The Democrat’s Wal-Mart Jihad

Obviously, anyone who reads here knows how I feel about the Democrat's appallingly stupid jihad against Wal-Mart. But hey, if they really think driving the over 120 million people who shop there each week away from their party is a good policy, why should I bother speaking out? Besides, there are others doing a very nice job of eviscerating the foolishness.

Like Jonah Goldberg (another opinion from the LA Times. Is this Kansas anymore?)

The New York Times reported recently that the Democrats have, en masse, declared their party to be the enemy of the mega-box store. Sen. Joe Biden Jr. (D-Del.) recently delivered a "blistering attack" on the company at an anti-Wal-Mart rally in Iowa, and other Democrats have appeared at similar events. Indeed, one of the few times Lieberman and Lamont appeared at the same event during their primary contest was at an anti-Wal-Mart clambake in the Nutmeg State.

This bonfire of buffoonery is helping me learn to love Wal-Mart. First, let's talk politics. More people shop at Wal-Mart every week (127 million) than voted in the 2004 presidential election, according to a company website. They are disproportionately low-income folks who, by some estimates, are collectively saving hundreds of billions of dollars by shopping there.

Compounding the electoral asininity is the glorious hypocrisy of it all. Hillary Rodham Clinton — who returned a donation from the devilish retailer — was on Wal-Mart's board of directors from the mid-1980s until the 1992 presidential campaign. If the store's policies are so un-Progressive, how come it never occurred to her to do anything about it until now? Similarly, former would-be First Lady Teresa Heinz attacked the store in 2004, saying it "destroys communities" — which apparently never stopped her from hawking her ketchup there or owning $1 million in Wal-Mart stock. Even Lamont, the golden boy of the new yuppie populism, owns a few thousand bucks of Wal-Mart stock.

The most delicious moment in the WMDS hysteria came last week, when civil rights icon Andrew Young had what some are calling his Mel Gibson moment. Hired as a flack for Wal-Mart, Young gave an interview to the black-owned Los Angeles Sentinel in which he celebrated Wal-Mart's role as a destroyer of small, locally owned stores. Wal-Mart, he explained, "ran the 'mom and pop' stores out of my neighborhood. But, you see, these are the people who have been overcharging us — selling us stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans, and now it's Arabs; very few black people own these stores."

But, to really get the full flavor of the derangement over Wal-Mart, you really must read Ezra Klein's attack on Goldberg. That should clarify the utterly Clue Proof™ reasoning at work on the left. Klein is impervious to the fact that any raise in pay and benefits to Wal-Mart employees will come at the cost of higher prices to consumers or fewer jobs at Wal-Mart. His wails at the loss of mom-and-pop store jobs neglects the fact that those jobs likely paid minimum wage and did not include any benefits whatsoever. Which demonstrates, I suspect, that Mr. Klein never worked in retail for a mom-and-pop. Or generally has any clue what he is talking about. (Which QandO proves rather handily).

Suspects Arrested In German Train Plot

German authorities have now detained three men while Lebanese authorities have arrested another. The men are suspected in a failed bomb plot on German commuter trains. Two unexploded suitcase bombs with gasoline and propane were found.

BERLIN — Police arrested a third suspect Friday in connection with a failed attempt to blow up two trains, while Lebanese authorities picked up a fourth man believed to have been involved, officials said.

The man arrested in Germany, whose identity was not released, was detained in the southern city of Konstanz on suspicion of membership in a terrorist organization, attempting to set off an explosion and multiple counts of attempted murder.

"Whether, and to what extent he was involved in preparing the attacks is the subject of the investigation," said Frauke Scheuten, spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor's office.

Prosecutors said the man was an associate of Youssef Mohamad el Hajdib, one of two Lebanese men accused of planting the bombs July 31.

Meanwhile, Lebanon's Prosecutor General Saeed Mirza said police in his country detained a 24-year-old man, whom he identified only as H.K.D., on suspicion he was involved in the failed bombing plot.

Mirza said information received from the second suspect, Jihad Hamad, led to the arrest.

After a nearly three-week lull following the attempted bombings, the case has moved quickly in recent days. El Hajdib, 21, was arrested Aug. 19, and Hamad, 20, was arrested Thursday in Lebanon.

The two are accused of planting the bombs at the Cologne train station. The detonators for the devices went off, but the bombs failed to explode and were discovered on regional trains in Koblenz and Dortmund.

It is a good thing they were inept or it would have been a much worse story.

Epilogue

Allahpundit commenced the beating, Confederate Yankee took over to bat cleanup. Now its Mary Katherine Ham's turn to deliver the coup de grace. After all, Greg Mitchell decided he wanted to defend shoddy, faked news photos.

Turns out Mr. Greg Mitchell, who has so vocally defended the folks making up news in the Middle East lately, confessed to making up news himself, when he was but a young'un.

Of course, "confessed" isn't really the right word since he didn't seem too repentant about it.

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

I never found out. Oh, I went down to the falls, all right, but when I got there, I discovered that I just could not wander up to strangers (even dorky ones wearing funny hats and knee socks) and ask them for their personal opinions, however innocuous. It was a puffball assignment, but that wasn't why I rebelled. I just could not bring myself to do it.

So I sat on a park bench and scribbled out a few fake notes and then went back to the office and wrote my fake story, no doubt quoting someone like Jane Smith from Seattle, honeymooning with her husband Oscar, saying something like, "Gosh, I never knew there was so much rock under there!"

Of course, I got away with it.

Why yes you did Mr. Mitchell. You got away with doing something honest people would not even consider doing. You got away with scamming people, for what really amounts to nothing but that you could. Which tells us quite a lot about your character and why you can't fathom why some people don't like to be lied to.

It's true, and as evidence, Mitchell has not grown out of it yet. If this guy was willing to fake a story about tourists at Niagara Falls, imagine how easy it'd be for him to do it for, I don't know, political reasons. Certainly not much of an ethical hurdle for him to jump.

In the short time I was a reporter, I covered something like 20 local deaths– some in car accidents, some of disease, about half of them children. It was my first job out of college. Would it have been easier to make up a quote than to call a family that had just lost four children in one car accident? Yes, a lot easier. And, I was only 22, so I would have had an excuse, right? Wrong.

So, Mr. Mitchell, can we expect a two part column explaining why your lies are acceptable?

Why do I think you'll never, ever answer that? Oh, it's that character thing.

You have none.

Cloud Dance

Snake On A Train

The Swiss have a problem at the moment. It seems a passenger on one of their commuter trains was taking his pet for a ride. The pet made a break for it and hid in the walls of the car. So now they have the railroad car out of service while they're hunting for the pet.

The pet snake.

"We immediately took the train out of service," Eric Luthy, a spokesman for the Neuchatel Regional Transport company, said Thursday.

Since last Saturday, reptile experts and infrared devices have been unable to find the cold-blooded adder or coax it out of its hiding place with juicy bait.

Although the snake is not regarded as dangerous, passengers "wouldn't understand" if the train was put back into service with the 80 to 130 centimetre-long (2.6 to 4.2 feet) reptile slithering around, Luthy explained.

The rail company hopes to claim compensation from the pet owner's civil liability insurance.

We have been trying to tell the Swiss railway people our thoughts on the matter all day, but they keep hanging up. So we'll just let our faithful readers know that we've figured out why they can't find the snake.

He had a transfer. He's been joyriding all over the alps laughing at them.

An Immoral Calculus

I just read a post by Russell Shaw at Huffington Post. He asks a question about what he calls a 'calculus' and asks if it has a moral validity. His calculus? Would a terror attack that killed an unspecified number of Americans just before the election and therefore swept the Democrats into office be a really cool and neat way to win the election? (I'm paraphrasing a bit).

The short answer: No.

The longer answer: If a terror attack happens on this country before the election do you honestly believe your words will not come back to haunt you and everyone you support? They will. Promise.

This is probably the most obscene line of political reasoning I have seen. If your ambition to gain political power is so lacking in morality as to make you yearn for the deaths of your fellow citizens, you have lost any claim to any moral high ground.

A thought experiment: Turn the parties around and ask Mr. Shaw's question. Insert any political group. Insert people from other countries and switch their political groups in. See the problem?

There is no way to make such calculus anything but immoral, Mr. Shaw. No way whatsoever.

UPDATE: Others suitably impressed with Shaw: Say Anything, Hot Air, Right Wing News, Ace of Spades, LGF, Done With Mirrors (Callimachus delivers a severe smackdown - don't miss it), Redstate, The Real Ugly American, Urban Grounds, And as of this update, 10:04 PM CDT, not one single left wing blog is condemning this that I can see. Not one.

UPDATE: Caerdroia (Fisking very thoroughly), Argghhh, PoliPundit, Liberty and Justice, All Things Beautiful, Strategic Outlook Institute, GOP and College, Right Wing Sparkle, Dr. Melissa Clouthier, Florida Cracker, And I still cannot find one left wing blog - I went quite a ways into a Technorati search.

Natascha Kampusch: Identity Confirmed

The 18 year old woman who escaped captivity eight years after being kidnapped has been conclusively identified through DNA testing. It is, indeed, Natascha Kampusch, kidnapped on her way to school when she was ten years old. The man who kidnapped and held her for eight years killed himself after she escaped. They're waiting on a DNA test on him, too, since he threw himself under a commuter train.

As investigators interviewed the 18-year-old about her harrowing ordeal, some neighbors questioned Friday whether they could have done more to end it earlier.

Stefan Freiberger, a retiree in his 60s, recalled his daughter and a friend telling him that the man now believed to have abducted Kampusch had exposed himself a few years ago as the two girls rode their bikes past the back of his house. Freiberger said he contemplated going to the police about the man, Wolfgang Priklopil — but didn't.

Priklopil's house in this semi-rural community — where children play freely in the streets and doors are left open — had a menacing aura, Freiberger said.

"Whenever I went by, everything was closed," he told The Associated Press, recalling a house characterized by shuttered windows, closed gates and a well-manicured lawn.

Priklopil, 44, killed himself Wednesday by jumping in front of a Vienna commuter train.

Police have said they are looking for a possible accomplice based on the testimony eight years ago of a 12-year-old girl who claimed to have seen two people in a white van stop and seize Natascha.

Priklopil's suicide came just a few hours after Kampusch escaped and frantically pleaded for help at a neighbor's door.

My earlier posts on Natascha here and here.

If You Can’t Beat Them

A convicted thief escaped from a Vietnamese prison and found the absolutely perfect place to hide for twenty years.

He joined the police force.

A police newspaper reported Friday that Ngo Thanh Tam, 51, was re-arrested Tuesday, two decades after joining the police under a false identity in the Central Highlands province of Dak Nong.

The An Ninh Thu Do (Capital Security) newspaper described Tam as a "dangerous criminal" on the national wanted list. After his arrest he was purged from the party, which he joined in June.

It was unclear how Tam's real identity was discovered.

Tam was sentenced to four years in jail in 1984 for a series of robberies, but he escaped from prison in 1986, the newspaper said. In 2003 Tam was promoted to police chief of Dak Ru commune.

Absolutely awesome display of detective work, isn't it?

Another Rash Of Airline Security Alerts

Four in one day now. A specific bomb threat was called in on an Aer Lingus flight. No bomb was found. A man arriving on a flight from Argentina had traces of dynamite residue in his luggage. A flight from England was diverted to Bangor, Maine after the TSA determined there was a security concern and finally, a Federal air marshal tackled a passenger after some unspecified altercation involving a flight attendant.

HOUSTON - A college student's checked luggage on a Continental Airlines flight from Argentina contained traces of dynamite, authorities said, in one of four security incidents Friday involving U.S. flights.

An American Airlines flight from England to Chicago was forced to land in Bangor, Maine, for security reasons, and a U.S. Airways jet was diverted to Oklahoma City after a federal air marshal reportedly subdued a passenger who was involved in an incident with a flight attendant, officials said.

An Aer Lingus flight from New York to Dublin was evacuated Friday morning during a scheduled stopover in western Ireland following a bomb threat that turned out to be unfounded, officials said.

There is considerably more detail in the article. There is a field of study that looks at precursors leading up to various events. Generally applied to accidents, it can also be used to predict other things and some researchers are adapting it to terrorism threats. (As a management tool, if you start seeing a rash of minor accidents you need to step in - fast - before a major event happens).

I wonder what the researchers think of this sudden rash of odd incidents?

UPDATE: It was NOT dynamite residue found in the student's luggage. It was a stick of dynamite.

Lieberman To Remain In Democratic Party

Connecticut Democratic party registrar Sharon Ferrucci today rejected a move by "peace activists" to expel Joe Lieberman from the party.

The senator lost the Democratic primary and is running in the general election as part of a new party, Connecticut for Lieberman.

Had Registrar Sharon Ferrucci agreed to the petition, she could have scheduled a hearing in which Lieberman would have to explain why he should remain in the party that nominated him for the vice presidency in 2000.

The authority to expel a party member "should be rarely and cautiously exercised," Ferrucci said.

"The Democratic Party is founded upon principles of inclusion and diversity of opinion and the promotion of debate," Ferrucci said. "I do not intend to summon anyone enrolled in my party to defend the good faith and bona fide nature of their affiliation with the Democratic Party."

Another dirty trick fails.

Honk If Pluto Is Still A Planet

According to the BBC, you can buy bumper stickers over the internet already that say just that. Critics of the decision of the "Irrelevant" Astronomical Union decision to downgrade Pluto say that the vote was effectively hijacked by certain elements within the astronomical group.

On Thursday, experts approved a definition of a planet that demoted Pluto to a lesser category of object.

But the lead scientist on Nasa's robotic mission to Pluto has lambasted the ruling, calling it "embarrassing".

And the chair of the committee set up to oversee agreement on a definition implied that the vote had effectively been "hijacked".

The vote took place at the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) 10-day General Assembly in Prague. The IAU has been the official naming body for astronomy since 1919.

Only 424 astronomers who remained in Prague for the last day of the meeting took part.

An initial proposal by the IAU to add three new planets to the Solar System - the asteroid Ceres, Pluto's moon Charon and the distant world known as 2003 UB313 - met with considerable opposition at the meeting. Days of heated debate followed during which four separate proposals were tabled.

Eventually, the scientists adopted historic guidelines that see Pluto relegated to a secondary category of "dwarf planets".

Drawing the line

Dr Alan Stern, who leads the US space agency's New Horizons mission to Pluto and did not vote in Prague, told BBC News: "It's an awful definition; it's sloppy science and it would never pass peer review - for two reasons.

"Firstly, it is impossible and contrived to put a dividing line between dwarf planets and planets. It's as if we declared people not people for some arbitrary reason, like 'they tend to live in groups'.

"Secondly, the actual definition is even worse, because it's inconsistent."

One of the three criteria for planethood states that a planet must have "cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit". The largest objects in the Solar System will either aggregate material in their path or fling it out of the way with a gravitational swipe.

Stern dryly points out that Earth has not cleared its orbit. (They use the same picture of Clyde Tombaugh that I did last night, incidentally).

Cat fights among astronomers. This should be amusing to watch.

Chavez Violates Godwin’s Law

Well, at least a corollary since Godwin's law actually applies to the internet. But Chavez called Israel worse than Hitler. So he resorted to the reductio ad Hitlerum at the least.

"Israel often criticizes Hitler … but they have done the same thing, perhaps even worse," Chavez told reporters Friday in a briefing during his six-day visit to China.

Denouncing the "fascist attitudes" of Israel, he said: "What has happened was a genocide. They must be brought in front of an international tribunal."

"Nobody should stay muted," he said.

What an offensive little man he is.

China And South Korea To Cooperate

China and South Korea have agreed to work together to stop a possible North Korean nuclear test. They did not elaborate on what that cooperation would entail. Looks like Kim Jong Il is not making any friends in China at the moment.

A nuclear test by the communist North would be "a grave situation of a different level from missile launches," Song Min-soon said after returning from a two-day trip to China, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

"South Korea and China have agreed to continue cooperation not to let that situation occur," Song was quoted as saying. He did not elaborate on how the two countries would cooperate.

South Korea and China, along with Japan, Russia and the United States, have tried to convince the North to abandon its nuclear program at six-party negotiations that have been on hold since November.

The North stoked regional tensions on July 5 by test-firing seven missiles, drawing U.N. Security Council sanctions, and concerns are growing that it could be preparing for a nuclear test.

Hopefully, this can stop Kim, but he has been behaving in an increasingly erratic fashion for some time now.

Pluto Gets Support Group

In a strongly worded statement, the Seven Dwarves have slammed the International Astronomical Union for taking away Pluto's status as a planet.

"Although we think it's DOPEY that Pluto has been downgraded to a dwarf planet, which has made some people GRUMPY and others just SLEEPY, we are not BASHFUL in saying we would be HAPPY if Disney's Pluto would join us as an eighth dwarf," they insisted.

"We think this is just what the DOC ordered and is nothing to SNEEZE at."

Pluto the dog made his debut in 1930 — the same year that a 24-year-old American astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh, discovered what until now was called the ninth and outermost planet.

A white-gloved, yellow-shoed source close to Disney's top dog said: "I think the whole thing is goofy.

"Pluto has never been interested in astronomy before, other than maybe an occasional howl at the moon."

Well, what did you expect? So far it has been a slow news day.

Don’t Look Now

But sanity just broke out among the managers of the US Air Marshal program. Members of the service will be allowed to dress in any way they feel will help them blend in, instead of being held to a rigid dress code.

The director of the Federal Air Marshal Service relaxed a strict dress code and some of other rules on Thursday, addressing gnawing problems at an organization that has expanded quickly since 2001 but been plagued by poor morale.

On September 11, 2001, there were only 33 air marshals, but now armed law enforcement officials disguised as passengers are deployed on thousands of U.S. airline flights each week. Their actual number is classified, but officials say it is in the thousands.

Dana Brown, who has been seeking to improve working conditions since he took over as the agency's director earlier this year, said that, as of September 1, marshals can choose what to wear on flights.

"The manner of dress should allow you to blend in and not direct attention to yourself, as well as be sufficiently functional to enable you to conduct your law enforcement responsibilities, and effectively conceal your duty equipment," he said in a memo to air marshals that was obtained by Reuters.

Brown's predecessor Thomas Quinn, who was charged with beefing up the air marshal service after the September 11 hijackings, had faced resistance from disgruntled air marshals who said their undercover status was compromised by rules like the stringent dress code.

So you will not be able to tell the air marshal by their clean-cut, business-suited appearance any longer. About time, I'd say.