"You considered this not a document of the government, but your own personal document that you could share with the media as you want to?" Senator Roy Blunt asked Comey. "Correct," Comey replied. "I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the President. As a private citizen, I felt free to share that. I thought it very important to get it out."
If that is the case, then it really isn't a leak, or the breaking of a rule. Or, at the least, he didn't believe it was the violation of a rule - perhaps others may feel differently.
Trump dislikes climate change because Fox News told him to dislike it. Slashdotters dislike climate change apparently because they believe their ignorance of science will anger the last non-conservative left on slashdot and hopefully scare him (me) away.
If you're convinced that was satire, I think you don't know enough about where the vast majority of slashdot comments are coming from these days. If slashdot readers were representative of the US at large, Trump would have won at least 103% of the popular vote.
I'm sorry but that degree of spin is utterly nauseating. You linked to a blog page (from the conservative blogosphere) that took a 2 second sound bite from an interview and then linked to another conservative commentary. You could have just as well linked to Mallard Fillmore at that point. Your link does not support your claim of the Obama white house doing political unmasking, rather it shows that conservative commentators love to propagate the conspiracy that they did.
>> "The Tea Party regularly encourages people to find every way they can - legal or not - to reduce their taxes."
Where has anyone even made the claim the tea party is encouraging illegal tax cheating?
People who call themselves parts of the Tea Party frequently boast about cheating the tax system. Politicians allied with the Tea Party are the ones most often caught "forgetting" to declare income sources that affect their taxes. It goes on from there but you don't seem worried about that.
In any case the IRS requested information about what the tea party orgs were mailing, claiming, and even their prayer information.
The first two are standard for any group who wants to file for tax exempt status. It's merely due process to ensure that the group who is asking for this special status is really involved in activities that do not exclude them from that status. The third part there is absolutely no support for. Just because some angry Tea Partier claimed it happened - and then of course conveniently misplaced all the documentation supporting their claim that it happened - does not mean it did.
No such information was requested for MediaMatters, DailyKos, MoveOn, etc.
DailyKos does not have the status that the Tea Party filed for. None of the three you list have ever advocated for people to cheat the tax system, either.
The shareholders are currently pushing for arbitrary growth marks because they can... and because they are now in a guaranteed can't-fail model as people turn to twitter to find out what the POTUS is rambling on about tonight. If the whole company imploded this afternoon they would be bailed out by the government. The shareholders might as well insist that Twitter start funding a mission to Mars at this point, the US Government wouldn't allow them to go bankrupt.
There are some WalMarts in larger cities where the majority of employees go to work by mass transit. Do they really expect to get them to carry customers' packages home on the bus or train? And when you're commuting by mass transit, another additional mile or so in each direction can quickly make your commute a lot longer in time.
Why didn't the IRS grant tax exempt status to the Sierra Club and all the pro-government expansion groups no questions asked
They didn't? I'm not the IRS, but I can tell you that the Sierra Club has never advocated for cheating on taxes. The Tea Party regularly encourages people to find every way they can - legal or not - to reduce their taxes. If a group comes to them with that philosophy asking for tax exempt status then due diligence would include examining their records. If they don't want to share that information then they should not have asked for tax exempt status.
This was all over all forms of media and yet you claim I'm in a conspiracy theory somewhere?
You are in a conspiracy theory. The IRS was doing their job in scrutinizing the tax exempt application. Did someone force them to apply for it? They could have gone without and then they would not have had the IRS looking into their records.
The NSA was totally spying on people wrongly. You think Eric Snowden is on an extended vacation in Russia or what exactly?
I'm not defending the NSA. I'm merely pointing out that your conspiracy of them being a tool of one party to go after the other is utterly without merit.
And why do you think Susan Rice has changed her answers so much about whether she authorized the unmasking of Hillary's political opponents?
I'd love to see a source for that claim.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you just aren't following any of this.
I won't let you bring me down to your level. I don't know what you look at that you see as being supporting of your conspiracies, and I don't expect you to share them with me. I do actually read the news; based on what you have written that is more than you can say for yourself.
A constitutional crisis is when a president says, "We are only going to enforce the parts of the law our party likes and refuse to enforce existing federal immigration laws".
You need to look up what is actually described in the constitution and how the actions of POTUS 44 and 45 relate to the laws that are actually in the books.
Obama certainly didn't send the FBI after the IRS tea party silencing or the NSA spying on and unmasking political opponents.
Those would have been terrible things if they had actually happened. Those who do not exist in the conspiracy bubbles that perpetuate those myths though know how much bullshit in involved in that statement.
For one, the IRS was doing its job when it investigated the applications for tax exempt status that were filed by groups that were openly advocating for people to avoid paying taxes. If there had been other political groups asking for the same exemption while promoting anti-tax agendas of dubious legality they would have looked into them as well.
As for the NSA, there is not the slightest shred of evidence of what you allege having happened. Just because someone claimed on twitter that it happened does not mean that it did.
He made thousands of promises during his campaign and has broken or walked back from most of them (and of course the wall would bankrupt our country). This might be the first one he has actually accomplished. I can't say based on his track record so far that the devastation that will come from it is at all outside the normal range for his actions.
Which is not an acceptable use of the overrated mod. Moderation is not intended to be a way for you to squelch the voices of people who say things you disagree with. You really should read the moderator guidelines before you go around dishing our your new favorite kind of justice.
I'm willing to accept the off-topic mod. In the strictest sense of what is topical for this thread, my post could be considered outside those bounds.
If you want to look at abuse of moderation privileges though, I can guarantee you that someone will hit it with the "overrated" mod, which is taken by those who are given moderator points to mean "I disagree". Whatever. They can moderate my posts till their blue in the face and they won't move my karma.
Pence is awful, for sure. Compared to Trump on women's issues he may be a wash, though; sure he wants to restrict a lot of things that the government shouldn't be involved in but he does at least respect his wife.
That said Pence may be a non-issue. Trump is an incredibly spiteful person and it would not be the least bit out of character for him to take Pence down with him. That would ordinarily leave Paul Ryan in charge, but if we look to what happened with Nixon we see that Ford was not Speaker of the House before becoming president; Ford was brought in as VP after Agnew resigned and then became POTUS when Nixon resigned. That allowed Ford to chose his own VP (who was also not Speaker of the House). We could certainly expect a similar series of power moves from the end of the Trump white house.
Notice that Trump has already brought in his own private lawyer to cover his ass as things continue to spiral down... Not white house counsel but someone just to look out for him and only him.
A president resigning or being impeached and removed from office would not be a constitutional crisis
Correct.
A constitutional crisis would be when something happens that a solution isn't provided for.
Yes, like when the POTUS wins the election because of influence from a foreign nation. Or when the POTUS profits financially from money spent by foreign nations in his properties. Or when the POTUS fires the FBI chief who was tasked with investigating what he did that is widely believed to be in violation of the constitution. Or when the POTUS gives away secret information to a foreign power. Those are all constitutional crises, and given his track record we'll see another one by the end of next week at the very latest.
About 96% of voters said they would still vote for Trump, compared to 94% of Clinton voters.
I would really love to know where you got those numbers from. Considering polling of Trump voters shows an approval rating somewhere in the low 40s consistently, how do you come up with the notion that 96% of them would vote for him again?
It is worthwhile to consider that a very significant number of republicans turned out and cast votes for Trump because of Hillary Clinton more so than anything else. Had Trump ran against anyone else - basically any democrat not named Clinton - he would have lost by enormous margins. Instead he only lost by a couple million. A lot of democrats weren't thrilled to vote for Hillary, but they voted for her just to prevent this maniac from becoming POTUS.
There's a *ton* of people cheering the president, it just doesn't get noted in the MSM. Look to places like Breitbart and Gab and Reddit threads for comments from people who are four-square behind his policies.
Just because they cheer for him on Breitbart doesn't mean they exist in large numbers. Why aren't they responding to actual polls? Why are the actual polls showing that Trump voters are expressing remorse in huge numbers?
I'm ready to place a bet that he's out before Thanksgiving. Not over this in particular but rather over the constant dumpster fire that is the Trump administration and the boggling fact that they keep going from one constitutional crisis to another. Few people still think he'll finish four years; I don't expect him to finish one.
His decisions are well published. He is CEO and controller of the majority of shares, giving him the ability to pass down whatever decisions he wants. He has openly boasted about many of his decisions as being of his own doing as well.
But if you don't want to read about him, I can't force you to do so. Similarly I can't stop you from making sweeping and baseless assumptions about me.
I followed the schedule that they assigned me. I did not choose my start date, my training date, or any other date - they set all of those. If they would have set those dates to be closer to the date that I actually applied for the job, then maybe I would have been established with them well enough before getting the offer for the other job that I would have turned the other job down.
The notion of wasting "a ton of their time and money" is laughable as well. The training day was only about 2 hours long - though it wasted a full day of mine as it was in the middle of the day. Similarly my first and only day was only a 4 hour shift that screwed up my entire day as well. They likely gained more from me than they put in as it allowed them to test to see how much they could abuse an incoming employee for their own benefit.
When you exaggerate to an extreme degree and make wild and specific claims about the internal workings of the business
These are not exaggerations. The person calling the shots for Sears and KMart (the latter of which he took over first) is Eddie Lampert. He has publicly declared his admiration for Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged on more than one occasion. He is known for being a total asshole to members of the board by shouting at them (via Skype, no less) at their meetings. He is the author of the order for floor employees that says nobody is to help out any customer who wants to shop in another department. This is all very well documented; if you ask nicely I would be willing to provide references for you though you are certainly welcomed to search for them yourself as well.
I have to think that you're probably disgruntled for entirely other reasons that having gotten slow service at the tool counter.
You can make that assumption but you would be wrong.
I bought a router set there, and there was no "tool counter," just a customer service island in the tool department, and there is either somebody there, or there isn't
I'm curious as to why you are placing special emphasis on "tool counter", when I never used the phrase myself. I referred to the tool department in my post, and I pointed out that the entire department was devoid of employees.
If nobody is at that register, you have to walk to a different register. I understand that is too difficult for some people, and if they can't afford concierge then it is frustrating for them.
Have you ever done an exchange in the tool department - in particular for a hand tool to be exchanged under the "lifetime guarantee"? That is supposed to be done at the register in the tool department, as they often have a specific set of spares for many of the tools that are supposed to be sent out - and there is a specific set of directions that are supposed to be followed for that exchange. That is why I needed someone at the register in the tool department.
The myth of a home being a quality investment is just that - a myth - and is finally starting to crumble completely and people are recognizing it for the fallacy that it is. Few people other than realtors will make money on the sales of homes again any time in the forseeable future; what then is the incentive to purchasing a home at all? Smart people are renting apartments in better designed buildings where they can get the amenities they want and need without being dragged down by pointless shit like lawn maintenance and mortgage insurance. They then can invest the money they save in retirement accounts or go on the vacations that their friends who are being dragged under by home ownership can only aspire to.
There's a reason why we are seeing nice apartment complexes being built in desirable school districts.
I distinctly remember a stand-up comic joking about the absence of employees at Sears back in the early 90s.
I recall a Leno joke about that back in the day. Sears had an ad campaign back then about how smart their shoppers were, which they used in a lot of commercials. They had one commercial that was something like "who is smarter, this Nobel prize winning scientist, or this Sears shopper?". Leno replied that it was likely the latter, provided they could locate a cashier at Sears in order to pay for their merchandise.
You describe a very different Sears from the one I was in most recently. The last time I went in to a Sears I was one of at least 8 customers in the tools department, and there were a total of ZERO employees there. This was shortly after the store had opened for the morning. Any one of us could have easily walked out the door with merchandise and nobody would have been able to stop us. I went to the adjacent department where I found someone in clothing who was at a register. I asked him to page someone to help us in tools; care to guess his response? He told me he could not, and would not, do that. He actually REFUSED to help us.
Care to guess why he would not help us? Not because he was worried about deserting his department and its zero customers. He did that because that is what corporate told employees to do. A while back Eddie Lampert decided that he needed to add some aspects of Lord of the Flies to his established Atlas Shrugged philosophy. A formal order was passed down that employees are not to help customers who want help in other departments. If you ask an employee in electronics how to get to tools, they should respond by trying to sell you a television. No employee is to ever help a customer purchase anything that is not in their department.
That said, the stores I've seen aren't far from empty. Sears is having serious credit problems right now so there are lots of empty shelves as they can't get merchandise in.
Slashdot Mirror
"You considered this not a document of the government, but your own personal document that you could share with the media as you want to?" Senator Roy Blunt asked Comey. "Correct," Comey replied. "I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the President. As a private citizen, I felt free to share that. I thought it very important to get it out."
If that is the case, then it really isn't a leak, or the breaking of a rule. Or, at the least, he didn't believe it was the violation of a rule - perhaps others may feel differently.
... people will see this as being a great idea. All hail facebook and their endless stream of brilliant ideas!
Trump dislikes climate change because Fox News told him to dislike it. Slashdotters dislike climate change apparently because they believe their ignorance of science will anger the last non-conservative left on slashdot and hopefully scare him (me) away.
If you're convinced that was satire, I think you don't know enough about where the vast majority of slashdot comments are coming from these days. If slashdot readers were representative of the US at large, Trump would have won at least 103% of the popular vote.
>> I'd love to see a source for that claim.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/...
I'm sorry but that degree of spin is utterly nauseating. You linked to a blog page (from the conservative blogosphere) that took a 2 second sound bite from an interview and then linked to another conservative commentary. You could have just as well linked to Mallard Fillmore at that point. Your link does not support your claim of the Obama white house doing political unmasking, rather it shows that conservative commentators love to propagate the conspiracy that they did.
>> "The Tea Party regularly encourages people to find every way they can - legal or not - to reduce their taxes."
Where has anyone even made the claim the tea party is encouraging illegal tax cheating?
People who call themselves parts of the Tea Party frequently boast about cheating the tax system. Politicians allied with the Tea Party are the ones most often caught "forgetting" to declare income sources that affect their taxes. It goes on from there but you don't seem worried about that.
In any case the IRS requested information about what the tea party orgs were mailing, claiming, and even their prayer information.
The first two are standard for any group who wants to file for tax exempt status. It's merely due process to ensure that the group who is asking for this special status is really involved in activities that do not exclude them from that status. The third part there is absolutely no support for. Just because some angry Tea Partier claimed it happened - and then of course conveniently misplaced all the documentation supporting their claim that it happened - does not mean it did.
No such information was requested for MediaMatters, DailyKos, MoveOn, etc.
DailyKos does not have the status that the Tea Party filed for. None of the three you list have ever advocated for people to cheat the tax system, either.
The shareholders are currently pushing for arbitrary growth marks because they can ... and because they are now in a guaranteed can't-fail model as people turn to twitter to find out what the POTUS is rambling on about tonight. If the whole company imploded this afternoon they would be bailed out by the government. The shareholders might as well insist that Twitter start funding a mission to Mars at this point, the US Government wouldn't allow them to go bankrupt.
In case anyone was wondering how we ended up with two WalMart-related front page stories so close to each other on one day...
There are some WalMarts in larger cities where the majority of employees go to work by mass transit. Do they really expect to get them to carry customers' packages home on the bus or train? And when you're commuting by mass transit, another additional mile or so in each direction can quickly make your commute a lot longer in time.
Why didn't the IRS grant tax exempt status to the Sierra Club and all the pro-government expansion groups no questions asked
They didn't? I'm not the IRS, but I can tell you that the Sierra Club has never advocated for cheating on taxes. The Tea Party regularly encourages people to find every way they can - legal or not - to reduce their taxes. If a group comes to them with that philosophy asking for tax exempt status then due diligence would include examining their records. If they don't want to share that information then they should not have asked for tax exempt status.
This was all over all forms of media and yet you claim I'm in a conspiracy theory somewhere?
You are in a conspiracy theory. The IRS was doing their job in scrutinizing the tax exempt application. Did someone force them to apply for it? They could have gone without and then they would not have had the IRS looking into their records.
The NSA was totally spying on people wrongly. You think Eric Snowden is on an extended vacation in Russia or what exactly?
I'm not defending the NSA. I'm merely pointing out that your conspiracy of them being a tool of one party to go after the other is utterly without merit.
And why do you think Susan Rice has changed her answers so much about whether she authorized the unmasking of Hillary's political opponents?
I'd love to see a source for that claim.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you just aren't following any of this.
I won't let you bring me down to your level. I don't know what you look at that you see as being supporting of your conspiracies, and I don't expect you to share them with me. I do actually read the news; based on what you have written that is more than you can say for yourself.
A constitutional crisis is when a president says, "We are only going to enforce the parts of the law our party likes and refuse to enforce existing federal immigration laws".
You need to look up what is actually described in the constitution and how the actions of POTUS 44 and 45 relate to the laws that are actually in the books.
Obama certainly didn't send the FBI after the IRS tea party silencing or the NSA spying on and unmasking political opponents.
Those would have been terrible things if they had actually happened . Those who do not exist in the conspiracy bubbles that perpetuate those myths though know how much bullshit in involved in that statement.
For one, the IRS was doing its job when it investigated the applications for tax exempt status that were filed by groups that were openly advocating for people to avoid paying taxes. If there had been other political groups asking for the same exemption while promoting anti-tax agendas of dubious legality they would have looked into them as well.
As for the NSA, there is not the slightest shred of evidence of what you allege having happened. Just because someone claimed on twitter that it happened does not mean that it did.
He made thousands of promises during his campaign and has broken or walked back from most of them (and of course the wall would bankrupt our country). This might be the first one he has actually accomplished. I can't say based on his track record so far that the devastation that will come from it is at all outside the normal range for his actions.
Which is not an acceptable use of the overrated mod. Moderation is not intended to be a way for you to squelch the voices of people who say things you disagree with. You really should read the moderator guidelines before you go around dishing our your new favorite kind of justice.
I'm willing to accept the off-topic mod. In the strictest sense of what is topical for this thread, my post could be considered outside those bounds.
If you want to look at abuse of moderation privileges though, I can guarantee you that someone will hit it with the "overrated" mod, which is taken by those who are given moderator points to mean "I disagree". Whatever. They can moderate my posts till their blue in the face and they won't move my karma.
Pence is awful, for sure. Compared to Trump on women's issues he may be a wash, though; sure he wants to restrict a lot of things that the government shouldn't be involved in but he does at least respect his wife.
That said Pence may be a non-issue. Trump is an incredibly spiteful person and it would not be the least bit out of character for him to take Pence down with him. That would ordinarily leave Paul Ryan in charge, but if we look to what happened with Nixon we see that Ford was not Speaker of the House before becoming president; Ford was brought in as VP after Agnew resigned and then became POTUS when Nixon resigned. That allowed Ford to chose his own VP (who was also not Speaker of the House). We could certainly expect a similar series of power moves from the end of the Trump white house.
Notice that Trump has already brought in his own private lawyer to cover his ass as things continue to spiral down... Not white house counsel but someone just to look out for him and only him.
A president resigning or being impeached and removed from office would not be a constitutional crisis
Correct.
A constitutional crisis would be when something happens that a solution isn't provided for.
Yes, like when the POTUS wins the election because of influence from a foreign nation. Or when the POTUS profits financially from money spent by foreign nations in his properties. Or when the POTUS fires the FBI chief who was tasked with investigating what he did that is widely believed to be in violation of the constitution. Or when the POTUS gives away secret information to a foreign power. Those are all constitutional crises, and given his track record we'll see another one by the end of next week at the very latest.
About 96% of voters said they would still vote for Trump, compared to 94% of Clinton voters.
I would really love to know where you got those numbers from. Considering polling of Trump voters shows an approval rating somewhere in the low 40s consistently, how do you come up with the notion that 96% of them would vote for him again?
It is worthwhile to consider that a very significant number of republicans turned out and cast votes for Trump because of Hillary Clinton more so than anything else. Had Trump ran against anyone else - basically any democrat not named Clinton - he would have lost by enormous margins. Instead he only lost by a couple million. A lot of democrats weren't thrilled to vote for Hillary, but they voted for her just to prevent this maniac from becoming POTUS.
There's a *ton* of people cheering the president, it just doesn't get noted in the MSM. Look to places like Breitbart and Gab and Reddit threads for comments from people who are four-square behind his policies.
Just because they cheer for him on Breitbart doesn't mean they exist in large numbers. Why aren't they responding to actual polls? Why are the actual polls showing that Trump voters are expressing remorse in huge numbers?
I'm ready to place a bet that he's out before Thanksgiving. Not over this in particular but rather over the constant dumpster fire that is the Trump administration and the boggling fact that they keep going from one constitutional crisis to another. Few people still think he'll finish four years; I don't expect him to finish one.
The Texas legislature says the bathroom bill is about privacy . Aren't Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in favor of privacy????
... I see what you did, there.
and don't know which decisions he's even making
His decisions are well published. He is CEO and controller of the majority of shares, giving him the ability to pass down whatever decisions he wants. He has openly boasted about many of his decisions as being of his own doing as well.
But if you don't want to read about him, I can't force you to do so. Similarly I can't stop you from making sweeping and baseless assumptions about me.
I followed the schedule that they assigned me. I did not choose my start date, my training date, or any other date - they set all of those. If they would have set those dates to be closer to the date that I actually applied for the job, then maybe I would have been established with them well enough before getting the offer for the other job that I would have turned the other job down.
The notion of wasting "a ton of their time and money" is laughable as well. The training day was only about 2 hours long - though it wasted a full day of mine as it was in the middle of the day. Similarly my first and only day was only a 4 hour shift that screwed up my entire day as well. They likely gained more from me than they put in as it allowed them to test to see how much they could abuse an incoming employee for their own benefit.
When you exaggerate to an extreme degree and make wild and specific claims about the internal workings of the business
These are not exaggerations. The person calling the shots for Sears and KMart (the latter of which he took over first) is Eddie Lampert. He has publicly declared his admiration for Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged on more than one occasion. He is known for being a total asshole to members of the board by shouting at them (via Skype, no less) at their meetings. He is the author of the order for floor employees that says nobody is to help out any customer who wants to shop in another department. This is all very well documented; if you ask nicely I would be willing to provide references for you though you are certainly welcomed to search for them yourself as well.
I have to think that you're probably disgruntled for entirely other reasons that having gotten slow service at the tool counter.
You can make that assumption but you would be wrong.
I bought a router set there, and there was no "tool counter," just a customer service island in the tool department, and there is either somebody there, or there isn't
I'm curious as to why you are placing special emphasis on "tool counter", when I never used the phrase myself. I referred to the tool department in my post, and I pointed out that the entire department was devoid of employees.
If nobody is at that register, you have to walk to a different register. I understand that is too difficult for some people, and if they can't afford concierge then it is frustrating for them.
Have you ever done an exchange in the tool department - in particular for a hand tool to be exchanged under the "lifetime guarantee"? That is supposed to be done at the register in the tool department, as they often have a specific set of spares for many of the tools that are supposed to be sent out - and there is a specific set of directions that are supposed to be followed for that exchange. That is why I needed someone at the register in the tool department.
The myth of a home being a quality investment is just that - a myth - and is finally starting to crumble completely and people are recognizing it for the fallacy that it is. Few people other than realtors will make money on the sales of homes again any time in the forseeable future; what then is the incentive to purchasing a home at all? Smart people are renting apartments in better designed buildings where they can get the amenities they want and need without being dragged down by pointless shit like lawn maintenance and mortgage insurance. They then can invest the money they save in retirement accounts or go on the vacations that their friends who are being dragged under by home ownership can only aspire to.
There's a reason why we are seeing nice apartment complexes being built in desirable school districts.
I distinctly remember a stand-up comic joking about the absence of employees at Sears back in the early 90s.
I recall a Leno joke about that back in the day. Sears had an ad campaign back then about how smart their shoppers were, which they used in a lot of commercials. They had one commercial that was something like "who is smarter, this Nobel prize winning scientist, or this Sears shopper?". Leno replied that it was likely the latter, provided they could locate a cashier at Sears in order to pay for their merchandise.
You describe a very different Sears from the one I was in most recently. The last time I went in to a Sears I was one of at least 8 customers in the tools department, and there were a total of ZERO employees there. This was shortly after the store had opened for the morning. Any one of us could have easily walked out the door with merchandise and nobody would have been able to stop us. I went to the adjacent department where I found someone in clothing who was at a register. I asked him to page someone to help us in tools; care to guess his response? He told me he could not, and would not, do that. He actually REFUSED to help us.
Care to guess why he would not help us? Not because he was worried about deserting his department and its zero customers. He did that because that is what corporate told employees to do. A while back Eddie Lampert decided that he needed to add some aspects of Lord of the Flies to his established Atlas Shrugged philosophy. A formal order was passed down that employees are not to help customers who want help in other departments. If you ask an employee in electronics how to get to tools, they should respond by trying to sell you a television. No employee is to ever help a customer purchase anything that is not in their department.
That said, the stores I've seen aren't far from empty. Sears is having serious credit problems right now so there are lots of empty shelves as they can't get merchandise in.