Author Archives: admin

Walmart Employees Threaten Black Friday Strike

It’s funny. I’m actually in Ukraine as an ex-pat. Many people in this country save money for years, and stand in lines for many hours to get permission to go to the US and work at Walmart-like jobs. When they succeed in doing so, they are grateful and their friends are envious.

How much do these clowns think they deserve for wrangling shopping carts and putting boxes onto shelves????

These guys are privileged, ungrateful and under-educated. Their rising political power makes me very happy to have chosen life as an ex-pat.

If you take almost any human being from any point in the history of man and put him in the middle of Walmart, and express the prices to him in terms of hours of unskilled, manual labor, he will think he arrived in heaven! But instead of praising this modern miracle of capitalism, we condemn it, because the people who CHOSE to work there want more money and better conditions.

***

At least they didn’t have one of the morbidly obese employees deliver the line about not having enough to eat:

Now many states want to secede from U.S.

open quoteSince WND first reported that residents in the state of Louisiana were petitioning to secede from the U.S., residents in over 30 more states have filed requests with the White House to peaceably break from the union.

Furthermore, the Louisiana petition has topped 27,000 signatures, exceeding the threshold needed after which the White House has pledged to respond.
Ads by Google

Petition with GoPetitionUse our powerful platform and access our #1 fb network www.GoPetition.com
Is Jesus Really God?Scholars Examine the Facts About Jesus’ Claims to be God Y-Jesus.com

And for Texas, one of the new states to join the fray, the signature count now tops 60,000.

The White House’s We the People website explains that once a petition reaches 25,000 signatures, it will be placed on a queue for response from the administration. The website also maintains a page for previous petitions that have received a White House response.

Joining Louisiana now are Alaska, Utah, Wyoming, California, Delaware, Nevada, Kansas, Ohio, South Dakota, West Virginia, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Oklahoma, Arkansas, South Carolina, Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee, Michigan, New York, Colorado, Oregon, New Jersey, North Dakota, Montana, Indiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, Florida, North Carolina, Alabama and Texas.

The Louisiana petition, which has served as a pattern for many of the new states, reads as follows: “We petition the Obama administration to: Peacefully grant the State of Louisiana to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.”

It continues, “As the Founding Fathers of the United States of America made clear in the Declaration of Independence in 1776: ‘When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.’”

The petition concludes with a further quote from the Declaration of Independence: “‘Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and institute new Government.’”close quote (Read more)

The Hostess Liquidation: A Curious Cast Of Characters As The Twinkie Tumbles

open quoteWhat is curious is that its emergence had all the drama of a anti-Mitt Romney PAC funded thriller, with a PE firm, in this case Ripplewood holdings, injecting $130 million in order to obtain equity control of Hostess as it was emerging last time. There were also more hedge funds, investment banks, strategic buyers, politicians involved in this particular story than one can shake a deep fried numismatic value Twinkie at. More importantly, however, as America has been habituated following the last season of the reality TV show known as the presidential election, if Private Equity then “bad.” Only this time there is a twist: because it wasn’t really PE that was the pure evil in the Obama long-term campaign, it was associating PE with Republicans, and thus: with jobs outsourcing. And here comes the Hostess twist: because Tim Collins of Ripplewood, was a prominent Democrat, a position which allowed him to get involved in the first bankruptcy process in the first place, due to his proximity with the Teamsters’ long-term heartthrob Dick Gephardt (whose consulting group just happens to also be an equity owner of Hostess). In other words, the traditional republican-cum-PE scapegoating strategy here will be a tough one to pull off since the narrative collapses when considering that it was a Democrat who rescued the firm, only to see it implode in a trainwreck that has resulted in the liquidation of a legendary brand, and 18,500 layoffs.

But it only gets better. Because the full cast of characters involved here is quite stunningclose quote (Read more)

Noam Chomsky: Impressions of Gaza

open quoteBy Noam Chomsky – 4 Nov 2012

Even a single night in jail is enough to give a taste of what it means to be under the total control of some external force. And it hardly takes more than a day in Gaza to begin to appreciate what it must be like to try to survive in the world’s largest open-air prison, where a million and a half people, in the most densely populated area of the world, are constantly subject to random and often savage terror and arbitrary punishment, with no purpose other than to humiliate and degrade, and with the further goal of ensuring that Palestinian hopes for a decent future will be crushed and that the overwhelming global support for a diplomatic settlement that will grant these rights will be nullified.

The intensity of this commitment on the part of the Israeli political leadership has been dramatically illustrated just in the past few days, as they warn that they will “go crazy” if Palestinian rights are given limited recognition at the UN. That is not a new departure. The threat to “go crazy” (“nishtagea”) is deeply rooted, back to the Labor governments of the 1950s, along with the related “Samson Complex”: we will bring down the Temple walls if crossed. It was an idle threat then; not today.

The purposeful humiliation is also not new, though it constantly takes new forms. Thirty years ago political leaders, including some of the most noted hawks, submitted to Prime Minister Begin a shocking and detailed account of how settlers regularly abuse Palestinians in the most depraved manner and with total impunity. The prominent military-political analyst Yoram Peri wrote with disgust that the army’s task is not to defend the state, but “to demolish the rights of innocent people just because they are Araboushim (“niggers,” “kikes”) living in territories that God promised to us.”

Gazans have been selected for particularly cruel punishment. It is almost miraculous that people can sustain such an existence. How they do so was described thirty years ago in an eloquent memoir by Raja Shehadeh (The Third Way), based on his work as a lawyer engaged in the hopeless task of trying to protect elementary rights within a legal system designed to ensure failure, and his personal experience as a Samid, “a steadfast one,” who watches his home turned into a prison by brutal occupiers and can do nothing but somehow “endure.”

Since Shehadeh wrote, the situation has become much worse. The Oslo agreements, celebrated with much pomp in 1993, determined that Gaza and the West Bank are a single territorial entity. By then the US and Israel had already initiated their program of separating them fully from one another, so as to block a diplomatic settlement and punish the Araboushim in both territories.

Punishment of Gazans became still more severe in January 2006, when they committed a major crime: they voted the “wrong way” in the first free election in the Arab world, electing Hamas.close quote (Read more)

Rematch: Texas takes on the TSA Again

open quoteAUSTIN, Texas (Nov. 12, 2012) – On Monday, Texas Rep. David Simpson (R-Longview) pre-filed a bill to stop aggressive TSA groping in the Lone Star State.

The Texas Travel Freedom Act, House Bill 80, would make it a criminal act to intentionally touch “the anus, breast, buttocks, or sexual organ of the other person, including touching through clothing,” without probable cause in the process of determining whether to grant someone access to a public venue or means of public transportation.

The act also provides additional protection for minors.

A public servant acting under color of his office or employment commits an offense if he…removes a child younger than 18 years of age from the physical custody or control of a parent or guardian of the child or a person standing in the stead of a parent or guardian of the child.

If passed, the law would prevent TSA agents from carrying out the most intrusive pat-down searches at airports across Texas.close quote (Read more)

New President/CEO of CATO institute hostile to libertarianism

open quoteDevelopments at the Cato Institute have in recent months taken a surprising turn. After a protracted struggle between Ed Crane, the President of Cato since its inception, and Charles and David Koch, both sides have reached a settlement. John Allison, a highly successful banker, has replaced Crane: he is now President and CEO of Cato, To all of us who care about the future of Rothbardian libertarianism, this appointment should be a matter of grave concern, It signals a new stage in the efforts of Cato to separate itself from its Rothbardian founding principles and to replace these principles with something radically different.

Allison’s appointment at first sight seems difficult to understand. He is not only a follower of Ayn Rand, but a Randian of the strictest observance. In his recent book, The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure, he acknowledges “a deep intellectual debt to Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and Leonard Peikoff.”

. . . .

Allison is a strict Randian, close to Peikoff and Brook: so what? Why do his views make his appointment difficult to understand? The answer lies in bringing together two facts. The Cato Institute, despite its break with Rothbard, bills itself as a libertarian organization; but the Ayn Rand Institute has for many years bitterly opposed libertarianism. The opposition finds its foremost expression in a pamphlet by Peter Schwartz, “Libertarianism: the Perversion of Liberty.” As Randians of the Peikoff faction see matters, libertarians’ defense of the free market counts for little or nothing, in the absence of the proper philosophical foundations. Only Objectivists can consistently defend liberty. Schwartz draws the following conclusion in a shorter essay of 1989, “On Moral Sanctions: “Justice demands moral judgment. It demands that one objectively evaluate Libertarianism, and act in accordance with that evaluation. It demands that one identify Libertarianism as the antithesis of – and therefore as a clear threat to – not merely genuine liberty, but all rational values. And it demands that Libertarianism, like all such threats, be boycotted and condemned.”

How then can Allison, a confirmed follower of Peikoff, assume the leadership of a libertarian organization, if to the members of the Peikoff faction no association with libertarians is permissible? The mystery appears to have a ready solution, but this solution will not stand examination.close quote (Read more)

Back to the Business of Government: Get Bradley Manning

open quoteThe legendary court system has done its work on Bradley Manning, the whistleblower who dared to stand up to the global empire and its expose terrible war crimes by giving evidence to WikiLeaks. Bradley, who is only 24-years old, will plead guilty in a bargained attempt to avoid life in prison.

He didn’t cheat. He didn’t make anything up. He didn’t even hurt anyone. All he did was reveal what is true. (The best background on the case comes from Wikipedia.) The result was explosive in showing the world what goes on behind the scenes in the wars for democracy. He showed innocents being slaughtered, people taking pleasure in bombings and killings, a gigantic catalog of deceptions and tricky, and much more. It wasn’t hard to find this material. He only had to download it and upload it.

Any true American would have done the same — or should have. It takes guts to stand up for what is right. He has languished in prison for two and a half years, for the Orwellian crime of revealing the truth. Julian Assange is exactly right that he is a hero. close quote (Read more)

Petraeus mistress claims Benghazi “embassy” was a secret CIA prison

open quotehe CIA has dismissed as “baseless” and “uninformed” claims made by the former lover of ex-agency chief David Petraeus that Libyan militants were held in secret US prisons prior to the deadly Benghazi consulate attack.

Paula Broadwell, the biographer whose affair with Petraeus led to his abrupt resignation Friday, alleged that the assault, in which US ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed, was an attempt to free men being detained in a covert CIA annex.close quote (Read more)