Friday, August 25, 2006

The War on Wal-Mart

As your beloved blog-0-fascist, it some times becomes me to take a stand on the issues. And on the issue of Wal-Mart, my position is firm. You are not to go to Wal-mart! Unless you really want to or it's more convenient to go there.

I think our friends on the Right, in between reminding us we are all going to get blown up if we don't vote for Republicans, are also trying to make Wal-Mart an issue in this campaign. Earlier this week we commented on a piece by Bill Murchinson on Wal-Mart. Today we have an article by Jonah Goldberg entitled "Wal-Mart drives Democrats batty." First of all, Mr. Goldberg, we don't need Wal-Mart to drive us batty - we can go batty all by ourselves, thank you very much.

Jonah Goldberg points out that Wal-Mart is probably a benefit to poor consumers. He also, surprisingly enough, acknowledges that Wal-Mart destroys small local businesses, but justifies this by saying, pretty clearly, that the small businesses that Wal-Mart destroys deserve to be crushed. Small business can't afford to provide cheap goods to the poor the way Wal-Mart can.

The tone of the article is similar to Murchinson's; Democrats must be crazy to take on Wal-Mart and that's good for Republicans.

Taking the cake for attacking Democrats on Walmart is Herman Cain who coined a new term for Democrats earlier this week. Hezbocrats.
The Hezbocrats, a roaming band of militant guerrillas seeking their party's 2008 nomination for president, have most recently lobbed their rhetorical bombs at Wal-Mart, that cruel capitalist occupying corporation. The most recent base of Hezbocrat activity was Iowa, the state whose January 2008 party caucuses are the nation's first measure of presidential preference. The Hezbocrats, armed with nothing more than Katyusha-grade class warfare rhetoric, descended upon Iowa earlier this month determined to take down Wal-Mart, a company they consider the nation's largest capitalistic oppressor of the proletariat.
Nice how Cain can't really decide whether we are communists or terrorists. Anyway this reads more like him trying to be witty and clever and failing. I don't know if he really believes the Democratic party is the equivialent of a terrorist organization because we think it would be nice if Wal-Mart paid a living wage. But it's still a pretty over the top description, and a nice way of combining the "Hey vote Republican or you'll die" and "Vote Republican or you'll have to pay more for Wonder Bread" threads of this campaign.

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