Believe me, every other day the retail workers smile and say 'yes, you are right, how can we help you?' to all the asshole customers. But ON CHRISTMAS EVE! Just ONE day of the year, just frigging think about the retail workers! Since they already work 364 days a year now, after Thanksgiving was taken too. Is it too much to say 'On Xmas Eve, PLEASE let them leave work on time! JUST Do your shopping before 7:30pm on Christmas EVE!

Yes, the store hours might be untilo 8pm, but do you HAVE TO BE THE ASSHOLE WHO SHOWS UP AT 7:59???? Show some respect to the people who already are working their butts off and get no respect, no thank yous, no holidays off!

Thank God I am not working retail any more, but my best friend is, and so are lots of my other friends. They are the hardest working people, and still, they are the ones that worst of everything.

And things like this last minute shopping not just Walmart. I never worked for Walmart, but I salute this manager for standing up to the employees. I am sure the other money-hungry retailers were still ushering people out around 8:50pm and having cashiers stay there, just because the elite wanted to have their last minute leisure shopping 'when it is finally quiet in the store'.



>> ^Darkhand:

>> ^mintbbb:
>> ^VoodooV:
The guy's a douchebag but he is right. There is no inherent right to shop. They have the right to refuse service.
That said. It's a stupid policy. Deny entry at 8. Sure it takes longer to close because you have to get the people out..but so what. It doesn't take THAT long to get people out vs the bad PR incidents like this generates.
Let the consumer whores shop. that standoff was completely unnecessary.

It does take that long to get people out. When a store closes at 10pm, you have to pretty much try to wrestle some people out by 10:30. Turning off the lights and announcing that the store is closed does not help. On a normal night, people have to be scheduled at least that extra 30 minutes late. So, even now, I am sure nobody gets to go home before 8:30.
It is frigging Christmas eve! Retail workers are people too (surprise!), and they might want to get out of the store and to their families, and not stay extra late because some idiots want to do LAST MINUTE SHOPPING.

Mintbbb,
I understand what you are saying but I disagree.
Are retail store workers people? Yes. But unfortunately they are people with jobs, and that job is to allow people to shop. I've never heard of a policy where "Yes the store is open until 8:00 but we stop letting people in at 7:30".
I understand these people have homes,families,children,cats,etc to get home too but when you work retail it's part of your job. You (unfortunately) have to service guys like these who wait till the last minute and make you late going home.
As a person who did customer service extensively I've had people plenty of time call up 10 minutes before closing and I don't say to them midway through the call "I'm sorry I was not able to resolve your computer issue, however it is now 6:00 PM and we are closed, please try your call again tomorrow HAVE A NICE DAY click . Nor do we stop picking up at 5:30 because everyone wants to leave at 6:00.
What's happening sucks but the Manager and everyone in the store needs to suck it up and let those people in.

I wonder if "a thousand years" is a code for "we kept it as far away from George Lucas as possible." Because I'd be okay with that.
>> ^westy:

"The Old Republic, players will explore an age thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader">> ^Morganth:

The Empire returned? I thought this was a thousand years before Natalie Portman said we ushered it in with thunderous applause.

Humanism is a religion and evolution is its creation story.

"I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level -- preschool day care center or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new -- the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism."

John Dunphy THE HUMANIST MAGAZINE

As you can see, these humanists are proselytizers too, and their stated goal is the indoctrination of our children with humanist values, and the destruction of Christianity, which they will replace with their humanist faith. So much for tolerance and unity, right? How hypocritical can you get? This is the kind of insanity you get when you try to replace God with man.

These are the very people trying to establish a one world government, which is what will usher in the antichrist to power. So when that happens by sure to thank them for ending the world.

I read the wiki article you posted, it says the opposite of what you suggest. That pre-1980, they had no ability to generate policy...they just gathered information. Do you have a link to something that talks about the freemarkety nature in the 80s?, because that link doesn't have it. Unless you are just talking about Regan doing free market stuff on the whole affecting education somehow indirectly, but the link clearly says he made it a federal government responsibility to create educational policy in the 80s. In that, I don't know that your argument fully answers @Grimm's claim that educational stardards have gone down since federal policy making has been done. We aren't talking about free markets here, even at the state level. We are talking about who makes better policies affecting children's education; federal or state. It has also been of my opinion that for important things, eggs in one basket methodologies are dangerous. Best to have a billion little educational experiments boiling around the country, cooking up information that the rest of them can turn around and use. Waiting for a federal mandate to adopt a policy can be rather tedious.

I have some friends that are educators, I will have to ask them how they feel about this. It is easy for us to have an opinion based on raw idealism of our core beliefs, but I would be interested to see what certain teachers have to say. I met a real interesting person at my friends bachelor party. He came from a union state, and moved down here to Texas, we have teachers unions and things, but they aren't as powerful as the north. He experienced a complete change in himself. He found that his own involvement in his union happened in such a way where he basically held the kids education hostage over wages. He said that is was basically the accepted role of teachers to risk children's education over pay. I am not talking about just normal pay, but he was making 50k as a grade school teacher in the early 90s. Not suggesting this is normal, but it is something we don't copy here in Texas. As for his own mind, he knows he would never teach in that area of the country again, and would never suggest anyone move their that values their children's education.

What would be interesting to me is if the absence of the DOE would break down some of the red tape and allow schools to "get creative" with programs a federal political body might not want to take a risk on. Education is to important to fail on, and applying "to big to fail" kind of logic to a failing system of education is to much politics to play for me. Empower teachers and schools, and try to avoid paying as many non-educators as possible would be one way to improve things I would wager. What aspect of the DOE do you think is successful that we need to keep exactly? I mean, I can tell you I don't like that the DOD is so huge and powerful, but I know nuclear subs and aircraft carriers can't operate themselves. What necessarily component of the DOE do you see as necessarily, beyond just talking point of either party line stance of it? I mean, the Department of Energy's main goal was to get us off foreign oil, like a long time ago, that is pretty failed as much as the DOE. Different approach needed, or a massive rethinking of the current one. You don't usually get massive rethinking nationally of any coherent nature, which is why I think a local strategy might be a good way to go here. Perhaps then, you could have that initial part of the DOE before it became the DOE of providing information to schools about what works from other schools kick in again.

This kind of talk of "Ron Paul addresses none of this" about something that isn't related exactly isn't really fair. It is like trying to talk about income tax issues and saying changing them doesn't address the issue of the military war machine...well of course not, it is a different issue. Did you see that recent Greewald video where he talks about the founders did think that massive inequality was not only permissible, but the idea...just as long as the rules were the same for everyone? What I mean to say is that there does need to be a measure of fairness, but that fairness needs to be the same for everyone, rich and poor. I still say the real problem lay in the government creating the monster first and the monster is now eating us. If legislators simply refused to accept the legitimacy of corporate entities and instead say that only individuals can deal on the behalf of themselves with the govenrment(the elimination of the corporate charter as it refers to its relationship to the government) things could get better in a day. But since the good ol USA thinks that non-people entities are people, well, I don't see much hope for restoration. Money is the new government, rule of law is dead. I liked the recent Greenwald input on this. Rant over Sorry, this is just kind of stream of consciousness here, didn't plan out an actual goal or endpoint of my ideas....just a huge, burdensome wall of text

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

The first incarnation of the department of education was actually created in 1876. Was our educational system unfucked before 1876? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education
1980 was a pivotal year, but it had nothing to do with the department of education. 1980 was the year that Reagan ushered in a large number of 'free market' reforms: Privatization, deregulation, tax cuts for those at the top, austerity for those at the bottom... basically the Milton Friedman Shock Doctrine as described in Naomi Klein's excellent book.
We've since seen the rise of the corporate state and a deterioration of the public sector. These market principles have seen our jobs exported to 3rd world slaves (and then asked us to compete with those slaves), have given the green light to mass pollution and global warming, have allowed big business to use our military as middle east mercenaries and have redistributed vast amounts of wealthy to a tiny fraction of the population (not to mention numerous scandals (Enron, Exxon, BofA, Countrywide, Halliburton, Blackwater, Savings and Loans, Mortgages, etc..)
Ron Paul addresses none of this. He has no solutions for jobs or inequality outside of his faith in invisible hands and invisible deities. He doesn't even seem aware that there is a problem. I don't think he's lying when he pretentiously states that his partisan political views are the very definition of liberty. I just think he is another out of touch conservative millionaire with a mind easily manipulated by self serving dogma (be it religious political or economic).

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

The first incarnation of the department of education was actually created in 1876. Was our educational system unfucked before 1876? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education
1980 was a pivotal year, but it had nothing to do with the department of education. 1980 was the year that Reagan ushered in a large number of 'free market' reforms: Privatization, deregulation, tax cuts for those at the top, austerity for those at the bottom... basically the Milton Friedman Shock Doctrine as described in Naomi Klein's excellent book.
We've since seen the rise of the corporate state and a deterioration of the public sector. These market principles have seen our jobs exported to 3rd world slaves (and then asked us to compete with those slaves), have given the green light to mass pollution and global warming, have allowed big business to use our military as middle east mercenaries and have redistributed vast amounts of wealthy to a tiny fraction of the population (not to mention numerous scandals (Enron, Exxon, BofA, Countrywide, Halliburton, Blackwater, Savings and Loans, Mortgages, etc..)
Ron Paul addresses none of this. He has no solutions for jobs or inequality outside of his faith in invisible hands and invisible deities. He doesn't even seem aware that there is a problem. I don't think he's lying when he pretentiously states that his partisan political views are the very definition of liberty. I just think he is another out of touch conservative millionaire with a mind easily manipulated by self serving dogma (be it religious political or economic).


Well said sir, in my view no department is inherently bad or good, the value of the department depends on who is running it, how it is used and how policies governing the department are made. If the Department of Education is causing harm to the education of students then this could be fixed by resolving the underlying issue which is one of corrupt policy making. Look at Bill Gates for example, he's playing his part to destroy and privatize the education system so he can have Windows on every school computer and influence the public education budget. He's allowed to do this because of policy changes and enormous amounts of lobbying money (which go hand in hand).

Here's an interesting read about some of the sweeping changes he's been able to introduce via lobbying:
http://techrights.org/2011/09/09/new-york-times-and-washpo-on-edu/

Plus of course all the other issues dystopianfuturetoday mentions - these won't go away just by removing a couple of departments - the core issues of corruption and lobbying have to be fixed first.

Is Ron Paul going to fix these? Hell no. Even if he was strongly in favor of these sorts of real changes, he wouldn't get support for them under the current system, the GOP would block everything, the Dems would keep talking about how bad the GOP is for blocking everything, and everything would continue to get fucked just as badly, or worse, than it currently is.

The first incarnation of the department of education was actually created in 1876. Was our educational system unfucked before 1876? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education

1980 was a pivotal year, but it had nothing to do with the department of education. 1980 was the year that Reagan ushered in a large number of 'free market' reforms: Privatization, deregulation, tax cuts for those at the top, austerity for those at the bottom... basically the Milton Friedman Shock Doctrine as described in Naomi Klein's excellent book.

We've since seen the rise of the corporate state and a deterioration of the public sector. These market principles have seen our jobs exported to 3rd world slaves (and then asked us to compete with those slaves), have given the green light to mass pollution and global warming, have allowed big business to use our military as middle east mercenaries and have redistributed vast amounts of wealth to a tiny fraction of the population (not to mention numerous scandals (Enron, Exxon, BofA, Countrywide, Halliburton, Blackwater, Savings and Loans, Mortgages, etc..)

Ron Paul addresses none of this. He has no solutions for jobs or inequality outside of his faith in invisible hands and invisible deities. He doesn't even seem aware that there is a problem. I don't think he's lying when he pretentiously states that his partisan political views are the very definition of liberty. I just think he is another out of touch conservative millionaire with a mind easily manipulated by self serving dogma (be it religious political or economic).

The solution is to only allow 50% of people to vote?

Nowhere does it state in the text of the column that voting is to be restricted for anyone, only that stupid, uninformed voters may be the end of the Republic.

Civil war? May happen anyway.



>> ^dannym3141:

>> ^quantumushroom:
"Consider the Ohio voters. Ohio has a failing economy with one of the nation’s highest state income tax rates and forced unionization – Ohio private sector workers can be forced to join a union in order to work. By a narrow margin they elected a governor, John Kasich, who promised to bring government employee unions under control. Kasich ushered a law through the Ohio legislature that restricted collective bargaining rights for government employee unions.
"OK … let’s stop here for a moment and consider government unions engaging in collective bargaining. Would you like to know two prominent people in American history who steadfastly opposed government union collective bargaining? That would be Franklin D. Roosevelt and labor giant George Meany, the former president of the AFL-CIO. That’s not to say these men didn’t support the growth of unions! Come on! FDR and George Meany? Of course they were pro-union. But they recognized that while private sector unions were bargaining for a share of the profits they produced through their work, government sector unions didn’t generate profits. They were merely negotiating for taxpayer money … negotiating with politicians they put in office with their campaign contributions and volunteer efforts on election day.
"So now the uninformed and often flat-out ignorant voters of Ohio have handed these collective bargaining rights back to the government sector unions. They will not resume negotiations with the very officials they put into office for the money in the pockets of the people who gave them that power. The only way Ohio government entities will have to handle the rising costs will be to raise taxes, cut services or fire workers.
"Yes --- I understand. The question on the ballot for Ohio voters was poorly worded. Worded, in fact, to favor the union organizers who got that question put on the ballot through a petition process. That doesn’t excuse the voters. This is their money, their economy, their future and the future of their children. They owed it to themselves and their children to become informed on the issues. They didn’t. Ohio will suffer. They will suffer. Their children will suffer if they don’t get the hell out of Ohio and move to Wisconsin or some other state with right-to-work laws where government sector unions don’t have collective bargaining rights.
"Democracy is ugly. Majority rule can be a disaster. There is a reason our founding fathers thought it to be a good idea to limit who had the privilege (not the right) of going to the polls and selecting our leaders. There was a reason our founding fathers did not include a right to vote in a federal election – including voting for our president – in the constitution. They didn’t trust mobs. They didn’t want to see the “mindless whims of the masses” translated into law. They were right … but to no avail. Now the masses are taking their ignorance to the polls. We live in a country where over half of the people get some kind of a check from the government every month without working for it … and they vote. Now you tell me how we’re supposed to survive that."

Neal Boortz from "In the end ... it's the idiot voters destroying the country "

The solution is to only allow 50% of people to vote? I'd consider what the long term effects of that were before chasing that dream if i were you. You might find yourself either in a civil war or at the helm of an oppressive government in effect holding half a nation prisoner.
Democratic government was founded upon the mindless whims of the masses, it is supposed to be subject to the national will.
And now it serves the mindless whims of the few. Up with Occupy.

>> ^quantumushroom:

"Consider the Ohio voters. Ohio has a failing economy with one of the nation’s highest state income tax rates and forced unionization – Ohio private sector workers can be forced to join a union in order to work. By a narrow margin they elected a governor, John Kasich, who promised to bring government employee unions under control. Kasich ushered a law through the Ohio legislature that restricted collective bargaining rights for government employee unions.
"OK … let’s stop here for a moment and consider government unions engaging in collective bargaining. Would you like to know two prominent people in American history who steadfastly opposed government union collective bargaining? That would be Franklin D. Roosevelt and labor giant George Meany, the former president of the AFL-CIO. That’s not to say these men didn’t support the growth of unions! Come on! FDR and George Meany? Of course they were pro-union. But they recognized that while private sector unions were bargaining for a share of the profits they produced through their work, government sector unions didn’t generate profits. They were merely negotiating for taxpayer money … negotiating with politicians they put in office with their campaign contributions and volunteer efforts on election day.
"So now the uninformed and often flat-out ignorant voters of Ohio have handed these collective bargaining rights back to the government sector unions. They will not resume negotiations with the very officials they put into office for the money in the pockets of the people who gave them that power. The only way Ohio government entities will have to handle the rising costs will be to raise taxes, cut services or fire workers.
"Yes --- I understand. The question on the ballot for Ohio voters was poorly worded. Worded, in fact, to favor the union organizers who got that question put on the ballot through a petition process. That doesn’t excuse the voters. This is their money, their economy, their future and the future of their children. They owed it to themselves and their children to become informed on the issues. They didn’t. Ohio will suffer. They will suffer. Their children will suffer if they don’t get the hell out of Ohio and move to Wisconsin or some other state with right-to-work laws where government sector unions don’t have collective bargaining rights.
"Democracy is ugly. Majority rule can be a disaster. There is a reason our founding fathers thought it to be a good idea to limit who had the privilege (not the right) of going to the polls and selecting our leaders. There was a reason our founding fathers did not include a right to vote in a federal election – including voting for our president – in the constitution. They didn’t trust mobs. They didn’t want to see the “mindless whims of the masses” translated into law. They were right … but to no avail. Now the masses are taking their ignorance to the polls. We live in a country where over half of the people get some kind of a check from the government every month without working for it … and they vote. Now you tell me how we’re supposed to survive that."

Neal Boortz from "In the end ... it's the idiot voters destroying the country "


The solution is to only allow 50% of people to vote? I'd consider what the long term effects of that were before chasing that dream if i were you. You might find yourself either in a civil war or at the helm of an oppressive government in effect holding half a nation prisoner.

Democratic government was founded upon the mindless whims of the masses, it is supposed to be subject to the national will.

And now it serves the mindless whims of the few. Up with Occupy.

"Consider the Ohio voters. Ohio has a failing economy with one of the nation’s highest state income tax rates and forced unionization – Ohio private sector workers can be forced to join a union in order to work. By a narrow margin they elected a governor, John Kasich, who promised to bring government employee unions under control. Kasich ushered a law through the Ohio legislature that restricted collective bargaining rights for government employee unions.

"OK … let’s stop here for a moment and consider government unions engaging in collective bargaining. Would you like to know two prominent people in American history who steadfastly opposed government union collective bargaining? That would be Franklin D. Roosevelt and labor giant George Meany, the former president of the AFL-CIO. That’s not to say these men didn’t support the growth of unions! Come on! FDR and George Meany? Of course they were pro-union. But they recognized that while private sector unions were bargaining for a share of the profits they produced through their work, government sector unions didn’t generate profits. They were merely negotiating for taxpayer money … negotiating with politicians they put in office with their campaign contributions and volunteer efforts on election day.

"So now the uninformed and often flat-out ignorant voters of Ohio have handed these collective bargaining rights back to the government sector unions. They will not resume negotiations with the very officials they put into office for the money in the pockets of the people who gave them that power. The only way Ohio government entities will have to handle the rising costs will be to raise taxes, cut services or fire workers.

"Yes --- I understand. The question on the ballot for Ohio voters was poorly worded. Worded, in fact, to favor the union organizers who got that question put on the ballot through a petition process. That doesn’t excuse the voters. This is their money, their economy, their future and the future of their children. They owed it to themselves and their children to become informed on the issues. They didn’t. Ohio will suffer. They will suffer. Their children will suffer if they don’t get the hell out of Ohio and move to Wisconsin or some other state with right-to-work laws where government sector unions don’t have collective bargaining rights.

"Democracy is ugly. Majority rule can be a disaster. There is a reason our founding fathers thought it to be a good idea to limit who had the privilege (not the right) of going to the polls and selecting our leaders. There was a reason our founding fathers did not include a right to vote in a federal election – including voting for our president – in the constitution. They didn’t trust mobs. They didn’t want to see the “mindless whims of the masses” translated into law. They were right … but to no avail. Now the masses are taking their ignorance to the polls. We live in a country where over half of the people get some kind of a check from the government every month without working for it … and they vote. Now you tell me how we’re supposed to survive that."



Neal Boortz from "In the end ... it's the idiot voters destroying the country "

>> ^packo:
because things like religion, abortion, immigration... while important to people, aren't important to politicians who use them as "look over here, don't look there" tactics...
they don't want you to focus on how they are blatantly working against the average American citizen's economic interest for their corporate and financial masters
they want you to fight over issues they themselves deem unimportant while feigning concern
they'll use semantics to confuse issues rather than take action
they'll wrap themselves in the flag, all the while ushering in fascism for their own short term social/economic benefit
these people aren't patriots, they are committing treason, and should be hounded through the streets until they can no longer run due to exhaustion; then made public examples of
public servants? the only people they are servicing are themselves
these aren't the departments of this or that I'm talking about... I'm talking directly about the people elected by the citizenry to represent them
they're selling your future, and the future of your children... for the right to suckle at the tit of your new corporate and banking masters


I agree with a lot of what you're saying here but you also make a lot of common mistakes.

first of all, the "important issues" that "matter to people" that powerful people cloak themselves in. Things like abortion, gun control, illegal immigration, terrorism...are wholey fabricated by those same politicians. They're not just using these issues to disctract you, they're creating these issues and convincing you that you care about them to polarize you against fellow Americans. Obama's gonna "tik ur guuuuns" right? Because liberals don't like guns? Bullshit. Of course there are liberals that don't believe in guns, but liberals on the whole split about evenly with the rest of America on the issue. It's a fabricated issue.

Why aren't teapartiers supportingthe OWS movement? Isn't the movement founded on the same frustration that got all those conservatives to load up on the Fox news busses? Oh wait! It's because OWS is against Wallstreet and Teapartiers are against Government! Bullshit. The citizens of America, in the course of serving their own corporate masters have been manipulated once again.

You give politicians too much credit. There is not vast conspiracy to sell out to corporations. Politicians are merely narcisists who are taken by the delusion that their own ideas are important enough to matter to the country. or their narcisists who believe they're own unique personal attributes make them qualified to lead other people. They're not driven a plan to sell out to corporations, they're driven by massive egos. And this is what makes them susecptible to corporations. Big money finds ytheir flaws and draws them out. Politicians succumb to whatever weekness drives them, money, power, sex altruism...big money can give you anything you want.

This is not a problem with liberalism, conservatism, politicians, corporations...this is an issue of human nature. How do you fix that?

If you figure out a way, please let the rest of us know. In the mean time, stop getting sucked into the argument that your corporate masters have duped you into. They know what drives you, they know your weaknesses...and they're playing you against your fellow americans the same way they play politicians against themselves.

because things like religion, abortion, immigration... while important to people, aren't important to politicians who use them as "look over here, don't look there" tactics...

they don't want you to focus on how they are blatantly working against the average American citizen's economic interest for their corporate and financial masters

they want you to fight over issues they themselves deem unimportant while feigning concern

they'll use semantics to confuse issues rather than take action

they'll wrap themselves in the flag, all the while ushering in fascism for their own short term social/economic benefit

these people aren't patriots, they are committing treason, and should be hounded through the streets until they can no longer run due to exhaustion; then made public examples of

public servants? the only people they are servicing are themselves

these aren't the departments of this or that I'm talking about... I'm talking directly about the people elected by the citizenry to represent them

they're selling your future, and the future of your children... for the right to suckle at the tit of your new corporate and banking masters

This happened to me at the London Dungeon. I walked up to some usher wax guy and it wasnt, scared the shit out of me.

>> ^Peroxide:

The collective awakening has officially begun.

Electronica is ushering the next progressive swell. AKA the new 60's.


I hope so.

The collective awakening has officially begun.


Electronica is ushering the next progressive swell. AKA the new 60's.

>> ^braindonut:

Maybe I'm dense, but I'm not seeing where he was coached into giving the ball to the kid.
>> ^packo:
yeah, while he did the good thing... i seriously see this as "kid is good at instantaneously following authority" as opposed to "such a big heart"... he was on his way up the stairs to his seat when he was stopped by the usher... would he have given the ball without the usher's intervention? maybe... maybe not... the point is ALOT of people make the assumption one way or the other, based on their own bias as to what they'd like to see (mostly because they don't see it enough); as opposed to what ACTUALLY happens in the video



I had to watch it again myself. But when he runs up the stairs, he suddenly turns around and looks intently back from where he came. When they zoom out, there's a white haired guy in a red shirt talking to him. It's hard to know what was said. And then the mother is shown thanking the older guy.