Do you live your patriotism, or just give it lip service?
One good alternative to Wal-Mart in the Chattanooga area is Publix, a US company which is 31% employee-owned (plus, if you shop at Publix, chances are much lower, vs. Wal-Mart, that your kids or pets will end up eating melamine or other toxins that the Chinese love to toss into the mix). A bonus is that Publix offers many organic, free-range and hormone-free options at competitive prices.
For non-food items, buying local is always best (and with so many cool and funky shops on Frasier, in St. Elmo, and scattered about town, there are many options), but for low-cost, large-scale shopping, Sears/K-Mart is probably the best of the local lot — at least they do right by our nation’s soldiers.
All of you — not just the bozos who are running Detroit into the ground — need to watch this and think about it. Just maybe, the time has come for you to choose between your immense greed and your desire to run a healthy business.
“There is a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hand, saying that they’re going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses. It’s almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo. It kind of makes you a little bit suspicious.” He added, “couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here? It would have at least sent a message that you do get it.”
–Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-New York), to the heads of Chrysler, Ford and General Motors, in a House Financial Services Committee meeting on Wednesday
UPDATE: more here.
Here’s yet another reason to be disappointed in the former and yet another reason to avoid any artists associated with the latter: RIAA’s Ripoff Of Tennessee. Given the current desperate condition of Tennessee’s university system, the fact that Bredesen made a priority of this should be a source of profound shame for him — once again, he cast aside the needs of the citizens of his state for the sake of some antediluvian friends who are still stubbornly attempting to make a mid-20th-century business plan work in a digital world.
UPDATE: Guess what? Tennessee looking at HUGE tuition increases.
Today is October 2nd, and I just saw a commercial with Santa Claus in it.
::sigh::
• A team of paleontologists have discovered a huge Stone Age cemetery in the Sahara desert. Here is a woman and two children who were found holding hands, arms outstretched toward each other, with evidence to suggest they were laid to rest on a bed of flowers (follow the link for more photos and a video about the find from National Geographic).
• American team members to watch now that the Olympic games have moved on from swimming to track & field.
• What if Karl Rove were working for the Obama campaign?
• This is just the kind of thing that long ago made me resolve to never do business with AT&T again. I found myself on more than one occasion trying to get my money back from AT&T after they over-charged me for lame or inept reasons. For them, screwing customers while hoping they’re not paying attention is the #1 item in their business practices manual. And in this case, someone turned their frustration into to a bit of silliness.
• Everyone’s favorite East Tennessee politician is back once again! This time, she’s talking about Jesse Helms, who she says is a great American. (Of course, as much as I loves me some Griffiny Juneness, I gotta wonder what sort of crack heads are running the KNS these days!)
I’m really worried about America’s karma these days. We’re turning into a nation of mean, nasty people. The king mean nasty person and his lackeys in Congress have been screwing over our nation’s greatest heroes — the first responders and GIs — for years. And our nation’s largest retailer, along with others, is quickly gaining a reputation for repeatedly trying to stand between people and proper medical care and benefits. And we are completely failing when it comes to taking care of the men and women who serve on the front lines of Bush’s unbelievably stupid war.
News stories like these are a daily thing in the Bush/McCain regime and I don’t know how much more negative energy this nation can take.
The National Press Club, which claims on their website to have standards and skills, appears to be determined to play court jester in today’s media. Nate has the details, including thier spokesman calling a Pulitzer-prize-winning critic a “cretin,” their decision to host a press conference for a lunatic and criminal, and — get this — that they have Jeff Gannon (George Bush’s favorite gay escort!) blogging on their site.
In the meantime, the AP has gone completely insane, and wants to charge bloggers who quote their articles. Here are some of the people following the story:
- Boing Boing: AP expects you to pay to license 5-word quotations
- AmericaBlog: AP is now lecturing you about how the Internet works
- Michael Silence and R. Neal: AP wants to meet with the media bloggers association
- AmericaBlog: AP: This is journalism, Part II
- Kos: More AP foolishness
- Godless Liberal Homo: Some Alternatives to AP
- Crooks & Liars: The AP walked right into a buzz saw
- Oliver Willis: How Dumb Is The AP?
- Oliver Willis: Media Bloggers Association And The AP Story
This was a beverage I used to buy quite often. Who would have thought that such a seemingly freespirited product could have come from people who work against equal rights and general kindness/compassion? Thank goodness for Pam and wikipedia. More here.
- This is not good news for the beef industry. The Bush administration wants to stop all this crazy testing for mad cow disease! They’re afraid the consumer might be freaked out by too much information. Seriously. But you’re not still eating that hormone-laden, untested, corn-fed, antibiotic-charged, E. coli-tainted beef from the big cattle companies anyway, are you? Me neither (via Ice Station Tango).
- Oy. Tennessee’s addled legislature has apparently decided to illustrate the principle of entropy. Sigh.
- For anyone bothered by the suggestion that their hard-earned contributions to the Obama campaign might end up being used to pay off the debts of a woman who’s worth tens of millions of dollars, relax — it doesn’t work that way.
- Like many of this year’s Congressional Republicans, Liddy Dole is in deep trouble in North Carolina. Oh, well.
- Jenna Bush got married yesterday, and guess who performed the ceremony?The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston officiated at the ceremony. Mr. Caldwell, a longtime religious adviser to Mr. Bush, has endorsed Senator Barack Obama.
Of course, Jenna might be supporting Barack Obama as well. - What is Half in Ten? Well, this is the way the Station Agent puts it:John Edwards moves his campaign against poverty forward by creating Half in Ten. The idea is to cut poverty in half in ten years, which is a truly ambitious goal considering Bush is trying to double poverty within the next five or six hours.
- And finally, via A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago, I found the trailer to Hamlet 2, which is due to hit theaters at the end of August. It could be hilarious or it be so over-the-top that it misses the mark, but the bit here made me laugh.
