Memorial Day Sale

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Tributes to Fallen Soldiers In Iraq and Afghanistan

 

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Some Exciting News About the Keiffe & Sons Ford Ad

Well, a reader of this blog has generously sent me an audio clip of the obnoxious radio ad by Keiffe & Sons in Mojave, CA. Karen Peralta graciously sent me a copy of the advertisement. Thank you, Karen. WooHoo. The first couple of lines are missing from the recording, but we both have a pretty similar memory of what he said.

Get the audio for the ad.

Here is a transcript of the ad, with the missing part in blocks. Karen has more recently heard the ad, so I'm putting in what she remembers.

["Did you know that there are people in this country who want prayer out of schools, "Under God" out of the Pledge, and "In God We Trust" to be taken off our money?"]

"But did you know that 86% of Americans say they believe in God? Since we all know that 86 out of every 100 of us are Christians, who believe in God, we at Keiffe & Sons Ford wonder why we don't tell the other 14% to sit down and shut up. I guess I just offended 14% of the people who are listening to this message. Well, if that is the case then I say that's tough, this is America folks, it's called free speech. None of us at Keiffe & Sons Ford is afraid to speak out. Keiffe & Sons Ford on Sierra Highway in Mojave and Rosamond, if we don't see you today, by the grace of God, we'll be here tomorrow."

Well, Mr. Keiffe, you won't be seeing me either today or tomorrow. And you certainly won't be seeing my money. What an asshole. It seems that he is for free speech for himself and his majority, but the rest of us 14% are second class citizens who need to "sit down and shut up." Also, his percentages are wrong. According to the Pew Poll, 10.6% say they don't believe in God, and 73% identify as Christian.

What about a new version of the ad? After all "it's called free speech."

"Did you know that there are people in this country who are assholes that want to shove their religion in everyone's faces? But did you know that 14% of Americans say they don't believe in God? Since we all know that 14 out of every 100 of us are not Christians, who don't believe in God, we at Keiffe & Sons Ford wonder why we don't tell the other 86% to sit down and shut up. I guess I just offended 86% of the people who are listening to this message. Well, if that is the case then I say that's tough, this is America folks, it's called free speech. None of us at Keiffe & Sons Ford is afraid to speak out. Keiffe & Sons Ford on Sierra Highway in Mojave and Rosamond, if we don't see you today, we'll be here tomorrow."

Now if an ad aired like this there would be massive protests of Christians everywhere. What if the ad targeted Jews or African Americans? Would any radio air the ad?

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Sweet Victory: Coalition for Immokalee Workers Wins

by Katrina Vanden Heuvel

In March 2005, I started a weekly feature called "Sweet Victories." The idea was to chronicle progressive victories –electoral wins, protests and boycotts, the launching of new ideas, fresh organizations and initiatives, and successful organizing efforts. I hoped that these stories would serve not only as a source of information, but inspiration. The victories might be small, but they were always sweet.

On May 23, we celebrate a sweet victory for social justice. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT.) will join representatives of the Coalition for Immokalee Workers (CIW) and the Burger King Corporation at a press conference in the U.S. Capitol to announce that the corporation has agreed to work with CIW to improve wages and working conditions for the farm workers who harvest tomatoes for Burger King.

This victory is testament to the tenacity and discipline of the Coalition,a community-based worker organization, which has exposed a half-dozen slavery cases that helped trigger the freeing of more than 1000 workers. It has also advocated for better wages, living conditions, respect from the industry, and an end to indentured servitude. In this last year, CIW scored victories in negotiating a penny-per-pound surcharge–so workers would receive about 77 cents per 32-pound bucket–with McDonald's and Yum! Brands (owner of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC). (The corporations also agreed to work with the Coalition to eliminate slavery from the fields.) And the corporations –not the tomato growers–agreed to pay the 40 percent salary increase. Astonishingly, Burger King, until today, refused to go along with a deal that will cost them less than $300,000 annually; last year, the corporation raked in $2.23 billion in revenues.

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Fuel costs kill off a US airline every week

by James Doran

Airlines in America are closing down or going bankrupt at a rate of one a week as the rocketing price of oil forces the industry to its knees and calls into question the very viability of commercial air travel.

In Britain, analysts say low-cost carriers such as EasyJet and Ryanair could be hammered. Andrew Fitchie, analyst at Collins Stewart, said: 'The no-frills airlines are in the eye of the storm. They will have to slash capacity, stay on the tarmac or look at merging. There will be casualties.'

According to the US Air Transport Association (ATA) six airlines have been forced to close down since the beginning of April, while another has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

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The Fall of Conservatism

Have the Republicans run out of ideas?

by George Packer

The era of American politics that has been dying before our eyes was born in 1966. That January, a twenty-seven-year-old editorial writer for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat named Patrick Buchanan went to work for Richard Nixon, who was just beginning the most improbable political comeback in American history. Having served as Vice-President in the Eisenhower Administration, Nixon had lost the Presidency by a whisker to John F. Kennedy, in 1960, and had been humiliated in a 1962 bid for the California governorship. But he saw that he could propel himself back to power on the strength of a new feeling among Americans who, appalled by the chaos of the cities, the moral heedlessness of the young, and the insults to national pride in Vietnam, were ready to blame it all on the liberalism of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Right-wing populism was bubbling up from below; it needed to be guided by a leader who understood its resentments because he felt them, too.

"From Day One, Nixon and I talked about creating a new majority," Buchanan told me recently, sitting in the library of his Greek-revival house in McLean, Virginia, on a secluded lane bordering the fenced grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency. "What we talked about, basically, was shearing off huge segments of F.D.R.'s New Deal coalition, which L.B.J. had held together: Northern Catholic ethnics and Southern Protestant conservatives—what we called the Daley-Rizzo Democrats in the North and, frankly, the Wallace Democrats in the South." Buchanan grew up in Washington, D.C., among the first group—men like his father, an accountant and a father of nine, who had supported Roosevelt but also revered Joseph McCarthy. The Southerners were the kind of men whom Nixon whipped into a frenzy one night in the fall of 1966, at the Wade Hampton Hotel, in Columbia, South Carolina. Nixon, who was then a partner in a New York law firm, had traveled there with Buchanan on behalf of Republican congressional candidates. Buchanan recalls that the room was full of sweat, cigar smoke, and rage; the rhetoric, which was about patriotism and law and order, "burned the paint off the walls." As they left the hotel, Nixon said, "This is the future of this Party, right here in the South."

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Here're the savings from Arctic drilling — 75 cents a barrel

By Erika Bolstad

WASHINGTON — If Congress were to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, crude oil prices would probably drop by an average of only 75 cents a barrel, according to Department of Energy projections issued Thursday.

The report, which was requested in December by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, found that oil production in the refuge "is not projected to have a large impact on world oil prices."

But the report also finds that opening ANWR could have other benefits, particularly in Alaska, where tapping the resources in the Arctic refuge could extend the lifespan of the trans-Alaska pipeline. It estimates that if Congress agreed to open ANWR this year, Alaskan oil could hit the market in about 10 years.

"I'm coming away from it saying that this is yet another an indicator that opening ANWR is important to this country and to our energy future," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

The report was unveiled Thursday by the Department of Energy's research arm, the Energy Information Administration and came a day after the Department of Interior said that 60 percent of federal lands that hold potential sources of natural gas and oil are closed to leasing.

It also comes in the midst of a renewed push by Alaska's congressional delegation to persuade their congressional colleagues to open a portion of ANWR to oil exploration. Opening the wildlife refuge is the centerpiece of recently unveiled House and Senate Republican energy plans, which focus on increasing domestic oil production in the face of record oil prices that, this week, exceeded $135 a barrel.

Stevens had no comment about the report, but did speak on the floor of the Senate Thursday in support of opening ANWR to drilling.

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The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks

yeah, "safety"

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San-Zhr Pod Village

by Craig Ferguson

 

San-Zhr Pod Village, by photographer Craig Ferguson, is a project that features images of an abandoned hotel/housing pod development in the small town of San-zhr (三芝) on the north coast of Taiwan. These images have a post-apocalyptic flavor that seem like they are right out of a dystopian novel, and as Craig explains, the truth is no less bizarre:

Just before arriving in Sanzhi, there's an interesting site hugging the shoreline - an abandoned hotel/apartment complex that looks like somewhere ET might call home. I first heard about this a couple of years ago, but it was only recently that I was able to get out there.

Accounts vary on the origins of this complex, and indeed, as to whether it was meant to be a hotel development or a housing development. Apparently, it was constructed in the 1960s and included/was to include a dam to protect it against sea surges, floors and stairs made of marble and a small amusement park. The site was commissioned by the government and local firms and there is no named architect. Local papers at the time reported that there were numerous accidents during construction which caused the death of some workers. As news of these accidents spread, no one wanted to go there, even to visit, and the project was subsequently abandoned. The ghosts of those who died in vain are said to still linger there, unremembered and unable to pass on. The complex was left in its unfinished state because no amount of redevelopment will bring people to the area due to superstitions about ghosts, and it can't be demolished because destroying the homes of spirits and lost souls is taboo in Asian culture.

When I was there, I met four young university students who were passing by and stopped for a look. They didn't want to get too close to the buildings for fear that the ghosts would take them. They told me there was "heavy evil" in the buildings.

We are glad that Craig braved the ominous warnings to produce these incredible images, and we think you will agree.

Enter Gallery

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BIODIVERSITY: Privatisation Making Seeds Themselves Infertile

By Julio Godoy

BONN, May 22 (IPS) - Seeds were once for ever. After harvest, a few from the crop would be planted for the following year, and so it went on.

Now, biochemical industry giants are making seeds themselves infertile. You sow them this year, and that's it. For next year's crop, you need brand new seeds -- you would have to buy them, of course.

Twenty-five years ago, there were at least 7,000 seed growers worldwide, and none of them controlled more than one percent of the global market. Today, after a takeover spree, 10 major biochemical multinationals, including Monsanto, DuPont-Pioneer, Syngenta, Bayer Cropsciencie, BASF, and Dow Agrosciences, control more than 50 percent of the seeds market.

"The goal of these companies is, of course, to make profits," Benedict Haerling, researcher at the German non-governmental organisation Future of Agriculture, told IPS. "In order to improve their profits, they all apply one strategy to increase their control of the market: they impose upon farmers worldwide the so-called vertical integration of inputs, from seeds to fertilisers to pesticides, all from one brand." Compulsory customer loyalty, you might call it.

And through biochemical manipulation, including genetic modifications, many companies have made sure the harvest you obtain cannot be sown again.

Such "vertical integration of agricultural inputs" has transformed agriculture in developing countries into a two-class business, Angelika Hillbeck, researcher on bio-safety and agriculture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich told IPS.

"In the developing countries there is a class of farmers with large plantations and enough money who can afford to buy all inputs from the major biochemical companies, from seeds and fertilisers to pesticides and conservatives." But there are small farmers for whom the biochemical markets are out of reach.

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Indy Left Me Short, Round, and Alone

Summer blockbusters don't always have happy endings.  Just ask the once-sidekicking, Short Round of "Temple of Doom" fame what his opinion on the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones quadrology is.  He provided a copy of this letter sent previously to his former colleague, and we're happy to share it with you.    

Dear Dr. Jones,

I may be short, but my memory is that of an elephant (like the ones that frequent the small village I saved with your help), and I shan't forgive your insult as long as I shall live. What the Nazis and Russians say indeed is true; you are as hollow as a bamboo shoot, as tired as the wilted Lotus Blossom and as unrealistic as the dreams of an Asian child actor with a lovable accent turning into a grown-up Hollywood icon.

Oh how I remember those days of frolicking in airplanes and mine carts without a care in the world. Together we were the stuff of legends, the idols of millions, on top of the world which we criss-crossed as if it were but a small map. But where are we now? Well you… YOU… You are again in the spotlight, another of your quests is memorialized in film, and I am nowhere to be seen.

What happened to us?  

I thought you would be honorable; that you would stay in touch or simply "throw me a bone" as the masses may say. But no, of course not, you have no time for the child who saved your ass from a pit of fire and being on the wrong end of a one-directional heart transplant.

How dare you leave me on the sidelines as you continue your adventures? I made you, Indy. You think you're one of a kind?!?!?!

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Poor ticket sales, expected protests scuttle Bush-McCain fundraiser at Phoenix Convention Center

by Mike Sunnucks

 

A Tuesday fundraiser headlined by President Bush for U.S. Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign is being moved out of the Phoenix Convention Center.

Sources familiar with the situation said the Bush-McCain event was not selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space, and that there were concerns about more anti-war protesters showing up outside the venue than attending the fundraiser inside.

Another source said there were concerns about the media covering the event.

Bush's Arizona fundraising effort for McCain is being moved to private residences in the Phoenix area.

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High definition

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Credit where it's due

by Janet Albrechtsen

THERE is a certain familiarity to the concomitant series of actions and reactions when disaster strikes in the world. The US stands ready, willing and able to offer assistance. It is often the first country to send in millions of dollars, navy strike groups loaded with food and medical supplies, and transport planes, helicopters and floating hospitals to help those devastated by natural disaster.

Then, just as swift and with equal predictability, those wedded to the Great Satan view of the US begin to carp, drawing on a potent mixture of cynicism and conspiracy theories to criticise the last remaining superpower. When the US keeps doing so much of the heavy lifting to alleviate suffering, you'd figure that the anti-Americans might eventually revise their view of the US. But they never do. And coming under constant attack even when helping others, you'd figure that Americans would eventually draw the curtains on world crises. But they haven't. At least not yet.

So it was last week. The US stood ready to help the cyclone-ravaged Burmese people. It did not matter that Burma's ruling junta was no friend of the Americans. With more than 100,000 people feared dead and many more hundreds of thousands left destitute, US Air Force cargo planes loaded with supplies and personnel started arriving in nearby Thailand to begin humanitarian operations in Burma.

A US Navy strike group in the Gulf of Thailand sent helicopters ashore, ready to arrive in Burma within hours. Alas, Burma's military leaders left their people to die for 10 days before finally accepting help from the evil empire. Even if the Yanks are allowed to boost their assistance to Burma, they can expect a groundswell of criticism.

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Dwell Daily

Audrey Tempelsman

Winner: Small Project Awards 2008

This week, the American Institute of Architects announced the recipients of its Small Project Awards 2008. Winners include Abod, envisioned as a low-cost, prefabricated solution to South Africa's housing shortage by BSB Designs.

Each home packs flat and can be assembled by four people with a screwdriver and awl (both tools are shipped with the structure). Buyers can add multiple features on to the original 10x12 foot structure, including a kitchen, bathroom, window-walls, and closets.  The lightweight steel framework and corrugated walls can be easily disassembled and transported.

Though the prototype's components are currently made in the U.S., BSC Designs is negotiating local production with South African manufacturers. The projected cost is $1500 a piece.

Read all of Audrey Tempelsman's posts

Posted by: Audrey Tempelsman on May 21, 08 at 08:56 PM PDT

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LITTLE CORPORATE DISHONESTIES

by Andrew Tobias

I pay for CreditSecure from American Express, and it mails me a quarterly review that includes, among other things, my credit score from one of the three rating agencies. 

 The report could have just as easily shown all three scores, but instead it gives instructions for getting the other two at no extra charge, "instantly," on line. 

 I go to that URL and am instantly asked to sign up for on-line access.  In the fine print, I see something that seems to suggest that if I take the time to sign up, I would no longer get the mailed reports.  It's not completely clear (one might almost say hidden), so I called to check and – sure enough.

 So basically this is a ploy by Amex to get me to lower their printing and mailing costs, hoping I won't notice or mind.

 At least for me, a straightforward message would have been honest and more effective.

 Dear Customer:  We'd like you to consider switching to our on-line service.  The advantage to you: you can access your credit situation 24/7 at no extra cost and have the satisfaction of knowing you did something good for the environment.  The advantage to us: we lower our costs and have the satisfaction of knowing we did something good for the environment.  If you consider this a 'win-win,' please go on-line and sign up!

 Instead, they tried to trick me into it. 

 Or how about this: those web sites, like DirecTV, that ask whether you want to receive occasional marketing offers – with the default box checked ("yes, I do") – so you uncheck it . . . but then when it turns out you used hyphens in your phone  number (or some other glitch that forces you to go back and redo an error) they've quietly rechecked the marketing boxes in the hope you'll make whatever little correction was needed without noticing that – while everything else remained the same – the empty check boxes had reverted to being checked.  And now they have your permission to send you marketing offers and sell your email to others.

These are tiny manipulations that amount to little more than over-eager salesmanship, with perhaps a pinch of duplicity – and a dollop of cynicism – thrown in.  But they bug me.

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The Arrow of Time

 

- up to 2007 -

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America's Disappearing 'Upper Class'

Apparently, in the United States, we don't have an upper class; we have elites -- a complimentary term that obscures true differences in opportunity.

by Zephyr Teachout

John Edwards, it is hoped, will bring the "working-class" vote to Barack Obama. In alternative descriptions, he will help with the "middle-class" vote, or what a very tired Hillary Clinton might call the "white-middle white-class, white-working, white vote." This (disappearing) working-class population fills the pages of analysis and news. In the New York Times, for example, there have been 324 references to "middle class" and 220 references to "working class" in the past three months.

At the same time, "upper class" is vanishing from our language. In the 18 references in the New York Times in the last three months, none are in the context of elections. "Upper class" appears most often in quotes, literature review and history, or as a referent to people on the other side of the puddle, as they say: the "upper-class British" way of life appears, as does the "upper-class European," and the upper-class voice of a deceased BBC announcer.

In America, we don't have the upper class, apparently. We have, according to many news reports, "elites." There are thousands of references to elites: In the context of politics, a search for "Clinton" and "elite" in the last three months finds 40 results, while the blogs are full of concern about various candidates' tendencies to attract elite voters. It sounds like an epithet, when thrown at campaign managers ("you are just getting the elite vote"), but it's a compliment to the people described therein.

"Elites only, folks, elites only for early boarding," cries the Continental Airlines steward, and the rich people line up, complimented and convenienced at the same time. The best football players are elite, and the best colleges are elite -- the word comes not with the stink of privilege but with the flattering sound of being something deserved, worked for even. Elites may be "out of touch," but they are "out of touch" with a French-derived word meaning to choose -- the same root as the word "election," as it turns out. The elite are the chosen, the secular "good men and women," ones we ought to make way for as they pass.

You might think I'm being unfair here -- sometimes elite means a particular group of people, not all rich -- but what I think is disturbing (and imprecise) is how we use words from different categories blended together, as if we had three classes, "the elite," "the working class" and "people living under the poverty level," instead of the categories as they were initially introduced, "the upper class, the middle class and the poor," or "the elite, the mediocre and the incompetent," or "the ruling class, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat."

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Pastor John Hagee's Endorsement of McCain

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Voice of the people

Gore Vidal: 'This country is finished. But, with a new republic like this, if you missed being here at the beginning, the next best thing is to be here at the end'. Interview by James Campbell


'The honest savage' ... Gore Vidal. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe
 

Gore Vidal's collected essays, United States, a hefty volume incorporating the work of four decades in the form in which he is a modern master, won the US National Book Award for 1993. "It is the ugliest prize ever given to me," says the author, gesturing with a brandy snifter towards the room in which the unloved object stands. "It's two bronze cubes, my name is not on it, there's no identification of what it is. It's just like the country that gave it to me. Blank."

Conversation at Vidal's table has a tendency to flow towards the state of the union, no matter what the source. In America, he is admired - and more highly valued than he likes to admit - for an unorthodox liberalism that puts individual preference at the heart of everything, from sex to tax. For 60 years, through novels, plays and miscellaneous non-fiction, Vidal has preached the message that government is not only pervasive but corrupt; that while there are may be two political brands, Democrat and Republican, there is only one party: business.

At the start of the Democratic presidential nomination, Vidal had favoured Hillary Clinton (a photo in his 1995 memoir, Palimpsest, shows Mrs. Clinton visiting him at home in Italy), but recently he switched to "the other side". Not John McCain, of course. "McCain is the village idiot. He is very, very stupid, even by American standards." Barack Obama has begun to impress him - "but only to a point. He doesn't have much to say. I'd rather see a woman as president, if we're going to go in for minorities, but Hillary lost her nerve."

He believes that Obama will be the next US president. "He'll be shot, though, that's his problem. If Jack [Kennedy] knew he was going to be shot, a black boy must know it too." Invited to suggest a motive for Obama's persistence, Vidal offers "Curiosity. Even - dare I use a word never used in American political life any more? - honour. Mine was the last generation to have believed in such a concept." The brandy glass completes its voyage to the mouth, permitting a whispered exclamation of disgust. "I cannot believe the trashiness of this country."

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