Tuesday's links and comments

Sorry for the absence. Nothing motivated me to write. Israel is hitting back at Hezbollah and Hamas after they stirred up trouble at the behest of Syria and Iran. The stock market has been awful since the recent flare up in the Middle East, not that it was roaring before then. On the baseball front, the Indians have come out of the All Star break stumbling. Anyways, here are a few links and comments for a Tuesday morning.

The head of the NAALCP wants people to stop shopping at Target because Target didn't respond to some survey they sent them.

Of the 50 companies contacted by the NAACP, five ignored the survey, including four retailers: Dillard's Inc.; Kohl's Corp.; Sears, Roebuck and Co.; and Target Corp. All were given Fs for not answering. The other company that failed to answer was Excel, a telecommunications company; it also received an F. Gordon called on blacks to stop shopping at Target, in particular, until they answer the NAACP's questions - though he stopped short of calling the action a boycott. "They didn't even care to respond to our survey," he said. "Stay out of their stores." The NAACP focused on Target because they're one of the nation's most prominent national retailers, said John C. White, NAACP spokesman. However, the group does not plan to picket or leaflet Target, but will rely on word of mouth, he said.

Wow, does he sound like a petulant child or what? Target did respond to this threat.

A Target spokeswoman said via e-mail that the company opted out of the survey "because Target views diversity as being inclusive of all people from all different backgrounds, not just one group." The NAACP survey asks only about blacks. She added that minorities make up 40 percent of Target employees and 23 percent of all officials and managers.

I don't expect this undeclared boycott will have any actual effect, but who do you think would be hurt most if the boycott was effective? That's right, the lower level employees. However, the employees are of no concern to the NAALCP. They're only concerned with trying to intimidate a major corporation into tossing some cash their direction.

I don't often find myself in agreement with Clarence Page, but his column today is well worth reading.

Mark Steyn reviews Nicholas Wade's book Before The Dawn in a column titled: Before the white man came? War We've deluded ourselves into believing in the myth of the noble and peaceful primitive.

Someone is actually trying to clean up the mess called Detroit elections.

City Clerk Janice Winfrey is set in less than a month to eliminate from voting rolls the names of nearly 55,000 dead people and those who no longer live in Detroit, as she undertakes a blitzkrieg aimed at restoring integrity and respect to Detroit elections.

Winfrey, a political novice and former math teacher, was able to do in six months something her predecessor, Jackie Currie, didn't do for years. "It was very easy," Winfrey said, explaining she bought "death lists" from the state and city Health Department so the names of the deceased could be purged.

Yesterday, it was reported repeatedly that President Bush used an expletive in a private conversation. Unfortunately, almost no attention was given to what he said before the expletive. Here is the complete quote: "See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s--- and it's over," Bush told Blair. The key point is if Syria wanted hostilities to end they could end it. Instead everyone has focused on the fact that he used a harsher word than crap.