lwin, also known as Nyi Nyi Aung, was sentenced to three-years in prison on trumped up fraud and forgery charges.

This past July, President Obama signed into law the Burma Sanctions Renewal Act, which extended strict sanctions on the country’s military junta for three more years. But the administration must also be careful that its policy of “pragmatic engagement” with Burma’s military rulers-which began with a visit by State Department officials last November-does not legitimize a fundamentally corrupt regime.

Than Shwe, the senior general who heads the junta, has promised to hold nationwide elections this year, the first since Ms. Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy’s landslide victory in 1990 elections-which were nullified by the military. But the election will be a sham, the product of a new constitution pushed through last year by force and intimidation that forbids Ms. Suu Kyi from running for or holding office.

Ms. Suu Kyi, her supporters, and many of Burma’s long-persecuted ethnic groups, including the Karen, Karenni and Shan, are rightfully refusing to participate in this charade unless the regime amends the constitution to allow for free and fair elections, a legitimate civilian government and equal rights and representation for all ethnic groups.

But first the regime must release its thousands of political prisoners, including hundreds of monks who took part in the 2007 antigovernment protests known as the Saffron Revolution.

Thus far, however, Gen. Than Shwe has been employing his usual mix of violence, brutality and war. He’s rounding up and arresting opposition members and increasing his assault on the Karen and other ethnic minorities, displacing more than 75,000 people in Karen State in eastern Burma in 2009 alone.

How can the U.S. and the international community play a meaningful role in bringing true peace and freedom to Burma? The answer lies in placing collective political and economic pressure on the regime to engage in meaningful and timebound dialogue with Ms. Suu Kyi, her party, and the leaders of Burma’s ethnic minorities. Failing that, the U.S. should take the lead in organizing a global arms embargo against the regime, and establish a commission of inquiry to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma by the United Nations.

This will require Mr. Obama’s strong leadership and commitment. His Burma policy objectives are sound: the release of all political prisoners, an end to conflict with ethnic minorities, accountability for human-rights violators, and genuine dialogue among all Burma’s stakeholders.

But “pragmatic engagement” or “measured engagement,” whatever it is called, should not be an open-ended process. There should be benchmarks, such as a clear time frame, expected outcomes and appropriate responses.

Mr. Obama should appoint a U.S. policy coordinator for Burma, legislatively mandated by Congress since 2008, and let him or her play a central role to strengthen existing pressure mechanisms, including increasing financial sanctions on Burma, while continuing engagement with the regime.

Mr. Obama should also urge the European Union to join with the United States, Canada and Australia in imposing targeted financial and banking sanctions against the Burmese generals, their families and their crony business partners. He should also remind the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that it needs to put serious diplomatic pressure on the regime for a negotiated settlement with the opposition if it is really committed to productive U.S.-Asean relations.

Mr. Obama’s presidency is the product of the blood spilled and courage displayed by American freedom fighters and civil-rights activists barely a generation ago. Our hope is that he recognizes their sacrifices by supporting the Burmese people in the months ahead with decisive action. He could start by demanding the release of Ms. Suu Kyi and the American human-rights activist Kyaw Zaw Lwin.

Aung Din was a political prisoner in Burma between 1989 and 1993. He is now the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Campaign for Burma.

I also reminded of the centuries-long struggle for a Jewish homeland in Israel. Jews around the world fought hard politically and diplomatically, but they also bought and shipped arms to the fighters in the street. Perhaps that’s just to non-Buddhist.

Aung Din ought to keep up his war of words, but he should not rely on them in the end.

Triage is a bitch.

From a promotional email for Alafair Burke’s newest novel, 212:

I try to shield both you and myself from the harsh, depressing realities of today’s publishing industry, but the truth is I need your support right now. I wish that 212’s good reviews were enough to protect it during this rough spot. I’d love to think that slow-building word-of-mouth could hurtle my baby onto the bestseller’s list. But these days, if a book is not already selling well before its publication date, it’s usually doomsday.

Yep, you read that right: a book is supposed to sell before it’s even out. Craziness.

I am a writer who loves to write and to meet readers, both in person and online. But I’ll confess that I despise salesmanship. Back in Portland, there was a crew-cutted TV pitchman called Tom Peterson who filled the airwaves with his promise that “Free Is a Very Good Price.” I did not become a writer so I could be Tom Peterson.

But if you are planning to buy a hardback copy of 212, you’d be doing me a solid by pre-ordering it from your favorite bookseller.

And free is in fact a very good price: That’s where pre-orders and mystery gifts come in.

I just checked at Powell’s, and a copy of the book is $24.99

What’s a writer to do?

I agree with the positions and goals of the social entrepreneurship venture Change.org probably more than 99 percent of the time. When the group gets the message or cause wrong, however, it do so in a big way.

Yesterday I got an email alert with the subject line: The KKK vs. Students.

The email was all down hill from there.

First, the Klu Klux Klan, the very real, grossly fragmented and essentially toothless organization held up here as a threat in 2010, is a joke. That is not to say that there are not plenty of ignorant and brutal people out there who present a criminal danger to those they hate, there are, but to suggest these people are members of something cohesive is to grant them far more power than they actually wield.

Second, the students, well here’s what Change had to tell me:

Early this year, four students embarked on a 1,500 mile march from Miami to Washington, D.C called the “Trail of Dreams” tour.

Their goal? To raise awareness about our failed immigration policies.

Their challenge? To do so while avoiding deportation and the wrath of anti-immigrant groups like the KKK.

These students are among the tens of thousands of those who graduate from high school in America each year but are prevented from applying for federal student aid for college or a job because of something entirely out of their control: they are undocumented.

That is, they are illegal aliens living illegally in the United States.

Like many undocumented students, the Trails of Dreams marchers were each brought to the United States while young and have grown up like any other American – volunteering in their community, reaching the honor roll, and applying to top universities.

Does the writer really mean to imply that any other American teenageer voluteers in their community, reaches the honor roll and applies to top universities? Writing as a bonafide former American teenager I confess that I did not fit that particular profile.

I have no doubt that the four involved in the march, and many, many more, do fit the profile, but don’t pretend that they somehow represent anything but the top of the cohort.

But our current immigration policies penalize them for decisions made by their parents long ago and prevent them from fully contributing back to the country they love. As one of many examples, one of the Trail of Dreams marchers, Felipe, was accepted to Duke University but had to pass up his dream of attending due to the lack of a Social Security number.

That’s what happens when you live illegally in a country. You break the laws of the country and you can expect consequences of brealking the laws.

As they walk up the East Coast, the Trail of Dreams marchers are engaging communities in dialogue about the negative impact of our current immigration system. But they are not without opposition, and this past week as they entered Georgia they were greeted by an unwelcome counter-demonstration by a racist blast from the past: the Ku Klux Klan.

The KKK demonstrators accused the students of being part of a “Latino invasion,” arguing that “God put each race in their respective continent and they were meant to stay there.”

According to Florida Times Union, 48 members of the KKK showed up at a rally that, according to First Coast News, featured a couple of hundred counter demonstrators and officers from four different law enforcement agencies.

This was not Washington, D.C. on 8 August 1925.

The student marchers’ response? They didn’t spew back hate, or point fingers, or threaten violence. Instead, they were joined by members of the NAACP and sang songs of freedom and justice.

The contrast between those fighting for tolerance and human rights and those filled with hate and fighting for discrimination couldn’t have been starker. And it couldn’t have been clearer which group is marching on the side of history.

The KKK is a poor boogieman here. You want a real threat to immigrants, put Pat Buchanan on the platform.

The clear message in the piece is that if you don’t support the students’ (all four of them) march then you’re no better than the KKK (or Pat Buchanan). That pisses me off.

The key bit here is that the students were brought to the United States illegally by their parents and they somehow want to make the case that they ought to be treated as full citizens with all the rights (and obligations) there of because they didn’t choose to come to the United States.

I don’t buy it.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Finally, someone talks some sense about the duties of new Cuyahoga County Commissioners under the County reform – candidate Clark Broida. The task of the county government is services, not economic development, he says.

How about that, someone interested in the real tasks of government.

Here”s what Broida said to Henry Gomez of the Plain Dealer:

“Almost everyone says economic development. It drives me nuts. I just don”t think it”s the County”s overall role to create jobs – it”s to provide services. Our job is to provide an environment where the people have a better opportunity to achieve.”

Problem is that you have some greedy people looking out for their Continue Reading »

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog video excursion I present: From My Dad.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

But whether your novel ought to begin at the beginning or not, just how and where it does begin is vitally important. All article writers know the importance of getting the lead paragraph absolutely right, and short-story writers know that a lead is every bit as important in fiction. (I think it”s more important: a reader may stay with an article because the subject matter”s interesting to him, but a weak lead will make him skip a short story nine times out of ten. p. 145

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

Is there a good reason to talk about the possibility of free and open elections in Myanmar in 2010? Stanley Weiss, the founding chairman of Business Executives for National Security (which sounds like a sub-committee of the State Peace and Development Council, aka Myanmar’s military dictators) thinks so.

Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch? Not so convinced.

Here”s the reality: Peaceful protests led by Buddhist monks in 2007 were crushed with extreme violence. The 2008 constitutional referendum was rigged. More than 2,100 political prisoners languish in horrific prisons. The junta has refused to engage in serious dialogue with the opposition. And without concerted international pressure, particularly from China, there will be no meaningful change.

Mr. Weiss argues that bogus elections and an end to sanctions will lead to a new Burma. But why a regime wallowing in cash from selling the country”s natural resources – while most Burmese live in poverty – would relax its grip if sanctions ended is a mystery. Instead, the United States, the European Union, Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations should finally implement serious targeted financial sanctions. And the United Nations should tell the generals that if they don”t reform quickly it will authorize an inquiry into decades of massive human rights abuses by the military.

Carpenters look for nails to hammer, surgeon’s look for flesh to cut and human rights organizations look for abuses to investigate. I get that.

If Adams thinks for a moment that the threat of any United Nation’s investigation will cause the generals to lose any sleep, he has another think coming. Ditto with sanctions. Corporations know no loyalty to borders or sanctions. They will always find a way around such measures.

Has any military dictatorship in the history of the world ever relinquished power to anything but a stronger power?

I didn’t think so.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

All you need is one crazy Republican to shut down the government these days. And they do it.

Sen. Jim Bunning is doing the job, denying the unemployed compensation in a Republican induced deep recession. And now he has caused payments to doctors for Medicare payments to be cut drastically.

Happy Days are Gone Again, sing the Republicans.

Isn”t this just what we needed to put us into a Depression.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

The departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers was a blow to the people of Brooklyn, N.Y. but the arrival of a Ratner might be more devastating to Brooklyn citizens.

Here”s why:

Judge Grants New York State Right to Steal Homes By
Eminent Domain for Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards Boondoggle

Outstanding Legal Issues Still Plague Atlantic Yards

Brooklyn, New York-A Brooklyn Supreme Court judge today, in an 80-page ruling, granted the Empire State Development Corporation’s petition to take title ownership of the private properties-homes and businesses-in the footprint of developer Bruce Ratner’s $5 billion Atlantic Yards boondoggle. Continue Reading »