I stopped in WalMart today, looking for a pair of cheap running shoes. I eventually found them piled in a corner of the Garden Center, next to the relocated displays of cat toys and lingerie. They weren’t renovating, as it turned out. In desperation, someone had moved the items there to make room for the Easter chocolate.
Long gone are the days when Easter candy decision making boiled down to “hollow or solid, bunny or chicken”. While I expected the traditional chocolate bunnies and eggs, I was wholly unprepared for the sheer volume and choice before me.
Take the eggs, for example. They came in dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate, There were peanut encrusted, creme-filled, caramel dipped, and brightly colored candy-coated masterpieces that looked for all the world like Ukrainian pysanky, but with tastier shells.
There were foil-covered hummingbird eggs hanging with 365 to the little mesh bag, with labels advertising “A Year Of Easter!” There were post-nuclear apocalypse ostrich hen behemoths that required the assistance of a stock boy to roll to your vehicle.
Others had toys inside. There were “transformer eggs” that certain gifted children could convert into Ninjas ready to be devoured. A few played music and in the electronics department, one could shell out $159.99 for an realistic looking egg with a hidden camera inside – to be doubly sure the nanny is paying all due attention to the children on this most special of family holidays.
I considered venturing into the chocolate bunny department, but I was pressed for time. Instead, my attention was drawn to those newcomers to the Easter tradition.
Alongside the chocolate kittens and basset hound puppies and baby chicks, chocolate vampires stood atride chocolate tombstones while chocolate Viking ships roamed in search of plunder. There was a Creamy White Chocolate Barbie[tm] , a 3-cherry chocolate slot machine, and a chocolate mudder Jeep with raised suspension. The Amazing Hulk, Superman, Britney Spears, Star Jones, Bart Simpson – all were available in chocolate. (Michael Jackson was offered in both dark and white.)
Cadbury and Hersheys had “Special Edition” Easter chocolate bars wrapped in fancy purple paper, with calligraphy and golden foil peeking out the ends that sparkled like the setting sun over choppy water.
It was mesmerizing.
So, imagine my shock when I was told;

“Sorry ma’am, but we don’t have a chocolate ‘Jesus On A Cross’. Try Canadian Tire.”

I had to settle for a chocolate Santa Claus.
(Meanwhile, this can’t be good, either.)

Everything old is new again;

In the 1980s, there was a consensus among the members of the national media that Ronald Reagan was going to fail and that he was going to bring on economic disaster. But. . .the economy didn’t collapse. In fact, it soared to unprecedented levels.
The media stubbornly refused to admit that “Reaganomics” was responsible. The drumbeat of negative opposition to the president’s policies continued through the 1980s. By 1986. . . the ratio of negative to positive stories was seven to one. In other words, as the economy was improving, media reports on the economy were becoming increasingly negative.
One of the most common allegations in these reports was that the poor got poorer under Reagan, even though the actual number of poor declined from 14 to 13 percent during his administration, and the average income for the lowest one-fifth of Americans rose from $7,008 to $9,431. Inflation declined 48%, from 8.9 to 4.6%. Unemployment declined 45%, from 7.5 to 5.2.%. Interest rates declined 71.9%, from 21 to 5.9%. Twenty-one million new jobs were created.
The so-called “greedy ’80s” witnessed the largest peacetime economic expansion in our nation’s history, yet the media remained deaf, dumb and blind. – L. Brent Bozell III – November, 1994

“Newsweek: Strong Economy May Hurt Economy”;

Newsweek only admits now that what has been going on the past three years — superb productivity gains, resulting in a true strengthening of the economy, growth without inflation — was a good thing, now that it may be about to end.
Before, Newsweek bemoaned the lack of gangbusters hiring — the “jobless economy” we’ve heard so very much about — without acknowledging the upside of modest (but good) job growth was that companies were growing sensibly and strongly with respect to hiring, not overhiring in a way likely to provoke a bubble and the inevitable bursting of that bubble.
Only now that that it looks like companies are hiring a lot more people do they admit that the “jobless recovery” (which wasn’t jobless at all, but whatever) was fundamentally sound.
I’ve noted this a bunch of times before: The MSM is only willing to acknowlege the economy is strong in stories predicting it is about to weaken. Only when the scary prediction of a collapsing economy is discussed will they admit the economy is currently actually strong.
Bush can never get the political benefit of a strong economy, because the media will never admit it as such until it has passed. Only when the business cycle turns, as it it one day will, to a recessionary period will the MSM then admit the economy had been strong.
In order to contrast what had been good to what is now bad. Without ever acknowledging things were good at the time.
And so it goes.

Via Ian at Inoperable Terran.

A reader who works in the federal justice system writes;

As part of the government’s accountability legislation, there is this little gem. It appears almost as an afterthought in the Bill and has not received much attention outside of the Federal Department of Justice. The creation of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions removes the Attorney General’s office from the Justice portfolio. This is to ensure no political influence is exerted to force a prosecution ahead or to affect the outcome in an ongoing prosecution.
The office of the D.P.P. is based upon an number of international models (including Great Britain) as well as models of some provincial Attorneys General in Canada. A number of prosecutions (notably under the Criminal Code) are the responsibility of the provinces to prosecute. In some provinces, a D.P.P. has been established to ensure the independence of the prosecuting agency from any and all political influences.
The Bill hints of good things to come in Federal prosecutions as it both promotes transparency in prosecutions and seeks to eradicate any political influence in the criminal justice arena.
In addition to the obvious sources of interference, presumably it will also preclude attempts by police to exert pressure to pursue questionable prosecutions, or demanding the prosecutions unit take certain (unreasonable) positions on bail or in sentencing.

Read about it here.