Hat tip
GunRightsAcrossUSA @GRAAmerica

If you were a bad boy, there was none of that “40 acres and a mule” nonsense but probably a load of buckshot or a noose.

Reading an article about Sears decay and how their pension plan is one of the thing  killing the company when I run into this:

Many other analysts have blamed Lampert himself for Sears’ misfortunes. They say he made bad decisions about marketing, didn’t invest enough in stores and didn’t commit to selling online.
Americans’ increasing preference to buy online, and at big-box stores rather than malls, is a major problem for the company. Sears has lost $11.7 billion since its last profitable year in 2012

Selling online is just a very modern and very efficient version of the old mail order catalog sales: You chose what you wanted/needed at home, send payment and get your stuff delivered. The irony is that Sears was, for many years, the biggest catalog seller in the world. Many young ones won’t even know about it, but the Sears catalog started in 1,888 and was integral part of the American Household for decades (and outhouses too) till the 1980s and finally quit in 1993.

Many old school companies are blaming Amazon for their own reduction in sales, but that Sears is taking it in the chin when Bezo’s baby is nothing more than a very modern version of the Sears catalog is very ironic when you are supposed to have over a century’s worth of experience.  And they even sold guns and houses!

Economic Darwinism is as ruthless as the regular one.

So yesterday we have the “shattering” news of Kavanaugh’s sexual misconduct via a letter that Dianne Feinstein had been holding for over a month, and which fizzles rather fast after it is leaked that the impropriety was a high-school silliness.

And the next day, we have 65 women coming out to defend Kavanaugh in an open written letter.

I know political operatives may be good and fast, but nobody can collect and make 65 people agree on something, redact it and have it out in less than 24 hours. My take? The Republicans knew about the accusation and prepared the response to embarrass the living daylights out of the Democrats.  And on a Friday afternoon, knowing it will make every political talk show in the weekend.

I would say they succeeded.

Earlier today, the New York Times broke a story that the State Department spent $52,701 on curtains for the residence of the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley.

This was the perfect thing for the Democrat outrage machine to process.  They hate Trump, they hate Haley, why not scream about the government wasting money on people they hate.

Congressman Ted Lieu decided to score some #Resistance points with it.

This is not okay. As a Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I call on @HouseForeign Chairman @RepEdRoyce to hold an oversight hearing on @StateDept spending on @nikkihaley and her deputy. https://t.co/c2ipX1s79d

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) September 14, 2018

David Hogg in his quest to never be right about anything called on Haley to step down over this.

The problem is, in the NYT own story, the NYT explains how the outrage is all false.

A spokesman for Ms. Haley said plans to buy the curtains were made in 2016, during the Obama administration. Ms. Haley had no say in the purchase, he said.

So the curtains were ordered under Obama and they aren’t personalized for Haley.

So what about the $52,701 curtains.

This is my two cents on the subject.

Being around the defense industry, and having worked for ARDEC, DARPA, and a bunch of other defense technical development programs, there is of cool tech out there.

If you have ever watched the movie Clear and Present Danger, you may remember a scene where some goverment agents were listening in on some people with a laser pointed at the window.

That exists.  Laser long range listening devices are real, so are microwave listening devices.

I’m curious if the $52,701 curtains are more than just decorative but developed to block laser or microwave listening or are opaque to IR or provide some other security features against espionage.

They may also be blast or ballistic rated.

That seems like the kind of thing that the State Department might do for an ambassador’s official residence.

I could be way off and these could be just super expensive curtains.

I just think it would be typical (Democrat) politics for some ignorant asswipe of a politician to grand stand over something like this just find out that he nearly spilled the beans on high tech counter intelligence curtains by being an partisan asshole.

I don’t know, but my experience in the defense technology world makes my spider sense tingle on this.

So the Maduro government once again changed the local currency to a new name and new “value” and assigned the minimum wage that all employers must follow. But the forgot to tell employers how much people must make at higher levels.

If you are confused, let me explain. If you work in Venezuela, your salary is regulated by the Government according to a scale they came up with. So, if you are in custodial services & basic stuff like that, you get minimum wage. If you are a doctor, you make more than the custodian, but only what the government says you can make. It does not matter if your medical expertise sucks or you are the future Nobel prize: you make the same.

Now, any variations from the scale are severely penalized. They rely on workers to keep the company “honest” and not allow the owners to give special bonuses to the good workers because it would be unfair to others in the same bracket.

But when the government changed the currency and its value, they forgot to issue the new salaries. So, the companies in order not to be accused of unfairness and be sent to jail, they came up with a rather Solomonic solution: Everybody gets paid the same minimum wage.

As expected, a bunch of people are a bit upset, but there is little they can do. Their only hope is that the Government wakes up and produces the table and orders the companies to pay retroactively. And that has its possible consequences as the minimum wage was set too high for the economy and the government risks having companies shut down because they cannot make payroll.

And if you are asking why companies cannot downsize personnel to adapt, the answer is another great piece of Socialist solution: You cannot fire people unless very extreme circumstances. And they can appeal to a government ministry and you still have to keep them in the payroll till a decision is made.

And that is why companies rather shut down than deal with the increasing madness.