Fight the good fight, sand-man.  Liver cancer can be beaten.

It is in the Nature of Man that he wants to have control over others - their property and even their very thoughts.  We are endowed at birth by Our Creator with certain inalienable rights - but we will keep them only as long as we defend those rights and principles from those who would take them from us.  

Ahem.  According to Wikipedia: "Deliverance was shot in the Tallulah Gorge southeast of Clayton, Georgia and on the Chattooga River, which divides the states of Georgia and South Carolina."

So thar .....  Oops!  I meant "there".

OR - I'll stand with you and Sand-man.  Hell, I'll even let you stand to his right and I'll get behind him on the left - even if my being left-handed is a PITA.

As to those of you who demonize the man because he disagrees with you ....  Well, shame on you.  I don't know how many time I've posted on these forums that "Gentlemen should disagree without being disagreeable" but it seems not to have sunk it even yet.

Sand-man - I disagree with you about your choice of presidential candidates.  And even though I volunteered for service in South Vietnam and have my USMC Combat Action Ribbon, had I known what I later learned, I'd probably have gone and lived with my relatives in New Brunswick, Canada instead of voluntereering.  Our involvement in Vietnam was a terrible mistake - just as is now our misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Voltaire said it better than I ever could - "I may disagree with what a man says, but I will defend to the death his right to say it." 

As far as Walmart goes in employment, it is the McDonald's for adults.  You need little more education than a 5th-grader (if that much) and if you are 35 years old and can't get a job - it looks good, no matter what education you have accrued.  I shop at my local Walmart so often that I've developed relationships with some of the employees and what should be a 15-minute shopping trip turns into twice that because we "git to gabbin' " and we both lose track of time.

Do they hurt "Mom and Pops"?  Of course, they do.  Welcome to the 21st Century.  Mom and Pop now work for Walmart, having sold their store to someone who specializes in things where Walmart doesn't want (or need) to compete.

Guess what?  When "Obamacare" kicks in full force, a lot of the full-time jobs are going to go away - along with the benefits the employees have with them.  

Sometimes reality just plain sucks - but it's always real. 

He's paddled out of sight now.  I think he heard that banjo music again ...... 

As far as bankruptcy goes, the purpose of it is to give a person or company some "breathing room" from creditors/obligations while it reorganizes or otherwise does what it needs to do to get back on its feet.  Does anyone seriously think that GM was going to go out of business?  While it made for a good scare story and perhaps indicated how deep our economic problems are, it also indicated that GM was badly managed.

Instead of GM going bankrupt and being bought out by other investors with the business acumen to run it properly, we end up with the crew who put it on the rocks still at the helm, further complicated by government bureaucrats cluttering up the "bridge".  A good example is the Chevy Volt, the darling of the tree-huggers.  The consensus is that it's a piece of crap and the Volt production line has been switched over to Impalas - which are bought by various government agencies.

The only question is whether or not we'll be duped into another bailout when GM crashes again - because it will.    

SWFGA - It's not that I don't like what you're selling.  However, your attitude leaves something to be desired.  If you don't want to have me as a customer because I live in Maryland, fine.  There are plenty of places which will sell me whatever I want and will be glad to accept my business - and my money.

The dairy went out of business - forever.  A juice company bought the buildings/physical plant a few years later.  I don't know it that's still in business or not. 

Union obduracy cost my father a good job.  He worked for a dairy and was a Teamster.  The dairy had a long-time contract to deliver milk to our county's schools, obviously a very lucrative contract and my father made pretty good money.  For whatever reason, the contract was lost and the dairy's revenues plummeted.  Pop, because of his union seniority, managed to get a home-delivery route but salaries were cut across the board.  The union made demands that the employer couldn't meet (and they showed the union they couldn't) and threatened to strike if those demands weren't met.  The owners told the union that they'd close the company if they struck and the union "called their bluff" - but it wasn't a bluff.  The dairy closed and my father lost a job he'd had to over 20 years.

I am not anti-union.  In fact, for several years I was a member of the same Teamster's local which had cost my father his job and because we had good shop stewards the most outrageous things my employers tried to do were stopped in their tracks.  I was also represented by the FOP when I was a cop and had the same experience there.  However, common sense should prevail.  You can't get blood out of a stone and when an employer simply doesn't have the money to meet union demands, it's time for the union to explain that to the members and simply settle for the best you can get without destroying the company - and your job.