Free Republic

As Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has grown into the nation's biggest grocer, St. Louis is one place where its Supercenters have been curiously scarce. Now, Wal-Mart says the area needs more of its grocery megastores. "We really like St. Louis," said spokesman Ryan Horn. "We're looking very closely at a number of places in the St. Louis area, and that's not going to change." A lot of others wish it would.

The chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. yesterday defended the retailer's decision to close a Canadian store after its employees voted to form a union, saying demands from negotiators would have forced an already unprofitable store to hire 30 more people and abide by inefficient work rules. "You can't take a store that is a struggling store anyway and add a bunch of people and a bunch of work rules that cause you to even be in worse shape," H. Lee Scott Jr. said. In his first interview since Wal-Mart announced it would close the store in Jonquiere, Quebec, Scott...

<p>Stop. You've found it. This is the place. Americana HQ. Patriotism in a giant tin bucket. This is where souls recoil, children wail, dreams die.</p> <p>This is Wal-Mart. The glorious consumer mecca, the epic wonderland/wasteland of prefab landfill merch, not only the world's largest and most powerful retailer and the most aggressive snarling frightening happy-place marketer and quite possibly the most hideously overlit soul-draining monster empire you will ever know in your entire lifetime, but also the very multibillion-dollar pseudo-Christian kingdom that censors their offerings and refuses to sell certain music CDs and bans "risqué" beer-'n'-babes mags like Maxim and FHM and Stuff, because, you know, pretty girls are evil.</p>