Buycott

As stated earlier, I’ll be moving today, and you know how much stuff you need when you move in, right?  Then we have this situation:

Home Depot Co-Founder Bernie Marcus told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a recent interview that he plans to donate a part of his fortune, which has a net worth of $5.9 billion according to Forbes, to Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign. He said that although Trump “sucks” at communicating he should be given credit for boosting jobs in America and taking strong stances against China, Iran, and North Korea.
Following the article’s publication in late June, some shoppers at the home improvement supply giant expressed outrage over the 90-year-old’s decision and vowed to boycott the store. The hashtag #BoycottHomeDepot also started to emerge on social media.

But as author and political commentator Dan Bongino‏ notes:

“Liberal boycotts are a joke, just like liberals. The best thing for your business is a liberal boycott. Your sales will explode after lunatic libs announce their ‘boycott’. Just ask Chick-fil-A.”

So guess where I’ll be getting all my household hardware needs for the next week or two… and there’s a branch just a few blocks away.

♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ …Hi ho, hi ho… ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪

Hooray

I’d like to see a lot more of this attitude:

Gerard O’Shaughnessy posted a job advertisement to hire candidates for social media marketing roles at his online ad agency, Business Marketing Services Ltd (BMS) in West Yorkshire.
The 48-year-old created the brutally honest advert saying ‘mickey takers’ and those who call in sick with hangovers need not apply.
Mr O’Shaughnessy became frustrated after wading through stacks of applicants who didn’t fit the bill for the role, which would see the employee working from 9-3, with free gym access, but would also mean their phone was locked away all day.
After stating the perks of the job, he then highlights that he doesn’t want people who are addicted to their phones to apply as well as weekend party-goers and those with ‘psycho’ boyfriends demanding regular text updates.
Mr O’Shaughnessy has been working at the business for 15 years, and said we are living in a ‘generation of snowflakes’.
He highlighted how previous staff members had ‘complete meltdowns’ after the company made it compulsory two months ago for phones to be locked away each day – only being given back at lunch time and of course at the end of the day.

Give the man a medal.

New Link

He doesn’t post that often, but when he does, it’s a wonder of stream-of-consciousness bile and invective.  Just call him Ishmael:

…and in future you’ll find him among the permalinks over on the right-hand side of the page.

Wrong Kind Of Heroes

Charles Lindbergh was the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air non-stop, in 1927.

Wrong: the first nonstop crossing of the Atlantic by air was by John Alcock and Arthur Brown, some eight years earlier.

Yet while we all remember Lindbergh, Alcock and Brown aren’t acknowledged often, not even by their own country on the centenary of their achievement:

Two WWI heroes made the first transatlantic flight fuelled only by sandwiches, a flask of coffee and raw courage to win £10,000 Daily Mail prize. So why 100 years on is Britain doing nothing to remember these magnificent men?

Oh, please.  I can think of several reasons.

  • White men
  • Worse yet, heterosexual  White men
  • War veterans mongers
  • Didn’t even try  to recruit female- or POC crew members
  • Leaving from a country stolen from the native peoples by colonialist oppressors
  • Using an aircraft once used as a weapon of war to bomb helpless civilians
  • Burning countless gallons of fuel, i.e. a leaving a massive carbon footprint
  • Showing up less brave, less able people by a pointless act of so-called “heroism”
  • Their sandwiches contained meat, and their coffee wasn’t “Fair Trade”.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.  I’m just surprised that their existing monuments haven’t been destroyed by now.

When Gummint Fails

…which is to say, almost all of the time, it’s incumbent then for citizens to step in and fix the problem, if they can.  As did a couple folks in the People’s Collective of Oakland, Californistan:

We don’t need to remind Oakland drivers their streets are some of the worst in the country, costing locals an extra $1,049 a year in car maintenance on average.
The problem has prompted two Oakland residents to go rogue, pulling off covert missions to patch potholes in the middle of the night. They’ve dubbed themselves the “Pothole Vigilantes” and show off their work on an Instagram page by the same name.

Needless to say, Gummint isn’t impressed:

When asked about the unauthorized roadwork, Oakland Public Works empathized with the problem at hand, but made it clear that Oakland residents shouldn’t be taking to the streets to themselves.
Said Sean Maher, a spokesperson for the department, “We can’t recommend anyone do this work themselves, not least because it raises safety issues while people are working in the streets.”

Oh yeah, the old “safety” bullshit.  Like hundreds of people hitting deep potholes with their cars every day is a “safer” alternative.  I also like the other part:

Maher made a plea for patience, saying more resources to fix roads are on the way. The city council is set to vote on a $100 million plan to repave streets over the next three years. The money would come from Measure KK, approved by voters in 2016.

Okay, let me just make sure I’ve got the arithmetic right.  The voters approved the necessary spending in 2016.  We are now nearly halfway through 2019 — and the council is only now “set to vote” on the repaving plan?  Uh-huh.  No wonder people are getting impatient.  I wonder what else the OakGov may have been doing over the past couple years, that prevented them from working on the thing any earlier… never mind, I remember now:  Oakland City Hall was busy preventing ICE from rounding up illegal immigrants, making themselves feel all virtuous by defying federal law.  But back to our story:

“They are frustrated and fed up with the pavement condition in their neighborhood,” said Maher.

I bet this guy also works for the Oakland Department Of The Blindingly Obvious.