WalMart: Always Big Lies. Always.

Remember when WalMart scarily tried to open a bank? They said it was simply to process credit card and other transaction and that they would not seek to compete in financial service.

Well, PANTS ON FIRE!

What is wrong with this picture is two fold.

On a basic level, the financially under-serviced (WalMarts acknowledged target) are ever rip for exploitation and are daily subject to usurious interest rates. Attempting to tie-up the funds of its customers and capturing the often enormous fees paid out by them to marginal services such as check cashers, pay-day advancers and wire services is to tap into the depths of the misery market. WalMart will crow that they reduce costs to consumers, but...is reduing a 30% interest rate to a 21.7% rate really helping the cosnumer, or is it simply redefining profit parameters based on economies of scale?

On the other level...Walmart doing mortgages? Owning homes? Foreclosing? ENOUGH! Who ever thought that along iwth Big Oil and Big Pharma we'd one day have the dreaded Big Retail?

Supreme Court Wanna Be Subpoenaed!

Well! That'll show you, Harriet Miers.

The withdrawn (and withdrawing) erstwhile Supreme Court Nominee has been subpoenaed by Sen. Patrick "Go Fuck Yourself" Leahy.

The whitehouse screams confrontation -- which of course it is. They are so reckless and out there that I bet you dollars to donuts they attempt to defy the subpoena and drive it into the courts.

Bombs A-Gay!!

You have to read this to believe it.

I'ts not a joke, it's...THE GAY BOMB!

More Splintering on the Far Right

Hard to believe there's anybody to the right of James Dobson?

Think again.

As the above LA Times article makes clear, there are splinter group within the rabid anti-abortion movement that think Focus on the Family and National Right to Life are not extreme enough.

The rub is over whether to take an incremental or absolutist approach to the elimination of abortion (and diminshment of women's rights). The distinction between extremeist strategies is interesting: will absolutism self-distruct? Probably -- it usually does.

But more interesting is the not-so-sub text captured in the Times. "Money Grubbing Phonies" is what the splinters call the big groups. The resentment within the ranks of the far right building toward the groups that have grown too fat, too powerful, and too arrogant can -- hopefully -- only gain strength.

Akways the Answers, Never the Questions

Here's AP's take on tonight's Republican debate.

Notice anything? It's a small but perfect example of media manipulation. The entire article is a litanny of individual candidate's talking points -- those pithy, quotable statements created by handlers well in advance of any actual questioning. AP carries the candidates' water by quoting what they said -- in almost every instance without even the context of the questions theses stamements obstensibly refer to.

In this case, little harm done. And you could argue that what candidates say -- not what they are asked or how they differ -- is the news out an event like tonight's.

But they why call it a "debate"? Why not just aknowledge it a publicity vehicle for third party dissemination of competitive messages?

A Scene Not In America's Top Comedy

Why deleted? Its very funny...

Violence Unsurprsiningly Persistent in Iraq

While all of Washington is content to wait until September to pass jusdgement on the SURGE, vairous Iraqi fighters are showing now signs of taking a day off. Isn't the Irqi president in the US for three weeks...for what exactly?

Larry King: Killer! Watch Out Anderson Cooper...

Summer Reading!!

Have you read Michael Chabon's wonderful new book "The Yiddish Policemen's Union"?

It's wonderfully strange and maybe his best yet. Film Noir Detective Story cum Alternate History Fantasy that's simultaneously a love note to the Yiddish and English languages as well as a beautiful and funny mediation on memory and belonging.

Oh, is that all?

And how about the graphics on the cover -- ultra gorgeous and the work of a designer named Will Staehle. Here's his website, too. Very nice!

Chickens in the News!

Chickens have gotten such a bad rap since all this bird flu hulabaloo that we've decided to dedicate a regular little feature to good chicken news.

Here's the latest on chickens. We'll call it poultrantropology.

Ick! Dems Pander to the Christian Semi-Left.

Do not read on an empty stomach.

What's more distasteful? Hillary's acknowledgement that faith got her through Monica (oh, really?) or John Edwards continuing to openly discuss his child's death and wife's cancer for poltical advantage?

Expletives Undeleted!

Here's the Times's piece on yesterday's ruling on obsensity by a Federal Appeals panel in New York. Interesting enough, and a sly and choiceful rebuke to Cheney to boot! (Senator Leahy, call your office.)

However, seems the gist of a larger story resides in one sentance from the descions quoted by the Times:

“We find that the F.C.C.’s new policy regarding ‘fleeting expletives’ fails to provide a reasoned analysis justifying its departure from the agency’s established practice,” said the panel.

The fact is that the adminstration has proved precious little "reasoned analysis" justifng its departure from a vast array of established practices -- from torture to environmental policy to food safety regulation to...oh, you name it. Did we mention war and peace? They consistently replace long standing federal policy with ideological imperatives of the far right.

This case will go to the Supreme Court...will the court, with Roberts and Alito, give the adminstration the authority to change federal policy on ideogical whim? Or will we see the begining of court rollback of executive over-reaching?

The headline we're waiting for? "Supremes To Cheney: Go Fuck Yourself."

We're Off for the Weekend! Here's a Little Nina...

Let Go, Peggy, Let Go

Peggy "Morning in America" Noonan has finally had it Bush.

Over torture, the war, gross undermining of the constitution, law breaking? Nope. Immigration. Oh, who cares?

BUT get this revealing quote:

The beginning of my own sense of separation from the Bush administration came in January 2005, when the president declared that it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world, and that the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation. This was at once so utopian and so aggressive that it shocked me. For others the beginning of distance might have been Katrina and the incompetence it revealed, or the depth of the mishandling and misjudgments of Iraq.

Notice what's missing? Torture. Even as they flee the sinking ship, ideological conservatives are choosing the baggage to salvage, and among the refuse dragged to shore, keep watching, will be "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Bye Bye Bartlet

Here's the Times's news break. So Dan Bartlet is goin to spend some more time with his family. Just had a new baby, it seems, who has been christened "Exit Strategy."

Couple of observations:

Old fashioned PR ploy: announce annoying news on a Friday (other rule: announce disasterous news on a Saturday). Unsurprsining.

But, not to be agesist...Dan Bartlet, conisistently referred to as one of the Presidents most important and senior advisors, was all of ...36?!? Meaning when they came to the White House he was 30? Isn't that little young? But he's been with Bush for ever, loyalty has it rewards, and wet behind the ears Texas politicos hold top advisory posts in a nationa at war.

Well, he's gone.