What is the Long Game?

When WalMart announced it was closing 269 stores, local news included the fact that it was closing one store in Vegas. The closure of this store was no surprise to me. In fact, I was surprised it was still open at all. It was the Walmart where this happened. When there’s a shootout with cops in your store, you really ought to reconsider that location.

Now, it has since been pointed out that there’s not another full grocery store for 5 miles. Think about that for a minute: an urban area, near an Air Force Base, that can’t support one single grocery store. That’s mind boggling.

Even more mind boggling is that WalMart — traditionally, a retailer that would go into rural towns where KMart didn’t want to be — can’t seem to make up its mind concerning small town grocery stores. First, it opened up a bunch of grocery stores in small towns. The local grocers that had been serving those areas could not compete and went out of business. Now that WalMart has an effective monopoly, they are closing those stores!

So does WalMart have some sinister long game? Or is management simply incompetent?

In Closing: return of the Cat Film Festival; a recipe that looks great, but who am I kidding I’ll never make it.

The Shorties Girls

I really thought about doing something on intellectual dishonesty today. But you know it boils down to one thing: Cheating cheats you in the long run. So here’s the shorties.

Google Easter Egg: check out what happens when you search for “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.”

The Cats of Belgium: Belgians have a pretty good sense of humor, it turns out.

The NSA: I guess nobody noticed they had their fingers crossed behind their backs. I wonder what, if anything, can stop them from thumbing their nose at the 4th and 5th Amendments.

Stop! Thief!: Civil forfeitures now exceed losses from burglaries.

Opt Out: Massachusetts has decided they don’t want Common Core. Not because they can’t live up to it, but because they believe what they already implemented was better.

The Whole Country: “Russian sailor drank half a litre of rum before crashing 7,000-ton ship full speed into Scotland.” Some headlines are better than others.

The History [Americans] Don’t Know: We will never figure out how to bring peace to the region without learning how “The West” helped cause the problems in the first place.

And Finally: A few words on Downtown Las Vegas. By the way, “Downtown” and “The Strip” are completely different places. Strictly speaking the Strip isn’t even in Las Vegas!