...
Was how shall we say "maximum overkill". Glass was found 200m away and the explosion...
"MAXIM 37: There is no 'overkill.' There is only 'open fire' and 'reload.'"
"Maxim 61: Don't bring a big grenade into a small room."
also,
"MAXIM 14: 'Mad Science' means never stopping to ask 'What's the worst that could happen?' "*Sigh*
Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today. They expect to close over 100 of the remaining 700 stores immediately, and probably will be lucky to survive as a business entity through the holidays. In fact, the upcoming holiday is the only reason creditors allowed the restructuring; so that they could try and make a little more profit for THEM.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2018/10/business/sears-timeline/index.html
I grew up in a Sears "build by numbers" home in Burlington, New Jersey.
mnem
Another casualty of "Trump's America".
Oh spare me this ridiculous hyperbole. Sears has been circling the drain for decades. They COULD have been what Amazon now is, but lacked the foresight. Their customer service has been abysmal for years, and they'd been going ever cheaper quality wise on their tools for a long time. Their power tools were once among the finest; for at least the past ten-fifteen years they've been crap. (A Craftsman bench grinder my father bought and that is older than I am runs smooth as silk, and you can about shut it off, run upstairs, wash your hands and return before it has completely stopped turning. A more recent version we had at work sounded like a worn out cement mixer full of empty beer cans, and would about walk the table around the room as it ran. A cordless drill barely held a charge from the time it was new; I have a 20 year old Makita that still uses one of its original battery packs.) Their hand tools in recent years were following suit with the 'made in China' rough edges quality slide, and I say this as one who used to almost exclusively buy their hand tools. Now when I need something, I seek out SK, Wera, Armstrong, Wiha and the like.
And the creditors - would those be the entities that Sears OWES MONEY TO? Yeah, can't understand why they might want to try and get at least some of it back....
It's very unfortunate, but based on the decisions made by Sears management, I found myself with fewer and fewer reasons to go there, considering that the main things I purchased from them were tools, and I like to buy GOOD tools. If you stop selling good tools, then I've no reason to buy tools from you.
Sears is a casualty of their own mismanagement, not "Trump's America", and this bankruptcy has been many years in the making.
-Pat
You need to get around more.
"Trump's America" is not declaration of ownership, but rather current common shorthand in many circles for the fundamental problems with American Society that ALLOW people like Trump to flourish, instead of being in Leavenworth or someplace like it for the last 20 years like he should have been for hundreds of cases of felony fraud that his daddy's money and connections got him out of. The witless Cheeto squatting in the White House is only a side-effect of that decay.
The fact he can literally brag in print about engaging in millions of dollars worth of business contracts with no intention of paying the bill (the above-mentioned felony fraud) and still be walking the streets is what is wrong, and why that shorthand exists... named not only after him, but his father before him. Trumps have been screwing this country since before I was born;
they and their cronies are both the product of and catalyst for our current state of blatant wholesale corruption. Woody Guthrie sang a protest song about the old man's slumlord douchebaggery back in the 60s; that's how far back that particular bribery & corruption trail goes.
YOU are the one making it into ridiculous hyperbole, by taking such affront. Like everything, the Sears cautionary tale is a LOT more complicated than one simple, single sentence can describe; there's a reason folks like me wax poetic about the loss of such a historic artifact; it's the HISTORY involved.
No, Sears isn't ONLY a casualty of their own mismanagement; they, like most of the American brick & mortars that have been beaten out of existence over the last few decades, are first and foremost a casualty of NAFTA and the back-room deals that made it possible, and which continue with the TPP that is, surprise-surprise, also still alive and quite well.
Sears' primary "mismanagement" lay in continuing to operate under the assumption that somehow we as a nation would wake up and start manufacturing at home again rather than continuing to buy everything from overseas... they are more a victim of idealism and misguided belief that somehow, "family values" would pull them out of the fire.
And for the loss of that history, I do mourn; there are only so many cornerstones. America as a whole is diminished by the loss of that heritage.
Cheers,
mnem
"I've got blisters on me fingers!!!" ~ Richard Starkey