Come on; wake up, people!

Please go over to OpEdNews and take a look at an article entitled "How can a business run more progressively? Are we treating people fairly" and then think again if you EVER consider shopping at Wal-Mart again:

I have an acquaintance that works in management for Wal-Mart and he HATES his job. He is required to be tough, aggressive and mean to the employees under him. They had him fire a group of people to see if he could do it before he became a manager. The people hadn't done anything wrong and should not have been fired. It was a way to find out if this potential manager had what it takes to command a group of underlings.

Just unbelievable.

And now look at this:

I was appalled when I found out that Robert Ringer's book 'The Art of Intimidation' was being taught to women in business situations so they could join men in intimidating in the business world. I believe that kind of mentality (which is still being taught in business schools across the land) is one of the problems with the world today. It is why we move corporations to other countries and use slave labor so we can make the products we sell less expensive. Instead of management learning to intimidate we should be learning to work toward consensus and learn how to build loyal employees by treating everyone fairly.

And this:

The third point I want to make is we vote by where we shop. I enjoy listening to people like John Perkins on Free Speech TV's Keynote, who said we are voting by where we shop. John Perkins founded the Dream Change Coalition which is an organization that inspires executives to clean up pollution, reshape corporate goals, and form Earth-honoring partnerships with indigenous cultures. One of his books that influenced me most is Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. I have been telling this story to all of my acquaintances and to anyone that would listen so we would NOT shop at Wal-Mart. Sure we vote where we shop but we need to rethink how we live as well and not buy things we don't need when there are people living among us that cannot afford the food or rent. Do a little research before you buy.

What really gets to me is people who justify shopping at Wal-Mart because "they're all like that." No they're not! I like the last sentence in the excerpt above: "Do a little research before you buy."

Definitely the quote of the day

And it was said on Fox News, no less:

When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions, we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward I think it's important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those.

-- Gen. David Petraeus

Puerto Ricans are NOT foreigners!

Here's a correction from today's Washington Post:

The May 27 editorial "The President's Pick" incorrectly referred to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as the daughter of "immigrant" parents. Judge Sotomayor's parents were not immigrants but were born in Puerto Rico after passage of a 1917 law that automatically conferred U.S. citizenship on island-born residents.

Really, there's no excuse for that sort of editorial ignorance in the first place.
~~~

Today's Quick Vote

Well, this is encouraging:

Do you expect the Senate to confirm Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor?

Yes - 88%

No - 12%

It's from the CNN website.
~~~

Leno, the great

This is just too good!

Judge Sotomayor said she seemed overwhelmed today, and she said it really won’t sink in until she hears Rush Limbaugh say he hopes she fails.

- Jay Leno

Quote of the day

From Sojourners:

This wealth of experiences, personal and professional, have helped me appreciate the variety of perspectives that present themselves in every case that I hear. I strive never to forget the real-world consequences of my decisions on individuals, businesses and government.

-- Judge Sonia Sotomayor, explaining her philosophy as she was nominated to the Supreme Court.

What has happened to single payer?

Now here's a title for you: How Can We Expect an Industry That Profits from Disease and Sickness to Police Itself? That's by Bill Moyers and and Michael Winship and it's worth reading. Here's a sample:

In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told a local AFL-CIO meeting, “I am a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program.”

Single payer. Universal. That’s health coverage, like Medicare, but for everyone who wants it. Single payer eliminates insurance companies as pricey middlemen. The government pays care providers directly. It’s a system that polls consistently have shown the American people favoring by as much as two-to-one.
...
So what’s happened to single payer?

A woman at his town hall meeting in New Mexico last week asked [President Obama] exactly that. “If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense,” the President replied. “That's the kind of system that you have in most industrialized countries around the world.

“The only problem is that we're not starting from scratch. We have historically a tradition of employer-based health care. And although there are a lot of people who are not satisfied with their health care, the truth is, is that the vast majority of people currently get health care from their employers and you've got this system that's already in place. We don't want a huge disruption as we go into health care reform where suddenly we're trying to completely reinvent one-sixth of the economy.”

What a let down.

I don't see how we could have any more of a "huge disruption" than we've already had with this year's economic crash. Our health care system is an inefficient behemoth. It needs to be disrupted.

UPDATE: Here's a comment to the above article that I think is really good:

Here's my plan for getting Congress motivated to actually represent their constituents for a change.

How can they possibly represent us when they don't have a clue what our lives are like? How can they possibly understand what dealing with the U.S. "health"-"care" system is like when they've all got state-of-the-art insurance?

Solution #1: Figure out what percentage of the U.S. population is uninsured and what percentage underinsured. These percentages will be applied to members of Congress. The insured, underinsured, and uninsured will be determined by lot.

Solution #2: The salary for each representative and senator will be no more than the median income of his/her constituents.

I bet we'd have some reform PDQ, and probably some better-qualified candidates for higher office.

I bet so too.

Memorial Day, 2009

Just 'cause it soothes my soul

War: the real thing

There's a book review in this morning's New York Times by Chris Hedges entitled "What War Looks Like". It reports on a book called The Photographer by the late Didier Lefèvre and cartoonist Emmanuel Guibert . Here's the one paragraph I really wanted you to see:

The disparity between what we are told or what we believe about war and war itself is so vast that those who come back, like Lefèvre, are often rendered speechless. What do you say to those who advocate war as an instrument to liberate the women of Afghanistan or bring democracy to Iraq? How do you tell them what war is like? How do you explain that the very proposition of war as an instrument of virtue is absurd? How do you cope with memories of children bleeding to death with bits of iron fragments peppered throughout their small bodies? How do you speak of war without tears?

I, of course, do not want to see the book. I'm afraid I'm not emotionally armored enough to look at pictures like that. But I know. I know what war is really like and I don't know how any person of faith, how any decent person, can not recognize how morally wrong it is.

This is a nuisance

Dear readers,

I've lost internet connection at home so posting will be sporadic until that is up and running again.

Thanks for your understanding!

Peace,
Ellie
~~~

Ain't it the truth?

"This man needs friends."

Okay, you must - I mean, really, you MUST! - go over and read Garrison Keillor's column for this week. It starts out like this:

Only one out of five Americans is willing to describe himself or herself as a Republican these days, and frankly I am tempted to become one of them. For the variety, and because they need me and because when I heard former Vice President Cheney talk about the meaning of Republicanism the other day — "We are what we are," he said — I felt drawn to the simplicity and dignity of that. And I have never been a Republican, just as I've never been to South America, and that makes it tempting.

I look at pictures of Machu Picchu and think, "Why don't I get on a plane and go?" And I look at Dick Cheney and think, "This man needs friends." I voted for Obama, and will vote for him again in 2012, Lord willing, but in the meantime, it's a free country.

Of course, if you're humor impaired, don't bother....
~~~

Come on; have a heart!

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Well, you know I say this to you every now and then. Go adopt a dog or cat (or rabbit or hedgehog or potbellied pig!) from a shelter, please. Did you know that between three and four million dogs and cats in the United States are euthanized every year for lack of adoptive homes?

AND did you know how really, really good it is for your children to grow up with pets? Here are some examples:

• Children who grow up in homes with pets have less risk of developing common allergies and asthma.
• Playing with dogs may help lower blood pressure.
• Kids with pets get outside more- to go for walks, run, and play- and enjoy all the associated health benefits.
• Pet owners require fewer doctor’s visits.
• Emerging readers often feel more comfortable reading aloud to a pet.
• Nurturing a pet is an acceptable way for boys to “parent play”; to practice being caregivers.
• Feeding and caring for a pet encourages childhood responsibility.
• Children with pets display improved impulse control, social skills and self-esteem.
• Sharing the love and care of a family pet forges an additional common bond among siblings.
• Pets offer security and stability. Nearly 70% of children confide in their pets, confident their secrets will not be betrayed.
• Cuddling a pet reduces stress, loneliness, and anxiety.
• And pets provide a natural gateway into the animal kingdom- love for one’s pet as a child often translates into an adult belief that the relationship between humans and animals is one of mutual support.

I had not thought of having pets as acceptable "parent play" for boys before. That's really a very positive benefit.

The above list is from Care2 Make a Difference.

~~~

Obama echoes George Bush today. Sheesh.

I was in the car this afternoon with the radio on and I heard the President say that his first responsiblity is to protect the safety of the American people.

No, no, no!

Mr. President, your first responsibility is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Okay. I know he was being rhetorical. I know he was up against that evil Cheney. But still. He should know better. He does know better. He's a constitutional scholar, after all.
~~~

Cheney

Well, I felt compelled to read an opinion piece I saw because it was entitled "Dick Cheney is crazy. Really."

Of course, I agree but I wanted to see why the writer thought so.

Take a look at this:

The other thing we learn, especially once we get to Dick Cheney's age, is that death comes for everyone, even oneself. A sane person comes to grips with this and acknowledges that perfect safety is impossible, and that there are some things no decent person would do in order to save his own skin -- killing and maiming small children, for example. Those who don't learn this -- those who sacrifice others, many others, so that they might live, are also crazy.

If we don't give Cheney the benefit of the doubt, we have to say that he is pretending to be a man who is crazy with fear in order to once again achieve the sort of power that he lost when Obama was elected president. In that case, he's still crazy, he's just more coldly, viciously, sociopathically crazy than he is crazy with fear. If we don't give him the benefit of the doubt, we have to say he is crazy with evil.

Personally, I don't know which to pick -- I don't know the man. But I do know that he is neither laughable nor unimportant, and that every word out of his mouth, repeated in the press and the blogosphere, is destructive to us as a nation and to the psychological health of those who listen to him.

And I completely agree.
~~~