This is why I always did my X-Mas shopping Dec. 24:

I know they call it "Black Friday", but this is outrageous. There's a deep sickness in America that it won't be easy to address, but it's going to be up to our new President to at least try to put down this out-of-control culture of greed in our country. It goes from the top to the bottom, whether it's a shopper stepping on a worker to save a few bucks on a TV or a President sending a nation to war over billions of dollars in oil. Republicans talk a good game about establishing a "culture of life", but this culture of greed we've established stems from the same principles that drove the Reagan revolution: greed is good. I don't know if our new President can do anything about this, but I'm hopeful that his call to service may stem the tide. We can hope.

A Wal-Mart worker died early Friday after an "out-of-control" mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through the Long Island store's front doors and trampled him, police said.

The Black Friday stampede plunged the Valley Stream outlet into chaos, knocking several employees to the ground and sending others scurrying atop vending machines to avoid the horde.

When the madness ended, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was dead and four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured.

...

Even officers who arrived to perform CPR on the trampled worker were stepped on by wild-eyed shoppers streaming inside, a cop at the scene said.

"They pushed him down and walked all over him," Damour's sobbing sister, Danielle, 41, said. "How could these people do that?

"He was such a young man with a good heart, full of life. He didn't deserve that."

...

"I look at these people's faces and I keep thinking one of them could have stepped on him," said one employee. "How could you take a man's life to save $20 on a TV?"

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/11/28/2008-11-28_worker_dies_at_long_island_walmart_after.html?page=1