In case you still shop at Wal-Mart …

There are so many reasons to spend your shopping dollars anywhere … that’s pretty much anywhere … else than Wal-Mart.  We’ve talked about some of them before, but today we’re gonna talk about the latest and greatest:  Wal-Mart is telling its employees how to vote.  This story broke on August 1, when the Wall Street Journal printed this article:  Wal-Mart Warns of Democratic Win.  Here’s an excerpt:

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don’t specifically tell attendees how to vote in November’s election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

“The meeting leader said, ‘I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won’t have a vote on whether you want a union,’” said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. “I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote,” she said.

The Journal then reported yesterday, August 14, that labor groups have filed a complaint with the FEC over Wal-Mart’s actions in these meetings as companies aren’t allowed to expressly support or reject a specific candidate to hourly employees.  From The WSJ:

Legal experts said election-law complaints against employers are rare but that the complaint against Wal-Mart merits consideration. “I think it’s going to be a case that the FEC is going to have to take seriously,” said Joseph M. Birkenstock, a Washington attorney specializing in election law. The key to the case will be “exactly what was said” at meetings, he said.

In the “exactly what was said” category, Wal-Mart has opened itself up to further accusations as they apparently spread misinformation in these meetings, as well.  The WSJ reports that Wal-Mart presented misinformation to the employees regarding labor law and, specifically, the Employee Free Choice Act.  Essentially, Wal-Mart is scared that its employees will unionize and it is spreading fear through misinformation among its employees.

The next time you find yourself pulling into a Wal-Mart parking lot, ask yourself, “Why?”.  If you have another choice, please take it.  For further info on the glories of Wal-Mart, visit WakeUpWalMart.com.

 

Slime

I adore James Carville.  He reminds me of so many of the characters I’ve known in the South, or at least composites of them.  What he sees in his wife, Mary Matalin, though, I cannot understand.  Her latest move of patriotism is to publish, via Threshold Editions, the division of Simon & Schuster that she runs, the book, “The Obama Nation,” by Jerome Corsi.  This book has so many factual errors that the Obama campaign has published a 40 page … that’s FORTY PAGES, folks … rebuttal, called “Unfit for Publication,” which appears at FightTheSmears.com.

Corsi got little things, like the date of Barack and Michelle’s wedding, wrong.  But then Corsi got big things, like Obama’s religion (Christian) wrong.  How someone as seemingly intelligent and, I truly believe, as passionate about her country as Mary Matalin could let this kind of trash “journalism” through her publishing house is beyond me.

Clinton gets her roll call

After weeks of negotiation, Obama and Clinton announced in a joint statement today that HRC will get her roll call vote at the Convention.  Obama trotted out the “party unity” excuse and Clinton, for her part, will hear the call, offer her Super Delegate vote for Obama and then release her delegates and call on them to vote for Obama.  All of this smacks of so much of the old politics of which the Obama campaign promised to rid us.  I’m tired of it and actually glad that the credential I will share with other bloggers will be around someone else’s neck that night and I won’t have to witness this debacle on the floor in Denver.  I’ve said before, the Clintons need to go away and let Obama have his moment.  They are, of course, incapable, with their power insatiable personalities, to accomplish this.

Ah, Unity

The DNCC announced today that among the “key speakers on the economy” set for Tuesday night at the Convention is Gov. Ed Rendell of PA.  Rendell is set to speak on “how the failed policies of the last eight years have betrayed our values and left an economy out of balance.”  Rendell joins a list of ardent Obama supporters:  Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Gov. Janet Napolitano, Governor Deval Patrick, Senator Bob Casey, etc.  But Rendell?  Lest we forget, it was only last February that Gov. Rendell, then in the HRC camp, raised a ruckus with this beauty (courtesy of HuffPo):

“You’ve got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate,” the Governor said, ironically, to a black reporter. “I believe, looking at the returns in my election, that had Lynn Swann [2006 Republican gubernatorial candidate] been the identical candidate that he was — well-spoken, charismatic, good-looking — but white instead of black, instead of winning by 22 points, I would have won by 17 or so.”

Remember, if you will, that he said that only a day after Hillary, herself, made the fantastic, “”In the case of Louisiana, you know, a very strong and very proud African-American electorate, which I totally respect and understand,” statement in an attempt to disregard Obama’s victory there.  That was when the HRC campaign was in full racist mode.  And now Rendell is one of the “key speakers” on Tuesday night, the theme for which is “Renewing America’s Promise.”  I find it slightly ironic. 

The things we’ll do in the name of unity.

 

Differing views on the Obama VP texting tease

Unless you’ve been living under that boulder we mention every now and then, you know that yesterday, David Plouffe and the Obama campaign sent out an email telling supporters that they could “Be the First to Know” who Obama picks as VP via email or text message.  As Plouffe said in the email, “No other campaign has done this before.”

On HuffPo, two columnist are presenting differing views on this.  Leonce Gaiter, who I love, as you know if you’ve read this blog for very long, thinks this gimmick could backfire.  His view is that this sort of fresh tech methodology has too much of a “reality TV vibe” that plays into the all flash - no substance attack the McCain campaign is making against Obama.  With the full disclosure that I sent my text to 62262 to be on the list for the VP announcement, I will admit to nodding in agreement to Gaiter’s post.  Gaiter is convincing, accusing the Obama campaing of “turning the VP selection process into an ‘American Idol’ moment.”  It is his viewpoint that the McCain audience, “middle-aged and older minds,” will see this as nothing more than a celebrity stunt that cheapens the entire process and, by extension, the campaign and the candidate.

Simultaneously, HuffPo is carrying a post by Sarah Granger called “VP 2 B …”  Granger takes the opposite view, pointing out that Obama is following a developing trend in political campaigns of taking advantage of the growing texting culture.  Granger, too, sent her text to 62262.  She and I had different experiences.  It took her 95 minutes to receive her reply text from the campaign, verifying that she would, indeed, “be one of the first notified” of the VP selection.  I, however, received my message almost instantaneously.  I was probably a little late to the party, having ceded my laptop to my four year old for hours to play Ben Ten Alien Force at Cartoon Network.  (Don’t call social services.  I’m trying to survive living in a hotel room with two kids for two weeks.)  Granger points to her lag, however, as evidence that this gimmick of emailing or texting supporters may be just that, noting that recent emails and texts to supporters with “news” have, indeed, suffered from a lag post-media announcement, making them no more than confirmation of news already reported.  Granger still thinks that this was a “smart move” from a technologically savvy campaign that did, after all, begin on the ’net.  Obama’s core of support, after all, has always been the youth movement and it is this core that will respond very favorably to this kind of methodology. 

In the end, I think Gaiter and Granger could both be right.  The older generation(s) will probably roll their eyes at this kind of gimmick.  But I cannot imagine that it would be impactful enough to change anyone’s vote.  If a voter were to get severely worked up over this kind of thing, I can’t see how she could be on the Obama train to begin with.  On the plus side, it is the kind of technology innovation in campaigning that will turn on Obama’s core supporters.  Sure, the news may break on outside sources or even in my inbox before I get it via text.  But there is something seemingly personal about a text message that still makes it cool. 

Wherever you come down on the gimmick, itself, there’s no denying that it has created a buzz surrounding the VP selection, a buzz which may not exist in the middle of Olympics-mania and the Russia / Georgia “conflict.”  And for that, alone, perhaps it was a very smart move.

He really does know the Pledge!

How convenient is this?  Just when I was talking about the ignorant folks down here (that is, in AL) spouting off about Obama not knowing the Pledge, I find on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog, now at The Atlantic, a video … an actual video … of Barack saying the Pledge in response to a heckler at a rally.  This is just too good.  I have a headache and am too tired to worry with embedding the video here, so go to Ta-Nehisi’s blog yourself to see it and to watch the heckler dude get totally riled up.  It’s just tooooo good.