Staples Hates Competition For Your Business

Staples is at it again.  They are cutting back employee's hours before they get to the thirty hour per week limit so they have to be covered by the Affordable Care Act.  This thirty hour provision in the law needs to be dealt with one way or another.  We were told that there WAS no massive cutting back of employee's hours to thirty hours in the overall wage labor market.  But Staples is one of these "Unreconstructed" money mad corporate entities.  Of course Mitt Romney's money financed the start-up of Staples.  (It's one of the corporations that got a thumbs down meaning they weren't slain in the arena of sudden death)   But now we have the saga of Staples wanting to buy out Office Depot, who in turn had bought out Office Max not that long ago.  We clearly don't want a monopoly in the office supply retail market.  Every time I hear about a ruling of the EPA or the FTC or Justice Department- - I wish I didn't get that feeling of unease, as though the Bushies still controled these commissions.  It's like some foreign entity ruled our government and President Obama was only allowed to exist as a powerless figure head.  All of Obama's speeches are so lame it's pathetic.  Rather, for instance, than just talk about race relations, why not get Eric Holder to indict Officer Darren Wilson and the Ferguson Police Department.  As some point if I were the President I'd just say "If you don't do what I tell you to do then I'm just going to have to make one of those "executive decisions" and fire you".   Ditto for the FTC.  Some caller asked why the hell the Shermon Anti Trust Act stopped being enforced.  Yes, Reagan stopped enforcing it.  But rather than be seen as some flook anamolly- - every other President, even President Clinton- - dxecided that Reagan's "decision" had the force of a Supreme Court precedent ruling- - as though if Ronnie said it, then every other President has to follow suit.  We managed to stop the phone company mergers.  Whether it's Comcast or Time-Warner or whoever who wants to merge just say a firm "No".  Clearly it's been shown that there is much more spirited competition in the cell phone industry now after the merger was turned down.  This is a clear indication that competition is good because it drives down prices and improves service.  But sadly there are many corporations who if they had the choice would NOT have competitive prices or keep up good service, if they didn't absolutely have to. 

There is a mentally unstable atheist anti Muslim guy who wasted three men of the Islamic faith in an underground parking lot.  It’s a case of “parking lot space rage”.  But his web site is disturbing.  There are times when he sounds like your normal progressive, but then there is all this weird stuff mixed in with it.  Another story of the day is that John Stewart is leaving “The Daily Show” on cable in July, or maybe September, and has no idea what he’ll be doing.  I had the Norman Goldman show on and Hillary Clinton’s name came up.  Sean Hannity says that these days Hillary has gone into hiding granting neither one on one interviews, or press conferences.  She has given few public speeches, and any speeches she has given have been for a stiff speaking fee.  She’s the furthest thing from a Roosevelt Democrat.   She can be beaten, just as President Obama could have been beaten by a better candidate in 2008.  It's a crying shame that John Edwards had all those personal problems in 2008 because barring those, he was the odds on candidate to win the party's nomination that year and would have been the best candidate to put forward.  Someone said the only thing the Clintons have in common with FDR is that both got elected to President four times.  I just don't think we need either another Bush or Clinton in the White House.  Hillary is stale, the same way that candidate Obama was already getting stale in his rhetoric in 2008 when Hillary was beating him in all of the major primary races that year.  I think the idea of annointing someone with no conflict is silly.  We need to prove the metal of our candidates in advance.  Before they face conflicts with other nations, we need to see if they can face conflicts with their fellow travelers in the Democratic Party.

What you really want to know is what does the Orion Federation think of the "Declaration of War" that President wants congress to enact.  They think it's a very bad idea.  They point out that ISIS is entrenched and not going anywhere, and to a large degree have the support- - loyalty of a lot of people who will fight for them if needed.  It was pointed out that it was less bombs, for instance that defeated the Nazi party of Germany as much as the contrast between the kindness of US servicemen, and the brutality of their own government.  When the German people were made aware of all the concentration camps in their midst- - the normal reaction is "We didn't know".  They "Awoke" as if from a giant slumber.  Clearly the Japanese had to be shown that Hirohito wasn't incarnated from the Sun God or whatever.  The United States gave Japan the tools to rebuild their own country economically.  In contrast- - in Iraq the United States destroyed the whole infrastructure of Iraq and put back nothing in its place, except more bombings.  We were like the unwanted guest who has overstayed his welcome.  We had their enthusiastic support when we toppled Saddam Hussein, but then lost it as the war ground on year after year.  We somehow have to show them that ISIS is not worth making an Idol of to worship.  This will not be an easy job at all because if Americans were attacked by- - say Mexico or Columbia- - we would be up in arms too, attacking whenever we could with sniper attacks or whatever.  The only reason why President Obama wants this War Powers act is that he's trying to "prove his manhood to the Republicans".  That's about as bad as me trying to "Prove I'm a good fundamentalist Christian" to certain people in the Jesus movement.  At this point it's never going to happen because we are just too different.  President Obama is like the guy in the Pink Floyd song "Banging his head up against some mad buggar's wall".   He'll never win.  The Republicans won't even LET him pass this resolution right now but are going to stall for weeks on it.  That's what John Boehner does best.  He procrastenates to the n'th degree- - when everybody has lost their patience with him and just gives up- - then John Boehner says "If you had been just a little more patient- - you'd have gotten what you wanted". 

Joe was listening to this radio of this Boston University professor advising against going to war full scale with ISIS.  Thom Hartman stated that ISIS was like the Black Panthers or something as an organization acting almost charitably with women’s centers and making sure everybody has food, water and electricity.  This is hardly the image the West portrays them as.  On C-Span there were these Democratic congressmen who wanted to make sure the war declaration or whatever of 1982 was repealed.  Since military funding by constitutional law can’t be for more than two years, this resolution would have been null and void a long time ago.  But then I saw this Senator Corker guy from Texas who is like John Mc Cain’s younger brother, who went down the litany of all President Obama’s failures in foreign policy.  He spoke of the “red line” case in Syria leaving out an important detail.  He failed to point out that the President wanted Congress to approve his proposed actions and congress never even took it up.  It also should be noted that the Republicans did not approve a war resolution last year because election antics and game playing was more important to them.  They would get more votes calling President Obama a failure than they would than complying with an explicit request he made to them.  And the Democrats didn’t call them on it.  In terms of Ukraine and Putin there’s a little fact people have forgotten.  Putin has the bomb, and he’s one of the few foreign leaders who has stated openly that “If I have to use it, I will”.  But this Boston professor pointed out that Obama gets sucked into all these wars he never intended to get in (or so he says).    We touched on this with our Super Bowl story about the “New war with ISIS the President got us into”.

It's bordering on the strange- - how little normal "winter weather" ie chili and moist- - we've had this winter.  We've had these hot Santa Ana winds and yesterday set a near heat record- - from 1971 where we had a heatwave just after the February 9th earthquake.  This morning when I got up it was downright hot in this room - - but I didn't open the window because of the Santa Ana winds blowing.  These dry, hot Santa Amas are common in October and early November around here- - but not in February.   Dry heat waves have become to be known as "earthquake weather" around here.  We had the Whittier Narrows earthquake- - where I was living in the Bosc House with Frank at the time on October 1st 1987, and it was a protracted heat wave.  We have the Northridge earthquake of February 17th of 1994 with some very unseasonably hot and dry climate.  Then there was the June 28th earthquake of 1992 but of course it was summer time then anyhow.  But this hot weather is all the stranger because it's been so cold in the eastern part of the country with places like Miniapolis and Chicago having sub zero wind chill factors, and New York itself will be a zero degree wind chill.

Bob Simon, one of the Sixty Minutes crew- - was killed last night in a car crash in New York City on the west side near the Hudson river.  He had been with CBS since the days of the Viet Nam war and joined CBS in 1967  Simon was 73.  The buzz at the Federation is that "Simon died a Good Death" meaning he is now with the Federation.  In other news there is a pending Peace agreement between Russian rebels and Ukraine.  A cease fire goes into effect this Sunday, although fighting has continued during the whole period of the negotiations.  It would be truly nice to have one less conflict in the world - - at least for a while.  There was a rumor that Whitney Houston's daughter was "going to be taken off life support" on the third anniversary of her mother's death.  This assertion is, of course, completely false.  The daughter is doing much better now.   That UNLV coach who died at age 84 or something won a bunch of championships or whatever, but ran afowl of the NCAA when he won - - a legal suit against them years back.   We have that Chicago Little League team being stripped of last summer's American championship victory because the team (made up mostly of Blacks) is accused of having illegal "ringers" on the team that are inellagible to play from that zone.  I think opperative here is the term "little" and these kids were teenagers well into their growth spurts.  I thought the cut-off age for little league was twelve, but times have obviously changed.  I think as much as being stripped of the championship hurts, for the sake of the integrety of the game, that this disqualification insures the integrety of the Little League franchise for future championships.