Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death

A Wal-Mart employee in suburban New York died after he was trampled by a crush of shoppers who tore down the front doors and thronged into the store early Friday morning, turning the annual rite of post-Thanksgiving bargain hunting into a Hobbesian frenzy.

At 4:55 a.m., just five minutes before the doors were set to open, a crowd of 2,000 anxious shoppers started pushing, shoving and piling against the locked sliding glass doors of the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y., Nassau County police said. The shoppers broke the doors off their hinges and surged in, toppling a 34-year-old temporary employee, Jdimypai Damour, 34, of Jamaica, Queens, who had been waiting with other workers in the store’s entryway.

KTUU 2008 Sarah Palin turkey interview

Get this. She's talking about "pardoning" a turkey while the guy in the background is killing them. You have to watch for the juxtapositions, like when she talks about how brutal it is being on the campaign trail, or state programs being on the chopping block.

The conservative manifesto

Over at another site I was debating the nature of conservatism. My interlocutor claimed that he was standing up for "true" conservatism. The conservatism of Burke and Russell Kirk. You often hear this kind of thing, often from the same kinds of people who say they are "real" liberals, by which they mean the kind of liberals that existed back in the 17th or 18th Century, but never since then.

These guys commonly argue that McCain, and even Bush, are not real conservatives, bt that if the American people knew what real conservatism is, they would be.

So in this discussion I thought I'd point out what I think the elements of real conservatism are. Maybe some of them will look familiar to you.

Bush is what conservatism is:

Favors the wealthy over the disadvantaged at every opportunity.

Militaristic to the point of imperialism.

Simplistic, dualistic view of international dynamics.

Hostile to civil liberties, and evidencing a fondness for repressive police and military policies.

Committed to using the powers of government to enforce conservative moral and religious values.

Opposed to using the powers of government to serve the common good or to redress the legitimate grievances of disadvantaged groups.

Hostile to environmental protection or other impediments to unrestrained capitalism.

Oh, and if you haven't noticed, Burke left the building a long time ago.

The car industry is vital, but . . .

I've been watching the debate over what to do with the car industry, and I'm not entirely sure that we should just tell them to take a hike. After all, we really need the industry. In addition, it's not all their fault. True, the have fought more responsible environmental and safety regulations for over forty years, but they were profitable a year or so ago. I don't think it's entirely fair to have expected them to turn over their entire operations, especially when they were making a profit of $5-10,000 per unit on the SUV's they were selling.

Still, Jesus H. Christ!

(CNN) -- Some lawmakers lashed out at the CEOs of the Big Three auto companies Wednesday for flying private jets to Washington to request taxpayer bailout money.
Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli, left, and Ford CEO Alan Mulally testify on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

"There is a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hand, saying that they're going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses," Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-New York, told the chief executive officers of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee.

How stupid do they have to be to do this? Does it make you hand over any of your money?

Finally, something that Bush is good for

At first glance it does't sound like good news. Yesterday, Bush had a ceremony at the White House to honor the two composers of such insipid works, I hesitate to call them music, as "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and even the execrable "It's a Small World".

So where's the good news here? If you don't see it, you may be looking at it wrong. Just think. If Bush had realized back in 2001 that he could play president by handing out awards like these two vandals, how much trouble could we all have been saved?

You can thank me later for not directly linking to any of the so-called music these guys produced.

VTblogosphereTV 5a

This is Part 1 of my interview on VTBlogosphereTV.

Pop Quiz

We're not going to have too many more chances to look closely at Sarah Palin, so I'm taking every chance I can.

1. Fill in the blank. The countries in NAFTA are: _______________________.

2. Africa is a:

(a) continent

(b) country.

The hate, again

There is lots of great feeling today, and with good reason. I do think it's worthwhile, though, to keep in mind what the Obama haters are saying. It tells us what we'll be up against in the coming four or eight years. I assume there are any number of places to find this information, but I'm going back to the old reliable Facebook group, Anti-Obama and Damn Proud of it.

One particular point comes from the morning of Election Day, from the status line of a member's page:

[User] is disgusted and not optimistic about todays outcome.

Now think about this for a minute, and consider what it means. "Unhappy"? Okay. "Worried"? Why not? But "disgusted"? What would give rise to a feeling of disgust or revulsion? It seems pretty obvious to me that a policy disagreement can't make you disgusted. A visceral reaction like disgust comes from something else, and if it's not disagreement with Obama's political positions, what is left? That's right, the reaction that someone "disgusting" like him has no business getting elected president. This really seems like a pretty blatant expression of racism.

But that's just one person. Let's see what some of the rest of them are saying:

I doubt he will make it through his first term, let alone a second term. I'm hoping for an early Christmas present this year, if anyone knows what I'm thinking.

Socialism is here.. say goodbye to 95% of our economy..

Rest in peace America, it was a good run while it lasted.

FOR ALL OF YOU OUT THERE LIKE MYSELF THAT WORK 2 JOBS AND WORK HARD TO HAVE A GOOD LIFE, GET OUT YOUR CHECKBOOK. ITS TIME TO PAY SOME LAZY ASS PERSON ON HIS ASS BECAUSE WERE ALL A BUNCH OF RACIST ASSHOLES! WELCOME TO TEH MARXIST SOCIETY!!!

obama is anti semitic , he cannot rule the most important country in the world .
being black , shouldn´t he be accepting and embracing all cultures?
especially cultures that are much more powerful than them .
he does believe he is the king of the world .
and he is younger than my father .
where is your experience n*****?
R.I.P. America .

MAN FUCK OBAMA HE SHOULD BURN IN HELL...GO AHEAD AND MAKE ME AN OFFICER...IM SERVING MY COUNTRY IN IRAQ RIGHT NOW AND AM NOW LOOKING AT A PAY FUCK FROM THIS PEICE OF SHIT BASTARD THAT WE ALL JUST HIRED...

look up nostradamus' predictions. then see if you can still try to tell me obama was the "right" choice

I can't look at his stupid fucking face all over yahoo and the news.

congratulations USA you r black now!

He's not President yet; it ain't over 'til the Electoral Colleges says it's over, and we may yet make him bring out his birth certificate. If his election is nullified before he takes the oath, Biden cannot succeed him. We have to keep pushing; in the meantime, I'm hiding my guns...

THIS ELECTION HAS RUINED 300 YEARS OF ALL THIS COUNTRY HAS WORKED TO BECOME!!!!!!!

haha rob, i like ur thinking. i hate vermont, everyones a fucking libral and won't listen to who obama really is, they think hes our savior. good bye america!!
START THE REVOLUTION!!!

In Loving Memory:
The United States of America
1776 - 2008

Today, on November 4, 2008, the Socialist States of America, was born.

:(
our country is fucked in the ass, we arent gonna have any rights left, im not racist but osama obama is gonna fuck this county up, we're gonna be as important as canada soon

There are more bright spots than dark ones. Still, the fact that these people are willing to talk about the assassination of our newly elected president, or seceding, demonstrates that we have a long road ahead of us.

Barack Obama DNC Stevie Wonder

VICTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What this election means

I confess to having a great, you might say sentimental, devotion to voting. I have voted in every election I've been eligible for, and that means I've voted for a long succession of losing presidential candidates. In fact, Clinton was the first winning candidate I ever voted for, and one of the votes I was least enthusiastic for.

Still, I love to vote. This year I'm more fervent about it than in most years, and the last few nights I've felt like a little kid before Christmas. It's not just me, though. I sense a greater excitement for this election than I ever have before.

I was in Boston the night Obama secured enough electoral votes to be the candidate. I was watching his speech in the basement of a building at Boston University with four or five maintenance workers, four of whom were African, one was Hispanic. These guys were totally into it. They knew the candidates, they knew their positions, they could talk knowledgeably about possible vice presidential and cabinet choices. They knew it was an important night.

But not as important as tomorrow.

When Barack Obama was born, black people were still legally prevented from voting in parts of the United States. During our lifetimes we've seen brave people beaten and killed trying to vote; and seen candidates elected not because of the strength of their policies, but because of their ability to exploit racial fears and hatred. Now, our country, a country that owes so much of its culture to the legacy of slavery, stands on the threshold of electing its first black president. Think of what that says to the rest of the world, but more importantly, think of what it says to millions of our own citizens, citizens who have been told their whole lives, in word and in deed, that they don't have a say in what happens to their country.

He'll make mistakes, and we'll presumably stay in the opposition to much of what he does. But the important thing is this:

Starting tomorrow, everything is different. Forever.

Another example of mindless theism

Okay, you don't have to tell me I'm being redundant, but even in the world of narrow minded theological idiocy, this ranks pretty high on the list.

If you're a regular reader you may also be in the category of people who know Gary Gygax. He was the inventor of Dungeons and Dragons, and he died this past March on Town Meeting Day. Since then, his supporters and mourners have been raising money in his memory for his favorite charity, the Christian Children's Fund.

If you're supposedly committed in the welfare of children, you would be glad to get a substantial contribution to the cause, right?

Think again.