Bernie Ward Sentenced
(08-28) 15:53 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge decreed a prison term of more than seven years Thursday for Bernie Ward, whose 15-year career as a leading liberal voice on Bay Area talk radio disintegrated when he admitted downloading graphic images of child sex and distributing them on the Internet.
Ward's case is a "personal tragedy," and a prison term may not be the best way to help him or the children exploited by pornography, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker said as he imposed the sentence in a San Francisco courtroom. But he noted that federal law requires at least a five-year sentence, and said some aspects of the case were disturbing.
Walker said Ward, a former Roman Catholic priest whose KGO broadcasts included the Sunday morning "God Talk" program, "had an opportunity to think long, hard and deeply about the problems of child abuse" in the Catholic Church. Why, the judge asked, "when he encountered his own predilection (for child pornography), didn't he seek treatment, seek help?"
Ward pleaded guilty in May to distributing child pornography and admitted sending between 15 and 150 pornographic images by e-mail, which he said were part of research for a book. At Thursday's hearing, attended by his wife and four children, he spoke briefly, telling the judge, "I regret my actions, the harm they caused my family, my friends and this community." He said he takes full responsibility for his conduct.
Walker said he would go along with a defense request that Ward serve his sentence - seven years and three months - in the minimum-security prison in Lompoc (Santa Barbara County). Prosecutors did not object. The judge gave Ward until noon today to turn himself in to federal marshals.
Ward's sentence could be reduced by about a year for good behavior in prison. After his release, he will be required for the rest of his life to register with police as a sex offender.
Ward holds a master's degree in theology and spent two years in the priesthood before leaving to get married. He worked for three years as a legislative assistant for then-Rep. Barbara Boxer before joining KGO in San Francisco as a reporter in 1985. He became a talk-show host in 1992 and held forth on news and politics for three hours every weeknight, while discussing religious issues on Sunday mornings.
The station, which nicknamed him the "lion of the left" for his outspoken manner and liberal views, fired him in December after his federal grand jury indictment was unsealed.
Ward was investigated after a woman in Oakdale (Stanislaus County) contacted police in 2005 and said a former priest, later identified as Ward, had been having sex chats with her by e-mail and had sent her a photo showing child pornography.
Police got a search warrant for the online account and found about 100 images showing minors, some as young as 2 or 3, engaged in sexually explicit conduct, prosecutors said. They said Ward exchanged the pictures with a group of 10 people for about a year.
Ward's lawyer, Doron Weinberg, described the conversations as role-playing. Ward said he had downloaded the images as part of his research for a proposed book on hypocrisy among Americans who preach morality. Transcripts of some of the messages quoted Ward as fantasizing about naked children, with no apparent connection to any research subject.
His motive and intent were irrelevant to his guilt under federal law, which makes distributing child pornography a felony punishable by at least five years in prison.
At Thursday's hearing, Weinberg said Ward's actions began as a "journalistic endeavor" but "ended in a dark place." They were an aberration in the life of "a very good man (who) has touched the lives of thousands of people" as a broadcaster and fundraiser for charity, Weinberg said.
He argued for a five-year sentence, the minimum required by law, while prosecutors and the court's probation office recommended a nine-year term.
"This is not an aberration. ... This is recurrent behavior," Justice Department lawyer Steven Grocki told Walker. Grocki said Ward "traded in the currency of human suffering" and that the victims of child pornography "are exploited again and again" when their images are exchanged on the Internet.
E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

Tom Hayden Speaks!
DENVER -- Speaking at a luncheon hosted by the Denver Press Club at the Denver Athletic Club today, former California state legislator and '60s political activist Tom Hayden predicted that Barack Obama will lose the 2008 Election. "An African-American candidate talking about economics and a white war hero -- it's clear to me who is going to win," Hayden said. When one of the attendees at the small luncheon, attended mostly by Denverites, asked him to be more specific about why he thinks Obama will lose the race, Hayden replied, "You don't think McCain's gonna have a convention about his being an American." Hayden seemed to be referring to the fact that Barack Obama continues to introduce himself to the American electorate. Hayden elaborated. "I've known kookie Cokie, kookie Cokie Roberts for years, but when Obama vacationed in Hawaii, she said, "He shoulda gone to Myrtle Beach." Hayden turned out his hands, as if to say what're you gonna do?
Hayden went further. "[Obama's] problem is that he's lived in the world of beating the Democratic establishment for so long, it's hard to transition to being the Democratic establishment." Hayden is part of the group Progressives for Obama, but he has his issues with the candidate. "There's the pursuit of the last white man standing in Pennsylvania," he said, rather than a fierce pursuit of the Latino vote, which is what Hayden would like to see.
Given Hayden's history of confrontation with the police, famously at the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968, perhaps it's not surprising that Hayden has a generally dark view. Much of his talk, which was advertised as an introduction to his new book A Tom Hayden Reader, centered on the police presence at the convention in Denver. Since the 1999 Seattle protests against the WTO, Hayden said that there has been "a continuous police build-up that concerns me since then." The brother of an old friend who lives on Denver's 16th Street Mall told Hayden that "he had never seen anything like it before"--that the police presence there is overwhelming, intimidating and edgy.
Apparently, the police have said that they have hundreds of weapons stored next to the mall, and that they bring them out every night and return them to their secret cache in the morning. Or anyway that's what the brother has confided to Tom Hayden. "All these horses on the mall -- it's like St. Petersburg 1905," Hayden said. The Denver Police Department has received $50 million from the Department of Homeland Security, according to Hayden. What concerns him is not only the massive police presence at the convention (the cop who spilled the beans about the weapons cache is convinced that something is going to happen here) but also the newly purchased technology, which will be used "in the barrio" long after the Democrats are gone. When Hayden says that the police create "an imaginary argument with your mind and with your nervous system," he almost seems to have made the point.
There's no need for so many police in Denver, Hayden says. "With Obama having opposed the war, there's no real reason for demonstrations." Hayden also feels that the "radicals of the 60s don't get credit for what has happened for good in the Democratic Party." He thinks there's too much harkening back to 1968. "All this talk about '68 because we have a fascination with round numbers," he quips. "Our country is full of the wreckage of the 60s."
Hayden observes that "there is a new social movement on a vast scale" centered right now in the Obama Campaign. "These young people will plant seeds for the next twenty-five years." But they are "small-d" Democrats, Hayden says, and they are environmentalists and idealists. "They don't want a war in :Pakistan!" And "if Obama loses, which I think he might," Hayden says, nevertheless the Democratic Party will have grown bigger. As for Obama, "he is losing. He is gonna lose the electoral college."
Hayden does offer a taste of Obama hope. "He gets one more chance to reboot, re-orient, redeploy." He offers the example of the Obama ad campaign on the McCain houses as a primer on how rebooting works these days. According to Hayden, some young investigators financed by Brave New Films in Los Angeles went to Arizona and filmed all the McCain homes and put the video on Youtube. Although the video went viral, nothing happened politically until a reporter from Politico saw it and then had a chance to ask John McCain himself the now-famous number question. Only then, Hayden reminded us, did the Obama team jump on. "Outsiders triggering situations -- that's the only way to win."

Five-ring circus; Olympic-Sized Racism

By Nate DiMeo (Slate)
Remembering the 1904 games, where Indians, Pygmies, and other "savages" faced off in the interest of science.

During an Olympics marked by futuristic swimsuits, age-reversing super-pilates, and nationalistic razzle-dazzle on LCD screens of heretofore unimagined scope, it's helpful to remember that Olympic progress can be measured by more than falling records and technological innovation. Last Friday's parade of nations featured representatives from 204 countries and territories of varying degrees of sovereignty bearing 204 flags and wearing 204 outfits designed to reflect the essence of the folks back home. The parade is more than a quadrennial check-in on sociopolitical changes (welcome, Montenegro! Serbia and Montenegro, we hardly new ye) and fashion changes (nice to have you back, newsboy cap!), it is perhaps the most powerful symbol of actual progress the Olympics has to offer. That's especially true when you consider that people from several of those parading nations first competed in the Olympics at a bizarre, demeaning borderline-freak show designed to further racial pseudoscience.
The 1904 Olympics weren't supposed to take place in St. Louis. The International Olympic Committee had already awarded the first non-European games to Chicago, but St. Louis complained: It was already hosting the Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exhibition (aka the World's Fair) that summer, and there was no way it was going to let some upstart sporting event rain on its parade (or midway, or technological exhibits, or elaborate temporary architecture). Determined to thwart Chicago's plans, the exhibition's organizers threatened to out-Olympics the Olympics. They'd organize a bigger and better athletic competition that would put Chicago's little continental import to shame. Fearing a calamitous setback for his nascent movement, Olympics founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin backed down and gave St. Louis the third Olympiad.
It wasn't much of one. The prospect of an arduous trip to a second-tier city in the American Midwest kept almost all of the top European athletes away. Ultimately, fewer than half the events had even one non-American entrant. The Baron himself steered clear of the games, later recalling that he "had a sort of presentiment that the Olympiad would match the mediocrity of the town." Even in the U.S., the Olympics were seen less as an epochal sporting event than as yet another attraction at the World's Fair.
When Judy Garland's fictional family goes to the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition at the end of Meet Me in St. Louis, they say it's the most beautiful place on earth. It was pretty cool. Real visitors saw typical fair fare: industrial exhibits, the world's largest organ, Abe Lincoln's boyhood cabin, newfangled foods like cotton candy and peanut butter and waffle cones, and, of course, a human zoo. Like, well, the Beijing Olympics, World's Fairs of the time were a great way to demonstrate the host nation's various virtues (at best) and presumed cultural superiority (at worst). In 1904, America was in the process of stepping out onto the world stage as an imperialist power. One of the centerpieces of the fair was its Philippine village, featuring live specimens from America's newly acquired territory in a replicated "native habitat" that spread out over 47 acres. Smaller villages were constructed to house Pygmies from Central Africa, American Indians from Mexico, Syrians, Turks, and other "savages"; visitors could gawk at them as they simulated a normal day back home. The display was in the spirit of both turn-of-the-century colonialism and social science. World's Fairs were conceived, in part, as a strollable compendium of the world's knowledge. Its organizers wanted the paying customer to marvel at, say, a new wireless telegraph and a dog-eating member of the Philippines' Igorot Tribe and draw the same conclusion: White Americans are awesome.
The Olympics had their own role to play in this pageant of "progress." A man named James E. Sullivan brought the games to St. Louis. He was a celebrity of an utterly archaic type, nationally famous for sponsoring and officiating athletic competitions. In 1904, he was the head of the fair's Department of Physical Culture. Just as the Department of Exploitation (that's what they called the marketing department) was designed to promote the virtues of the fair's attractions, Sullivan's group was charged with extolling the virtues of American-style athleticism. If the display of "primitive" people from around the world (and even from St. Louis' backyard—there were many Plains Indian tribesmen on exhibit) was meant to show Anglo-America's cultural superiority, Sullivan saw an Olympic games dominated by American achievement as a demonstration of our physical superiority.
Here's where the fair's creepy, early-20th-century ideas about racial superiority reach their icky apogee. Throughout the fair, the so-called primitives participated in physical displays alongside cultural presentations; a visitor to the "Patagonian" display, for instance, might see native Argentines do a traditional dance and also perform some athletic feat. Sullivan subscribed to the view that the white, Anglo-American was at the top of the racial hierarchy in brains and brawn. Here, at his fair, was a chance to prove it once and for all. He talked to William McGee, his counterpart at the fair's Department of Anthropology, and proposed that they combine their efforts. They would hold a "Special Olympics" (Sullivan's phrase) during the plain-old Olympics in which the "savages" would mimic their white counterparts. For Sullivan, it would demonstrate the inherent inferiority of the world's indigenous peoples. For McGee, it would create a body of data that would help him make his mark in the emerging field of anthropology and help him develop his pet bit of quackery: a complete racial hierarchy.
The Special Olympics were harder to pull together than they expected. Despite the fact that the folks in the human zoo were in quasi-captivity, they were paid professionals. With agents and everything. Very few of the "primitives" had any interest in participating in an amateur competition: The Ainu people of Japan might have stooped to climb trees for fair-goers, but that was because they got paid for it. Some, too, seemed to balk because they thought the Olympic sports were ridiculous. Water polo—no joke—was quickly scratched from the program. But eventually, whether due to coercion or curiosity, contestants were secured and the bizarre games within the games began.
"Anthropology Days," as the event was called, took place on Aug. 12 and 13, 1904. The first day featured European-style competitions: the shot put, the high jump, the long jump, the mile, and others. It went poorly—the events had been pulled together very quickly, and there was no time to teach the participants. One strength event—throwing a 56-pound weight—apparently enticed only three competitors, all three of whom refused to try a second round of throws. The high jump was confounding. Even the 100-yard dash was problematic. With so many languages spoken, the starting gun concept was understandably lost on many of the participants. So, too, was the idea of breaking through the finish line: Many would stop short or run below the tape.
The second day featured what the organizers saw as more "savage-friendly" exhibitions: a tree-climbing contest, archery, fighting demonstrations, a Mohawk vs. Seneca lacrosse match, and mud throwing. But even these supposedly more culturally appropriate games didn't work out the way they'd hoped. Thinking that spear-throwing peoples would fare well, Sullivan and McGee were shocked to see that most participants had trouble with the javelin.
The Anthropology Days were seen as a near-total failure. With very little notice, the Department of Exploitation wasn't able to promote it; very few people were there to watch. William McGee's body of data never emerged, with the events so haphazard and poorly designed as to prove statistically insignificant (if we pretend to accept for the moment that such statistics could ever be significant).
For James E. Sullivan, however, the games were at least partially successful. They demonstrated that these savages couldn't even play a proper game of tennis, after all. Sullivan considered the natives' failure to beat the Olympic record for the javelin a sure sign of racial inferiority rather than an aversion to an apparatus never before encountered.
The Anthropology Days experiment was, thankfully, a one-shot deal as an Olympic event. McGee did go on to repeat the experiment that fall, however, this time giving the participants (mostly Native Americans) time to learn and practice the games. Thirty thousand spectators packed the bleachers. Taken together, McGee wrote, the two events proved that the course of human events marched on, inexorably toward the civilized, white-American ideal. His quackery had "proved" the physical inferiority of "primitive" peoples.
Despite the best efforts of James E. Sullivan, the first Olympics on U.S. soil weren't a total embarrassment. George Poage became the first African-American to win a medal, taking home the bronze in the 400-meter hurdles. Frank Pierce became the first American Indian Olympian, running in the marathon and setting the stage for Jim Thorpe to dominate the 1912 games, Michael Phelps-style. And two Zulus, working the fair as part of a big Boer War exhibit, asked whether they could run the marathon and wound up placing fifth and 12th. But Sullivan could take heart: a white American won.
For Nate DiMeo's roundup of the scholarship that's been done on the 1904 Olympics and Anthropology Days, click here.

Isaac Hayes, Deep-Voiced Soul Icon, Is Dead at 65
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) -- Isaac Hayes, the baldheaded, baritone-voiced soul crooner who laid the groundwork for disco and whose ''Theme From Shaft'' won both Academy and Grammy awards, died Sunday afternoon after he collapsed near a treadmill, authorities said. He was 65.
Hayes was pronounced dead at Baptist East Hospital in Memphis an hour after he was found by a family member, the Shelby County Sheriff's Office said. The cause of death was not immediately known.
With his muscular build, shiny head and sunglasses, Hayes cut a striking figure at a time when most of his contemporaries were sporting Afros. His music, which came to be known as urban-contemporary, paved the way for disco as well as romantic crooners like Barry White.
And in his spoken-word introductions and interludes, Hayes was essentially rapping before there was rap. His career hit another high in 1997 when he became the voice of Chef, the sensible school cook and devoted ladies man on the animated TV show ''South Park.''
''Isaac Hayes embodies everything that's soul music,'' Collin Stanback, an A&R executive at Stax, told The Associated Press on Sunday. ''When you think of soul music you think of Isaac Hayes -- the expression ... the sound and the creativity that goes along with it.''
Hayes was about to begin work on a new album for Stax, the soul record label he helped build to legendary status. And he had recently finished work on a movie called ''Soul Men'' in which he played himself, starring Samuel Jackson and Bernie Mac, who died on Saturday.
Steve Shular, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, said authorities received a 911 call after Hayes' wife and young son and his wife's cousin returned home from the grocery store and found him collapsed in a downstairs bedroom. A sheriff's deputy administered CPR until paramedics arrived.
''The treadmill was running but he was unresponsive lying on the floor,'' Shular said.
The album ''Hot Buttered Soul'' made Hayes a star in 1969. His shaven head, gold chains and sunglasses gave him a compelling visual image.
''Hot Buttered Soul'' was groundbreaking in several ways: He sang in a ''cool'' style unlike the usual histrionics of big-time soul singers. He prefaced the song with ''raps,'' and the numbers ran longer than three minutes with lush arrangements.
''Jocks would play it at night,'' Hayes recalled in a 1999 Associated Press interview. ''They could go to the bathroom, they could get a sandwich, or whatever.''
Next came ''Theme From Shaft,'' a No. 1 hit in 1971 from the film ''Shaft'' starring Richard Roundtree.
''That was like the shot heard round the world,'' Hayes said in the 1999 interview.
At the Oscar ceremony in 1972, Hayes performed the song wearing an eye-popping amount of gold and received a standing ovation. TV Guide later chose it as No. 18 in its list of television's 25 most memorable moments. He won an Academy Award for the song and was nominated for another one for the score. The song and score also won him two Grammys.
''The rappers have gone in and created a lot of hit music based upon my influence,'' he said. ''And they'll tell you if you ask.''
Hayes was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
''I knew nothing about the business, or trends and things like that,'' he said. ''I think it was a matter of timing. I didn't know what was unfolding.''
A self-taught musician, he was hired in 1964 by Stax Records of Memphis as a backup pianist, working as a session musician for Otis Redding and others. He also played saxophone.
He began writing songs, establishing a songwriting partnership with David Porter, and in the 1960s they wrote such hits for Sam and Dave as ''Hold On, I'm Coming'' and ''Soul Man.''
All this led to his recording contract.
In 1972, he won another Grammy for his album ''Black Moses'' and earned a nickname he reluctantly embraced. Hayes composed film scores for ''Tough Guys'' and ''Truck Turner'' besides ''Shaft.'' He also did the song ''Two Cool Guys'' on the ''Beavis and Butt-Head Do America'' movie soundtrack in 1996. Additionally, he was the voice of Nickelodeon's ''Nick at Nite'' and had radio shows in New York City (1996 to 2002) and then in Memphis.
He was in several movies, including ''It Could Happen to You'' with Nicolas Cage, ''Ninth Street'' with Martin Sheen, ''Reindeer Games'' starring Ben Affleck and the blaxploitation parody ''I'm Gonna Git You, Sucka.''
In the 1999 interview, Hayes described the South Park cook as ''a person that speaks his mind; he's sensitive enough to care for children; he's wise enough to not be put into the 'wack' category like everybody else in town -- and he l-o-o-o-o-ves the ladies.''
But Hayes angrily quit the show in 2006 after an episode mocked his Scientology religion.
''There is a place in this world for satire,'' he said. ''but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry toward religious beliefs of others begins.''
Co-creator creators Matt Stone responded that Hayes ''has no problem -- and he's cashed plenty of checks -- with our show making fun of Christians.'' A subsequent episode of the show seemingly killed off the Chef character.
Hayes was born in 1942 in a tin shack in Covington, Tenn., about 40 miles north of Memphis. He was raised by his maternal grandparents after his mother died and his father took off when he was 1 1/2. The family moved to Memphis when he was 6.
Hayes wanted to be a doctor, but got redirected when he won a talent contest in ninth grade by singing Nat King Cole's ''Looking Back.''
He held down various low-paying jobs, including shining shoes on the legendary Beale Street in Memphis. He also played gigs in rural Southern juke joints where at times he had to hit the floor because someone began shooting.
------
AP writers Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Ky., and Nekesa Moody in New York contributed to this story.

moneybox (From Slate)
Always Dumb Politics. Always Wal-Mart.
The retailer's clumsy, self-defeating attempts to influence Washington.

By Daniel Gross
Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that retailing giant Wal-Mart, concerned about a potential Democratic sweep this fall, has been not-so-subtly indoctrinating managers and department heads about the perils of an Obama presidency. The operating assumption in Bentonville seems to be that a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress would pass laws such the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for unions to organize at Wal-Mart, thus hurting the company, its workers, and its shareholders. And while the executives running the meetings were careful not to instruct workers which lever to pull, the upshot was clear. "I am not a stupid person," a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor told the Journal. "They were telling me how to vote."
Wal-Mart denied that it was engaging in partisan politics. But, even so, these meetings are the latest in a series of clumsy political moves. Wal-Mart may be a master of many domains: global supply chains and logistics, local politics and zoning, anti-union warfare and branding. But on the stage of national politics, it has proved to be strikingly inept. Its executives seem to have a cartoonish understanding of the way Washington works, ascribing mythic powers to the nation's continually weakening private sector unions and misunderstanding the linkages between party control in Washington and its impact on the performance of the economy and individual companies.
For starters, Wal-Mart has pursued what would appear to be a self-contradictory political strategy. Clearly, Wal-Mart fears the prospect of unionization more than any other factor. Low wages, low benefits, and a generally supine workforce have been fundamental to its business model for decades. Wal-Mart clearly believes Democrats are more sympathetic to unions than Republicans. So one might think that the company would be doing everything in its power to help Republicans and hurt Democrats. That's certainly what it used to do. In the 2000 campaign cycle, its political action committee devoted 85 percent of its donations to candidates for federal office to Republicans; in 2004, the split was 78 percent to 22 percent. But with Democrats having resumed control of Congress, Wal-Mart has increasingly deployed corporate resources to help Democrats stay in power. So far in this cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Wal-Mart has basically split its $884,700 in donations equally between the two parties (52 percent to 48 percent in favor of the Republicans). The list of recipients includes long-standing friends of organized labor such as Rep. Charles Rangel of New York and Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.
Wal-Mart seems to be trying to help Democrats in retail politics, too. In the fall of 2006, Wal-Mart, seeking to bolster its public image, kicked off a campaign to help its 1.3 million employees—whoops, I mean "associates"—register to vote. The company hasn't published results of this campaign. But given the demographic makeup of Wal-Mart's workforce, any such efforts would seem to help Democrats. As Wal-Mart's 2006 EEOC data shows, 61 percent of employees are women, including 75 percent of sales workers, while 17.5 percent of workers are African-Americans and 11.4 percent are Hispanic. So it has spent money and effort helping to register voters who are quite likely to vote for Democrats.
As it tries to scare managers and workers about the inevitable triumph of unions should the Democrats sweep this fall, Wal-Mart also seriously misreads recent political history. The company behaves as if private-sector unions are juggernauts gaining strength, enjoying enormous support in Washington, and bending the Democratic Party to their will. In reality, private sector unions are very weak and getting weaker. Data from the statistical abstract of the United States show that in 2006, just 8.1 percent of private-sector workers (7.4 million) were covered by unions, down from 9.8 percent in 2000 and 15.9 percent in 1985. Given the massive job reductions in the auto industry, the figures are almost certainly lower now. Yes, big unions such as SEIU and AFL-CIO spend money on (mostly Democratic) campaigns and help get out the (mostly Democratic) vote. But the long-term trend is against unions and has been so under all partisan combinations in Washington. While Washington Republicans are almost uniformly hostile to organized labor, Washington Democrats aren't exactly the second coming of Samuel Gompers. Remember that NAFTA, a piece of legislation that organized labor vociferously opposed, was passed in 1993, when a Democrat was in the White House and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. In today's enlarged Democratic tent—with its upscale constituencies on the coasts and newly flipped districts in places like Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas—unions just don't matter as much. (While this shift could explain Wal-Mart's increased willingness to fund Democratic candidates, it strikes me as too subtle a change to register with Wal-Mart's Manichean strategists.)
Finally, consider this. Wal-Mart's brass plainly believes—no, know—that a Republican president would be good for Wal-Mart, while a Democrat would be bad. Despite Clinton's Arkansas roots, most Wal-Mart executives probably opposed Clinton in both his successful campaigns. But during his presidency, Wal-Mart's stock more than tripled. By contrast, Wal-Mart executives polled in 2000 would have been exultant at the prospect of two George W. Bush terms, especially if they were to be coupled with mostly Republican control of the House and Senate. And yet this decade has been a lost one for Wal-Mart shareholders: In the Bush years, the stock hasn't budged at all.
Yes, politics matters. But in the end, the macroeconomic climate matters a lot more. Wal-Mart's success ultimately depends on whether the lower-income and middle-income customers on whom it depends are doing well or getting eaten up by stagnant incomes and rising costs for health care and gas. Here, again, the last two decades offer a pretty good contrast. In the 1990s, when a Democrat was in the White House, the rising economic tide lifted all boats (though not all boats equally), and Wal-Mart benefited. In this decade, the rising tide lifted only the yachts. The Bush years have been something of an economic disaster for people on the lower rungs of the income ladders. Census data show that household income in 2006 was below its 1999 peak and that the uninsured rate has steadily risen throughout the decade. Layer on soaring energy prices in the past couple of years, and you've got trouble. It's not all the fault of Bush or congressional Republicans, of course. But it's pretty clear that the dominant fiscal and economic policies of the past eight years—massive tax cuts for the wealthy, economic royalism, hostility to labor, and neglect on health care—haven't made things better for Wal-Mart customers.
Instead of asking whether a particular candidate or political party will be favorable to Wal-Mart's labor-relations policies, the executives in Bentonville, Ark., should be asking whether the candidate or party will be good for Wal-Mart's customers.Daniel Gross is the Moneybox columnist for Slate and the business columnist for Newsweek.

Really bad day for Greyhound and passenger!

Man charged in decapitation aboard Greyhound bus

Travelers in Canada armed with tools keep suspect at bay until police arrive

PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE, Manitoba —(AP)
A 40-year-old man who witnesses said stabbed and beheaded the man sitting next to him on a Greyhound bus in Canada has been charged with second-degree murder, police said Friday.
Vince Weiguang Li, of Edmonton, Alberta, was due to appear in court later Friday, said Sgt. Brian Edmonds.
Authorities have not released the victim's name but The Canadian Press said friends had identified him as Tim McLean, a 22-year-old carnival worker.
William Caron, 23, said McLean was quiet, though he liked to socialize with friends. He was small -- about 5-foot-4 and 130 pounds -- and tended stayed away from a fight, Caron said.
"From what I hear, this other guy is three times his size," Caron said. "All the time I've known Tim, he's never been the type of guy to get into a fight with. He always kept to himself when there's strangers around."
Witnesses said the victim was stabbed dozens of times in the Wednesday night attack aboard the bus as it traveled a desolate stretch of the TransCanada Highway about 12 miles from Portage La Prairie, Manitoba.
They said the attacker then severed his seat mate's head, displayed it and then began cutting up the body.
Garnet Caton, who was sitting just one seat in front of them, said the suspect had been on the bus about an hour. He initially did not sit near the victim but changed seats after a rest stop. Caton said he did not hear the two speak to each other before the attack.
"We heard this bloodcurdling scream and turned around, and the guy was standing up, stabbing this guy repeatedly," Caton said.
Caton said the driver stopped the bus when he became aware of the attack and passengers raced off. A short while later, Caton said he re-boarded along with the bus driver and a trucker who had stopped to see what was happening.
He said the suspect had the victim on the floor of the bus and "was cutting his head off" with a large hunting knife.
"When he was attacking him, he was calm," said Caton. "There was no rage or anything. He was just like a robot stabbing the guy."
The attacker turned toward them and the three men quickly left the bus, blocking the door as the attacker slashed at them through an opening. Caton said the driver disabled the vehicle after the attacker tried to drive it away.
As the three guarded the door with a crow bar and a hammer, the attacker went back to the body and calmly came to the front of the bus to show off the head, Caton said.
Greyhound spokeswoman Abby Wambaugh said there had been 37 passengers aboard, many watching a movie when the violence erupted. She called the attack tragic but isolated.