Jujitsui Generis

CNN & Free Speech

Finally!  CNN admits that it has been practicing its right to free political speech in Xing out Cheney's mug during a speech last week.

Okay, not really.  A passionately partisan staffer may have gotten a little excitable with a caller.  But it's still good to hear CNN inch closer to admitting that they are no more an 'objective' news agency than FOX news.

The New 'Robber Baron'

Carping at Wal-Mart has become the latest fad among the well-to-do, 'social justice' set.  Here's Meathead, Rob Reiner, who incidentally can afford to not shop at Wal-Mart, taking a strong stand:

Communities across America are saying enough is enough and banning Wal-Mart from their city limits. Greenwald lays bare the notion, propagated by today’s robber barons, that American consumers will sell their soul for cheap t-shirts. Instead, we see the strength that comes when local government that truly reflects the values of its citizens: a respect for family-owned businesses, a recognition that a person’s labor should not be given without a living wage and benefits, and the repudiation of manufacturing that cares not for worker safety and environmental protection.

Reiner's assertion that 'American consumers will not sell their soul for cheap T-shirts' along with electronics, housewares, groceries, etc... is apparently wishful thinking.  Wal-Mart enjoyed better than expected results as the holiday shopping season has begun.  But Reiner is not alone in his hope.  Other Hollywood types, town councils and politicians, mostly in ill-advised attempts to tamper with the market, have been looking to clip Wal-Mart's wings for some time.  In an unprecedented move, the Maryland legislature is considering forcing Wal-Mart to boost their spending on employee health-care.  Maryland's Governor vetoed the legislation, but it's up for an override vote in January.  The legislation is ostensibly meant for all companies, but has been cleverly worded so that it would apply only to Wal-Mart.  Does singling out a single employer for burdensome restrictions strike anyone as an unfair use of coercive power?  Kip Esquire suggests the proper response, what he terms the 'nuclear reaction':

Dear Maryland Legislature,

If you override this veto, then we will close all our stores in your state 24 hours before the law takes effect. We will lock our doors and lay off all our employees. We will not return unless and until you revoke all legislation specifically and exclusively targeted at our company.

Love,
Wal-Mart

That's actually exactly the right response.  I would join Kip in urging Wal-Mart, in order to avoid a dangerous precedent, to layoff every single employee rather than submit to the malicious meddling of the state.  Another option Wal-Mart should consider is avoiding the mandate of the legislation on a technicality.  The bill requires an increased amount of healthcare spending on any employer of over 10,000 (surprise: Wal-Mart seems the only employer in the state to fit the bill) employees.  Wal-Mart should consider closing just enough stores in the state of Maryland so as to fall under the 10,000 employee threshold.

Of course, if Wal Mart closes stores in Maryland it will be the consumers, especially the low income consumers who most need Wal Mart's low prices, that will suffer the most:

The study by the economic research firm Global Insight concluded that the discounting along with other measures led to cumulative savings for consumers of 263 billion dollars between 1985 and 2004, or 895 dollars per person.

The researchers concluded that Wal-Mart had a positive impact on US employment, generating 210,000 jobs by 2004, or 0.15 percent more that would have existed without Wal-Mart.

The report also found that Wal-Mart's low pay for employees led to a 2.2 percent drop in overall wages across the economy but maintained that this was offset by falling consumer prices.

"Consumers earned less in nominal dollars, but their income bought them more in the economy with Wal-Mart because of real disposable income gains," the study concluded.

Here's John Stossel offering perspective:

"They have taken the values, the morals, the ethics, fairness that are the fabric of our society and put them aside and . . . put their profits before their people," said Blank.

That's foolish economics, and not very good morality. He is as wrong as the tycoon Michael Douglas played in the movie "Wall Street," who said: "It's a zero-sum game. Somebody wins. Somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred."

That's a myth. Businesses create wealth...

Their becoming rich doesn't mean there's less for the rest of us. Sam Walton's innovations created thousands of new jobs and allowed millions of Americans to save money...

Wal-Mart's critics act as if economic competition were a "zero-sum game" -- if one person gets richer, someone else must be getting poorer. If Wal-Mart's owners profit, we lose. But the reality is exactly what our ordinary language tells us: We make money. We produce wealth.

Wal-Mart created wealth. It started with just one discount store. Then, its owner, Sam Walton, invented new ways to streamline the supply chain, so he was able to sell things for less and still make a profit. By keeping prices low, Wal-Mart effectively gives everyone who shops there a raise, its own employees included.

Of course, as politicians, Hollywood, and the liberal elite join forces, most of that is forgotten in the feeding frenzy - a frenzy meant to destroy Wal Mart while protecting the small companies which the elites find so much more aesthetically pleasing.  They do so at the detriment of the everyday consumers.

Open Source Center

The CIA is looking for intelligence hiding in plain sight:

In a bow to the rise of Internet-era secrets hidden in plain view, the agency has started hosting Web logs with the latest information on topics including North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il's public visit to a military installation (his 38th this year) and the Burmese media's silence on a ministry reshuffling. It even has a blog on blogs, dedicated to cracking the code of what useful information can be gleaned from the rapidly expanding milieu of online journals and weird electronic memorabilia warehoused on the Net.

The blogs are posted on an unclassified, governmentwide Web site, part of a rechristened CIA office for monitoring, translating and analyzing publicly available information called the DNI Open Source Center. The center, which officially debuted this month under the aegis of the new director for national intelligence, marks the latest wave of reorganization to come out of the recommendations of several commissions that analyzed the failures of intelligence collection related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Here's the site, but I can't get on.  It's restricted to government employees and some journalists.

Drugs For Everyone

Thanks to Alina to pointing to the Institute for One World Health.  The Institute is an alternative to the traditional pharmaceutical model.  They are working on pharmaceuticals of a different sort and developing low-profit medicines specifically for the developing world.

Lunactic Ravings

A gifted writer gone quite mad.  Here's Kurt Vonnegut shilling for Islamic terrorism and offering his justification for suicide bombers (thanks to Betsy's Page for pointing to this story):

But in discussing his views with The Weekend Australian, Vonnegut said it was "sweet and honourable" to die for what you believe in, and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs.

"They are dying for their own self-respect," he said. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."

Asked if he thought of terrorists as soldiers, Vonnegut, a decorated World War II veteran, said: "I regard them as very brave people, yes."

He equated the actions of suicide bombers with US president Harry Truman's 1945 decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

On the Iraq war, he said: "What George Bush and his gang did not realise was that people fight back."

Vonnegut suggested suicide bombers must feel an "amazing high". He said: "You would know death is going to be painless, so the anticipation - it must be an amazing high."

As to whether or not they feel elation, I have no idea.  But yes, Kurt, 'Bush and his gang' did realize 'that people fight back'.  That's exactly why we're there battling Islamic extremists who have been launching brutal attacks on the West and the US for the last three decades.  In fact, given the West's overall record of minor 'police action' and appeasement in response to Islamic fundamentalism, I would say it is the extremists who have been surprised to find just how hard we are fighting back.

As I've argued before, those seeking to justify the insurgency in Iraq using the tired remnants of anti-imperialist language, like oppressor/oppressed, resistance movement, etc... actually undercut their own argument.  In arguing for the 'resistance fighers' they are arguing for the group most intent on subsuming the entire region under a brutal theocratic caliphate.  Or, as I written before:

But the assertion that events in Iraq have drawn the ire of the Islamic world - and its concomitant implication that they have therefore spawned a legitimate resistance movement - is justified only if one believes that subverting the will of the Iraqi people, that ruthlessly subjugating them to the strictures of a medieval fundamentalism, that forcing them to trade one devil for another is a legitimate purpose of the insurgency, that that is a justifiable and righteous cause of 'the resistance'.  But that is to undercut the motivation of those making the claim, which is to allegedly make life better for the Iraqis: for in admitting that it is the worst elements of Islamic society that are committed to Iraq's undoing - and that they would either like to see a return of the Baathists or the tyranny of Sharia - one only bolsters the case for seeing the project through to the end; one is actually making the case for resolve and tenacity in the face of barbarism.  That's kind of the point - unless, of course, one yearns for the oppressive days of Hussein's rule or finds common cause with those who would deny democracy and flourishing to those hopeful souls struggling so frantically in Iraq.  But that would be downright traitorous, if not appallingly inhuman.

Vonnegut is apparently reeling in exactly that sort of yearing. And here's James Lilek's closing the door on Vonnegut.

Merry Christmas....

From the labor unions.  Yes, it was GM that did the wrapping, but it was the labor unions that bought this gift for their rank and file.  Happy Holidays.

Sitting Ducks

Tragedy strikes in England.  This is what happens when even front line police officers are prohibited from using weapons to confront armed criminals.  While avoiding the entire issue of civilians and gun control, it seems self-evident that - if coercion and the use of force are the legitimate function of the state - this policy makes no sense.  It robs the state of the means by which to enforce its legitimate function.  And it puts the coercive power in only the hands of thugs and assassins.

Idiocy of the Day

I couldn't resist linking to this latest piece of nonsense over at Huffington Post:

1) Pedestrians are twice as likely to be killed when they're hit by an SUV than when they're hit by a car.
2) While the total number of pedestrian deaths in NYC has fallen by 18% in the last five years, the number of deaths by SUV have surged 27%.
3) SUVs made up about 15% of the cars in New York last year—but caused 26% of pedestrian deaths from passenger vehicles.
4) When a car and an SUV collide and someone dies, 81% of the time the victim is the car driver.

When is someone going to take the logical and urgent next step, and file a class action lawsuit against the manufacturers of SUVs? Irresponsible and dangerous in ways that their manufacturers surely knew, they have degraded the quality of all our lives.

Well, I'm no fan of SUVs, but SUV owners would probably disagree - unless Bradley just means that it's the lives of non-SUV owners which have been degraded.  But how many lives have been saved by the bigger bulk of SUVs, how many accidents have resulted in simple injuries for the families riding in SUVs rather than fatalities?  Not good enough for Bradley.  He'd like to apply his egalitarianism to safety and deaths.

Prior to automobiles, horse and buggy carriage mishaps caused a lot fewer fatalities than our modern day accidents.  While he's at it, perhaps Bradley should seek a class action lawsuit against all of the automobile manufacturers.

Quote of the Day

From Mark Steyn (registration required) on the demographic trouble in which France now finds itself.

So what can be done? For the political class, the demography’s becoming an insurmountable obstacle. When your electorate’s split between a young implacable ethnic group and elderly French natives unwilling to vote themselves off their unaffordable social programmes, there aren’t a lot of options your average poll-watching pol will be willing to take. And the trouble with the social democratic state is that, when government does too much, nobody else does much of anything. At the very least, European citizens should recognise that the governing class has failed, that the conventional wisdom has run its course, and that it is highly unlikely that those culturally confident Muslims will wish to assimilate with anything as shrivelled and barren as contemporary European identity ..

Ouch!  Read the whole thing.

A Warning For the Moderates

Even the Queen of England is an infidel according to Al Qaeda.  They've released a tape holding her responsible for Britain's 'crusader laws' and calling her one of the 'severest enemies of Islam'.  More interesting, however, is the explicit warning to Muslim moderates:

In the video al-Zawahiri not only labels the Queen as one of Islam’s “severest enemies” but also sends a warning shot to British Islamic leaders who “work for the pleasure of Elizabeth, the head of the Church of England”.

He said those who followed her were saying: “We are British citizens, subject to Britain’s crusader laws, and we are proud of our submission . . . to Elizabeth, head of the Church of England.” ...

Khan, 30, incites British Muslims to ignore the moderate Islamic leaders who want integration with British society.

“Our so-called scholars of today,” he said, “are content with their Toyotas and semi- detached houses” in their desire for integration. The message is believed to be the first of its kind in which a British suicide bomber calls on fellow UK Muslims to follow his example.

Khan's comments are instructive, and France's leaders should take notice.  These people are not looking for concessions or coexistence.  They are looking for our surrender.  And death.