Archive - Dec 22, 2013

There was a time in America when retail brawls only broke out around Thanksgiving dinner time (and increasingly earlier with every passing year). It appears that's no longer the case as the recent release of the Air Jordan 11s reveals. USA Today reports that following the release of Jordan 11 Retro Gamma Blue sneakers on Saturday, "the nation just about fell apart." One week ago, a crowd tore down a mall door just to get an advance ticket to buy the $185 Jordans. With the shoes now officially on sale, the world appears to be ending.

That yet another major retailer was hacked, as happened last week when Target announced that as many as 40 million credit and debit cards used from November 27 until December 15 at its stores  (one wonders why it took the retailer three weeks to realize/announce what was happening) had been "compromised", is no surprise. What was a big surprise is the action one major financial company took in response to the mega hack. The company in question was JPMorgan, and what it did was to tell customers whose debit cards had been used at Target stores during the period in question, that it was limiting use of their cards to cash withdrawals of $100 and purchases to $300 per day. However, what is perhaps most surprising is the sheer number of cards with spending caps: The new limit effects roughly 2 million accounts, or roughly 10% of Chase debit card accounts, according to a bank spokeswoman.

Putting Fukushima In Perspective

Compare and contrast.

CNN’s Jake Tapper: "I think the American people, honestly, want security over freedom."
Benjamin Franklin: "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

That right there demonstrates perfectly how far we have fallen culturally.