My Blog

Category: Politics

  • Bank of America Hates the Second Amendment

    McMillan Fiberglass Stocks, McMillan Firearms Manufacturing and McMillan Group International have been collectively banking with Bank of America for 12 years. But no more: In a recent meeting, the mega-bank told the firearms company that its business is no longer welcome.

    Operations director Kelly McMillan told the Daily Caller that his company has never been late on a payment and has never bounced a check. …

    Writing Thursday on Facebook, McMillan described a meeting at his office with Ray Fox, a business banking Senior Vice President with the giant bank. What was originally scheduled as an “account analysis” meeting, however, quickly became a political smackdown.

    The Bank of America emissary, he said, “spent 5 minutes talking about how McMillan has changed in the last 5 years and have become more of a firearms manufacturer than a supplier of accessories.”

    “At this point I interrupted him,” McMillan said, and asked, ‘Can I possibly save you some time so that you don’t waste your breath? What you are going to tell me is that because we are in the firearms manufacturing business you no longer what my business.’”

    Fox’s reply, according to McMillan? “That is correct.”

    via The Daily Caller.

    Well that pretty much says it all (more details to the story at the link.)

    I hate it when people say this but…  please pass this story along.  It is just so wrong that BofA would stop doing business with a successful company solely based on their manufacture of a legal and non-prurient product.

    I, thankfully, don’t do any business with BofA.  Can say that I certainly don’t intent to do so now.

    UPDATE:  Title changed to more accurately reflect the story.

  • Pentagon Smears Critics

    The first casualty when war comes is the truth.
    — Hiram Johnson

    No one knows this better than the folks at the pentagon.

    The newspaper USA Today said Friday an editor and reporter probing Pentagon propaganda efforts have been targeted by an online “misinformation campaign.”

    Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created under the names of the reporter and editor with postings denigrating their professional reputations, according to the daily.

    The timing of the online harassment coincided with stories by Pentagon correspondent Tom Vanden Brook, who has written about the military’s “information operations” program that spent large sums on marketing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    The program has faced criticism in and outside the Defense Department as “ineffective and poorly monitored,” the paper said.

    The false online accounts, including a fake Wikipedia entry, started appearing only days after the reporter first contacted Pentagon contractors for the story, the newspaper wrote.

    Two weeks after enterprise editor Ray Locker’s byline appeared on a story on the same subject, a fake website under his name — RayLocker.com — popped up, the paper said.

    You see?  you go writing things about the pentagon that they don’t like and misinformation about you will magically appear out of this air.  But worry not…

    A US official confirmed to AFP that the Defense Department had made inquiries to contractors doing public relations work to ask them about the false online accounts.

    The contractors denied any such activity, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

    But the websites were taken down following the Pentagon’s inquiry. Some other accounts were removed for violating Internet providers’ terms of service, USA Today said.

    The Pentagon said Friday it had not launched a formal investigation of the case.

    No no… why would a formal investigation be necessary?

    “We’re aware of the allegations and are not dismissing them outright to be sure,” press secretary George Little told reporters.

    via Yahoo! News Canada.

    Uh huh, right.

    Know this:  If the misinformation department at the pentagon is willing to take on a reporter and an editor from the USA Today — the nation’s largest paper — who have research staff and other resources at their disposal to fight back, then it would have no problem whatsoever totally destroying an ordinary citizen who exposes the truth.

  • Keith Olbermann Wanders Aimlessly in NY

    Unemployed, perennially confrontational talking head Keith Olbermann aimlessly wandered around Central Park South earlier this week, seemingly looking for a friend or a purpose.

    Our spies snapped unflattering pictures of Olbermann decked out in a giant red pullover and clownishly baggy jeans as he strolled 59th Street near Seventh Avenue, smelling the roses — or, in this case, the horse manure, allergens and aromas from a nearby food cart.

    via NYPOST.com.

    Ha ha ha.

    I never cared for Olbermann.  He, much like Bill Maher, engage in gutter dialog; although Olbermann uses fancier language.  It’s one ad hominem attack after another with this guy.  He has no unique ideas or thoughts of his own; he only tears down, divides.

    I’d like to think that karma is serving Keith the dish he richly deserves however the Left always need a useful idiot like Olbermann around to throw bombs.  He’ll be back.

     

  • Climate Alarmist Says Burn Down Skeptics’ Homes

    Climate Alarmist Calls For Burning Down Skeptics’ Homes

    “Let’s start keeping track of them…let’s make them pay”

    via  Infowars.

    Really?!

    Ya, really!

    “We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices,” writes Zwick, adding, “They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?”

    What a dingle-berry.

    How about this:  how about we make a list of all the people who got the global warming thing wrong and then charge them for all of our energy bills (gasoline, coal, electricity, natural gas, etc.) going higher because of their stupid regulations?

    Let’s start with Al Gore who lives in a huge mo fo house using 10 times the energy of the average person and wants to drive up the energy costs of poor people living in everything from cheap apartments to public housing.

    From there we’d move on to all the folks who don’t want to drive for oil in the Gulf of Mexico and ANWAR.  There should be two prices for gas in this country:  $2.65 for all the folks who support drilling and $6.75 for all the folks who don’t.

    Morons.

  • We’re Dying — Another 5.4 Million Get SS Disability

    Yesterday I re-wrote about Tytler:

    A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.

    The post when on to cite recent news about how we’re nearing this point.  We have a record number of folks on food stamps, approaching a majority.  We also have a record number of folks who do not pay any taxes… also approaching a majority.  Therefore we are at the point whereby the majority will vote in their own self interest and sink the entire country.

    Today this story comes along:

    A record 5.4 million workers and their dependents have signed up to collect federal disability checks since President Obama took office, according to the latest official government data, as discouraged workers increasingly give up looking for jobs and take advantage of the federal program.  …

    Since the recession ended in June 2009, the number of people who’ve signed up for disability benefits is twice the job growth figure. (See nearby chart.) In just the first four months of this year, 539,000 joined the disability rolls and more than 725,000 put in applications.via Investors.com.

    Incredible.

    For those that don’t know, disability is something you’re on forever… as in until you die.  You basically become a drain on everyone else in society.  The story goes on:

    This is straining already-stretched government finances while posing a long-term economic threat by creating an ever-growing pool of permanently dependent working-age Americans.

    A long-term economic threat indeed!!

    As a result, by April there were 10.8 million people on disability, according to Social Security Administration data released this week. Even after accounting for all those who’ve left the program — mainly because they hit retirement age or died — that’s up 53% from a decade ago.

    We need everyone to understand that for every person doing nothing collecting a check we need 15, 20, or 30 people out there working and paying taxes for those that don’t.  Further, for every government worker, you need another 20, or 30 workers to pay for their salary and benefits.

    Our ratios of workers to non-workers and workers to government employees is out of whack and unsustainable.  Those who do can no longer support those who don’t (and those who do but do so for the government.)

    Big BIG trouble ahead.

  • Prescient or Racism?

    Again, a UK paper carries a story no U.S. media outlet would touch.

    In his three years as U.S. president, Barack Obama has been dogged by claims he is not patriotic enough.  …

    Now it emerges that similar fears were expressed about his father, who was categorised with others as ‘anti-American and anti-white’ when he moved to the United States in 1959.

    A memo … released today by the National Archives in West London …  sets out their concerns about the young Kenyans.

    Dated September 1, 1959, it says: ‘I have discussed with the State Department.  They are as disturbed about these developments as we are.  They point out that Kenya students have a bad reputation over here for falling into the wrong hands and for becoming both anti-American and anti-white.’  …

    Mr Obama Snr was among 100 or so Kenyan students brought to America by the African American Students Foundation.U.S. and British officials were deeply suspicious of this outfit, observing that the AASF – though backed by singer Harry Belafonte and actor Sidney Poitier – had links to a Kenyan nationalist leader.

    ‘The motives behind this enterprise, therefore, seem more political than educational,’ warned a letter from the British Embassy in Washington.

    It added: ‘The arrival here of these students, many of them of indifferent academic calibre and ill-prepared for the venture, is likely to give rise to difficult problems.’

    Mr Obama Snr, who died in 1982, is not singled out for concern in any of the documents.

    via Mail Online.

    My first blush at this is that it’s nothing more than racism.  A bunch of upper-crust government types don’t are much for a bunch of African kids polluting their fine universities.

    Further though makes me wonder though, we know what kind of life Barack Sr. (and Barack Jr.) made for himself.  But we don’t know how any of the other students did.

    The comparison I’m thinking of is where a law school (or other academic institution) will let in a student based on race who’s not performed well in the past  (i.e. affirmative action.)  It is sad but true that some (not all but some) of these students simply cannot handle the rigors of law school and end up dropping out.  Sometimes affirmative action is education is just setting someone up to fail.  That’s not helpful to anyone.

    So maybe it’s not racism, it’s a sense that having these African kids is not helpful to anyone.  It’s not helping them do anything in Kenya.  It’s not helping us with any issues we’re having.  And further it denies the spot to someone who could really use it to make the world a better place.  i.e.  It’s not serving the greater good.

    But then maybe… just maybe…  these government types back in the 50’s weren’t like the fools we have today.  Maybe the government knew that these kids were really up to no good.  That they were just biding their time, working the system, until the moment was just right when they could make their play.

    Maybe it would have been better to not allow students selected by a national socialist political leader into our system if for no other reason than to separate politics from higher education.  We know locally that when politics and higher education mix it’s with bad consequences.

    We may never know what motivated the memo back in ’59.  But it is odd that not one U.S. media outlet covered this story.

  • Food Stamps & Taxes Suggest We’re Nearing the End

    A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

    Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

    attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler.

    I first published that quote nearly two years ago.  I thought it was true then… perhaps even truer now.

    The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday that 45 million people in 2011 received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, a 70% increase from 2007. It said the number of people receiving the benefits, commonly known as food stamps, would continue growing until 2014.

    via WSJ.

    And there is this:

    Out of the 143 million tax returns that were filed with the IRS in 2010, 58 million – or 41 percent – of those filers were non-payers.

    In other words, only 85 million actually paid taxes.

    via CNSNews.com.

    We cannot — and will not — survive when ‘net givers’ are outnumbered by ‘net takers’.  Two days ago I wrote that a record number of Americans have renounced their citizenship.  The U.S. is dealing with intellectual flight of massive proportions.  We are facing a perfect storm of breakdowns in both the economy and society.  The poor rarely have the ability, the means, to leave.  The rich however can easily move to wherever they like.

    We are only a few bad decisions away from the wheels falling completely off the bus.

  • The Catholic Church Engages

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9vQt6IXXaM]

    A friend of mine, who also happens to be a Baptist minister, once told me that despite being a life-long Democrat he had to endorse Bush over Kerry.  Kerry was just simply not compatible with his religion.

    There is an undoubted war on religion — all religion — in this country.  It’s time that all religions stood up to the bullies who want to remove God from all of our lives.

  • Record Number of Americans Renounce Citizenship

    Last year, almost 1,800 people … renounc[ed] their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards.  That’s a record number since the Internal Revenue Service began publishing a list of those who renounced in 1998.  It’s also almost eight times more than the number of citizens who renounced in 2008, and more than the total for 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined.

    via Reuters.

    This is not good any way you twist it.

    Go read the story.  It’s not the tired, poor,  huddled masses yearning to breathe free that are leaving.  It’s the well educated, the well off, the well healed who are heading for the door.  Tired of our unfair tax policies people the rich are saying enough.

    Who’s going to pay the bills when these people go?

  • Google’s Brin: Web Faces Greatest Threat Ever

    The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation of the internet three decades ago are under greater threat than ever, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

    In an interview with the Guardian, Brin warned there were “very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world”.   “I am more worried than I have been in the past,” he said. “It’s scary.”

    The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry’s attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of “restrictive” walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.

    via The Guardian.

    I’m not actually a big “Brin” or Google fan.  Although I do believe the story is accurate, it may be nothing more than a Google play for more “openness” so that Google kind find out more and more about you… so they can track you.

    We need to face the fact that Google is beyond spooky.  It tracks everything about you and has some undisclosed relationships with the government.  That’s not a good combination.

    Perhaps Brin should do a little spring cleaning in his own house before pointing fingers at Facebook and others.