livereal.org

An advocacy group claims Wal-Mart is misleading its customers by labeling non-organic foods as ‘organic.  Our expectations confirmed?  Yeah, mistakes will happen but at five different Wal-Mart locations?  And why has nothing been done since September about the mis-tagging of Organic Foods?  Don’t sell that Whole Foods stock just yet… Whole Foods may come out a winner in this battle!

This group is accusing Wal-Mart of organic fraud and they may be on to something.  We may be seeing a lot more of these stories since the higher prices are in the organic foods.  But lets take a look at the employees that work at Wal-Mart.

I do not really think Wal-Mart is doing this organic foods mislabeling on purpose.  I think it is the employees that are ill-informed and just do not know what an organic product is they think it is natural.  They are so used to the terms “new”, “natural”, 10% juice” etc that they just look at organic as a natural instead of organic product.  When you go in a Whole Foods you are used to everything already being mostly organic or natural instead of the fake chemical bags of Cheeto’s or fake chemical foods in grocery stores.

Go in Wal-Mart yourself and you will most likely discover it yourself.  The stockers in Wal-Mart have everything so trashed in the store that hardly anything matches what the sign says.  Although, Wal-Mart deserves to pay for misleading people if they keep doing this.  Especially when it comes to organic foods where they mis-mark them at higher prices and rip off the consumers.  If Wal-Mart is going to sell foods and try to compete against Whole Foods or Wild Oats then it needs better training to educate employees on what organic foods really are.

Call it what you will but there is definitely something kinky going on with this story and no we do not mean Kinky Friedman who ran for Texas Governor.  We are talking about real Kink.  That is Kink.com and real military discipline.

It is a little cold across the US today but Kink.com just made it colder.  Imagine being chained up in the San Francisco Armory Basement.  Kink.com recently reported buying the San Francisco Armory for a stunning $14.5 Million on December 29, 2006.  The Armory has not been used for years and is a San Francisco landmark.

The kinky porn company plans to remodel the building and possibly make part of the building a place to raise money and other parts places to produce adult porn.  This former military armory is a 200,000 square foot reproduction of a Moorish Castle completed in 1914 and has been mostly vacant since 1978.
Residents in the area are worried it may produce a bad role model but some residents say its part of what San Francisco stands for in that it “promotes sex instead of guns”.   Although,  I am not sure you can say sex instead of violence.

I just wonder how Kink.com makes so much money.  That is a lot of money for a porn site to be dishing out.  Also, who is getting the money? The San Francisco local government or the military?

For passengers of all the flights from San Francisco, CA to DFW Airport in Dallas, TX there was an apology sent out from American Airlines today.  A little late since the incident was on December 29, 2006.  Not only is this apology late but it’s a dollar short.  This apology is not enough from the mental issues they may have caused their passengers pinned up in their prison seats on board the flight that got diverted to Austin and Tulsa for over 11 hours.  Overflowing toilets, no running water, no electricity, no air conditioning, and contaminated air to breathe.  American Airlines should have responded better from this incident with a personalized message, free airline tickets, complete refunds, and maybe a few bottles of wine so families can deal with this mess.  These airline passengers were held like victims, hostages, or confined prisoners without any rights.

The issue was worse when one plane diverted to Tulsa and let people off but did not let the passengers begging to get off to have freedom off of the plane.  I feel laws need to be passed that say Americans should have freedoms INSIDE an airplane when its sitting on a tarmac for hours.  We should be able to get off the plane if it has sat there for more than an hour no matter the airport or labor policies.

If you wish to go green with your investing for 2007 there are many routes you can take these days.  One route you can take is investing with Sunpower (SPWR), a play on global solar cells products that are more efficient that most solars.  Sunpower is also less obtrusive than windpower but comes with more expense for consumers.  I have invested in SPWR and seen some good gains so far out of this stock.

Yesterday’s announcement of the new iphone from Apple Computer which also changed to Apple Inc. left America’s jaws wide open.   We were all in shock over the computer maker’s switch into the digital world with a breakthrough iPod phone that is 500 times better than even the latest iPod.  This is the first invention made out of America in decades that I feel will actually do some good for our exports to other countries.  I think the iPhone is ahead of other phone products including Treo and Motorola by five years at least (as Steve Jobs says).  Every liberal should own shares of AAPL known for Apple Inc.  The only problem I have with the new iPhone is their relationship with the monopoly of AT&T (T) who owns Cingular Wireless.

Other liberal stock plays include alternative forms of energy, organic grocers, and companies that give back to the community.  Energy may not be a good area to be in right now with gas prices so low but we have heard that Whole Foods could be a bargain at its current low stock price.  The Whole foods ticker symbol on the stock market is WMFI.  Other organic foods stocks are HAIN Celestial foods under symbol HAIN.

There are many companies that help out the environment and save on the bottom line while saving energy.  I would look for stocks of companies that build buildings that retain heat and use solar energy.  Whole Foods, for instance, contracts wind energy to use for most of its stores.

Jim Cramer on CNBC’s Mad Money says it best when he told a caller that you can invest in what you think will make money then after the money is made it’s what you do with the money that matters.  If you invest in Altria who owns Kraft and Marlboro cigarettes then you could turn that profit into a donation to a charitable trust like Jim Cramer does.

It all seems like an episode of Mean Girls or Girls Gone Wild on the local level.  There are many reports that the cheerleaders in McKinney, Texas have gone wild and mean to other students.  One of the cheerleaders is the principals daughter.

You can only guess the news source that reported the Cheerleaders Gone Wild - Fox News - the reporter for mean girl America.  Greta Van Susteren interviewed Gretel Kolach who is Newsweek’s special correspondent to find out more on the cheerleaders but there are so many mistakes in the Fox news transcript that its hard to follow.  For one, the Fox news transcript keeps mistaking Gretel Kovach with Greta from On the Record.

The attorney for Linda Theret claims that the actions of the cheerleaders are not any different than any other little or big town and that these girls “who are a little out of hand and a little bit too big for their britches”.  Linda Theret is the principal of this McKinney highschool and the mother of one of the fab five cheerleaders.

McKinney high school students claim they have been terrorized and bullied by these “fab five” cheerleaders and I hope some action is taken by the school.  There are enough bullies in high school and all of them need to be punished or suspended.  Take them off the cheerleader team, football team, or whatever the school needs to do to punish bullies and prevent them from turning into an adult Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter.

I am normally not anti-business as you can see in most of my posts (which is contrary to your impression of liberal or democratic thinkers). I think business is what keeps America running and its great to have private enterprise going strong. On the other hand, I feel the Airlines like American Airlines the nations largest airline have too much control and treat their customers like dirt. The airlines treatment of customers always comes out worst during the holiday season. They are understaffed and so tight on costs that everyone looses out even the people flying in first class part of the time.

I feel that the Airlines get so many tax credits, so many free rides, and so much free reign that they are basically like entering their country when you step on board. I used to own American Airlines stock until this incident but it is now sold because I am no longer a supporter of American and the way they treat their passengers (including coach, business, and first class). American Airlines does give away a great deal to gay rights campaigns which I felt was great for an Airline and gave them points for that. American scores great with gay rights but not peoples rights of how they are treated inside a crammed packed plane.

BELOW is from one of the passengers on the horrific flight from San Francisco/Oakland to DFW that you can read here:

I will not be entering the airport any time soon and do not recommend anybody spend the night in the terminal like we did but we were among thousands of other people stuck in the same situation. I am just glad the airline part is over because now when I see pictures of people stuck in airports on the news and USA Today - I will first hand know their misery.

This tells of a disaster that came about after a few small thunderclouds and lightning hit Dallas, TX following the 2006 Christmas holidays. American Airlines has done nothing to help these passengers on Flight 1286 so far. This incident involves my family on the plane and I am very upset that American Airlines acted the way they did and treated their passengers so badly without any humanity at all. No running water, no food, no compromises - just plain imprisonment worse than any jail where you are stuck in a coach seat and cannot move for 11 hours straight. Here is what my family had to go through on the very low staffed American Airlines:

Our return Flight 1286 from Oakland to Dallas left at about 1:30 p.m. CST on Friday, December, 28, 2006, and after circling DFW for about an hour because of lightening on the runway in Dallas was diverted to Tulsa. We were forced to remain on the plane on the tarmac in Tulsa for over 4 hours with no water or food and everybody trying to use the restroom at once.

The pilot announced that the plane would leave the Tulsa airport and return to DFW, but no flights would be going out of Dallas that night. Since we knew we had missed our connection flight #1369 at 6:20pm to Oklahoma City and would be stranded at the airport in Dallas overnight, we asked if we could get off the plane at Tulsa at the same time they were letting the 5 Tulsa people off. We were told ‘No’; we had to stay on-board to return to Dallas.

We got back to Dallas around midnight, and at this point we had been on the plane since 11:30 Pacific time, 1:30 central time, making the time on board the plane about 11 hours, without food. By the time we finally were able to leave the airplane, we could not retrieve our checked luggage. We were told it would follow us on a flight to Oklahoma City. Then the stranded passengers from Flight 1369 lined up to wait for an agent to try and arrange for a standby flight the next morning. We were stranded at the Dallas airport at 12:30 am without food or a place to sleep. We were told we could catch a cab to a hotel and rent a room at our own expense.

After a horrible night in the airport, without any help whatsoever from American Airlines, we lined up at the gate the next morning to try and board flight 3587 to Oklahoma City. The agent arrived and told us that the gate had been changed so we rushed to the new location where the gate and flight time was changed two more times forcing the 44 people waiting on standby to rush from one site to another in hopes of getting on the flight. The agents were very rude. Finally they announced the flight and started boarding people, and then they called out a few names from the standby list. We did not get on that flight and the next flight was supposed to be at 10:30 a.m. and would be the last flight of the day.

Because no one could assure us that we would get seats on the 10:30 flight, we finally gave up and rented a vehicle and drove the 3 hours to Oklahoma City. The expense for a vehicle was $128.00.

Note: This compares to the horrible treatment from American Airlines for the good folks who flew from SFO to Austin on the same day as the USA Today Blog reported.

If you are into the type of torture we always speak against or for capital punishment you may enjoy this video.  I do not enjoy this because it is sick and twisted watching someone hang.  I think we would be much better off having Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq than the mess that America has created without him in power.  Iran has got more control now without the scare of Saddam Hussein.

If you want to watch the video on You Tube of Saddam being hung here it is: youtube.com/watch?v=motRDwGmfBU.  I advise that you watch it and be prepared to be shocked because it is not easy watching anyone die even someone who has done as much wrong as this powerful ex-leader of Iraq.  I would almost take more interest in hanging Osama Bin Laden than Saddam Hussein but we are after the wrong person as usual.

If you wish to watch the video do it on your own.  Just be prepared to have nightmares of the Wild Wild West days of America.

Hours after taking control of Congress, House Democrats disclosed a plan they said would strengthen homeland security.  The Democrats  are working under a 100 hour time table to get things moving fast while the Republicans are complaining they are moving too fast.  Yes, thats right the Republicans cannot keep up.

Nancy Pelosi is only two heartbeats away from the presidency and this is a time to be proud of the speed of democrats.   The Republicans were too busy taking money and gifts under the table to get America (the land that once was great before the Republicans destroyed it) back on its feet.