Latte Liberals-
Daniel Gross, in the NY Times yesterday, reported that the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board, has cited Starbucks for committing 30 illegal union-busting acts in the NY area alone. Whole Foods, another chain that boasts about its political correctness and green record, is also hostile to their workers' desire to organize. Whole Food Chairman John Mackey told Fortune Magazine in 2003 that unions were "highly unethical and self interested." So I guess in today's world you can look like you are progessive and want to save the whales and help Al Gore, while your business practices are something Henry Ford would smile at.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Birthdays: Vladimir Ulyanov called Nikolai Lenin, Paul Robeson, Jean Paul Belmondo, Dennis Quaid, Ward Bond, Seve Balesteros, Carl Perkins, Michael Learned, Tom Lehrer, Paula Poundstone, Cynthia Nixon, Hugh Hefner is 81,Jenna Jameson is 33, Elle Fanning is 9

In Ancient Egypt this was the festival of Sham al Nassim, or Smell the Breeze Day. Horumheb, Im Hotep and their bros would get together to drink a lot of barley beer, eat green onions, bitter herbs, and eat a pickled half rotten fish called Fessik. Egyptians thought eating this stuff would fend off diseases carried by desert sand storms. Tradition says that it was during this festival that Moses and the Hebrews left Egypt to begin the Exodus.

1553- French writer Francois Rabelais died. His last words were: ” I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”

1747- Famed British actor David Garrick signed a contract to take over the management of London’s Drury Lane Theatre.

1778- In Paris the philosopher Voltaire is initiated into the Masonic Order of the Nine Sisters on the arm of his friend, Benjamin Franklin.

1859- Mark Twain received his Mississippi riverboat pilot’s license.

1914- The first all color film” The World, The Flesh and the Devil” premiered in London.

1948- Variety columnist Ben Mortimer had been needling Frank Sinatra for his advocacy of liberal causes. He accused Old Blue Eyes of draft-dodging and hinted maybe he had pro-Communist sympathies. This day Sinatra responded by meeting Mortimer in front of Ciro's restaurant on Sunset Blvd and punched his lights out.

1953- The first issue of the T.V. Guide.

1991- The last Horn & Hardardt Automat was closed on 42nd St in Manhattan. Philadelphia restauranters Joseph Horn and William Hardart saw German experiments in mass marketautomated restaurants and imported the equipment to start one in Philadelphia in 1902.

2004- Archaeologists in Cyprus discover a 9,000 year old grave of a New Stone Age man. In his arms is the remains of a kitten. This is the oldest evidence of man domesticating cats. So rest in peace- Gronk and Fluffy.