Gloomy Retail Forecast For 2009 December 31, 2008
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Business, Economy, Retail.comments closed
The deepening recession and poor Christmas sales will force the closing of over 70,000 stores in the first half of 2009 alone, says a leading retail analyst.
Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) — U.S. retailers face a wave of store closings, bankruptcies and takeovers starting next month as holiday sales are shaping up to be the worst in 40 years.
Retailers may close 73,000 stores in the first half of 2009, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Talbots Inc. and Sears Holdings Corp. are among chains shuttering underperforming locations.
More than a dozen retailers, including Circuit City Stores Inc., Linens ‘n Things Inc., Sharper Image Corp. and Steve & Barry’s LLC, have sought bankruptcy protection this year as the credit squeeze and recession drained sales. Investors will start seeing a wide variety of chains seeking bankruptcy protection in February when they file financial reports, said Burt Flickinger.
“You’ll see department stores, specialty stores, discount stores, grocery stores, drugstores, major chains either multi- regionally or nationally go out,” Flickinger, managing director of Strategic Resource Group, a retail-industry consulting firm in New York, said today in a Bloomberg Radio interview. “There are a number that are real causes for concern.”
There is an upside to the thinning of the herd, though:
Retail bankruptcies may help the industry in the long run, according to Flickinger.
“We’ll be going from a Dickens-esque worst of times this December to the best of times in future Decembers because we’ll rationalize out all the redundant retailers and retail space in shopping centers,” Flickinger said.
Jib makes a similar point here:
The one thing that I always had trouble wrapping my brain around was how so many retailers felt it wise to rapidly expand all at the same time. I mean, I understood that expansion was critical to market share and new revenue while same store sales suffered, but they were moving into smaller and smaller markets that could be challenged to support their stores (while eroding business at existing stores in larger markets), and there was sooo much competitive overlap in so many areas. I’ve felt for a long time that we were due for a large wave of store closings as competition and poor decisions came home to roost for many retailers.
Something Is Wrong Here December 31, 2008
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Gov. Jim Milhous Doyleone, State Government, Wisconsin.comments closed
Here’s a look at what state taxpayers are paying $1.1 million to an out of state group to accomplish: creating a state website with a picture of the state Capitol and the skyline of Minneapolis.
Madison – State Sen. Jeff Plale (D-South Milwaukee) noticed something a little odd when he logged onto the state’s new Web site for campaign finance information.
Prominently displayed at http://cfis.wi.gov is a picture of the Capitol in Madison next to a beautiful skyline – of Minneapolis.
“I’m looking at that thinking, what the heck?” Plale said Monday. “I don’t think a lot of Minnesota legislators care about our Government Accountability Board, but who knows?”
The board, which runs the Web site, confirmed the only way to see the skyline from Wisconsin is with a telescope in Hudson.
Patrick from Badger Blogger has a screen shot of the goof and adds:
I would build their site and even use pictures from Wisconsin for a whole lot less.
What strikes me as odd —even more so that a technology company that cannot even use a picture of a city in Wisconsin for a state of Wisconsin website — is that state taxpayers are forking over $1.1 million to a company in Connecticut. What? There aren’t any businesses in Wisconsin that could have done this job? As Roland Melnick points out in the comments thread at Badger Blogger, I thought we were this Mecca for high tech jobs and businesses. You mean there was no one anywhere in Wisconsin that could have created this website and done it correctly?
There’s something else at play. With Gov. Jim Milhous Doyleone’s administration, there always is.
Here’s one possibility: Connecticut. It may be just an odd coincidence, but the Mohegan Indian tribe is located in Connecticut. The Mohegans are involved with the attempts to convert the Dairyland Greyhound Park in Kenosha into a casino. It might be worth a look to see just what connections may exist between the Mohegans and PCC Technology Group, who received the contract to design the website. Given Diamond Jim’s propensity to take bribes from Indians here in Wisconsin and to sell off state contracts to the highest bidder, it’s in the realm of possibility.
Bruce from Badger Blogger has a free gift for PCC Technology.
Dan Cody from Left On The Lake has been out front on this one here and here. Here’s a take:
I know a lot of people in this particular industry right now who are going through hard times. Good people working hard to support their young families and facing the kind of choices due to the economy that I pray I never have to.
At a time when we’re bleeding jobs and trying to transition from an economy dependant on manufacturing to one that can seize the opportunities of the information age in Wisconsin, it only makes sense to me that we should be awarding this kind of work to companies here in Wisconsin that are creating careers for the next generation of workers.
Dan also fisks the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for writing a trite piece about the million-dollar bonehead mistake while casually mentioning that the million dollars went out of state.
I agree with Dan. That was the real story.
A Look At The Future In Public Education December 31, 2008
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Education, Gummint-Run Skoolz.comments closed
You think it’s bad now.
Wait until the Democrats get complete control of it in a few weeks.
Arne Duncan is the current head of Chicago Public Schools and has been tapped to be the Secretary of Education for The Messiah. If Duncan brings the accomplishments from Chicago to Washington, we’re all in trouble.
Under his leadership, CPS has failed to meet the Illinois state standards set under the federal No Child Left Behind Act the last five years. In fact, CPS is on academic watch status because of its failure to make any progress.
In 2006, 58 percent of students in the Chicago Public Schools met the state standards in reading and 59.7 percent met the state standards in mathematics. Both percentages were above the set 47.5 percent AYP success rate for that year.
However, to be counted as making Adequate Yearly Progress, schools must also achieve proficiency for all subgroups of students–White, Black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American, Multiracial/Ethnic, Limited English Proficiency (LEP), Students with Disabilities and the Economically Disadvantaged (ED).
In 2006, for example, only 20.2 percent of Chicago’s “Students with Disabilities” subgroup met the state reading standards, and only 22.9 percent met the math requirement–both well below the expected percentage. As a result, the Chicago school district did not meet AYP goals in 2006.
In 2008, meanwhile, 60.1 percent of all students for the district achieved the standard in reading, which was below the 62.5 percent level required for that year.
The Black subgroup failed to meet the minimum level of proficiency in both reading and math, and the Hispanic subgroup fell short in reading along with the LEP and ED subgroups. The Students with Disabilities subgroup failed to achieve goals in both reading and math.
In addition, only 17 percent of 8th grade students in CPS can read at grade level.
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report for 2007, Chicago public schools have consistently performed below the national average during Duncan’s tenure.
The report measures students at the fourth and eighth grade levels in the subjects of reading, math, science, and writing, and ranks them at below basic, basic, proficient, or advanced levels.
Students in eighth grade are those most likely to have been in the Chicago system for a majority of Duncan’s tenure. CNSNews.com used the scores for these students to best determine the results of Duncan’s administration.
By 2007, only 17 percent of Chicago eighth graders were at or above grade level in reading. Thirteen percent scored at or above grade level in math. Twenty-three percent scored at or above grade level in writing.
By 2005, the only year Chicago participated in the NEAP assessment program, 16 percent of eighth grade students were at or above grade level in science.
Nationally, students did much better on average in reading, math, science, and writing.
In 2007, 29 percent of eighth grade students scored at or above grade-level in reading, 31 percent in math, and 31 percent in writing. In 2005, 27 percent of eighth grade students were at or above grade level in science.
These figures are stunning for a district that has a $4.6 billion budget. Spending per pupil was $10,555, about 90 percent going toward education-related expenses.
Just what are they doing in Chicago? Well, one of Duncan’s priorities was an all-homosexual high school. And there are all sorts of ties between Duncan and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the project of unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and Barack Hussein Obama to radicalize Chicago’s schools.
In other words, turn the students into mindless little leftwing rabble-rousers community activists before making them proficient in reading and math so they can actually make something of themselves.
Our gummint-run skoolz will become even more of the propaganda and brainwashing centers over the next 8 to 10 years. The students will be properly prepared to go out and continue to vote Democrat mindlessly. Works just like it did in the former Soviet Union and continues to in Red China and Cuber.
Our schools will feature more and more of this:
And this:
Every totalitarian state needs to produce its mind-numbed robots programmed to follow orders.
And to think schools used to be institutions of learning. Now they are just mindless propaganda centers for the state.
The Obama Zone December 30, 2008
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Humor, Parody.comments closed
Found this on a friend’s Facebook site. It’s a parody of Golden Earring’s 1980s hit “Twilight Zone.”
The Obama Zone
Intro:
Everywhere in America on November 4, 2008It’s 10 p.m., the election’s done. I just can’t believe it, but Obama has won. It’s like a freakin’ nightmare; the whole county spins into a frenzy.
There’s Marxists on the loose; liberals in my head.
Tried to educate the voters, but all circuits were dead.
Can’t get no connection, can’t get through,
Boy we’re screwed!Oh, the night weighs heavy on a patriot’s mind
Our country’s on the borderline,
When the Islamists come, they know damn well we won’t confront them!And I say –
Help, I’m steppin’ into Obama’s zone,
This is a madhouse, Clintons won’t stay gone.
My God and my guns and my favorite car,
Where am I to go now that he’s gone too far?What will we come to know, when Obama takes the oath?
What will we come to know, when Obama take the oath?Help I’m steppin’ into Obama’s zone,
This is a madhouse, freedom’s on its own.
With Global Jihad, Ayers and Reverend Wright,
Where am I to go to find leaders who’ll fight?
For those of you not certain on how the song goes, here’s the video:
Paul Shanklin And The Magic Negro December 30, 2008
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Parody, Republican National Committee, Republicans, Rush Limbaugh.comments closed
Much is being written over the decision by Chip Saltsman, candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee, to give the latest Paul Shanklin CD to members of the RNC. Shanklin’s CD contains the parody song, “Barack the Magic Negro,” based on the 2007 al-Los Angeles Times article by David Ehrenstein and done in the voice of The Reverend Al Sharpton, who himself implied that Barack Hussein Obama wasn’t black enough for him.
You can read that article here. In the article, Ehrenstein implied that the Chocolate Jesus was non-threatening enough for whites to vote for him.
[I]t’s clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the “Magic Negro.”
The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. “He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist,” reads the description on Wikipedia .
He’s there to assuage white “guilt” (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.
As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle.
Never mind that Ehrenstein dissed some very good actors in that piece, effectively marginalizing their body of excellent works by implying the only reason they are popular and successful is that they aren’t threatening to “whitey.”
The response from Rush Limbaugh was immediate and on target, comparing and contrasting Ehrenstein’s piece to the writings of Shelby Steele and his book, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era. Here’s an op-ed piece from the Wall Street Journal by Steele which has a summary of the book’s contents.
Current RNC chair Mike Duncan, architect of successive Republican congressional disasters, has voiced his objections to reports in the Drive By Media of Saltsman’s gift to the RNC members.
“The 2008 election was a wake-up call for Republicans to reach out and bring more people into our party,” Duncan said in a statement. “I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction.”
Spare me the faux outrage, Mr. Duncan. You’ve just got sand in your vagina. Nothing like the Rockefeller Bush wing of the GOP, those blueblood, countryclubber elitists who brought the party two successive landslide losses. Sounding like the perpetually outraged, offended PC Left isn’t going to rally your base.
Duncan is a loser with a capital “L” tattooed on his forehead. He needs to go away. Permanently.
Saltsman has been criticized in some circles simply for creating a diversion and wasting time and effort to defend his actions. Boo-freaking-hoo. There’s nothing wrong with what he did, or with Shanklin’s parody, and when unwarranted attacks are made, they need a response. When those attacks don’t generate a firm, decisive response, they tend to stick in the public eye.
I’m sick and tired of either the phony outrage from the likes of Duncan or the effeminate girlie man response from others, with the “We shouldn’t say that because someone might be offended,” or “We mustn’t do that because someone might be offended.” Both of these are part and parcel of the Democrat-lite wing of the Republican Party. These guys couldn’t win a one-man race for dog catcher. Losers, every last one of them. Losers in life, losers in politics.
Michelle Malkin contrasts this with the real hate directed at President Bush over the past eight years from the radical Left.
All of sudden — after eight years of “F**k Bush” bumper stickers and “Kill Bush” assassination chic and Bush-or-Chimp parodies — the left is concerned about insulting the office of the Presidency?
Now, they are concerned with protecting the dignity of the office and with forging “common ground and mutual respect?”
She also takes on Duncan:
If that’s the kind of GOP “leadership” we’re in for the next four years, it’s going to a long, long four years.
Robert Stacy McCain has more here.
And I received this by e-mail today. It’s a press release written by Frances Rice of the National Black Republican Association:
If it were not so hypocritical, it would be comical how Democrats and their media allies have created a media firestorm over a parody on racism in the Democratic Party. The Democrats’ display of rank hypocrisy on race is a familiar scenario. First, Democrats exhibit vile racism. Then, any Republican who points out the Democrats’ display of vile racism is attacked by Democrats as being racist.
The current target of this Democratic Party racial jujitsu is RNC chairman candidate Chip Saltsman. So, what did Saltsman do to warrant being called a racist? Well, he dared to distribute a music CD with a parody about the fact that black Democrat David Ehrenstein called Sen. Barack Obama a “Magic Negro” in an article published by the left-wing, Democrat-controlled “Los Angeles Times.” Huh?
None of the people now trashing Saltsman uttered one peep of protest when the article entitled “Obama the Magic Negro” was first published in the “Los Angeles Times” on March 19, 2007 with the subtitle: “The Illinois senator lends himself to white America’s idealized, less-than-real black man.” Below is the link to that article.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ehrenstein19mar19,0,5335087.story?coll=la-opinion-center
Sadly, some high-profile Republicans who should know better have joined the Democrats and the mainstream news media in their Republican bashing frenzy.
Lost in the media uproar is the fact that the parody has been broadcast several times on the radio, and the satirical content understood by the more than 20 million listeners of the popular Rush Limbaugh Show. One is left to wonder if the critics have even listened to the parody.
Where was all this outrage over racism when the Democrats used despicable racial stereotypes (just as Democrats did during the days of slavery and Jim Crow) to slur black professionals, such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele?
Brazenly, on the left-wing Internet website called “The News Blog,” Democrats posted a doctored photograph of Steele, depicting him as a “Simple Sambo.”
Cartoonist Jeff Danziger depicted Rice as an ignorant, barefoot “mammy,” reminiscent of the stereotyped black woman in the movie Gone with the Wind who remarked: “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ no babies.” Black comedian Harry Belafonte and Rev. Al Sharpton publicly denounced Powell as a “House Negro.” NAACP Chairman Julian Bond equated the Republican Party with the Nazi Party and called Rice and Powell “tokens.”
The liberal media showed not a hint of concern about racial insensitivity when Obama campaigned for white Democrat Benjamin L. Cardin and against Michael Steele during the 2006 Maryland senate race, not long after Obama issued a letter of support for the re-election of white Democrat and former Ku Klux Klansman Robert Byrd.
Not one word of angst was uttered by the liberal press when a black Democrat pundit on national television called black Democrat Juan Williams a “Happy Negro.” What offense did Williams commit that resulted in such a vicious racial slur? He had the temerity to defy the Democratic Party’s “thought police” and wrote a book called “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-end Movements and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America.” His book exposes how the failed socialist polices of the Democrats who have been running black communities for the past 40 years have turned those communities into economic and social wastelands.
As author Michael Scheuer stated, the Democratic Party is the party of the four S’s: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism. Visit the website www.NBRA.info on the Internet to see the racist cartoons of Rice and Steele and the details about the Democratic Party’s 150-year history of racism.
The time is long overdue for Republicans to stop cowering over the issue of race. Republicans should cease attacking fellow Republicans for telling the truth about Democrats, recapture the Republican Party’s rich civil rights legacy, and shed the light of truth on the failed socialism and racism in the Democratic Party – past and present.
The NBRA also has audio of “Barack the Magic Negro” here. If anything, it’s as much a slap at Sharpton as the author of the LA Times article.
Holocaust Love Story Falsified December 29, 2008
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Hoaxes, Holocaust, Literature, Oprah Winfrey.comments closed
A planned memoir about a love story born on opposite sides of a Nazi concentration camp has been pulled from publication because the story turned out not to be true.
NEW YORK (al-AP) – It’s the latest story that touched, and betrayed, the world.
“Herman Rosenblat and his wife are the most gentle, loving, beautiful people,” literary agent Andrea Hurst said Sunday, anguishing over why she, and so many others, were taken by Rosenblat’s story of love born on opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence at a concentration camp.
“I question why I never questioned it. I believed it; it was an incredible, hope-filled story.”
On Saturday, Berkley Books canceled Rosenblat’s memoir, “Angel at the Fence,” after he acknowledged that he and his wife did not meet, as they had said for years, at a sub-camp of Buchenwald, where she allegedly sneaked him apples and bread. The book was supposed to come out in February.
Rosenblat, 79, has been married to the former Roma Radzicky for 50 years, since meeting her on a blind date in New York. In a statement issued Saturday through his agent, he described himself as an advocate of love and tolerance who falsified his past to better spread his message.
“I wanted to bring happiness to people,” said Rosenblat, who now lives in the Miami area. “I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world.”
It doesn’t matter what his motivation was. The story he and his wife planned to tell simply did not happen. It was false.
Hopefully we don’t have to start taking similar stories with a raised eyebrow, but with all the frauds out there, we might.
Turns out there were signals from critics — including scholars — who warned the gullible ones reacting with emotion that things didn’t add up. One of those taken by the Rosenblats’ tale was Oprah Winfrey, in addition to Hollywood.
The Rosenblats weren’t the only ones with Holocaust-related fictional tales to tell:
Other Holocaust memoirists have devised greater fantasies. Misha Defonseca, author of “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years,” pretended she was a Jewish girl who lived with wolves during the war, when she was actually a non-Jew who lived, without wolves, in Belgium.
Historical records prove Rosenblat was indeed at Buchenwald and other camps.
“How sad that he felt he had to embellish a life of surviving the Holocaust and of being married for half a century,” said Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum.
And this isn’t the first time Winfrey has been taken by a con artist. Remember James Frey?
Happy Holidays To You As Well December 27, 2008
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Christmas.comments closed
Par for the course, the insightful Tom McMahon gets it at 4-Block World:
The UAW’s Luxury Resort December 27, 2008
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Auto Industry, Automakers, UAW.comments closed
Their retirees continue to suck off the Big Three automakers at an exorbitant rate, the benefits package crippling the U.S. auto industry.
In turn, the Big Three and the UAW go hat in hand to Congress asking for a bailout. They’re turned down, only to have President Bush redefine Ford, Chrysler and GM as “financial institutions” and give them $17 billion out of the Trouble Assets Recovery Program funds, money that only punts the inevitable Chapter 13 bankruptcy further down the road.
But the UAW can always points to its ownership of a luxury resort with a top-flight golf course as evidence it’s taking care of its members.
Even as the industry struggles with massive losses, the UAW brass continue to own and operate a $33 million lakeside retreat in Michigan, complete with a $6.4 million designer golf course. And it’s costing them millions each year.
The UAW, known more for its strikes than its slices, hosts seminars and junkets at the Walter and May Reuther Family Education Center in Onaway, Mich., which is nestled on “1,000 heavily forested acres” on Michigan’s Black Lake, according to its Web site.
But the Black Lake club and retreat, which are among the union’s biggest fixed assets, have lost $23 million in the past five years alone, a heavy albatross around the union’s neck as it tries to manage a multibillion-dollar pension plan crisis.
Nice to know some of our tax dollars, already misappropriated from a bad idea (TARP), may very well go toward helping union thugs keep their luxury resort afloat.
By the way, I thought unions were for the little guy. Doesn’t ownership of and membership in a luxury resort smack of elitism and the supposed upper crust of society? Aren’t the UAW and other union thugs across the country constantly playing class envy and class warfare games about how “the rich” made theirs off the backs of the poor and the little guy?
I guess it’s OK when it’s union leadership that’s “the rich.”
Classic Christmas Commercials December 26, 2008
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Christmas.comments closed
From Miller Brewing in 1977:
And from Budweiser in the same year, featuring the Clydesdales:
An undated Andre Champagne commercial:
And a “Noelco” spoir from Norelco featuring Santa riding on an electric razor:
‘Forced” To Accept A Raise December 25, 2008
Posted by The Underground Conservative in State Legislature, Wisconsin.comments closed
Don’t blame the members of the Wisconsin state Legislature. They’re just poor victims of an oppressive bureaucracy which is forcing them to accept a $2,500 a year pay raise at a time when the the state budget is staring down a $5.4 billion deficit within the next two years and at a time when many taxpayers have been forced to take real pay cuts — that is, if they still have a job at all.
MADISON — With the state facing a $5.4 billion budget shortfall, state legislators say they have no control over the $2,500 pay raises they’re scheduled to receive next year.
Lawmakers’ annual salaries will rise $2,530, or 5.3 percent, to $49,943, according to the state Department of Administration.
The raises were approved when the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Employment Relations voted to accept the salaries recommended by the Office of State Employment Relations.
Lawmakers can’t write a law next year undoing the raises because the state Constitution bars changing the pay of elected officials during their terms, said Carrie Lynch, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston.
Critics acknowledge the $334,000 wouldn’t do much to address the budget shortfall, but they say the raises send the wrong message when so many others are having trouble making ends meet.
“It’s much more symbolic right now for them to give themselves a 5.3 percent pay raise at a time when people are struggling to keep their jobs or are getting laid off all over Wisconsin,” said Jay Heck, director of Common Cause in Wisconsin.
He also criticized the fact that raises are approved only by the eight members of the Joint Committee on Employment Relations, and not by every lawmaker who benefits.
“If you want a pay raise you should have the guts to vote for one,” Heck said.
Heck is correct. It is like the automatic increase in the state gasoline tax that the cowardly legislators didn’t want to go on record but would rather it just happen automatically. Coward. Go on the record and make a decision. It’s like legislators who vote “Present” on controversial issues.
Here’s a thought. If you really don’t want that $2,500, give it to a charity in your district which is trying to help the very people your policies are hurting.
