Six Marines from Headquarters & Service Company, 25th Marine Regiment, 3rd Battalion, Brook Park, Ohio, are dead. Lance Cpl. Jeff Boskovitch; Lance Cpl. Brian Montgomery; and Sgt. Nathaniel Rock (other names held pending family notification) gave the ultimate service to our nation. We mourn for them and the 1,805 others killed in Iraq.
From the Letters-To-The-Editor response to Salon’s Wal-Mart’s P.R. War by Liza Featherstone comes these thoughts (day pass required):
These families are also in severe economic denial — they could care less that Wal-Mart’s “price rollbacks” have rolled over jobs formerly held by American workers.
…trust me, if activism did result in marginally higher prices it would be perceived as blue-state intervention and micromanagement. It would be perceived as “those liberals” caring more about Malaysian children than American children. It would push more people to red-state politics.
…the problems with Wal-Mart are big-picture problems. But most Americans, especially the low- and low-middle-income Americans who shop at Wal-Mart, simply do not live in a big-picture universe.
…buys into the myth that Wal-Mart itself is the disease to cure, but it is merely a symptom. Target and most other corporate chains differ only in size and degree, not in kind. The labor unions spending millions of dollars to try “changing Wal-Mart” have a poor understanding of the systemic issues.
The downfall of Wal-Mart may not be due to public pressure, but due to its strategy of only caring about the bottom line. There aren’t any more price concessions to squeeze out of suppliers.
Wal-Mart, as you said, makes a community poorer as part of its corporate planning, thus forcing more of us to have little choice but to buy from them. Evil genius if I ever heard of it.
All it cost Wal-Mart for this national recognition was $50,000!
I would like to see someone do a comparative study on the different big-box stores (Wal-Mart, Costco, Target, et al.) and rank them in terms of worker pay and treatment, benefits, health coverage, etc. For those who need the price break of a big box, it would be nice to know if we have choices between them as to which is more socially destructive, and which is more socially benign.
I’ve been subscribing to Salon for more than seven years. I don’t recall this volume of reader responses in the past.
Wal Mart is not the problem, but it has become the poster child.
My Soundtrack: Fix You by Cold Play on WOXY.
[Update — 1929, 3 August 05 — From the Washington Post:
Virginia Rep. Tom Davis has told The Associated Press his House committee will investigate whether baseball slugger Rafael Palmeiro committed perjury when he told Congress he never took steroids.
Insterestingly enough, this investigation could allow us a peek at how President George Bush might act if Karl Rove is investigated for perjury.]
Rafael Palmeiro told Congress: I have never intentionally used steroids. Never. Ever. Period. On Monday, Major League Baseball, after a long appeal process, handed a 10-day suspension to Palmeiro for steroid use. President George Bush’s comment: He’s testified in public, and I believe him. For more great excuses see: The Dog At My Steroids.
Back on Friday I wrote about privacy. The impetus came from Ms. magazine’s piece on the centrality of the Supreme Court’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut in the privacy rights battle. To some, reading the Ms. article, the issue may seem theoretical. It’s not. From Wisconsin’s Capital Times comes this:
So if, as the pro-life community, you’re trying to outlaw surgical abortion but the court has told us its legal basis is founded on the necessity of abortion, shouldn’t the pro-life community begin to take a look at contraception? [Matt] Sande [director of legislative affairs for Pro-Life Wisconsin] says.
[snip]
Those who don’t turn their attention to trying to outlaw contraception at this point, Sande says, hurt the anti-abortion cause.
Sande, and people like him don’t want to turn the clock back to 1972, they want to turn it back to 1872.
My Soundtrack: Love Me Like You by The Magic Numbers on WOXY.
[Update — 1314, 3 August 05 — The realityl-based blogosphere is in an uproar over President George Bush’s comment. As always, PZ Meyers is the lightning rod.]
[Update — 1346, 3 August 05 — Only Faux News could come to the president’s defense on this.]]
If any one ever needed proof that intelligent, educated people are capable of holding irrational beliefs, they need look no further than our President. It is one thing to allow your silence to condone ignorant supersition, but it is another thing entirely for the President of the United States to publically speak in favor of it.
President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss intelligent design
I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought, Bush said. You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.
Even a Harvard education is no protection.
My Soundtrack: Helena by Nickel Creek on WOXY.
Since 1999, the United States has added 13 million people to its Medicaid roles. Since 1997, Medicaid spending has risen 85 percent, to $295 billion in 2004. According to this morning’s USA Today:
The growth is an aftershock of welfare reform, which since 1997 has pushed individuals off welfare and into the workforce. To support low-wage workers, Congress and state legislatures expanded coverage to low-income working families.
My Soundtrack: Knockout by Palomar on WOXY.
PZ Meyers on BiDil — Bad: using race as a shortcut to determine what the patient’s genetic makeup might be. And categorizing American blacks, who may have ancestry from all over Africa, South America, or North America, as a single bloc that should be treated with a single standard regimen is just mind-bogglingly stupid.
I think it is very indicative of the esteem in which the world holds the Bentonville Behemoth that it shows up in completely unrelated jokes and cartoons.
My Soundtrack: 1969 by The Stooges on WOXY.
I’m pretty good at listening to my Lemmings Meter, but I’m not immediately seeing the holes in this, from the inestimable artist P. Alexandria. I was stunned. It reminds me of something from You Are Being Lied To. Is this one of those truths that runs so counter to the popular wisdom that it gets ignored? I don’t know. I’m going to.
The beginnings of a reading list:
Why the HIV Tests Can”t Tell You Whether You Have HIV.
Africa: Treating Poverty with Toxic Drugs.
The Most Controversial Story You’ve Never Heard.
My Soundtrack: Swamp Song by Heartless Bastards on WOXY Vintage.
This is looking very, very bad. According to today’s London Times: Senior police sources have confirmed that the officers involved in the operation that led to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian would not have needed to shout a warning before firing. Menezes got no warning. He was not running nor wearing a bulky coat.
From the AJR (via BuzzMachine): Journalists are in the hot seat, their feet held to the flames by citizen bloggers who believe mainstream media are no more trustworthy than the politicians and corporations they cover, that journalists themselves have become too lazy, too cloistered, too self-righteous to be the watchdogs they once were…
From the Organic Mechanic comes these links to some amazing utilizations of web design and apps. I’m not sure what it is, but I know I find it disturbing and that, in my opinion, is a hallmark of Art.
My Soundtrack: The Machine by The Changes on WOXY.
It’s all the same fucking thing, man.
My Soundtrack: One In Seven by The Engineers on WOXY Vintage.
In an Even Revolutionaries Like Chocolate Chip Cookies vein, here’s some humor from my dad.
A blond secretary decides she want to try horseback riding, even though she has had no lessons or prior experience. She mounts the horse, unassisted, and the horse immediately springs into motion. It gallops along at a steady and rhythmic pace, but the blond begins to slip from the saddle.
In terror, she grabs for the horse’s mane, but cannot seem to get a firm grip. She tries to throw her arms around the horses neck, but she slides down the side of the horse anyway. The horse gallops along, seemingly impervious to its slipping rider.
Finally, giving up her frail grip, the blond attempts to leap away from the horse and throw herself to safety. Unfortunately, her foot has become entangled in the stirrup, she is now at the mercy of the horse’s pounding hooves as her head is struck against the ground over and over.
As her head is battered against the ground, she is mere moments away from unconsciousness when to her great fortune, Frank, the Wal-Mart Greeter sees her and unplugs the horse.
My Soundtrack: I Want It All by Trans Am on WOXY.
Judith Klinghoffer quoting Israel’s first prime minister, David ben Gurion on terrorism. The role of the soldier is to kill and be killed for a just cause… But there is something else that is called murder. And there is not one of us who may permit it, and we may not give anyone permission to permit it, especially when it is done in our name. More…
From Martha at Your Daily Art comes this wonderful find. I first discovered Hieronymus Bosch when I a freshman at Colorado University and living in Newsom Hall, where I had the poster on my wall. One of my gauges for art has been: can I look at it for more than a week? Bosch was a great source of joy during those long nights of altered states.
One of my favorite cartoons is Rose Is Rose in which the main character has a biker-chick alter ego. The teller at my bank this morning informed that I too have a biker alter ego: the Emmy award winning Tattoo Gypsy. Students at Rozelle Elementary called me Triple-H (it was the ponytail), but I think the Tattoo Gypsy is way cooler.
My Soundtrack: Teenage Lobotomy by The Ramones on WOXY.
In the vein of Macom Gladwell’s Blink comes this little PG-13 tale about the importance of thinking outside the box and the consideration of cultural values not our own. I truly believe 99.9 percent of the world’s problems arise from our inability to see through another’s eyes. Thanks to reader Cailin for the funny.
Wal Mart wants to pop India’s retail cherry and the government is doing everything it can to bring the virgin to the marriage bed.
According to Lok-adhikar, the blogger at Prajatantra, only 2 percent of his country’s retail is organized. By that, I think, the blogger means that 98 percent of the retail in India comes from single-site, entrepreneurial business people and not chains, foreign or domestic. Writes Lok-adhikar:
Finally, it should be abundantly clear to all but the utterly naïve, that the concerned Departments of the Government are working at a feverish pace just to push one Agenda: Allow Foreign Direct Investment (read Wal-Mart) in Retail
[snip…]
Organized Retail is growing in the Cities at a fast pace but that growth is being achieved by the indigenous entrepreneurs who lack nothing to grow further. The country certainly is not dependent upon Foreign Investors for this sector to grow, as already discussed in an earlier article.
Somehow it’s fitting that the octopus-like Bentonville Behemoth should court a country where its gods have many arms.
My Soundtrack: Days Of Rain by Bob Mould on WOXY.
Powered by Wordpress | Design by Ash Haque
XHTML Strict | RSS Entries