Every Walmart Is Now the Dirty Walmart

When I would go to the "Dirty" Walmart in St. Louis (if you're from North St. Louis County you know which one and it rhymes with Best Clorrisant) I would always joke "We don't hire cleaning services and pass the savings on to you!" Which just had to be true. That Walmart was just filthy. Nothing like the giant, mega Super Walmart in the "nice" part of St. Louis County. But then even that Walmart started to get a little "Walmarty," with the empty, unstocked shelves, the clutter, the old merchandise, that general "What a dump" feeling I have about most Walmarts, compared to a "Dirty" Target store, which is just being a filthy hipster Target and is dirty "ironically" as Targets ARE NOT supposed to be dirty.

And yet they are.

But anyway, Wally World, what gives?

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Clutch Magazine: Surviving Mom and Dad's Basement

As a two-time veteran of getting stuck at your parents' house even though you're an adult who's lived on their own for years, I decided to give some tips to the readers at Clutch Magazine Online. Namely, set some boundaries if you don't want to have the weird, slightly co-dependent relationship I have with my own mother.

Here's a snippet:

Speaking of 2007, that was when I made my first return to the homestead after I left a job as a newspaper reporter to get my head, life, and career back together while not having to worry about rent. I can’t say I handled my first trip back to the basement all that well, considering I was severely ill at the time, battling Bipolar Disorder and was extremely depressed. I was largely unpleasant to be around and mostly wanted to disappear into the concrete beneath my basement, bedroom floor. But since my slightly older-than-most-Boomer parents are really more like Depression Era survivors, with their fiscal nature and love of saving, I received less grief about my finances and more grief about being an adult my mother still saw as her child.

Nothing like being suddenly informed you have a curfew at 30 years old.

Read the full post at Clutch Magazine Online.

Clutch Magazine: Wanna Get Married? Graduate From College

Today for Clutch Magazine Online we learn that marriage isn't for white people -- it's for rich, educated people. No matter your race, the biggest indicators on whether or not you'll get married and whether or not that marriage will last depends on your ability to finish college and get a (well-paying) job.

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Jon Huntsman Picks Up Toys, Goes Home; Romney Hands Out Cash

Jon Hunstman, the Republican president candidate who could never shake that "Obama hired me to be Ambassador to China," moderate conservative stink off himself, dropped out of the GOP race today. Huntsman, naturally, endorsed the man who he most resembled without all the complications of being a horrible phony -- Mittens Romney.

Mittens, known for his robotic qualities and pathological inconsistencies was somewhere in South Carolina giving a poor black woman $60 in cash. It was a perfect storm of annoyances -- from the optics of a black person getting an actual "hand-out," to reinforcing the ideology that occasional donations from Daddy Warbucks should take care of our poor and not a strong social safety net built on our tax dollars, to reinforcing the belief that all poor, begging people are black people.

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Hey Everybody, Let's All Look At Rick Santorum Now!

Despite my many, many protestations to anyone taking Rick Santorum seriously, Santorum had to go and almost tie Mittens for a win in Iowa. Even though ol' Santy lost by eight votes, he's a "winner" since two weeks ago he was polling around four percent in Iowa. Of course, this ignores that GOP voters have played "Anybody But Romney" with pretty much everyone and it was now Santorum's turn. (Will it ever be Jon Huntsman's turn? Hahahahahaha. No.) 

But Santy's the one (for now). So let's all look at him, shall we?

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Poverty In America's Suburbs Jumps By 53 Percent

From the NYT SlideshowOnce a symbol of "making it," the suburbs continued their slide into growing older and poorer. The New York Times reports today that poverty level in America's suburbs has jumped by more than half since 2000, compared to the cities, which saw an increase of 26 percent. And the limping economy has only hastened the 'burb's poverty rate, with two-thirds of of that growth happening between 2007 and 2010.

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President Obama: Pass This *Damn* Jobs Bill (The Damn Is Implied)

President Barack Obama addresses a Joint Session of Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Sept. 8, 2011. Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner are seated behind the President. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)Last night President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress where he, repeatedly, told Congress to "pass this jobs bill." I'm sure he meant, "Pass this damn jobs bill, you unrepentant assholes," but the President always tries to keep his public swears to a minimum. Besides, he had no bone to pick with his team in Congress. All that implied "pass this mutha effer" was for the members of the Republican Party in Congress who enjoy holding up all appointments, filibustering everything and generally accusing the president of doing nothing for jobs when they have this tendency to make sure nothing ever happens by stalling, obfuscating, delaying and denying anything with Democratic Party, presidential whiff to it on Capitol Hill.

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NYT Graphic Depressingly Displays How We Work Harder For Less

Click to enlarge.After looking at this graphic I had a strong urge to just completely give it up and pack in it. Nothing like seeing hourly wages and compensation stagnate (and even go down) while American productivity continues to rise. In a world where you're constantly told that somehow everything done from 1947 through 1979 was all some fluke and that our country prospered in spite of the creation of entitlement programs, government spending, regulations and worker's rights, the chart hurts. It hurts so bad.

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Rep. Maxine Waters, CBC, Waiting For You to "Unleash" Them On Obama

While President Barack Obama was on the road doing a listening bus tour, members of the Congressional Black Caucus were getting an earful in Detroit from frustrated constituents upset over our dire economic conditions. When pressed on why the CBC isn't doing more to put pressure on the president, Rep. Maxine Waters gave a candid response that they were waiting on permission from their constituents. She said these voters, often fervent supporters of the president, needed to "unleash" them, like political Kraken.

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