Welcome to the 53rd installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

In this week's Wal-Mart Weekly, I'll be looking at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) positioning in the consumer electronics category. Wal-Mart has always served customers looking for the latest television sets to iPods to home theater systems, but generally has not focused in on the 'ministore' concept for merchandising these products.

When visiting a local Wal-Mart Supercenter this week, I was rather stunned to find a Best Buy Inc. (NYSE: BBY) type of appearance in Wal-Mart's consumer electronics department. In fact, the new planogram and merchandising arrangement reminded me of -- Best Buy itself.

Welcome to the 26th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions and just a bit of everything else when it comes down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart. Last week we wondered whether Always Low Prices was just a myth in today's competitive climate.

This past week, I discussed Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) Stores, Inc.'s entry into the non-protected digital music file download business. With the retailer selling non-protected songs from its website for a maximum of $0.94, will this action dent into Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s iTunes market share? Who knows at this point.

Wal-Mart has been in the news quite a bit this past week in regards to a European competitor entering a market Wal-Mart is already in (just not in a big way) -- California. Tesco (LSE: TSCO) said it will be opening smaller-concept stores soon that feature the opposite of the big-box retail feeling of the standard 100,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter. Tesco's stores will average about 10,000 square feet. What will Wal-Mart do in response?

Despite their success in Michigan in building of a new Wal-Mart Supercenter, the folks in Bentonville are not having similar success in Iowa. Iowa City Manager Steve Atkins is pleading with the Iowa City Council to deny a request -- a third request -- from Wal-Mart to extend its purchase agreement with the city in preparation for building a new Supercenter in South Iowa City.

With the Iowa State Supreme Court being sent a message from the opponents of the planned Supercenter, Wal-Mart wants to extend the purchase closing date by another 30 days or so (again, it's third request for an extension) for some unknown reason. Perhaps it wants to keep the parcel of property in question "open" as needed so that it is at least "secure" from other purchasers for the time being.

I can see Iowa City's argument here from this side: Keeping the property -- a little over 21 acres -- off the market while waiting for closing keeps other potential buyers from possibly purchasing and closing much sooner on the property than Wal-Mart would. In this case, and on this basis alone, I agree with Iowa City's opposition -- money talks and those who wait, should walk. Wal-Mart, if you really want this property for development, close and move forward.