Category: Business

Lies of Al Franken

Pants on Fire deals with Al Franken’s lies, subject of a forthcoming book of the same name. Speaking of which, I’ve developed a new method of listening to Franken (and the rest of political talk radio): I tune in until I hear a lie, and then change channels. Seldom does the radio stay in Franken … Continue reading “Lies of Al Franken”

Pants on Fire deals with Al Franken’s lies, subject of a forthcoming book of the same name.

Speaking of which, I’ve developed a new method of listening to Franken (and the rest of political talk radio): I tune in until I hear a lie, and then change channels. Seldom does the radio stay in Franken for more than five minutes. Today, within the first 30 seconds he claimed that Janice Rogers Brown says the American government is the root of all evil. Brown is down on government in general, but not specifically the US government. Even Michael Savage’s average lie rate is less than Al’s.

It’s shocking that Air America’s commercials are more truthful than its hosts.

Wal-Mart, Meet Prada

Wal-Mart is going upscale in hopes of boosting their sagging sales figures: Dear God, what if Wal-Mart sold Manolo Blahniks in the shoe section? Or stocked copies of Dwell and the New York Review of Books in the magazine aisle? At Wal-Mart’s annual meeting last week, CEO Lee Scott unveiled what may be a subtle … Continue reading “Wal-Mart, Meet Prada”

Wal-Mart is going upscale in hopes of boosting their sagging sales figures:

Dear God, what if Wal-Mart sold Manolo Blahniks in the shoe section? Or stocked copies of Dwell and the New York Review of Books in the magazine aisle?

At Wal-Mart’s annual meeting last week, CEO Lee Scott unveiled what may be a subtle shift in just that direction. The company is doing fine selling goods in massive quantities to lower- and middle-income shoppers who patronize Wal-Mart because, in Scott’s words, they “have to save money.” But these customers can get tapped out. Indeed, the retailer’s same-store sales have been plodding along, increasing less than 3 percent per year.

To grow more rapidly, Scott said, Wal-Mart needs to attract customers with lots of discretionary income who shop where they want to. So Wal-Mart plans to appeal to them by improving the quality of its clothes and goods and by stocking more “organic and natural food.”

Tip: don’t put this fancy stuff under the same roof as the garbage cans, underwear, and lawnmowers; think Chipotle, the upscale Taco Bell. And good luck, kick Costco in the ass.

Dvorak: “I knew it all along”

John Dvorak says he’s been trying to tell us for years that the end was nigh for the IBM/Apple combination. The Intel platform has some interesting implications (as we said yesterday): I’ve never understood why the Mac nuts are in such denial over this platform shift. This change to Intel will not only save the … Continue reading “Dvorak: “I knew it all along””

John Dvorak says he’s been trying to tell us for years that the end was nigh for the IBM/Apple combination. The Intel platform has some interesting implications (as we said yesterday):

I’ve never understood why the Mac nuts are in such denial over this platform shift. This change to Intel will not only save the platform but potentially drive it into a position of dominance. What will be lost, of course, is the niche and mystique aspect of the Mac which many of its users seem to relish as part of some misguided superiority complex.

A more interesting scenario to me is examining the possibility that Windows users can switch to the Mac OS on their Intel machines. Is this going to be possible?

I have always believed that Apple could enter the PC arena with an Intel-based computer that could run OS-X or Windows and begin to take market share away from Dell and HP.

So why not? If Apple’s real value is their software, doesn’t it benefit them to run it on as many platforms as possible?

The PC industry is undergoing one of those paradigm-shift dealies where the PC is becoming a home entertainment device, and Apple is well-positioned (as they say) to take advantage as long as they understand their actual product.

In the battle over who broke the story first, the Wall St. Journal is taking credit.

Apple goes Intel

This is really hilarious news: SAN FRANCISCO, June 5 – Steven P. Jobs is preparing to take an unprecedented gamble by abandoning Apple Computer’s 14-year commitment to chips developed by I.B.M. and Motorola in favor of Intel processors for his Macintosh computers, industry executives informed of the decision said Sunday. So much for the claims … Continue reading “Apple goes Intel”

This is really hilarious news:

SAN FRANCISCO, June 5 – Steven P. Jobs is preparing to take an unprecedented gamble by abandoning Apple Computer’s 14-year commitment to chips developed by I.B.M. and Motorola in favor of Intel processors for his Macintosh computers, industry executives informed of the decision said Sunday.

So much for the claims that PowerPC offers more bang for the buck than Intel.

We don’t know yet if this means that Apple will build a straight-up PC clone capable of running Windows and Linux, but if they so something short of that it will be stupid. And if they do build a real clone and port OS X to it, they’ll have a software platform capable of challenging Microsoft. They won’t win, of course, but the battle will be fun to watch.

H/T John Cole.

UPDATE: It’s official, Jobs announced it today and gave a demo. The reaction was interesting:

Gasps of concern went out at the developer conference when Jobs first mentioned the switch, as many Apple fans have long relished their non-Wintel status. The developers will be charged with doing most of the work to shed Apple software from the PowerPC architecture.

Heh heh heh. Apple apparently wants to get out of the PC hardware business and focus on OS X and iPods. More power to them.

UPDATE: Here’s a bit about Apple’s rationale; it’s not what you might think.

Monitoring Air America Radio

BoreAmerica.com monitors Air America so you don’t have to. They linked one of my posts on Al Franken’s lies, showing their good taste and discrimination. I had intended to make Al Franken’s Lies of the Day a regular feature, but it’s too boring because he tells the same lies over and over. This week it’s … Continue reading “Monitoring Air America Radio”

BoreAmerica.com monitors Air America so you don’t have to. They linked one of my posts on Al Franken’s lies, showing their good taste and discrimination.

I had intended to make Al Franken’s Lies of the Day a regular feature, but it’s too boring because he tells the same lies over and over. This week it’s been the filibuster lie every day (“the filibuster has always been used like the Democrats are using it now against judges – the Founding Fathers intended it to be used to stifle the will of the majority, blah blah blah.”)

We did finally catch Franken on a different (if not exactly new) lie today: the Administration (and Rush Limbaugh) duped the people about Saddam’s WMDs. Saddam never had WMDs but Bush/Rush made up this story to justify grabbing his oil, yada yada yada. I have just one thing to say about this: tell it to the Kurds whose gassing was one of the reasons that both the US and the UK called for Saddam’s removal throughout the 90s.

Remember the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998? Franken doesn’t.

Bitch fight

Glenn and Andrew are getting into it. Glenn’s winning, Andrew’s whining like a little girl. This has been going on for a few days now. We’re using first names as it sounds so very Hollywood.

Glenn and Andrew are getting into it. Glenn’s winning, Andrew’s whining like a little girl. This has been going on for a few days now.

We’re using first names as it sounds so very Hollywood.

Free Roger Simon

I’ve re-linked Roger Simon and would like to encourage others to urge him to slam the door on Huffy-Puffy. He who lies down with dogs gets up with fleas, and that sort of thing. Huffy-Puffy has basically become Jim Lampley’s blog and the others are just visitors, guest-bloggers, and vassals. Lampley is so deranged he’s … Continue reading “Free Roger Simon”

I’ve re-linked Roger Simon and would like to encourage others to urge him to slam the door on Huffy-Puffy. He who lies down with dogs gets up with fleas, and that sort of thing.

Huffy-Puffy has basically become Jim Lampley’s blog and the others are just visitors, guest-bloggers, and vassals. Lampley is so deranged he’s downright amusing. I’ve seen a lot of his sportscasting and while he was always a little bit off I had no idea he was such a basket case until Huffy-Puffy. Here’s an example of Lampley in full conspiratorial meltdown:

Sure there are still disquieting signs in a country where real democracy lies momentarily dormant. Dormant due to right-wing ownership of the national political machinery and the widespread election fraud that has engendered. Dormant due to the capitulation of mainstream media in the face of neoconservative intimidation tactics (see Bill Moyer’s post today about the corruption of editorial independence at PBS). Dormant due to the inherently greater diversity, fragmentation and iconoclasm of liberal as opposed to reactionary thought. Yes, it’s harder for us to get our act together because we’re way less willing to pervert the system for our own ends. But once we’re back on top, we’ll stay there longer, because our still-innocent willingness to really trust democracy will show.

So the left really values diversity of thought and democracy? Really? Is that the lesson of the diversity-sensitive, democracy-affirming mass filibuster of qualified judges?

I didn’t think so.

Al Franken’s Tuesday lies

Franken covered two subjects while I was listening this morning, and lied about both of them. According to Franken, the Newsweek story about US soldiers flushing the entire Koran down a Gitmo toilet was absolutely true. It was previously “reported” other places, and Newsweek only retracted it because of pressure from Bush. An on-line poll … Continue reading “Al Franken’s Tuesday lies”

Franken covered two subjects while I was listening this morning, and lied about both of them. According to Franken, the Newsweek story about US soldiers flushing the entire Koran down a Gitmo toilet was absolutely true. It was previously “reported” other places, and Newsweek only retracted it because of pressure from Bush. An on-line poll at Air America shows 88% of their people agreeing with this spin. Even Eric Alterman says the real story is how thinly-sourced the news is these days, but Al is having none of that.

Al’s working hard on his campaign for Norm Coleman’s seat in the US Senate. He played a long piece of George Galloway’s testimony before the Senate oil-for-food investigative committee on the situation in Iraq today, which in Galloway’s words is a “disaster”. Galloway, as you recall, is the British MP who was caught red-handed taking bribes from Saddam to prop up his government, expelled from the Labour Party, and elected to the Parliament by running a racist campaign against black Jewish woman Oona King in a district with a large Islamic fundamentalist registration.

Galloway’s most flagrant lie is that the British and American troops have stolen $8.8 billion from the Iraqi people since liberation, a claim that Franken endorsed.

Franken claimed that Galloway’s ravings were directed against Coleman, presumably on the basis of his being the committee chair. The FEC should look into Air America’s contributions to the Franken campaign at some point. I don’t know if jail time is in order, but this whole campaigning-by-talk-show deal stinks.