More comic relief!

The Dollar Store solution

I came across an article on Alternet entitled "Dollar Stores: The Last, and Not So Healthy Eating Choice, Before the Food Lines" and it talked about the kinds of food products found in dollar stores and why people buy food there. Here's a paragraph that really disturbed me:

The ethic behind dollar stores is both pervasive and perverse. Employers who seek to maximize their profit margins by slashing wages hire people who in turn attempt to stretch their diminishing dollars by purchasing discount items. Such items come from other companies that compete by slashing their wages, creating yet a lower social strata of consumers. The rock-bottom of the food chain, as it were, is the dollar store, the last stop before the food pantry, which is where a lot of unsold dollar store goods end up.

Isn't this an example of the retreating tide lowering all boats???
~~~

Time for some comic relief

For your theological illumination:

That one place where the vicar just closes his eyes is too funny!
~~~

Six companies with no layoffs

My goodness. I didn't know there was such a thing. Do click through and read the CNN article No Layoffs - Ever and to find out how they do it.

Here's an example of how SAS copes:

The Research Triangle-based company has been able to avoid layoffs recently by instituting hiring freezes in all areas except R&D and sales, which continue to grow. And by cutting back on travel and expenses, the company relies more on conference calls and video conferencing to get the job done. CEO Jim Goodnight has engaged employee support by communicating early and often with staff to prepare them for any changes.

Communicating with your staff. How radical.

Here's another example:

While Mercedes faced the same challenges as the Big Three, the company hunkered down and cut costs by eliminating non-essential travel, reducing temporary staff and placing controls on overtime. When management discovered that further cost reductions were unavoidable, the CEO and executive team (28 people total) accepted pay cuts. The tough choices paid off, resulting in a 10% total reduction of labor costs from mid-2009 to year end.

Executives taking pay cuts. Wow.

Mind you, some people in the comments section take issue with some of the listings. However, others are mentioned there as doing a really good job of not laying people off. One of them is Interstate Batteries (who have a store just around the corner of the Center. That makes me want to patronize them even more.)
~~~

Friday cat blogging!

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Something to think about, dear people:

Friend of the Center, Paul Rogers, sent me this.
~~~

RIP J.D. Salinger

I was driving home this evening after having stopped at the supermarket to stock up because an ice storm just started up here in Tulsa. I tuned in to the middle of a NPR program as I cranked up the car and they were talking about The Catcher in the Rye and I immediately thought, "Oh, my. J.D. Salinger has finally died." I just logged on to the internet a few minutes ago and, of course, it's true. Howard Zinn and Salinger both died on the same day. It truly is the passing of an era.

Here's the CNN report for you to read if you like:

Author J.D. Salinger dies at 91

~~~

Oh, my: A Democrat with some spine

RIP Howard Zinn

Oh, this is such very painful news:

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and a leading faculty critic of BU president John Silber, died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling, his family said. He was 87.

Read more from the Boston Globe right here.

He will be very greatly missed.

~~~

About history and Haiti

I have been so sickened by people (such as Pat Robertson and others) who have blamed the people of Haiti for their poverty and other misfortunes. I'm glad Bill Moyers has offered a commentary about it all. Here's part of his piece:

Start with the French. They ran Haiti as a slave colony, driving hundreds of thousands of slaves to early deaths in order to supply white Europeans with coffee, sugar and tobacco. In 1804, the slaves rebelled and after savage fighting defeated three foreign armies to win their independence. They looked to America for support, but America's slave-holding states feared a slave revolt of their own, and America's slave-holding president, Thomas Jefferson, the author of our Declaration of Independence, refused to recognize the new government.

Their former white masters made matters worse by demanding reparations, and by exploiting and exhausting the country's natural resources. Fighting over what little was left, Haitians turned on each other.

Coup followed coup, faction fought faction, and in 1915, our American president Woodrow Wilson sent in the Marines. By the time they left almost 20 years later, American companies had secured favored status in Haiti. In 1957, the country was taken over by the brutal and despotic rule of Papa Doc Duvalier, whose son, Baby Doc, proved just as cruel as his old man. Don't let the familial nicknames fool you. The Duvaliers were murderous thugs and thieves who enjoyed the complicity of American interests until the dynasty played out in 1986.

There's more. The article is entitled "Haiti's Problems Are Rooted in Its Colonial Legacy". Do click through and read it all if you have a couple of minutes. It's not very long.
~~~

Oh, God. I so freakin' LOVE this:

Double click to enlarge. Worth it. Please trust me on this one.

~~~

Blaming the victim --- AGAIN

One of the first websites I check out each day is Alternet and this morning I was greeted with a headline that appalled me: "Hey David Brooks, How Dare You Blame Haitians?" Of course, I'm not really surprised that David Brooks would do such a thing. The smug, self-satisfied manner with which he expresses his predicatable conservatism has annoyed me for years. Here's the lead on that article (re-printed from The Nation, by the way):

Armchair commentators like David Brooks, who know nothing about Haiti, have rebuked suffering Haitians from the comfort of the U.S. and Europe.

The writer, Amy Wilentz, refers to the "genteel racism" that has bubbled up to the surface following the Hatian disaster. She says the following:

I've never seen victims so roundly blamed for their fate. David Brooks's recent column in the New York Times--one of the paper's most e-mailed articles the week it was published--blamed Haiti's culture for the quake's violence.

Please go read the article. It will catch you up on the history of Haiti and give you a much greater perspective than the likes of David Brooks.
~~~

Olbermann on the Supreme Court Decision

Please watch this. It's a little on the long side (about eleven minutes) but it's really worth it to learn what really can happen as a result of Thursday's decision:

Question of the day

Here it is:

How Stupid Do You Have to Be to Think that Bribery and Speech Are the Same Thing?

Now, go read the article if you want to. But, really, the question is enough.
~~~

Oh, this party. (Sigh. Deep, deep sigh.)

I want to direct your attention to an article entitled "How to Squander the Presidency in One Year" by David Michael Green. I'm not sure I agree with all of it but that's not the point. The point is as much about appearance and perception than anything else. It's the very beginning of the article that truly got my attention:

There's only one political party in the entire world that is so inept, cowardly and bungling that it could manage to simultaneously lick the boots of Wall Street bankers and then get blamed by the voters for being flaming revolutionary socialists.

It's the same party that has allowed the opposition to go on a thirty year scorched earth campaign, stealing everything in sight from middle and working class voters, and yet successfully claim to be protecting ‘real Americans' from out-of-touch elites.

It's the same party that could run a decorated combat hero against a war evader in 1972, only to be successfully labeled as national security wimps.

Just to be sure, it then did the exact same thing again in 2004.

It's the same party that stood by silently while two presidential elections in a row were stolen away from them.

How ‘bout dem Dems, eh?

One year ago today, there was real question as to what could possibly be the future of the Republican Party in America. That's changed a bit now.

Go read the rest of it, please. There's a blistering set of criticisms against the president included. You might not agree with them all but this is how Mr. Obama is being perceived by a lot of people.
~~~

Something we need to remember

Take a look:

When given the choice between a Republican, and a Democrat who acts like a Republican, the voters will choose the Republican every time.

--Harry Truman

A pernicious interpretation

I really wish all the fundamentalists in the world could read and ponder the following - especially Pat Robertson:

We cannot be guilty of a greater act of uncharitableness, than to interpret the afflictions which befall our neighbors as punishments and judgments.

-- Joseph Addison

First Amendment for People — Not Corporations!