I want to know your opinions about Wal-Mart. The reason I'm posting this is because of an article I just read at the New York Times tonight, let me link to it:

Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs
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Go there and read the article but I'm sure you've heard it before or at least a variant. If you're a wage earning worker, this is bad news. And if you're a Wal-Mart worker, this is probably seriously bad news, especially if you're older or if you are in poorer health. We all know that as progressives we're never supposed to even set foot inside that store. BUT I've got a sneaking suspicion some of us have and that some of us do. Now, I just know I'm going to get into serious trouble for this post but my desire to know has just taken me over completely. Let me insert the break here and there will be...

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October is domestic violence awareness month. Over the next few weeks, i'd like to share some of what i've learned and experienced. I have been involved in the movement to end domestic violence off and on since the mid 1980s, in various capacities. I'd like to share some of that experience here. Please keep in mind that every shelter has its own policies, so your local shelter may operate just a bit differently than i describe.

It's any time of day or night, any day of the week. A woman calls the hotline. She may have planned this moment for week or months with the help of hotline volunteers. Or, she may have just reached her breaking point, and packed up what she could, and left when she had a chance. In either case, she winds up at the same place: a local safe meeting place to meet up with the woman who will take her to shelter.

Black-hearted fiends, the lot of them
Rep. Joe Barton - TX
Jeff Flake - AZ
Virginia Foxx - NC
Scott Garrett - NJ
John Hostettler - IN
Steve King - IA
Butch Otter - ID
Ron Paul - TX

The government has failed the people.

That seems to be the bottom line at the end of a week of horrifying images.

The seeds of this disaster were not sown in the Bush Administration, although the current administration does bear the full responsibility for what happened. As predicted, calls for Congressional hearings and a criminal investigation are but a few of the things that the citizenry has called for.

Who will be thrown to the lions? Certainly not the man on the throne. Our modern-age Nero can strum his guitar as people drown or die of thirst, and already the people at the top are stockpiling their excuses.

A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Flood waters continue to rise in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina did extensive damage when it made landfall on Monday. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)


Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the area in New Orleans, Louisiana.(AFP/Getty Images/Chris Graythen)

I didn't grow up in New Orleans. But, its where some of my earliest memories took place. It's where I went to college and it's where I met my husband (ex, now). It's where my mother was born and where my grandmother was born, and her mother before her. Its where my sister lives to this day in what was once my Grandparents house.