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It wasn't long in coming.
The wrong death suit accuses Wal-Mart that "by offering deep discounts it created an atmosphere of competition and anxiety that led to crowd craze".
The security guard is said to have attempted to protect an 8 months pregnant woman from the crowd storming into the store. He obviously was more concerned about her safety that his own.
That brings up several questions:
Does Wal-Mart or anyone else for that matter expect a woman who is 8 months pregnant to show up in a Black Friday crowd?
What condition is the woman in now? What is HER story?
Also, what REALLY killed the man?
Could it have been a heart attack, considering his huge weight?
OK. I am not in court defending Wal-Mart. I am sure the store will have a team of lawyers who will present the company. No more Black Friday sales would prevent other stores to wind up with similar problems in the future. because big crowds - and rowdy behavior - is the name of the game.
Control the herds? Watch them in action and you will understand that controlling them is a bit utopian.
http://tinyurl.com/6rale9
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I don't usually post video links, but I think it's important to review the Administration's accomplishments during the past eight years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUuGuQPftvk
If this doesn't make you angry, you are emotionally dead.
Cheers!
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We watched a biography of Paul Robeson last night. Born in 1898, son of a run-away slave father and a Quaker mother, he won an academic scholarship to Rutgers from which he graduated with honors. He was a star athlete (football, baseball, basketball and track and field,) studied law at Columbia and graduated in 1928. He was hired by a law firm, but quit after a white secretary refused to take his dictation.
His voice and acting abilitie were displayed in many plays and musicals--from Shakespeare's Othello to Showboat, where he sang 'Ol Man River.'--I'm sure drawing on his father's memories as a former slave.
He became a champion of the underdog--not just the black man. He stood for anyone who suffered--including coal miners. And he was castigated for his beliefs.
Why? Because he went to Russia and tried to use Russia as an example of how the US could break down the American animosity against the black man? Or was he a victim of the ideology of the Cold War.
Or maybe, was he a precursor of things to come--Malcome X and Martin Luther King, Jr., and, now, Barack Obama?
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The saying used to be "What's good for General Motors is good for the USA."
Times have changed. Now GM is asking the government for an eighteen billion dollar bailout. They are also cutting jobs, closing factories, and cutting executive pay as they scramble to remain solvent.
From the NY Times: "G.M. said Tuesday that it needed $4 billion in immediate loans to stay in business after December, and another $8 billion to carry it through the first part of next year." The additional four billion, I suppose, will come later.
Let's speculate on what would happen if the taxpayers did NOT shell out eighteen billion dollars to help GM. Would it cost us taxpayers more in the long run, or less?
Is there cronyism involved? Is GM really that important to our economy that we need to pour another 18 billion dollars into it? And will they ever be able to repay such a loan? What if they take the money and still go out of business?
In this economy, people aren't buying cars anyway, certainly not American cars, so why should we think a bailout would be good for anyone except (temporarily) GM?
I don't have any answers, I'm looking for your opinions.
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Sola gratia ("by grace alone")
From Wikipedia:
Sola gratia is the teaching that salvation comes by God's grace or "unmerited favor" only — not as something merited by the sinner. This means that salvation is an unearned gift from God for Jesus' sake. While some maintain that this doctrine is the opposite of "works' righteousness" and conflicts with some of the aspects of the Roman Catholic doctrine of merit, it might be asserted that this article, taken at face value, conflicts in no way with Roman Catholic teaching; while the doctrine that grace is truly and always a gift of God is held in agreement between both views, the difference in doctrine lies mainly in two facts: that of God as sole actor in grace (in other words, that grace is always efficacious without any cooperation by man), and second, that man cannot by any action of his own, acting under the influence of grace, cooperate with grace to "merit" greater graces for himself (the latter would be the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church). This doctrine asserts divine monergism in salvation: God acts alone to save the sinner. The responsibility for salvation does not rest on the sinner to any degree as in "synergism" or Arminianism. Lutheranism holds that this doctrine must not be maintained to the exclusion of gratia universalis (that God seriously wills the salvation of all people).
It seems to me that this sola ties right in with the last one, "By faith alone". In both cases it is an act of God that saves mankind, not through anything we can do for ourselves. In Sola Fide we learn that it is by faith alone that we are justified, indicating that at a minimum we at least must apply faith or believe in the message of Christ. But here with Sola Gratia we see it explained even further that God saves through His own design; with nothing expected from from us.
I'm not sure what I think about this one yet. I need to do a little bit more study, especially on Arminianism, as I recall hearing that term thrown around quite a bit but never really bothered to look into it yet. So far though, I don't agree with solas 1&2, so we'll have to see where I land on this one!
Any thoughts?
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Some of you may have seen the news reports about unfolding events in Mumbai, India. Teams of gunmen, in an apparently well organized assault, attacked sites throughout the Indian financial capital of Mumbai. The targets include the world famous Taj Mahal Hotel, the Oberoi Hotel, market areas, at least one train station, several restaurants, and the offices of a Jewish outreach program. At the moment, the death toll exceeds one hundred with several times that number injured and many more still at risk as hostages in some of the facilities. Americans and Britons are being selectively targetted by the attackers.
Initial reports have the Deccan Mujahideen claiming responsibility for the attacks. While misguided political correctness has news organization claiming the motivation for the atacks is unknown it seems pretty clear what that motivation is...yet another group of Islamic radicals want to give free rein to their murderous bloodlust in the name of a bankrupt and barbaric ideology. These are the very same subhuman animals that some people, even some here at Fool Moon, think we should talk to and allow to explain their twisted "logic." I say this latest atrocity demonstrates the foolishness and the futility of talks with those who kill the innocent simply because they are innocent...its time, no...its well past time, for us to give them what they crave so greatly: DEATH. It should be the national policy of the United States of America to kill without hesitation, mercy, or remorse those who endorse, support, or practice this corrupted ideology. National borders and international norms should not stay our hands until the last of these creatures has been exterminated and their foul presence no longer pollutes this planet.
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Those that refuse to learn from the mistakes in history are condemned to repeat them.. This old piece of wisdom is too often ignored.
I wonder if our arrogant administration bothered to seek advice from people like the retired Russian general.
After almost 10 years of fighting, the Soviets gave up and went home, completing their withdrawal Feb. 15, 1989. With Ronald Reagan's "freedom fighters" advancing on Kabul, the Afghan Army surrendered and Communist Pres. Najibullah resigned, April 16, 1992. He was later hanged and the schools and hospitals built especially for women by the government, closed down...
Reporting from Moscow -- Retired Lt. Gen. Ruslan Aushev served for five years in Afghanistan during the Soviet Union's nearly decade-long battle with mujahedin there. He was wounded and named a Hero of the Soviet Union. Aushev, 54, who later served as president of the Caucasus republic of Ingushetia, is now chief of the Committee of Afghan Veterans.
He sat down Thursday in his Moscow office to talk about the lessons learned from the 1980s war in Afghanistan, and what they suggest as the U.S. military enters the eighth year of its own conflict in Central Asia.
In its invasion of Afghanistan, do you believe the United States benefited from the Soviet experience? Do you see any evidence of your lessons from the Soviet defeat?
I can tell you which mistakes you made and which mistakes we made. They are the same mistakes. We set up a very weak leader, Babrak Karmal. He didn't have prestige with the people. Today the leadership of Afghanistan does not enjoy popularity with the people. They said of Babrak Karmal, he only sits there with the help of Russian bayonets. LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-aushev23-2008nov23,0,4727945.story
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Given my previous anti-gun posts, this is a rather embarrassing op, but...
Our daughter is buying a truck. She enjoys truck camping and the truck she's chosen is a good one for that.
She has a dog, Bentley, who's a well-trained, very loyal young bitch. Bentley will go everywhere with our daughter and would give her life for Ellie.
I've told Ellie that she should never go solo truck-camping without a loaded personal weapon at her side.
I'd like to get her such a weapon, but I have some questions.
What should I get her? Does she need to be with me so that she can test the balance, which would be different from mine because I'm smaller than she is, although we both have small wrists and arms.
Am I over-reacting to TV shows in wanting to give our daughter a lethal means of defending herself should she need it?
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Bank deregulation from 1970s to 1994 lead to a decrease of 20-30% in the black/white wage gap.
The move from local monopoly to more competitive banking lead to lower costs, interest rates and increased 'credit'/debt availability, increased startups which increased competition beyond the bank sector.
The result was higher hours worked and hourly pay for blacks and was more pronounced in states with lower rates of inter-racial marriage.
http://papers.nber.org/papers/w14273 refers...
Food for thought for those who suggest banking should be more regulated...
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Barack Obama has outlined an aggressive strategy to create 2.5 million new jobs by 2011 that's reminiscent of Roosevelt's New Deal. Among other things, he wants to put people to work on the crumbling US infrastructure.
Will it work? Again, we should address connectivity. One thing is the cost of health care. Employers and unions currently provide health care 'perks.' Would the government have to take over those 'perks' in order to make salaries for road building livable? If so, would the government have to work with the pharmaceuticals to lower the price of drugs or cut off R&D grants? How would the costs of hi-tech diagnostic machines be affected?
If he can swing it, there're going to be a lot of changes.
The there are trade and work agreements about which we know little. Right now, for example, a Japanese construction company is supervising the construction of a bus tunnel through a hill in Seattle. Would foreign countries be barred from bidding on contracts.
And here's recycling, again. There's a half mile of freeway outside our Town that's a 'test strip' for quiet pavement based on recycled tires. If it works, two birds could be killed with one stone--repaving freeways through urban areas and using what would otherwise be waste.
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Un-official.. yet we all deal with it!
The FCC decides... the State Department agrees: and mergers occur whether consumers like them or not!
I just drove from my home in Southern Minnesota to a little town on the Gulf of Mexico without losing an Internet connection on a cell phone connected as a modem to a laptop computer!
I remember carrying a phone that looked like a brick in 1990 which would work sometimes in my local area but not near a bridge or tunnel!
I am personally amazed by the fact that I can place a wireless device into my computer in rural MInnesota and log onto the Internet but I get calls from the middle of Kansas much less Wyoming complaining about 400kbs per second!
I don't know folks... please tell me what you think!
It is possible that I am too old to do this job!
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When is a Depression not a depression? When it's called a Recession?
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As an adjunct to the warehousing of cars at the Port of Long Beach, there was also the story about recycled cardboard, paper and plastics that's usually shipped to China in order to make boxes and filling for coats and sleeping bags. China has cut back on it's orders of our trash due to lack of demand.
China imports a lot of our trash which can cause China's pollution; i.e., the burning of circuit boards to retrieve precious metals--often made in China, then returned to China for recycling into other products.
Is this an example of the affects of the financial melt-down? People, are losing their jobs--and they're not jobs that are normally thought of as directly connected to the financial markets.
I realize this can be viewed as an over-simplification of what's going on--but isn't it an indication of the wide-apread 'problems' facing us today?
Are the, possibly unanticipated, concequences of free trade plus mnon-regulation fighting against each other?
How many non-financial, non-automotive companies can be destroyed in an 'economic turn-down?'
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