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My latest from TCS:
The last few weeks have seen some ostensible victories for the First Amendment against the evils of campaign-finance regulation. Celebrants should take a step back. As our country moves further and further toward government licensing of the press, the fact that the authorities are currently being generous with the licenses isn’t exactly reason to shout.
Happy Election Day!!!
“Palestinian boy’s organs donated to Israelis”
– CNN.com, November 7
Somehow, this seems like a bad idea to me. I could swear I’ve seen an anti-Semitic cartoon based on this premise.
Just whom could the UFT be referring to when it sneers at “barely post-adolescent editorial writers” at The Post?
C’mon guys, that hurts.
I know it was painful admitting that you’d been lying for three years about the problems with the teachers contract and accepting most of the recommendations from the fact-finding panel.
But really, my age?
Call me when you have an argument.
Here’s my latest column from The Post, taking aim at the comically dishonest anti-Wal-Mart movie by Robert Greenwald.
(Yes, Greenwald is a promiscuous octopus hater.)
Particular fun: An interview with the guy who reopened a hardware store that was supposedly crushed by Wal-Mart. He calls his store’s location (2 miles from Wal-Mart) “a gold mine.”
Snip:
In the closing minutes of the new documentary “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price,” triumphant activists proudly point to vacant lots in their various communities. Their message: They were going to build a Wal-Mart here, but we stopped it.
Vacant lots. What a victory.
And what a perfect symbol of what’s wrong not just with the anti-Wal-Mart ideologues, but the whole anti-development, anti-globalization, anti-everything left.
…
But you don’t have to like Wal-Mart to realize that its enemies are driven by faith, not facts.
For instance, the first 10-minute segment in “High Cost” — about a hardware store closing down in Middlefield, Ohio, when Wal-Mart moves in — takes such a, shall we say, relaxed approach to the truth it’s laughable.
What’s more, the real story proves exactly the opposite of the point Greenwald is trying to make.
The narrative revolves around Don Hunter, who founded H&H Hardware in 1962 and passed the business onto his son Jon in 1996. As Greenwald tells the story, everything was running smoothly until Wal-Mart’s bulldozers rampaged through the town — “Wal-Mart descends on Middlefield” the titles scream — destroying every small business in sight.
One (huge, gaping, insurmountable) problem: As first reported in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, H&H Hardware closed down nearly three months before Wal-Mart opened one its “supercenters” around the corner.
“I think Wal-Mart hurts a lot of small businesses,” Don Hunter told the Plain Dealer earlier this month. “But it’s not the reason we closed. Absolutely not.” Jon Hunter, according to the paper, told the filmmaker not to tie H&H’s closing to Wal-Mart’s opening.
Greenwald’s spokesmen replied to the Plain Dealer story by pointing out that the movie isn’t specific about the timeline — but that’s sort of the point. The story only works if the facts are obscured beyond recognition.
The real story is that H&H had been having financial difficulties for a few years before Wal-Mart arrived in mid-May of 2005. It closed down in February. And only five months after Wal-Mart arrived, a new hardware store opened in H&H’s old location.
I probably shouldn’t be surprised that a lefty documentary would lie so blatantly and so stupidly, but I still am.
Oh well.
The Online Freedom of Speech Act, which The Post endorsed here, failed the House. It had a majority, but not the two-thirds needed under the rules.
Here’s an account from Allison Hayward. Bob Bauer lays out why this is a really big setback for freedom of speech on the Internet.
I firmly believe that the speech-regulation coalition is cracking (as the House vote shows) and that real progress will eventually be made in rolling back these laws. But far more work is needed.
How to combat our robot masters:
* A robot trying to find you will use thermal imaging based on the roughly 91-degree temperature of human skin, so smearing yourself in cool mud will confuse them.
* If being chased by an unmanned robot vehicle, flee to a rustic, unmapped area with lots of obstacles.
* If your robot “smart” house — one wired with video surveillance and computer gear — tries to trap you, chop your way out with an ax and don’t take your cell phone, because the house will track you with it.
Pay attention, people.
(via Geek Press)
Don’t miss tallying how you spend your life.
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