Over at American Thinker, writer, Peter Skurkiss, has a piece with the interesting premise that one way to limit the out of control growth of federal government, Trump’s draining the swamp, is to decentralize it by moving various federal agencies out of the bloated federal district and into more geographically centralized and mainstream American locations. While many of the commenters agree this could help return some sanity to federal bureaucrats by making them live among those their edicts affect, others point out the risk, noting that Californians moving to Oregon, Washington and Colorado were like metastasizing political cancer cells. Many other commenters are of a mind that severely reducing the bloated agencies in size is more important, while others think that both moves have merit.
Whaddaya think here at TAH?
Author: Poetrooper
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Dissecting D.C.
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A new cereal killer unleashed
I do so wish I could lay claim to creating that moniker, folks, but in truth, it belongs to Spencer Jakab at the Wall Street Journal, who coined it for his report on the latest corporate crime against stockholders. Among all the other liberal insanity we’ve witnessed since the recent elections, apparently someone at cereal manufacturing giant Kellogg’s must have gotten his social justice panties in a twist. In a stroke of petulant political payback, this poor individual decided to cancel all further advertising with conservative web giant Breitbartnews.com, a huge Trump supporter throughout the campaign.
In a countermove that would make proud its defunct feisty founder and namesake, the management at Breitbart.com immediately launched a #DumpKelloggs campaign with an anti-Kellogg’s petition calling for signers to grab that famous Tiger by his tail and swear off ever buying another product of any kind from that bunch of liberal Froot Loops. The bright folks at Breitbart further called for a boycott from its 45 million monthly readers of the cereal giant until it gets all those liberal Pop-Tarts back in the box.
Recent history for such corporate liberal nose-thumbing at conservative America does not provide Kellogg’s stockholders with much to look forward to, as last year’s bathroom boycott of Target proved out. Target’s openly leftist CEO took that retailer over that liberal lemming cliff by making all bathrooms in his stores “gender-neutral” for customers who think they’re members of the opposite sex. Though those running Target were initially defiant, substantial reductions in sales and an almost 20% drop in their stock price made them reconsider. With competitors like Walmart gaining market share while Target’s shrank, Target pledged to spend $20 million to build standalone restroom facilities in its stores.
Sources are already reporting that Kellogg’s sales are underperforming the competition like Post Holdings and General Mills, with wiser investment heads advising that this is a fight Tony the Tiger won’t win. Cereal sales are already a declining market, what with millennials and their changing morning time habits, so this is obviously a bad time for Kellogg’s liberal leadership to pick a fight with what could well turn out to be the most determined and prolific cereal killer in the history of the nation.
Hey, those Breitbart dudes have got a lot of Snap, Crackle, and Pop. Know what I mean?
Crossposted at American Thinker
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Not a ‘red tape’ country but a ‘red carpet’ country…
At Donald Trump’s recent victory tour through Michigan, one of the speakers was a powerful CEO from a major industrial power in the United States, Andrew Liveris of Dow Chemical. Mr. Liveris, who Trump has appointed to chair his American Manufacturing Council, announced that Dow soon will create a new research and development center in Michigan that will provide two hundred jobs. He made it crystal clear that the decision to build it in the US when it could have been located anywhere in the world was directly attributable to the industry friendly policies of our incoming president. In his speech Liveris used an expression that should be adopted and promoted by the Trump Administration:
“We could have waited,” Liveris said. “We could have put it anywhere in the world. … We’re going to use American hard work and American dreams and we’re going to fight for the Dow Company in the U.S.A.”
“You’re paving the way through your administration your policies to make it easier to do business in this country,” Liveris told Trump. “Not a red tape country, but a red carpet country for American business. That’s what we have to do.”
I don’t know about you but that particular phraseology just lit up in my mind, eliciting an involuntary, “Hell yeah!” My desire for an America that is a red carpet country rather than a red tape country was my primary motivation for supporting Donald Trump; I just never thought to voice it quite that way in all my pre-election writings on his behalf. If the Trump Administration wants a catchphrase for its economic plan, they could do a lot worse than The Red Carpet. It’s every bit as catchy as the New Deal and a lot more self-explanatory.
Crossposted at American Thinker
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More Liberal Insanity
Over at American Thinker, publisher, Thomas Lifson, has a lead piece today about what investigations into the Oakland warehouse fire which killed thirty-six have uncovered so far. Not so unsurprisingly, the decrepit building had not been inspected for thirty years but what is much more enlightening (and infuriating) is the annual compensation paid to those city employees responsible for such public safety inspections:
…in 2015, Craig K. Chew, the assistant chief of inspectors, made $362,211, $147,000 of which was “benefits.” The Alameda County administrator Susan Muranishi made $729,162 in 2015, of which $313,503 was in “benefits,” which included bonuses.
The Alameda County sheriff, Greg Ahern, made $627,935 in that one year.
One has to wonder what the chief of inspectors makes if his assistant gets that kind of money. And of course none of these overpaid hogs at the public trough will be held accountable for all those needless deaths. The entire state of California, like most political entities under the governance of liberal Democrats and in thrall to public unions is headed for financial disaster when all these overpaid public servants retire at 80% of their highest pay. The Dallas Police and Fireman’s Pension Fund board had to put an emergency stop on lump-sum pension distributions this week, after panic withdrawals threatened to swamp its cash reserves.
There’s a lot more of that coming in Democrat-controlled enclaves like New York City, Chicago, and Detroit, for starters. Stay tuned…
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Crying
Ol’ Poe has graced this planet for more than three-quarters of a century now and never has he witnessed such a massive and immature emotional response to a presidential election loss as what we are now witnessing from the Clinton camp. From the mainstream media down to first semester community college freshmen, the wailings and lamentations have been unprecedented and unending, perhaps lending further support to Dr. Savage’s contention that liberalism is a mental disorder.
As an old man who supposedly has achieved a modicum of dignity with his advanced years, I realize that it could be seen as undignified to revel in the grief of the sniveling snowflakes, but dang all if this little video with a Roy Orbison tune from my teen years didn’t just make me grin from ear to ear:Dignity be damned, I just can’t help but revel in their damned silly self-pitying!
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Leslie Rutledge, Arkansas AG, Hillary’s worst nightmare?
The blog for the Arkansas Times is reporting that our attorney general, Leslie Rutledge, is in New York meeting with Trump transition planners. Rutledge, a diminutive fireball conservative elected two years ago, is quoted:
“My interest is in helping the Trump administration,” Rutledge told reporters as she arrived for meetings at Trump Tower in New York. “Whether that’s continuing on as the attorney general of Arkansas or (working) in the administration, then my ears are open.”
It’s the first of those two options, “staying on in Arkansas” that sets my antennae tingling for the simple reason that Rutledge is one of two state attorneys general in the country who have undisputed standing to investigate the Clinton foundation. The other state is New York, but their thoroughly politicized, Democrat attorney general would never lift a hand against the Clinton’s no matter how outrageous their corruption. Both AG’s have standing by virtue of the physical location of foundation offices within their borders.
Rutledge, however, could do a great service for both her own considerable political ambitions and the Trump Administration by accepting the Trump’s justice department hand off the hot potato investigation and prosecution of the Clinton Foundation corruption. Trump could quietly lend Rutledge’s own limited investigatory resources the far greater capabilities of federal agencies to build a lock-tight racketeering case against the Clintons and then quietly fade from the scene before Rutledge (soon to become the world’s most famous state attorney general and a household name) announces the indictments.
Think about it for a moment: Trump could mollify those demanding his promised Clinton investigation by saying that it was ongoing and as president and chief judicial officer he could not comment further all while having his justice department and the FBI quietly continue their own investigations into Clinton’s obvious security violations. But, and it’s a big but, by receding into the background, Trump could fade the heat from angry Democrats that he is persecuting his political opponents. And if Rutledge brought in some quick convictions or plea deals from some of the lower hanging fruit on the foundation staff, all eyes would be on her from that point on until she could either indict or, in a highly unlikely move, clear the Clintons.
If Rutledge were to gain convictions against the Clinton’s, most of the bloodlust on the right would likely be sated with even minimal state sentences. Moreover, Trump would have fulfilled his vow, through a state surrogate, to prosecute Crooked Hillary, and AG Rutledge would be world famous, likely the federal attorney general in a second Trump term, then Arkansas governor, senator, U.S. Supreme Court, who knows where that kind of fame, the woman who nailed the Clinton’s, could take her. And wouldn’t it be so fitting that The Clinton’s should get their comeuppance back here in Arkansas, where their decades-long career of corruption began?
Anyone think perhaps Donald’s thinking the same way I am?
Crossposted at American Thinker
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Reversing Obama’s social justice sailor’s fundamental changes
Obama appointee Ray Mabus, über-liberal head of our Navy, has been a very busy lefty during his time in the Pentagon, much to the chagrin of almost all sailors, active and veterans, particularly old retired salts with twenty years or more. It is doubtful any person in the puzzle palace is more despised than the smug Mabus, a social justice warrior of the first order. He makes no secret of the fact that his goal was to break the back of the Old Navy culture and install his politically correct dogmas and he has made every effort to accomplish that goal with edicts that have brought joy to the hard left while infuriating most of the force he theoretically leads. Here’s the future SecNav in his fierce sailoring days. He certainly doesn’t look like a future hard left, social justice warrior, now does he?
Future Social Justice SailorThe secretary of the Navy’s most egregious edict, which Navy Times labeled a tectonic shift, came recently when he ordered a revamping of the Navy’s enlisted ratings titles to make them gender-neutral, in effect changing aspects of everyday naval language, which in some cases dates back to the Continental Navy. He has imposed mandatory cultural training to compel male sailors to be more accepting of their female, homosexual, and transgendered shipmates, as well as same-sex marriage and civil unions, training time that most sailors would agree could be better spent in preparation to fight a real, not social, war.
But the most maddening of Mabus’s busybody social justice meddling comes in his decision to name new naval vessels after heroes of the LGBT movement like Harvey Milk, a gay San Francisco city supervisor who was assassinated by fellow supervisor, Daniel White, a former police officer and troubled Vietnam veteran who later committed suicide. Like Mabus, Milk served briefly, without particular distinction, as a junior officer aboard a small vessel in San Diego during the Korean War. The class of ships to which the USS Harvey Milk belongs is called the John Lewis class of oilers, Mr. Lewis being the same John Lewis who currently serves Georgia as a very leftist and demonstrably dishonest Democrat congressman, as even Daily Kos says. Somehow the oiler class seems fitting for Lewis. Others who will have ships in that class named for them are those ever popular feminist figures, Lucy Paul and Sojourner Truth, whom the left seems hell-bent on our recognizing, wanting them on our currency as well.
Another class of ships that bears Mabus’s banner of social justice around the globe is that of the Lewis and Clark dry cargo ships, most of which will wear the names of naval heroes such as Admiral Byrd and Commodore Perry or aviation pioneers, astronauts and other figures of distinction…well, except that Mabus just had to slip in two more icons of the left. Those would be labor organizer Cesar Chávez and Medgar Evers. I think most of us could live with that, knowing that Chávez is an icon to many Hispanics and Evers, a civil rights movement leader, is a hero to blacks, if either had made any significant contribution to the Navy, which neither has. Ditto the ship named for the Lewis and Clark expedition’s female Indian guide, Sacajawea, giving Mabus a twofer: female and minority.
Another ship in this class is named for an enlisted sailor, Master Chief Boatswain’s Mate Carl Brashear, of notable naval accomplishment, being the first black to become a U.S. Navy master diver despite having only one leg.
Most sailors should have no problem with there being a USNS Carl Brashear, as that is a ship upon which American crews of all backgrounds can serve proudly, knowing it is named in the proudest traditions of the United States Navy; but the USS Harvey Milk?
Let us hope that whomever Donald Trump selects to be the new SecNav will be more traditional in his ship-naming policies by sticking to a pool of valiant sailors and marines who have served this country with distinction and valor since its beginning. And just as, if not more, importantly, let’s hope our new SecNav, following the lead of his commander in chief, shows little tolerance for social justice engineering in our Navy and puts a quick end to the forced political correctness imposed by the worst SecNav ever, who, in turn, was appointed by inarguably the very worst commander in chief ever. As for the few now serving in the military who like and profit from all this social engineering…
Hey! Elections have consequences!
Crossposted at American Thinker
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Spontaneous Demonstrations? Yeah right…
While the Democrat party would like the American public to believe that the post-election, anti-Trump protests erupting in cities around the country are the spontaneous result of ordinary citizens who are dissatisfied with the election results, the visual evidence indicates otherwise. YouTube has video showing block after block of hired buses used to bus in “demonstrators” to Chicago in this instance:
The Democrats are proving to the world that they are thoroughly dishonest and corrupt to the core. Their leadership refuses to follow American tradition and accept our democratic processes. And if you think Hillary Clinton isn’t complicit in this shameful behavior, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’m willing to sell you.
