Pray for the Walmart employees

Posted: November 26, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
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Imagine my surprise to wake up and see a news headline talking about a shooting in Virginia, and then to realize it was at a Walmart I often shop at!

The Chesapeake Walmart off Battlefield Boulevard is not the closest Walmart to me, but I do shop there often enough in my travels that I know the store layout. It’s a very busy Walmart, and its in a nicer part of town. As of now, it seems the shooter was a night shift manager that did not like the people he was working with, was angry at his treatment and wanted to get revenge. More data is coming out as the FBI and local police continue their investigation.

Considering that the shooter is black and doesn’t wear a MAGA hat, I don’t expect the national media to care too much in another week or two. The shooting does bring up a bigger point about bullying though. We associate bullying with children, forgetting that it happens all too often in adults. A few years back, my wife was a volunteer for one of our kid’s PTAs when she returned from a board meeting in a pissed off mood. I found out that the President of the board was a raging jerk that regularly put her down for some of her fundraising suggestions. After a tense exchange and an open meeting, where I watched the school principal not say anything, she eventually quit, prompting a bunch of other volunteers to quit and the PTA to eventually dissolve due to lack of volunteers.

The lack of a spinal cord on the part of the principal is something we’re going to continue seeing. I have to wonder how many people watched this Walmart manager get picked on time after time. Didn’t anyone have the guts to say “Hey, maybe we ought to remind him we still care?” Did nobody notice this? Did anybody care?

It doesn’t excuse his actions, not by a long shot. He still chose to murder people, and ultimately he’ll face judgement of some kind over his actions. But we just celebrated Thanksgiving, where we give thanks for the people around us. This includes the people we work with, not just our families.

I ask that you pray for the victims of this horrible crime and their families. But I also ask that on Monday, when most of you go back to work, that you tell the people around you that you care about them. Even if that co-worker is an annoying Karen, it doesn’t give anyone license to push someone to the breaking point. Especially after years of government-induced COVID lockdowns and isolation, we should be trying to heal those around us and make our little part of the world better.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. Please pray for the victims of the Chesapeake Walmart shooting.

Under the Fedora: Day One of Peak, Black Friday Online, An Amazing coincidence with consequences, Some “mis-gendering” is more equal than others and The Clock is Ticking

Posted: November 26, 2022 by datechguy in catholic, Uncomfortable Truths, under the fedora
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Yesterday was Black Friday and day one of our “peak” season at work and the beginning of eight straight days of work for me.

As you might guess we were pretty busy, but based on the numbers I’ve seen overall volume was a whole lot less than normal. That won’t affect today, tomorrow or even Monday but the real question for me is: “Will we be behind to the point where next Saturday is voluntary?” In a normal year that’s how it works and by the time you get to Christmas you have managers who have worked 25-30 straight days since “optional” isn’t “optional” for them and some employees averaging 15 hours of overtime a week.

My gut and the numbers tell me that won’t be the case. I suspect we will only have one optional Saturday, next Saturday but that the volume will be at a point where we aren’t days behind rushing to keep up. Part of that may be to good planning on our part but the best planning can’t overcome incredible volume and based on day one, we just don’t have that.

Speaking of Black Friday shopping, most of mine took place on Thanksgiving evening and yesterday morning before going into the breach. A look at Amazon convinces tell me that while there are more and more pages of black friday “deals” (822 to be exact) there are less and less things on them that I need.

I also notice there are a lot of brands of “tablets” and “robot vacuums” that I’ve never heard of before as if there is an attempt to dump a lo of cheap electronics this year.

Of course with that many pages you’re bound to find something useful that your spouse might like or need (I just spotted something on page 29 that I never thought of which might work for her in the garden, but it’s all a question of how much time you want to spend (Indicently the cyber monday deals look surprisingly like the black friday deals

Good Luck.

By an odd coincidence as Elon Musk as cracked down on child porn on twitter apparently a lot of Antifa accounts have ended up dead while doing so.

They have not taken this well and there have been attacks on Tesla dealerships in the Northwest.

This is rather foolish for three reasons

  1. These will simply lead to insurance claims which puts money in the pocket
  2. Musk being one of the richest men in the world is in a position to put the type of security in place that won’t be as accommodating to the leftist thugs that don’t come enmasse.
  3. Finally he has access to the type of lawyers in a position to crush these folks on a national and international level

But if they want to poke the bear be my guest.

The loss of a cherished narrative is a terrible thing and CNN is doing it’s best to reverse it, But the Irony overload here is incredible:

And just like that you can look at someone, say they’re a dude and not be considered a bigot for it, at least if it serves the narrative.

That society has given in to this collection of mentally ill idiots is not an indictment of them, it’s an indictment of us for being suckers.

Finally there was some shock over a Christian commentator noting that those who were killed in Colorado didn’t accept Christ that they were likely in hell.

We are called upon not to judge the state of any particular soul but this type of thing is Christianity 101 or at worst 104. St. Faustina in her diary notes that Christ extends a hand at the time of death even to the most obstinate of sinners it’s just a question of grasping it.

People forget that the Good News of the Gospel is that there is a way into heaven and eternal life and avoiding eternal death and sufferings. For some people this is a hard message to take because it involves acknowledging sin, for others it’s a hard message to deliver because they want to go along and get along.

Christ was not one afraid to rock the boat nor afraid to risk offending people even inside their own homes. How many times was he invited to dinner which a Pharisee and then criticize them while there.

There is an excellent clip from The Chosen from the final episode of season 2 where Matthew is critiquing the Sermon on the Mount that illustrates this

The key line from Jesus:

“Did you think I was going to come here and say: ‘hey everyone keep on doing what you’ve been doing for the last thousand years since it’s been going so great?'”

If you actually love your neighbor you will tell them a truth they don’t want to hear to save their lives rather than shut up.

The good news is that you have your whole life to figure this out and come to Christ, but not a moment more.

Giorgia Meloni takes Sir Humphrey’s advice

Posted: November 25, 2022 by datechguy in Uncategorized

I’ve often quoted the spectacular TV comedies “Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister” on this site because of the continued relevance of it’s portrayal of: “The political will vs the bureaucratic won’t” which apparently has not changed in the nearly 40 years since the last episode was broadcast.

In that final episode titled titled “The Tangled Web” A there is a clash between Prime Minister James Hacker (Paul Eddington) and secretary of the Cabinet and head of the Civil Service Sir Humphrey Appleby (Nigel Hawthorne) over the PM categorically denying the bugging of a MP before parliament that he was not made aware of. Sir Humphrey refuses to back up this false statement in an upcoming appearance before the privileges committee. But before that appearance comes up Humphrey in an obscure interview not realizing a microphone is still live when the interview is done states that the you can half unemployment in a week by cutting off benefits to any person who refuses two job offers saying “they’ll be off the register before you can say parasite”. While the BBC had no intention of using the post interview remarks the PM gets ahold of a the master tape and Humphrey agrees to back up the PM’s previous denial before the committee to get his hands on the tape.

Well it’s 34 years later and we’ve finally found a pol willing to do something about this in Italy:

Ms Meloni had vowed to abolish the expanded welfare programme altogether during the campaign, arguing that it encouraged people to stay on welfare when they could work and was abused by fraudsters.

The changes announced on Tuesday would knock eligible workers out of the system after eight months or after they refuse a job offer, and requires recipients to actually live in Italy.

Where is this money going? Well it’s going to help Italy, a country with one of the lowest birthrates in the world make more babies:

To encourage families to have more children, Ms Meloni announced a 50 percent increase in the “baby bonus” checks parents receive the first year after the birth of a child and a 50% increase for three years for families with more than three children.

Women who choose to extend maternity leave beyond five months for an extra month can do so on 80 percent of their salary rather than 30 percent. Meloni, Italy’s first woman premier, also announced a reduced tax on feminine hygiene products and items for newborns.

The future belongs to those who show up and Ms Meloni is determined that those who own the future in Italy will be Italians who have a job.

Progressives are trying to kill Thanksgiving – we must not let them

Posted: November 24, 2022 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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The political left are a rather humorless and mean spirited lot. They are not satisfied making themselves miserable, they try very hard to ruin things for everyone else. 

Holidays particularly draw the ire of progressives and other cultural Marxists.  Thanks to the politically correct mob, Christmas is treated very much like a swear word.  Nativity scenes have been removed from town squares, Christmas tree lightings are now called tree lightings, and schools even ban candy canes and Christmas napkins.

There is a major move amongst progressives to replace Columbus Day with indigenous people’s day. They are now working very hard to replace Thanksgiving with A National Day of Mourning.  Articles such as this NPR article are popping up across this nation.

Members of Native American tribes from around New England are gathering in the seaside town where the Pilgrims settled — not to give thanks, but to mourn Indigenous people worldwide who’ve suffered centuries of racism and mistreatment.

Thursday’s solemn National Day of Mourning observance in downtown Plymouth, Massachusetts, will recall the disease and oppression that European settlers brought to North America.

Sadly, these Native American activists parrot the usual progressive revisionist history, which they no doubt learned from college.

“We Native people have no reason to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims,” said Kisha James, a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag and Oglala Lakota tribes and the granddaughter of Wamsutta Frank James, the event’s founder.

“We want to educate people so that they understand the stories we all learned in school about the first Thanksgiving are nothing but lies. Wampanoag and other Indigenous people have certainly not lived happily ever after since the arrival of the Pilgrims,” James said.

“To us, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning, because we remember the millions of our ancestors who were murdered by uninvited European colonists such as the Pilgrims. Today, we and many Indigenous people around the country say, ‘No Thanks, No Giving.'”

The latest liberal anti Thanksgiving talking point is captured in this Breitbart article.

A recent Washington Post essay faced backlash online after listing common Thanksgiving foods and their “climate impact” in order to inform readers which of the festivity’s staples can be consumed “with a clear conscience.” 

The Thursday article by food columnist Tamar Haspel, titled “The climate impact of the Thanksgiving meal might surprise you,” begins with the author admitting that “tallying the environmental impact of a holiday feast” does not seem to be in the holiday spirit.

We must stand firm against this progressive assault on Thanksgiving.  We must stand firm now before this insanity gains steam.

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