What's Wrong With This Picture?
Topic: Out of Flyover Land
A little something that is in the local Las Vegas news, but if it hits National, it will be drastically edited.

Hat tip toTim Covington at

De Opresso Liber


Picketers for Hire

The strange business of protesting jobs that may be better than yours

By Stacy J. Willis

Wal-Mart picketers
Photo by Iris Dumuk

The shade from the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market sign is minimal around noon; still, six picketers squeeze their thermoses and Dasani bottles onto the dirt below, trying to keep their water cool. They're walking five-hour shifts on this corner at Stephanie Street and American Pacific Drive in Henderson?anti-Wal-Mart signs propped lazily on their shoulders, deep suntans on their faces and arms?with two 15-minute breaks to run across the street and use the washroom at a gas station.


They're not union members; they're temp workers employed through Allied Forces/Labor Express by the union?United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). They're making $6 an hour, with no benefits; it's 104 F, and they're protesting the working conditions inside the new Wal-Mart grocery store.

Below Area Standards, picketer and former Wal-Mart employee Sal Rivera says about the notorious working conditions of his former big-box employer: "I can't complain. It wasn't bad. They started paying me at $6.75, and after three months I was already getting $7, then I got Employee of the Month, and by the time I left (in less than one year), I was making $8.63 an hour." Rivera worked in maintenance and quit four years ago for personal reasons, he says. He would consider reapplying.

The group has no transportation to go elsewhere?they are dropped off by a union van and picked up later. On weekends, they have to find their own transportation, Greer said.

Inside, the store manager at the Stephanie Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market says he's perfectly happy with his job, and that his insurance is fine.

"The average rate of pay for Nevada Wal-Mart workers is $10.17 an hour. We have a good insurance program, and every associate?even part-timers?are eligible for the 401k," says Mark Dyson. "There's actually different levels of insurance, dental and medical?I have a $500 deductible, but there's no cap on it. Some other companies' plans have a $1 million cap, but here there's no cap. For example, not long ago we had an associate whose husband needed a liver transplant, and that alone was $600,000; but they didn't have to worry about a cap.

In Dyson's market, the air-conditioning is cool, business on this day seems brisk, and the employees seem not so miserable; two checkers chat it up as they ring up customers.

This is not lost on the picketers outside.

Rivera removes his watch to show the dark tan his arm has gotten working in the sun; he talks about how he takes three buses to get to this work site on weekends; it takes two hours to get there and two hours to get home?a nine-hour day including that transportation for a gross pay of $35.

"I asked him (union organizer Hornbrook), I said, 'How come we're working here for $6 an hour? I need you to help us find a better job. I want information on the union,'" Rivera said.


I clipped out just part of the story, go to the website and read it all.

What sticks out to me is that these people are walking long hours in the hot sun for next to nothing for a pittance. They are protesting working conditions that compared to theirs look like paradise.

What happens if they do a REALLY good job? Well then the Union calls the Temp Agency and tells it they do not need these workers anymore, BUT if they can get jobs in a Union shop all by their own efforts?

Why the Union will be HAPPY to represent them and collect their dues.

At least the Union is being smart, they are using Temps. They are therefore not obligated to pay Workman's Comp. Unemployment benefits and ALL the little details that they demand and insist Employers be responsible for.

Let us call a spade a spade they are running a literal sweatshop operation outside in 100+ temperatures and when they no longer need these workers, they will discard them.

The Union justifies their actions with this sentiment

"This is an informational picket line only," Hornbrook said. "We're paying these people. They were out of work before (joining their picket lines). This is an in-between-jobs stop.

I see. They were out of work, so they are being done a favor by having this job, otherwise they might not be working at all, OR they might have gotten jobs with someone who would treat them like human beings with decent wages, raises, benefits and working conditions.

If I were Walmart, I would pull all my employees up front, point at the picket lines, point out some of the items I listed above, and ask them, Who around here is treating the people working for them like YOU want to be treated? Us in here or the Union out there.

What is WRONG with this picture?

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Bush's Missed U.N. Opportunity?
Topic: Out of Flyover Land
Bush's Missed U.N. Opportunity


By Sebastian Mallaby

Monday, September 12, 2005; Page A19

Sometimes what the Bush administration doesn't do is as amazing as what it does do. This week is going to bring a Class A error of omission.
**********************************************
Which brings us to this week's error of omission. After two years of planning, the United Nations is convening a summit of world leaders that was supposed to relaunch the organization 60 years after its creation. The key challenge was to refashion the Security Council, whose five permanent members reflect the power relations of another age, excluding the second-biggest economy in the world (Japan) plus 1 billion Indians and all of Africa and Latin America. Intelligent Security Council reform, which would create a weighted system of representation modeled on the World Bank's board, would serve the United States well. It would end the Russian and Chinese vetoes, and, by bringing in emerging democracies such as India and Brazil, it would strengthen the Security Council's ability to legitimize global action.

Rather than seizing this chance to bolster a key global institution, the Bush administration joined the debate on Security Council reform belatedly and limply. Bowing to congressional pressure,

it declared that reform of the patronage-ridden U.N. secretariat was a higher priority, even though such reform has been on the U.S. agenda for years and is largely hopeless.

Having made the wrong strategic call, the administration compounded its error by picking petulant fights over the U.N. poverty-fighting Millennium Development Goals, jeopardizing the limited prospects for secretariat reform still further.

So whatever comes out of this week's summit, it's not going to be the full-blown relaunching of the United Nations that its sponsors had aspired to. And a large part of that failure will reflect the Bush administration's refusal to get behind reform. It is a squandered opportunity.

Let me see if I understand this. The US thinks that the UN is hopelessly corrupt. The US thinks its a good idea to address THAT before going to great lengths to

"strengthen the Security Council's ability to legitimize global action."

Loose translation give the UN more power, open Pandora's Box open a Can of Worms, take your pick.

I am trying to figure out the Missed Opportunity?
I know I laid it down somewhere, it cannot have just gotten up an walked off by itself.

OH! I get it! This guy Sebastian is UPSET and disappointed, that we did not what? Take one more step towards Transnational Progressivism?

What we really need is more Oil for Food Scandals, more UN official run pedophile and prostitution rings in UN run refugee camps and of course we need more UN officials in the employee of genocidal dictators.

All I can say after reading this article is "Thank God for the Supreme Court and how did Jane Smiley put it? Oh yes "The unteachable ignorance of the red states" or fellows like this Sebastian Mallaby could have been running this country.

PS maybe someone could clue in Smiley that a dialogue is when two parties speak and a statement by just one person is a monlogue? Or maybe she is in the habit of using the Royal "WE" and gets confused.? I noticed in a google hit she is referredt to as an "Award-winning author" that usually means doesn't sell many books or she would be called a "best selling author" has to be on the Left if an author is on the Right google would turn up something not quite as positive as "award winning".

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Things Are Not Always As They Seem
Topic: Out of Flyover Land
As more information comes out after the first flush of confusion and chaos, the perceptions of the American People are starting to shift.

Feds Get Slightly Better Marks on Katrina Response
Thirty-six percent (36%) of Americans say that the federal government has done a good or excellent job responding to Hurricane Katrina. That's up from 28% ten days ago.

While 36% say the federal government has done a good or an excellent job, just 31% say the same about the response of state and local governments

Hurricane Katrina

Federal Response----------- President Bush Response
Excellent 15%-------------- Excellent 20%
Good 21%-------------- Good 19%
Fair 20%-------------- Fair 23%
Poor 42%---------------Poor 37%


Things are not always as they seem at first glance, even when the media does not go out of its way to point things blacker than needed.

Now I realize that drama sells more advertising than good news, but you have to admit, the Mainstream Media in this country do go to extremes at times.

Not however as much as the in Europe. There they do not allow even the most trivial action, such as going to the lavatory escape their eagle eye and sense of ridicule.

BREAKING NEWS at SPIEGEL ONLINE: Bush's Bathroom BreakThere is a new standard for quality and niveau in the German media when it comes to reporting on the United States. Forget explaining the complex workings of American politics, forget trying to present diverse political viewpoints from within the world's only remaining superpower, forget serious discussion of the Bush administration's plans for UN reform. No...none of that really matters right now...put all that on hold...this is far more important...

Sigh one wonders if they checked the room to see if the sink was wet indicating he did wash his hands afterwards. It is obvious he did we would have heard about it otherwise.

While I was reading this and like matters I got to thinking how different reality is from what most of the public perceive it and I recalled some events from my youth.

I will take a moment here to reminisce. Some may find this tale humorous some may not.

First I must provide some perspective and location.
I graduated from High School in 1969, some of you will recall those days, a time of great upheaval here at home and abroad.

I did not go to the University, until the Fall of 1971, my first two years I spent at a local Community College branch of the University of Kentucky.

I missed quite a bit of the excitement by staying home those two years. One particular incident I missed at UK was the night they burned down the ROTC Building A blow for the Revolution!

I say they, because I was about 300 miles away when it happened and had no involvement. But after wards at UK and during the years later I met quite a few who were very proud that we burned down the ROTC Building. Really I thought there were far too many "we's" for all of them to have been involved but some people do like glory through Association.

What divides me from them is that I know the real truth about what was done that night. I learned it from a girl I met on campus.

Maureen was a very pretty girl, which might account for my clear recollection of the tale she told after all these years.

Was she a Revolutionary, and Anarchist, a Sister in the Struggle? No, Maureen was a Dancer. A Ballet Dancer actually with the UK Dance Company.

Maureen also had a severe handicap, which was revealed to me by one of her closest friends. Ballerinas start training when they are not much older than babies, toddlers even and Maureen was VERY good at what she did, but alas she did NOT have the Classic Ballerina Build, she was how shall I put it? Too top heavy. EXTREMELY topheavy. Believe me, when those bright blue eyes flashed and her face flushed with emotion and and the Twin Peaks moved, your attention was RIVETED.

Maureen was very bitter about the Night They Burned Down the ROTC Building. No she was not a Young Republican, she was just a Dancer, but you see, the ROTC had not used that building in YEARS.

The Fine ARTS Dept used it instead to store the Props and Costumes for the Theater and Dance Company!

It was a case of Improper Target Identification and a lack of Intelligence in ALL the definitions of the term.

Over the years I have had the great pleasure of running into people who went to UK at that period of time and look back on their Revolutionary Youth with great Pride,

I just love it when they say, "Yeah man, WE burned down the ROTC Building!" and I get to see the confusion in their face when I reply, "Yeah that certainly was a Great Blow in the Struggle Against Culture!". "Rise up and throw off the Shackles of Ballet and Theater?"

Then when I explain with disgust what actually happened that night, and how long it took the Fine Arts Dept to recoup the blow to its budget, there is that moment, when I can see ALL of their Youthly Illusions Shatter, and Die,

Now, I want you to know, I am not an unfeeling person, I get a great deal of delight from these experiences. ;-)


The Lesson of this tale is always verify,
Things Are Not Always As They Seem.

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Media Bias
Topic: Out of Flyover Land
From time to time on International Discussion Forums, someone from another country will ask questions.

There is often a difference of opinion on matters between Americans online.

Recently a few of us were trying to explain Liberal Media Bias, when one of our counterparts posted the following,


"That's so funny you keep saying this - several months ago NPR did an anonymous poll of journalist across America and found that 48% of them declared themselves REPUBLICANS"

That was a surprise and if anyone knows a source for such a poll, I would be interested to peruse it.

As far as I can determine from source I can find the situation is much different.

Studies Show Reporters Less Conservative Than General Public

A survey released in May 2004 by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press provides the most recent figures to this evidence. That study shows journalists at the local and national level consider themselves more liberal compared with the public overall and less conservative. But like the general public, most journalists call themselves moderates. (Some commentators on this survey wonder if the survey participants may call themselves moderate despite not having those views.)

"Journalists at national and local news organizations are notably different from the general public in their ideology and attitudes toward political and social issues," the survey's summary notes. "Most national and local journalists, as well as a plurality of Americans (41%), describe themselves as political moderates. But news people - especially national journalists - are more liberal, and far less conservative, than the general public."

The survey found that 20 percent of general public calls itself liberal while 34 percent of the national journalists and 23 percent of local journalists. Forty-one percent of the public calls itself moderate while 54 percent of the national and 61 percent of the local journalists do so.

That compares with how 33 percent of the American public calls itself conservative compared with 7 percent of the national and 12 percent of local journalists.


Liberal Media Evidence

THE ARGUMENT over whether the national press is dominated by liberals is over. Since 1962, there have been 11 surveys of the media that sought the political views of hundreds of journalists. In 1971, they were 53 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In a 1976 survey of the Washington press corps, it was 59 percent liberal, 18 percent conservative. A 1985 poll of 3,200 reporters found them to be self-identified as 55 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In 1996, another survey of Washington journalists pegged the breakdown as 61 percent liberal, 9 percent conservative. Now, the new study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found the national media to be 34 percent liberal and 7 percent conservative.

Over 40-plus years, the only thing that's changed in the media's politics is that many national journalists have now cleverly decided to call themselves moderates. But their actual views haven't changed, the Pew survey showed. Their political beliefs are close to those of self-identified liberals and nowhere near those of conservatives. And the proportion of liberals to conservatives in the press, either 3-to-1 or 4-to-1, has stayed the same. That liberals are dominant is now beyond dispute.

Now one retort to the above is to point out the percentage of the mediawho consider themselves to be moderate, but I wonder, is a Dubuque moderate the same as one who lives in LA, NY, or DC?

Labels such as Conservative, Liberal and Moderate are subjective and cover a range of political thougth.

Party affiliation is more definitive. Visual aids such as graphs show the demarcation more vividly.

Media Bias Basics

What is the opinion of those in the media on this topic? Let us look at a small sample of the more prominent opinions from the above source.

"I thought he [former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg] made some very good points. There is just no question that I, among others, have a liberal bias.
- CBS's 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney

Most of the time I really think responsible journalists, of which I hope I'm counted as one, leave our bias at the side of the table. Now it is true, historically in the media, it has been more of a liberal persuasion for many years.
ABC anchor Peter Jennings

"There is a liberal bias. It?s demonstrable. You look at some statistics. About 85 percent of the reporters who cover the White House vote Democratic, they have for a long time. There is a, particularly at the networks, at the lower levels, among the editors and the so-called infrastructure, there is a liberal bias. There is a liberal bias at Newsweek, the magazine I work for.
Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Evan Thomas

"Everybody knows that there's a liberal, that there's a heavy liberal persuasion among correspondents...
Walter Cronkite

Now Walter Cronkite does present a reason for this,

.Anybody who has to live with the people, who covers police stations, covers county courts, brought up that way, has to have a degree of humanity that people who do not have that exposure don't have, and some people interpret that to be liberal. It's not a liberal, it's humanitarian and that's a vastly different thing

Loose translation, conservatives are not humanitarian, but of course that is not a Liberal bias, just reality as they see it.

And last but not least a complete admission from the direction of CNN

"I do have an axe to grind...I want to be the little subversive person in television."
Barbara Pyle, CNN Environmental Editor and Turner Broadcasting Vice President for Environmental Policy

All of this might explain a curious situation recently at CNN, it was either bias or journalistic incompetance of such a magnitude as defy belief.

I will let you decide.


From the "Bias? What liberal bias?" files...
On Saturday, CNN.com had a piece [9/12 clarification carried by Reuters] titled "Firms with White House ties get Katrina contracts:"

Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.

One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.

The Baton Rouge-based Shaw Group, CNN tells us, is a major corporate client of Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Among its Katrina-related contracts are this one valued up to $100 million from FEMA; and this one also valued up to $100 million from the Army Corps of Engineers.

But in their zeal to embarrass the Bush administration, CNN overlooks one very fat and inconvenient fact--and embarrasses only itself.

The Shaw Group, a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, is headed by Jim Bernhard, the current chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party. Bernhard worked tirelessly for Democrat Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's runoff campaign and served as co-chair of her transition team. Another Shaw executive was Blanco's campaign manager. Bernhard is back-scratching chums with Blanco, whom he has lent/offered the Shaw Group's corporate jets to on numerous occasions.

Now I just WONDER, how did CNN happen to miss this little tidbit?

"Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

Is big news.

The Shaw Group, a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, is headed by Jim Bernhard, the current chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party

Was not that important and so was left out of the story, or CNN could not report a PTA meeting with out missing most of it.

You choose.

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