- Ted Nugent Unloads Harsh Take on Taylor Swift’s “Cartoon Music,” Swifties Clap Back American Songwriter
- Ted Nugent Says Taylor Swift Makes “Cartoon Music”: “It’s All Poppy Nonsense As Far As I’m Concerned” Deadline
- Ted Nugent Sends a Harsh Message About Taylor Swift’s Music—and Swifties Clap Back Parade Magazine
- Ted Nugent says Taylor Swift’s music is “all poppy nonsense” with “no fire” and “no sensuality” NME
- TED NUGENT On TAYLOR SWIFT’s Music: ‘It’s All Poppy Nonsense’ With ‘No Fire’ And ‘No Sensuality’ BLABBERMOUTH.NET
Tag Archives: Unloads
‘They’re In My Way’: Jon Rahm Unloads on British Open TV Crews Following Rory McIlroy – Sports Illustrated
- ‘They’re In My Way’: Jon Rahm Unloads on British Open TV Crews Following Rory McIlroy Sports Illustrated
- Jon Rahm goes nuclear on fan-boy media at Open Championship amid disregard with Rory McIlroy SB Nation
- ‘Disregard that I existed’ – Jon Rahm sounds off on crowds inside the rope at Open Championship GolfWRX
- British Open 2023: Jon Rahm drops massive F-bomb at Hoylake, reminds American golf fans the mics are even hotter in Europe GolfDigest.com
- Jon Rahm FUMING with camera crew in his group with Rory McIlroy at The Open Golfmagic.com
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Target’s Profit Sinks as Retailer Unloads Unwanted Inventory
A glut of inventory sank profit at
Target Corp.
further than it expected, sparking investor concerns about the company’s response to an oversupply problem haunting retailers from
Walmart Inc.
to the parent of T.J. Maxx.
Like many other retailers, Target didn’t foresee the sharp reversal in buying behavior that has taken place in recent months as shoppers, squeezed by inflation, shifted more spending to travel and cut back on patio furniture, small electronics and other items that were in high demand for much of the Covid-19 pandemic. Target took a more aggressive approach than some of its competitors, slashing prices and canceling orders to clear out the glut as quickly as possible.
The decision to quickly move through excess inventory “had a meaningful short-term impact on our financial results,” Target Chief Executive
Brian Cornell
said on a call with reporters. He said the company didn’t want to deal with excess inventory for years, potentially degrading the customer and worker experience.
“Today the vast majority of the financial impact of these inventory actions is now behind us,” he said. In the current quarter the company expects a roughly $200 million impact from its effort to reduce inventory, Chief Financial Officer
Michael Fiddelke
said on a conference call Wednesday. The company expects operating margin to rise to 6% in the second half of the year.
Target shares were off 2.6% at $175.46 at midday Wednesday.
T.J. Maxx parent
TJX
TJX 4.43%
Cos. said Wednesday that inventory rose 39% in the most recent quarter, while sales fell 1.9%. The company said it is comfortable with its inventory levels and that lower gasoline prices could boost consumer spending for its goods.
Large retail chains including Walmart and
Home Depot Inc.
have reported higher sales for the most recent quarter driven by consumers’ willingness to absorb price increases. The results so far indicate Americans continue to spend even as they shift purchases away from nonfood items to offset the effects of inflation.
Overall retail sales—a measure of spending at stores, online and in restaurants—were flat in July as gasoline prices fell, compared with an increase of 0.8% in June, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Stripping out gasoline and auto sales, retail sales rose 0.7% in July.
Walmart, like Target, has discounted goods to pare excess inventory. Those efforts ate into last quarter’s profit and will continue in the current quarter, executives said Tuesday.
Target executives said traffic gains and the overall spending strength among its core shoppers are evidence that the retailer can put the inventory issues behind it. The retailer believes it is gaining market share by unit sales in all major categories, executives said. Target shoppers are buying fewer discretionary items as prices rise, but “we’ve got a guest that is still out shopping,” Mr. Cornell said.
Target’s inventory challenge rippled through its business over the past quarter, company executives said on a call with analysts Wednesday. In June inventory in Target’s warehouse network peaked at more than 90% of capacity, before dropping to below 80% by the end of the period, Chief Operating Officer
John Mulligan
said. The company aims to keep capacity at or below 85% to reduce cost and operational difficulties, he said.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
How has your shopping at Target changed over the past year? Join the conversation below.
To dispose of the excess inventory Target offered discounts, canceled orders and adjusted how it ordered products for the second half of the year, favoring items such as food that shoppers are now buying more of, executives said on the call. Target used store space typically reserved for seasonal goods to highlight deals, stopped selling outdoor products earlier than usual and brought in back-to-school items ahead of schedule. The company canceled $1.5 billion in fall discretionary product orders, executives said.
The company continues to import goods earlier than it did before the pandemic to make sure seasonal merchandise arrives on time, but believes supply-chain snarls have peaked, Mr. Mulligan said. Target’s inventory rose nearly 10% in the second quarter to $15.3 billion as the retailer prepares for fall and holiday shopping, he said.
Target’s net earnings were $183 million, compared with $1.8 billion during the same period last year.
The company’s revenue rose, boosted by strong sales of food-and-beverage, beauty and household items as well as more shopper visits. Comparable sales, those from stores and digital channels operating at least 12 months, rose 2.6% in the quarter compared with the same period last year. Shopper traffic increased 2.7% in the quarter. Shoppers spent slightly more for fewer items per transaction during the quarter.
Home Depot said Tuesday that its sales rose, in part because of higher prices, while traffic fell in the most recent quarter. Walmart said its sales rose, also helped by higher prices, and traffic increased 1% in the quarter.
Target revenue rose 3.5% during the quarter to $26 billion. It maintained previous estimates for the full year of revenue growth in the low- to mid-single-digit percentage range.
Write to Sarah Nassauer at sarah.nassauer@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Former Deus Ex, Tomb Raider Boss Unloads On Square Enix Japan
Back in May, Japanese publisher Square Enix announced it was selling a number of Western studios it had owned since 2009, including Eidos Montreal (Deus Ex) and Crystal Dynamics (Tomb Raider). For Stephane D’Astous, who founded Eidos Montreal and left the company in 2013, the deal marks the end of a decade-long “train wreck in slow motion”.
In an interview with Gamesindustry, D’Astous lets loose on his former bosses, blaming Square Enix’s management in both Japan and London for many of their Western studios’ troubles. He particularly references Square Enix’s relentless drive for astronomical sales, which became so famous among the industry (and even fans) that it became something of a running joke. In this instance, one year Japan had been expecting a $65 million profit, when without big games to release during that timeframe they were actually staring at a $65 million loss:
The pressure was starting to build, and my employees towards me, me towards my superiors. I think when people are in a crisis situation where there’s a lot of situations, you do see their core behaviour or values. And I didn’t like what I saw. There was really a lack of leadership, courage, and communication. And when you don’t have those basic things, no employee can do their job correctly — especially when you’re heading a studio.
I was losing hope that Square Enix Japan would bring great things to Eidos. I was losing confidence in my headquarters in London. In their annual fiscal reports, Japan always added one or two phrases saying, ‘We were disappointed with certain games. They didn’t reach expectations.’ And they did that strictly for certain games that were done outside of Japan.
That does not sound like a healthy working relationship! Interestingly, D’Astous adds that he believes Square Enix’s bargain-basement sale of its Western studios wasn’t just down to their performance, but because the publisher is hoping to be bought by Sony:
If I read between the lines, Square Enix Japan was not as committed as we hoped initially. And there are rumours, obviously, that with all these activities of mergers and acquisitions, that Sony would really like to have Square Enix within their wheelhouse. I heard rumours that Sony said they’re really interested in Square Enix Tokyo, but not the rest. So, I think [Square Enix CEO Yosuke] Matsuda-san put it like a garage sale.
D’Astous goes on to say that the relationship between Japan and its Western studios “was a train wreck in slow motion” while also talking about how “the success rate of superhero games is not good” (in light of the performance of Marvel’s Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy), so you should definitely go read the full, lengthy interview at Gamesindustry for more of this tea.
Antonio Brown unloads on Tom Brady, Bruce Arians on social media
Antonio Brown’s feelings toward Tom Brady continue to go from one extreme to the other, but his dislike for Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians remains the same.
Three weeks after posting a hype video to celebrate his former teammate’s retirement, Brown went back to ripping Brady while referencing the controversial ending to his time in Tampa Bay this season.
In an Instagram Stories post on Monday, the eccentric receiver accused the Buccaneers of trying “to hurt me intentionally” and claiming “they sent me out there knowing I was still hurt,” he wrote on top of a photo of an X-ray of his ankle. He went on to write that he was “lied” to by Brady going into the game.
“Tom said he would throw it if I came to play hurt, I came,” Brown said of the team’s Week 17 win over the Jets. “He didn’t throw it, imagine being hurt, having to play through this and being lied [to].”
The 33-year-old was referencing his final game with the Buccaneers. It ended with him stripping off his jersey and pads and running off the field after refusing to go back into the game when asked by Arians. Brown maintains his ankle was too injured to keep playing at MetLife Stadium that day. He was cut by Tampa Bay shortly after.
“Coach said if I couldn’t run on this get the f–k out of here,” Brown wrote. “F–k all you MF”
Brown flipped-flopped on his feelings toward Brady once already. Shortly after his Bucs exit he said the future Hall of Famer, who was instrumental in bringing him to Tampa Bay, was only his friend because “I’m good at football.” Two weeks later he backtracked on those comments, calling Brady “my guy” and to not get his previous words twisted.
Corporate America unloads on Biden’s newly active business watchdogs
WASHINGTON, Nov 19 (Reuters) – Corporate America mounted fresh attacks on Friday on President Joe Biden’s antitrust enforcers who have vowed to rein in anticompetitive practices and vigorously investigate corporate crime.
The Chamber of Commerce wrote three letters and filed more than 30 Freedom of Information Act requests about what it said were Federal Trade Commission failures to strictly follow rules and giving in to political interference.
The FTC defended itself, saying it would not change course despite criticism from the big business lobby group about a series of actions spearheaded by FTC Chair Lina Khan.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to reuters.com
Register
Also Friday, Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O) asked the U.S. Justice Department to consider requiring Jonathan Kanter, the newly confirmed head of the department’s Antitrust Division, to recuse himself from matters related to the search and advertising giant because of his work for a long list of Google critics.
Kanter had worked for such Google critics as Yelp, which the letter described as “vociferously advocating for an antitrust case against Google for years.”
The Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google last year and is believed to be preparing a second focused on the company’s dominance of online advertising.
The Chamber of Commerce said it was particularly concerned about votes cast by Commissioner Rohit Chopra before he left the FTC but which were announced after his departure. He now heads the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The chamber expressed concern about what it said was White House interference in FTC decision-making and the agency’s decision to use civil penalty authority.
The FTC said it would not change direction.
“The FTC just announced we are ramping up efforts to combat corporate crime and now the chamber declares ‘war’ on the agency. We are not going to back down because corporate lobbyists are making threats,” said FTC spokesman Peter Kaplan.
The agency has filed a lawsuit accusing Facebook of breaking antitrust law, tightened some merger reviews, been asked to probe high gasoline prices, and is considering a study to probe the role of competition in supply chain disruptions. read more
Register now for FREE unlimited access to reuters.com
Register
Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Edmund Blair and Leslie Adler
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Jimmy Kimmel Unloads on Aaron Rodgers for COVID Vaccine Lies
Aaron Rodgers is currently quarantined with COVID-19 and Jimmy Kimmel did not express any sympathy Thursday night, taking the Green Bay Packers quarterback to task for refusing to get vaccinated.
“No one seems to know that he wasn’t vaccinated,” the late-night host explained. “He hasn’t been wearing a mask, even where it’s required, and at one point, he claimed he was ‘immunized,’ but looking back at when he said it, it should have been obvious that he was not.”
Kimmel then rewound the tape, adding comical air quotes to Rodger’s assertion that he had been “immunized.”
“We now know he is not vaccinated, because unvaccinated players who test positive have to isolate for 10 days,” he continued. “Had he been vaccinated, he would have had a chance to play this weekend.”
Noting that Rodgers reportedly received a “homeopathic treatment” instead of the vaccine over the summer, Kimmel joked that “we should have known” because “nothing says ‘I heal myself with crystals’ like the player’s top-knot haircut.
“Aaron is a Karen, that’s the fact of the matter,” the host declared. “Honestly, the only thing worse than not getting vaccinated when you’re in close contact with other people is letting them think you’re vaccinated when you’re not. It’s basically the COVID equivalent of ‘the condom fell off.’”
Earlier, Kimmel mocked Rodgers’ fellow anti-vaxxer athlete Kyrie Irving, who may get a chance to rejoin the Brooklyn Nets if New York’s new mayor Eric Adams relaxes the city’s vaccine mandate.
“I just hope he’s able to finish his research first,” he joked. “You know, he’s been doing his own research. What if he enjoys that so much he decides to become a researcher full time?”
For more, listen and subscribe to The Last Laugh podcast.
Press unloads on Larry Elder as Republican may be poised to oust Gavin Newsom
When I left Los Angeles the other day, I suddenly realized that almost no one was buzzing about the recall race.
Ordinary folks weren’t chattering about it. I didn’t see anything on local TV news. The papers were covering it, but the campaign seemed as remote as a Malibu mountaintop.
In fact, the only political passion I saw was at an anti-vaccination rally in Santa Monica, which prompted plenty of horn-honking among passing drivers in the liberal enclave.
But with three weeks to go, the national media have suddenly woken up to the fact that Larry Elder could be the next California governor, and are hitting him with a sledgehammer.
The conservative radio host, in turn, is denouncing the press as biased and unfair.
MEDIA PUMMELING BIDEN FROM LEFT AND RIGHT AS AFGHANISTAN CRISIS DEEPENS
“How Did Larry Elder Become a Front-Runner in California’s Governor’s Race?” The New York Times asked Tuesday, though the answer has been obvious for quite a while. With two other Republican candidates urging Elder to quit the campaign to replace Gavin Newsom, Elder’s rise “has stunned and unnerved many in both parties,” the paper says.
As I noted in this space back on Aug. 13, this turns on the strange nature of the Golden State’s recall rules. Newsom will be removed if he can’t get to a majority plus one, and the yes-on-recall vote is now polling at an average of 48%. The top vote-getter in a crowded field would then go to Sacramento, and Elder is leading the pack with an average of 22%.
Much of what journalists are digging up about Elder is fair game. But consider this piece by Los Angeles Times columnist Erika Smith, headlined: “Larry Elder is the Black Face of White Supremacy. You’ve Been Warned.” Accusing the commentator of whitewashing the problems of being Black in America, Smith called his candidacy “an insult to Blackness.”
Elder told his friend Sean Hannity on Fox that there is another L.A. Times writer “who all but called me a Black David Duke. They are scared to death.”
LARRY ELDER’S RADIO RHETORIC COULD BOOST OR BUST HIM IN CALIFORNIA RECALL
Other recent L.A. Times pieces: “Larry Elder Talks a Lot. Too Bad You Can’t Believe Anything He Says.”
“If Larry Elder is Elected, Life Will Get Harder for Black and Latino Californians.”
More substantively, the paper reported that state officials are investigating whether Elder failed to disclose all his sources of income.
The most lurid allegation surfaced in Politico, which quoted his former fiancée and radio producer Alexandra Datig as saying she broke off their engagement in 2015 “after he waved a gun at her while high on marijuana.”
Datig, who was once part of Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss’ network — this is so California — told Politico she was “terrified” and “ran for my life.”
Elder said on Twitter that “I have never brandished a gun at anyone. I grew up in South Central [Los Angeles]; I know exactly how destructive this type of behavior is. It’s not me, and everyone who knows me knows it’s not me. These are salacious allegations.”
Newsom and Elder’s GOP opponents have made his attitude toward women a major issue, pointing to a column two decades ago in which he said “women know less than men about political issues, economics, and current events.”
Elder’s provocative language over the years — in opposing the minimum wage, vaccine mandates and abortion — shows how radio rhetoric can become instant fodder in politics.
New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo is provocative as well, calling Elder a “liberal nightmare” whose record “is so far beyond the California mainstream that he functions as a one-man cattle prod for energizing the Democratic base.”
Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle aims at the arcane nature of California’s recall process: “The question is whether any of us can accept losing an election anymore, or whether this constant rhetoric about a ‘rigged’ democracy has led us to a place where we are willing to live only with the outcomes we like and immediately set about trying to undo the ones we don’t.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
It’s true that Newsom, elected in a landslide in 2018, isn’t embroiled in some major scandal, but battered largely because of Covid and his own blunder in having a group dinner at a luxury restaurant while urging constituents to stay home.
Little wonder, then, that the Democratic governor is aiming most of his fire at Elder, whose battles with the press haven’t hurt him with Republicans while he ducks the debates. If Newsom can’t generate more excitement than I saw in Southern California, he stands a good chance of following Andrew Cuomo out the door.
Trump unloads on Brett Kavanaugh in new Michael Wolff book
Former President Donald Trump, in a book out Tuesday by Michael Wolff, says he is “very disappointed” in votes by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, his own hard-won nominee, and that he “hasn’t had the courage you need to be a great justice.”
Driving the news: “There were so many others I could have appointed, and everyone wanted me to,” Trump told Wolff in an interview for the cheekily titled “Landslide.”
- “Where would he be without me? I saved his life. He wouldn’t even be in a law firm. Who would have had him? Nobody. Totally disgraced. Only I saved him.”
Between the lines: After the election, as Axios’ Jonathan Swan reported in his “Off the Rails” series, Trump saved his worst venom for people who he believed owed him because he got them their jobs.
- He would rant endlessly about the treachery of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, reminding people of how he shot up in the primary polls after Trump endorsed him.
- Over lunches in the private dining room adjoining the Oval Office, Trump used to reminisce about how he saved Kavanaugh by sticking by him.
- For Kavanaugh to not do Trump’s bidding on the matter of ultimate importance — overturning the election — was, in Trump’s mind, a betrayal of the highest order.
Wolff writes that Trump feels betrayed by all three justices he put on the court, including Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, but “reserved particular bile for Kavanaugh.”
- Recalling the brutal confirmation fight, Trump said: “Practically every senator called me … and said, ‘Cut him loose, sir, cut him loose. He’s killing us, Kavanaugh.’ … I said, ‘I can’t do that.'”
- “I had plenty of time to pick somebody else,” Trump continued. “I went through that thing and fought like hell for Kavanaugh — and I saved his life, and I saved his career. At great expense to myself … okay? I fought for that guy and kept him.”
“I don’t want anything … but I am very disappointed in him, in his rulings,” Trump said.
- “I can’t even believe what’s happening. I’m very disappointed in Kavanaugh. I just told you something I haven’t told a lot of people. In retrospect, he just hasn’t had the courage you need to be a great justice. I’m basing this on more than just the election.”
Wolff gives an entertaining account of what it was like for the book authors who were given Trump interviews at Mar-a-Lago:
It’s called the Living Room, but it’s in fact the Mar-a-Lago lobby, a vaulted-ceiling rococo grand entrance, part hunting lodge, part Renaissance palazzo. But it is really the throne room. … He sits, in regulation dark suit and shiny baby-blue or fire-red tie, on a low chair in the center of the room, his legs almost daintily curled to the side, seeing a lineup of supplicants or chatting on the phone, all public conversations.
And why would Trump talk to Wolff, who wrote two earlier bestsellers with devastating accounts of Trump dysfunction?
- “The fact that he was talking to me might only reasonably be explained by his absolute belief that his voice alone has reality-altering powers,” Wolff writes.
- Trump told Wolff: “I don’t blame you. I blame my people.”
Jimmy Kimmel Unloads on QAnon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene for Harassing Parkland Survivor
On Thursday night, Jimmy Kimmel moved away from his favorite target, the coup-complicit congressman Ted Cruz, and toward the Q-complicit Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congresswoman from Georgia who subscribes to QAnon—a baseless, batshit-insane conspiracy theory positing that Donald Trump is a messianic figure battling a cabal of sex-trafficker pedophiles comprised of some of the biggest names in Hollywood and the Democratic Party (this despite the fact that Trump palled around with notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein).
“The chair of the RNC, Ronna McDaniel…tried to distance the party from QAnon. She said it’s beyond fringe and dangerous,” explained Kimmel during his late-night monologue. “QAnon is so fringe, in fact, Republicans in the House just put their screwiest, Q-iest member on the Education and Labor Committee—that is Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia.”
Then, Kimmel introduced his audience to Greene, who has never met a bonkers conspiracy theory she didn’t love.
“If you don’t know who this person is, I wish I didn’t too. She is the lady who, among other things, called for Nancy Pelosi’s execution; called for Joe Biden’s impeachment on his first day in office; and she believes our former governor here in California, Jerry Brown, used space lasers to set the wildfires here. She saw the Austin Powers movie and thought it was a documentary, I guess,” cracked Kimmel.
Greene is also a COVID skeptic who refused to wear a mask in a secure, tightly-packed room with other congresspeople during the storming of the U.S. Capitol; believes in Pizzagate, the debunked theory that Democrats were operating a child sex-trafficking ring under a D.C. pizza shop; said the elections of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to Congress represented an “Islamic invasion of our government”; called the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville an “inside job”; pushed the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that “Zionist supremacists” are trying to replace whites with migrants; has repeatedly questioned the 9/11 attacks; and called the Christchurch, Sandy Hook, and Parkland shootings “false flags.” And again, she supported executing Democratic leaders.
“Marjorie also called some of the terrible school shootings ‘false flag operations,’ meaning the perpetrators weren’t who we think they were,” offered Kimmel. “And here she is stalking and harassing a child not long after he watched his friends get slaughtered in school.”
He then threw to a video of Greene trailing David Hogg, a Parkland school shooting survivor (and teenager), barking at him and branding him a “coward.”
“The coward she was yelling at there is a teenager named David Hogg. He’s an activist. She referred to him online as ‘Little Hitler.’ I wonder how it would go over with the Fox News and Ted Cruz crew if Nancy Pelosi called for Marjorie Taylor Greene to be executed and called a teenage kid Hitler? You think they’d have anything to say?” asked Kimmel. “Well, it was the other way around, and guess what? Most of them have nothing to say. Instead, they assigned her to the education committee—hoping she would get one? I don’t know.”