WALMART - Voluntarily paying more than the minimum wage, competing with Amazon, competing with Costco via Sam's Club [hello, Timmy, how's the Banking Roundtable], and stocking some items SuperValue does not in Minnesota, which hence you cannot get at Cub, or at Coborns either.

Strib online here, reporting:

The world's largest retailer cut its annual earnings outlook Tuesday because its profits are being squeezed by pay raises for workers and efforts to make its stores cleaner and friendlier and speed up service. It also reported a 15.1 percent drop in second-quarter profit. Currency fluctuations are also dragging down results.

However, the retailer posted its fourth straight quarter of increases for an important sales measure, and its third straight increase in customer counts for its U.S. Wal-Mart stores.

Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, is facing challenges on all fronts that have resulted in its shares falling 16 percent this year. Its low-income shoppers are still struggling in an economy that is slowly recovering, though lower gas prices are providing some lift. The company is also facing increasing competition from online king Amazon.com and dollar stores, which are pulling in shoppers seeking low prices and convenience.

"The changes we need to make require investment, and we're pleased with the steps we've taken," Wal-Mart CEO Doug McMillon said, according to a transcript of a recorded message to investors. "We made continued progress towards our plan this quarter. Even if it's not fast as we like, the fundamentals of serving our customers are consistently improving."

Wal-Mart has been doing a number of things to improve its results. It's increasing spending for its online operations to between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion this year, up from $1 billion last year. It's opening fulfillment centers dedicated to e-commerce that should speed up delivery and put more items in one box. And it's testing an unlimited free-shipping service for $50 a year, undercutting Amazon's popular Amazon Prime, which costs $99 annually.

Wal-Mart's U.S. division, which accounts for 60 percent of the company's total sales, is undergoing a major overhaul under new U.S. CEO Greg Foran.

The company is trying to improve pricing and selection as well as beef up customer service. It raised the minimum wages for its hourly workers to $9 per hour in April. By February 2016, all hourly workers will make at least $10 per hour.

Those raises are part of a $1 billion investment in its workforce that also includes improved training. Wal-Mart is counting on happier employees to improve the experience for customers. The company is freeing more workers to be on the floor or running registers during its peak hours.

But the investments are battering the bottom line.

And Wall Street, unlike WalMart with a view beyond today's fiscal quarter, does not care as much about what's in the portfolio, and long term; as what in the portfolio performed best this quarter and damn the long term. So, screw Wall Street moods has to be a stay-in-business-prospering goal, as Warren Buffet has repeatedly indicated, in more delicate phrasing.

You even can bump into people you know, at the Elk River Walmart. Sears is now KMart and you know what that means, and Walmart has basic clothing too. Costco is based on membership and hence credit security greater than otherwise; and Target has hired its first outside CEO and is in the process of navel gazing and redefining itself; with all the low end clothing outlets stocking goods from vendors in China. Welcome to 21st Century America, and what does Trump have to say about mass merchandising, from China? More that that; what is his policy about it? His answer to what ails us? Oh, wait, sure, "Trust me." He says it so many ways, without specifically saying "Trust me," but kissing the Blarney Stone is not the same as having sensible answers. We wait. We see.

The entire item, mostly stated through the images, seems somewhat wierd.

This link. It is generally accepted that carrying too much weight can be a health risk, particularly as one reaches town elder status. Yet that China image was strangest. Anorexia is as much an eating disorder as over eating/under exercising. Or more so. People have died from anorexia.

"Trump is leading in polls of Republican voters, and is shaping Republicans’ debate. And Palin feels that is just fine, saying: 'He is the best thing to happen to the political class since the beauty of the Tea Party genuine movement rose up and shined light on crony capitalism, and pulled the rug right out from under status quo politicians who just kind of embrace that permanent political class.' "

2010 image from Politico, here.

Yes. You read that right. The Alaska politician who was thrilled beyond words [polysyllabic ones at least] to be picked as VP partner of status quo career DC politician John McCain - who is still embracing "that political class" only with more accumulated Senate seniority than during Palin's VP venture.

Do as she says, not as she did? For now, out of office since the VP debacle, Palin's pronouncements can be viewed as sour grapes. When's the last time the Republican Party bought her a new wardrobe? Yeah. Nothin' for me lately ...

The headline quote is from Politico, "Trump, Cruz, Palin: Revoke birthright citizenship for children born in America to undocumented immigrants," Posted on August 19, 2015 - By Joel Connelly (online, here). How much more genuine a Republican can you be, than bending (very, very far as the winds blow) and not breaking? Ask Norm about Palin's changed outlook, it probably would resonate; with Norm.

Back then, Palin was just like a newborn kitten, and now her eyes have opened up? Give me a break.

Candidates seeking the presidency, what about Snowden?

Will any of the current mob of contenders have the courage to suggest a full pardon?

What Snowden did was in favor of the privacy hopes of each of us, and the "national security" drape surely has been abused in the past and will be in the future as the Snowden revelations pass into history and as new events capture current attention.

What is certain; one candidate plays the family song, "Don't Worry be Happy"; and suggests Washington DC and Silicon Valley should partner to better enable the NSA. Really. This link.

UPDATE: The Ars item links to The Intercept as source of original reporting. And who was Jeb talking to about the need for stronger government power to watch citizen activity? Again, The Intercept. Those "people," who are defense contracting corporations; i.e., not real people at all.

Guardian has an August 19, 2015, item profiling Ben Carson. Then, a segue to the shoe drops on family turf.

First, Carson, this link, brief excerpting:

Throughout his campaign for president, Carson has touted his social conservative bona fides, portraying himself as an uncompromising hardliner on issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion, in particular, even though his record on the latter is actually somewhat mixed.

[...] even as he has attacked Planned Parenthood, Carson has stood by his support for fetal tissue research – which he has carried out himself in his own medical career.

He has also expressed support for the use of RU-486, an abortion pill opposed by the pro-life community since it is typically administered five to seven weeks into a pregnancy.

Conservatives, at least for now, do not seem to be troubled by Carson’s past record on abortion, [...]

“There appears to be a strong contingent of ‘anyone that is not of DC’ voters in the primary, people who want something new, and they keep rearranging themselves among Trump, Carly [Fiorina], and Carson, with a few landing on [Ted] Cruz or [Rand] Paul,” Rory Cooper, a Republican strategist who is not affiliated with any 2016 candidates, told the Guardian. [...]

While Carson is personally wealthy due to his success as a surgeon and service on several corporate boards, he is no Trump.

Whereas Trump does not have to rely on fundraising, Carson’s fledging political career has been plagued by a number of super PACs which use his name to raise money from of the conservative faithful.

One organization, the Draft Ben Carson Committee, raised $12.2m in the period before he announced his campaign and spent $12m of that total, mostly on fundraising. Its successor, the 2016 Committee, spends large sums of money on pro-Carson billboards and distributing copies of a book, written by one of the group’s leaders, arguing why Carson can win. These activities have siphoned money, energy and volunteer resources away from the Carson campaign and undermined efforts to directly promote his candidacy.

[...] Carson nonetheless appears unfazed and has pressed on in his bid to dethrone Trump as the official Republican frontrunner. He embarked on a tour of the US-Mexico border on Wednesday, tapping into the contentious issue of immigration that Trump has exploited to great success since launching his own campaign.

[links in original omitted] How does a black Republican candidate square with the Nixon Southern Strategy? I.e., does a black man square well with red necks? Or has the south changed, from 1954 days, when Brown v. Board of Education was fresh, and with George Wallace's candidacy between then and now? There has recently been the flag stuff. But - Besides flag-wise, do you believe there's been a change?

Next, shoe fly (yes, the children's song goes "shoo fly ..." but homophones for today rule - and as a bonus for diligent readers wanting real kitsch, this link).

SHOE FLY, put another way, is PLEASE, PLEASE, NOT MORE OF THE SAME

Wikipedia's "Bushduck.png" photo; see also their text.

One has to ask, would Jeb have been swift enough to duck. Of interest, the thrown shoe, Bushduck, happened in December 2008, mere months after W and his econ team in September of that year totally tanked the securitized mortgage derivatives market, thereby tanking the entire economy so badly that we have not yet fully recovered. A good bet is Jeb in W's place would not have ducked that one either.

Please, anyone but Jeb. Even [shudder] Ted Cruz. Jeb is that bad, the family that bad going back to Prescott's days at Brown Brothers Harriman.

____________UPDATE____________
Did any reader adventurous enough to follow that real kitsch link make it past the 30 second mark?

_________FURTHER UPDATE________
Guardian has Aug. 19 Huckabee coverage too. At least Huckabee is not Jeb, but beyond that ...

Same dateline, Planned Parenthood coverage at Guardian.

"The number of domestic abusers and harassers convicted of felonies in Minnesota has risen dramatically over the past decade — from 229 in 2003 to nearly 1,500 in 2013. And more of the guilty are going to prison. In 2013, Minnesota judges sentenced 315 defendants to prison for domestic abuse or violation of a no-contact order, compared to 44 offenders a decade earlier. The average prison sentence was two years. Data kept by the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission document the trend."

The headline above runs together the three short opening paragraphs of an online Strib item by Shannon Prather.

Larry wants to take his case dismissed for lack of standing up the ladder, and there is only one further level, and review there is discretionary. However, Larry fears if things are not set right, via his litigation, there will be riot and mayhem.

He writes such things, online here.

I am now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down abuses of power by President Barack Hussein Obama, who openly admits that he changed the immigration laws enacted by Congress.

Doing the job members of Congress won’t do, Sheriff Joe Arpaio filed a lawsuit to preserve and defend the U.S. Constitution. Freedom Watch’s lawsuit for Arpaio sought to declare that Obama’s actions are unconstitutional in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

As a lawless president, shredding the U.S. Constitution, Obama unilaterally granted amnesty to 6 million illegal aliens, plus benefits and work permits. He legislated in his 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Nov. 20, 2014, expansion of deferred action.

However, Arpaio’s case was dismissed in December by Judge Beryl Howell – appointed by President Obama – for lack of “standing.” Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed the lower court’s dismissal [...]

In Arpaio’s case in the D.C. Circuit, only the Bush-appointed appellate judge, Janice Rogers Brown, believed that binding precedents “required” a result that clearly she did not agree with. Brown agonized at length over the contrast with Massachusetts v. EPA. Brown objected to abuse of standing and suggested that precedents need to be overturned or modified by the U.S. Supreme Court. Well, Judge Brown, we are going to ask the high court to do exactly that.

These problems are part of the lawlessness corrupting our nation. Our country is dying, [...] This feeling drove thousands of ordinary Americans to tea party rallies in 2009 and beyond. Today, this is causing voters to flock to Donald Trump and other anti-establishment presidential candidates.

Tomorrow, if real, honest, non-establishment leaders fail to get elected, such as a president who can arrest the downward spiral of the nation, revolution will break out as it did in 1776. All political persuasions in this country have had it, and the judicial, legislative and executive establishment will figuratively be taken to the guillotines.

I can imagine Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito in a cart hauled to a town square to experience head-in-a-basket justice of the populace; Roberts saying, "Next thing this mob will behead corporations. It sickens me, General Electric, Boeing, on the block, the ax-man ready." Thomas asking Scalia what should be done to quell the mob this time, rather than incite ...

UPDATE: Right Wing Watch notes [links in original]:

Klayman made the same prediction about a revolution in 2013, when he urged “millions” to come to his rally calling for the overthrow of Obama. The revolution didn’t exactly materialize: Only about 100 people showed up.

I wonder how Larry takes the truth. That Bernie or Trump can draw ten times the crowd size even if all they do is fart.