Walmart? More like Wal-NOT!

WAL-NOT--as in, Not In My Backyard!

Walmart has become the new NIMBY as Washington DC residents organized to prevent 3 Walmarts from being built in their city last July:

"Walmart is becoming more of a cancer everyday," says angry Huffington Post user Bigodiddy.

"We all subsidize WalMart's poverty-level wages!" cried lightnessandjoy.

"Walmart is big enough we don't need new Walmart stores anywhere...Walmart is evil and unless they step up and show us otherwise we will continue believing it is evil," explains Zachary Carder.

See, no one wants a Walmart in their neighborhood anymore.  And it's easy to get rid of them, too!  How did DC save itself from having unsightly Walmarts decimate their community?

They simply required that Walmart pay all its workers a minimum wage of $12.50 an hour.  This would require the impossible price raise of 1.1% for its stores in the DC area.  Now, 1.1% might not sound like a lot, but you know who that would really piss off?

Mr. Smiley.  When he says "Low Prices, Every Day," he really means it!  How else are Walmart's execs supposed to "Save Money. Live Better?"

Fun Fact: With over 2 million employees and 8,500 stores, Walmart is the largest private employer in the world. (source)

Spies & Socialists

Spies and Socialists-- all the fun things that start with S!  Read up on the latest:

1. USA wiretapping and internet spying by the NSA will not end anytime soon.  Because big surprise, the same people who made this law, just voted to keep it going full force.

2. Did you know the USA has a Socialist Workers party? Apparently no one else, did either.  The Federal Election Commission says the Socialist Workers Party doesn't need regulation like other political parties because they're "largely irrelevant."

Why so irrelevant?  Perhaps it's like the New York Times said, "it [already] succeeded, even in the United States. Socialism meant the emancipation of the working class and its transformation into the middle class; it championed social justice and a progressive tax system, and in that sense has largely done its job."

Yep...because the working class in the USA is doing just fine, and the middle class is secure and stable!  It's not like we have an increased income gap for the last 20 years, or sharply declining taxes on our wealthy.

3. Meanwhile, France is winning all the socialism, because last year they elected the first Socialist Party President since 1988.  François Hollande's catchphrase is  "I want to put the magic back in the French dream," and he plans to do this by enacting a 75% tax on France's most wealthy!  But don't tell his PR team, he got in trouble for making that comment last year! He just didn't know any better, because he's never held a national government office before.

Religion Not Involved in Repeal of Prop 8!

In an amazing upset this week, Prop 8 was overturned, and the ruling judges never even mentioned religion in their decision! Right, I control+F-ed (searched) through 128 pages of statement and only civil marriage was mentioned, but never the word "religion," nor "discrimination," anywhere that I could find. How politically correct!

Yes, I'm really impressed by the court that recently declared Prop 8 unconstitutional. Yes! The way they worded the decision was so beauuuuuutiful;

Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, in requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently. There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted.

Interesting, right? It was only unfair because, there was no "legitimate reason" that Prop 8 should ever have been enacted. But if there was, then it would have been okay? I guess it's okay because our government can carry out the "passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently." Hmmmm. Are gay people even a class? I guess they are now a different class, because the court said so. I guess, the court could have recognized that gay people are just, you know, people, and not even a legitimately different social class, who should ever be separate from other people in the law's eyes, but, that would have been addressing a "broader issue," and;

Broader issues have been urged for our consideration, but we adhere to the principle of deciding constitutional questions only in the contest of the particular case before the Court.

So, they couldn't ever decide that gay people deserve all the same rights as non-gay people, UNLESS there was somehow a "particular case before the Court." What would that case look like? It would have to be about someone claiming it was unconstitutional to treat gays as a separate class of people, right? Maybe because they were unnecessarily denied something given to other people?

Hmmm, it's too bad we don't have any cases like that for them to give a decision on! Maybe, one day...

Freedoms are no Longer Free, AKA American Fiscal Theory

You thought your 1st Amendment freedom was free? Think again.

Scott Walker, governer of Wisconsin, already enacted a policy that charges protesters money to protest.

American government: Ohohoho, yes! We spent all this money on the military and corporate handouts, and then we tried to cut money from social programs to fund this, but then we got all these annoying protestors, so now if we can just charge the protesters money we can kill two birds with one stone! *evil cackle*

Gosh. I don't even have to try to make fun of the government anymore. They've made a caricature of themselves before I even got there..

American Military Politics

The US seems to be planning to deploy 20,000 troops for "defense" against protesters.

This group is supposed to "quell civil unrest."

American government: Hmmm, yes. We have too much civil unrest, because we are spending insane amounts of money on our military and corporate handouts, while the working class gets poorer every year and social programs keep getting cut. How should we solve this "civil unrest?" Oooooh, let's spend MORE money on the military so we can squash the protesters!

Great strategy..

Gay Stipend Part of Giant Gay Conspiracy in Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts, has the rest of the state talking. "In a move that may be the first of its kind in the country, Cambridge will soon begin making payments to same-sex married public employees to defray the cost of what local officials have called a discriminatory federal tax." While certain companies (like Google) already pay their employees this sort of stipend, Cambridge is the first level of government to do so.

Why would Cambridge be the first place for this to happen? Previous mayor, E. Denise Simmons, pointed out that "Having marriage equality yet an unequal tax burden keeps [certain] married couples on the margins, and marginalization in a lot of ways is seen as a level of discrimination."

But why should the state or even a single city have to pay this difference? Current Cambridge Mayor, David Maher, explains that the "City of Cambridge once again stepped up as a leader in civil rights and took steps to mitigate this tax inequity...This action is the right and fair thing to do until the federal government addresses this issue." He also noted that he doesn't expect to see other cities follow suit soon, because it "requires the expenditure of funds."

So, why would the Mayors of Cambridge think this was worth spending funds on before anyone else? Could it be that, they support gay right because...both mayors mentioned in this article, are gay. Yes, it's true. E. Denise Simmons was the first openly lesbian African-American mayor in the United States. David Maher came out during his term last summer. Heck, even the Mayor before Simmons was gay; Kenneth Reeves was the first openly gay African-American mayor anywhere in the United States! (source)

So, you can see Massachusetts is only spending money on gay people because their government is gay. They don't care about the greater good of society at all, only helping gay people. Heck, probably everyone in the whole state is gay! That means all the other things in Massachusetts that we thought were great are probably just gay scams too. Like Harvard, that's totally gay. And having the lowest divorce rate in the nation? That's probably gay too.


P.S. I know some of you are looking at California and thinking, but isn't that a really gay state too? How come they don't have a low divorce rate? But remember, California is not nearly as gay as Massachusetts. California revoked gay marriage in 2008 (via Prop 8) because over 50% of that state did not support gay marriage. Meanwhile, Massachusetts' state motto is; "By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty." I mean, swords and liberty, what's more gay than that?

Men Experience Discrimination

Men are now targets for profiling all around the globe, as the Wall Street Journal reported last month.

Men everywhere claim they are being treated as predators, pedophiles and rapists when they have done nothing wrong! Things such as changing a baby's diaper, stocking underwear in a store, and rescuing a child in danger have earned men beatings, dirty looks, and even legal attacks. When it is not legal for a day care center employee to change a baby's diaper, simply because the employee is a man, how is this helping anyone?

This is blatant discrimination and it's totally unfair. Treating all men like they are criminals, before they have done anything wrong? Why are we making innocent people suffer just because of their biology?

...Oops, wait a second! I forgot that this attitude is totally outdated in America, and NOT politically correct. My TV already told me that profiling is ok, and even recommended for public safety! We need to profile American males to protect ourselves from attacks just like we need to profile Middle Eastern Americans to protect ourselves from terrorism. Thereby if you protest the profiling of men in America, you are helping the terrorists!

Fox News, the Best Talk Radio Ever

I was shocked to read today that FOX News has been awarded a front-row seat in the White House briefing room. Why is this so surprising?

It was only last year that this same administration tried to BAN Fox completely from doing interviews with White House staff. Back then, the administration said Fox was not real news and compared them to talk radio.

Now, the White House is rewarding Fox for its "length of service and commitment." Commitment to what? To being a really great talk radio program?

Alli, Weight Loss via Suffering

I normally hate watching TV and last night I was reminded why. The worst of consumer culture swarmed the airwaves around 12am in a cacophony of diet commercials. I was surprised to see one for the diet pill Alli because I heard it was removed from the market due to bad side affects, so I Googled it and the results were acutely disturbing:

Alli is still on the market but it causes you to loose weight in a punishing way; if you eat fatty foods your anal sphincter becomes useless. Yes, you will poo your pants and it will be greasy, noisy and possibly explosive. And even if you stick to a diet plan, there is a period of adjustment where you will experience "treatment effects" including

» Gas with an oily anal discharge
» Loose stools or diarrhea
» More-frequent bowel movements
» Hard-to-control bowel movements

I'm not exaggerating, this list is quoted directly from the Alli review at mayoclinic.com . The reason Alli produces such awful effects is that it works by preventing your body from absorbing part of the fat you consume, so that fat just zooms through your body as oily sludge instead. The less calories from fat you consume, the less painful your "treatment effects" will be.

And how much weight can you expect to lose while on Alli? It only works when combined with a restricted diet and exercise plan, and the website says it will not cause any weight loss on its own, merely increase the effectiveness of your diet plan by 50%. So if your own, non-diaper demanding diet plan would net you 10 pounds lost, Alli will make that 15.

How could this possibly be worth it?

Cell-ebrity Author makes $600k at 15 yrs

And my teachers used to say, "Texting on your phone is a waste of time!"

Maybe they should have encouraged us to text more in class! Then I too, could have become famous, and published a SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLAR ($600,000) novel; like this Tokyo teenager so famous she is now known only as "Bunny." Being a one-named celebrity now puts her right up there with Madonna and ...Madonna?

PA Saves Education, Creates Casinos

Earlier this month, Pennsylvania almost closed its State libraries due to a broken state budget. The state had been running for months without a budget, and the legislators still couldn't agree on one that would balance for the next two years. There were too many expenses and not enough funding! No one wanted to accept cuts for schools or social services, but no one wanted to raise taxes either. :-/ Meanwhile, programs in PreK education, drug and alcohol counseling, domestic-violence shelters, and food pantries continued to suffer the immediate lack of funding-- laying off staff, reducing hours, cutting services, or simply closing altogether.

Luckily, Governor Ed Rendell had a great idea. Legalize gambling! If this bill goes through, it will create an extra $730 million in yearly funds, most of which will go to the state's universities.