...[S]uppliers to Sears have told Reuters they are doubling down on defensive measures, such as reducing shipments and asking for better payment terms, to protect against the risk of nonpayment as the company warned about its finances.With customer service like this, it's not terribly surprising. Sears has been failing for a long time; I worked for Sears Business Centers through 1991 and even then the entire edifice that was Sears was starting to crumble.
But I notice that the collapse of Sears didn't really start before then. I suppose the collapse of retail is the result of a few things such as online marketing and vastly improved shipping options; before FedEx and UPS your only option was the post office, and that was the era of "allow 4-6 weeks for delivery" since orders had to be processed manually.
Well, there's not a lot that can be done about it now.
* * *
So, the fact that Trump and his transition team were spied upon is heap bad juju. The press is denying it, but it's the facts; someone was spying on Trump, at the very least after it became obvious that he would win the nomination.
...It's now clear what happened. The Obama people started spying on Trump once he had the nomination or perhaps even earlier. They may have started earlier with an eye on helping the Republicans knock him off in the primary, but that's not clear. They figured that Clinton was a lock so they were not careful about covering their tracks. The Clinton people are as dirty as it gets so they were not going to be ratting on anyone over it. If anything, they would expand on it.This is why they continue to harp on the whole "Russian hacking" thing, even after all this time: it's the only thing protecting a lot of people from going to jail. If it comes out that anyone in the Obama administration ordered wiretaps etc on Trump, it's going to blow big and it'll probably render most Democrats radioactive, just by association.
This is where the Russian hacking story comes into the picture. Once disaster struck and Team Obama realized they had a problem, they needed cover, so they started with the Russian hacking nonsense. They would then claim that it was all an accident and they were just trying to prevent Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale from attacking our democracy! It's also why Obama signed a retroactive Executive Order giving cover to the intel agencies for their domestic spying activities. They were creating a cover story.
* * *
"Is Trump afraid of stairs?" Asks CNN, which was completely incurious about why Hillary Clinton required a 3-man team to assist her with stairs.
* * *
Well: over the past week or so I've been rereading $RELEASE_CANDIDATE_ONE, because it's been eons since I last read it and I needed to check what I'm writing in Apocalyptic Visions against what was written in the very next book that occurs in the timeline (ie $R_C_1). There are a few minor continuity errors, but nothing I can't fix. And it's a good cold read, since it's been literal years since I even glanced at it; I finished the book today while waiting for contractors to show up at Dad's house for estimates.
Damn it's a good book. If I do say so myself.
...suppose I should do something, eh? Submit it to another publisher? Castalia rejected it ("doesn't suit our needs" or something like that) but traditional publishers are probably even less likely to accept it since it's pretty much non-SJW.
Well, we'll see, I guess.