You Want To Take A Knee?

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Thank you Z

Take a little trip to Valley Forge in January.  If you don't know where that is, just Google it from the sidelines. Hold a musket ball in your fingers and imagine it piercing your flesh and breaking a bone or two.  There won't be a doctor or trainer to assist you until after the battle, so just wait your turn.  Take your cleats and socks off to get a real experience.  Then take a knee.

Take a knee at Pearl Harbor. Look at the remains of the USS Arizona.  Read the names on the wall.  Do you see small globules of oil coming to the surface, after 75 years.  There are American Sailors inside.  They are there forever.  Then look aft at the USS Missouri.  The Arizona was where it started, the Missouri is where it ended.  There is no goal post here.

Then, take a knee at the beach in Normandy where man after American man stormed the beach, even as the one in front of him was shot to pieces...the very sea stained with American blood.  The only blockers most had were the dead bodies in front of them, riddled with bullets from enemy fire.

Take a knee in the sweat soaked jungles of Vietnam, from Khe San to Saigon...Anywhere will do.  Americans died in all those jungles.  There was no playbook that told them what was next, but they knew what flag they represented.  When they came home, they were protested as well ​ ​ and spat upon for reasons only cowards know.

Take another knee in the blood drenched sands of Fallujah in 110 degree heat.  Wear your Kevlar helmet and battle dress...Your number won't be printed on it like football ​ ​ unless your number is up!  You'll need to stay hydrated but there won't be anyone to squirt Gatorade into your mouth.  You're on your own.

There are a lot of places to take a knee.  Americans have given their lives all over the world.  When you use the banner under which they fought as a source for your displeasure, you dishonor the memories of those who bled for the very freedoms you have. That's what the red stripes mean.  It represents the blood of those who spilled a sea of it defending YOUR liberty.

While you're on your knee, pray for those that came before you, not on a manicured lawn striped and printed with numbers to announce every inch of ground taken...but on nameless hills and bloodied beaches and sweltering forests and bitter cold mountains...every inch marked by an American life lost serving that flag you protest.

No cheerleaders, no announcers, no coaches, no fans....just American men and women...delivering the real fight against those who chose to harm us...blazing a path so you would have the right to "take a knee."

You haven't an inkling what it took to get you where you are...but your "protest" is duly noted.  Not only is it disgraceful to a nation of real heroes, it serves the purpose of pointing to your ingratitude for those who chose to defend you under that banner that will still wave long after your jersey is retired...!

(Author Unknown)

If you want to upset a Conservative, tell them a lie.

If you want to upset a Liberal, tell them the truth.

Old Hatchet Man Story

Sharing a interesting  email

Thanks Bruce 

Roger Norman  Old Hatchet Man Story.

“Apparently, liberals and never-Trumpers are so isolated in their political circles that they have no concept how things work in the real world of business and corporate America.

For example, they completely fail to grasp the concept of the “hatchet man."

Allow me to explain:  Say you are a business tycoon. You just successfully completed a large-scale acquisition and merger, bringing together multiple smaller companies into one conglomerate. After the merger, you want to put your own people in charge of everything. However, all those smaller companies had their own executives - and, at least for the short term - you need to keep many of them around to keep things running. So, you keep many of those executives around, and let them retain their own senior staff. You even appoint one of them - the head of the largest of the companies you acquired - to be the CEO of the conglomerate, and he pledges to get all the departments working together harmoniously.

After a transition period, some of them are doing fine in the new conglomerate - but others are clearly causing trouble. In fact, the one you appointed CEO is clearly a disaster. The newly merged departments are working against each other.

Furthermore, you have good suspicion he is dealing in insider trading - nothing you can take to a prosecutor, but there is a lot of circumstantial evidence building up. Worse, he is not only doing his own dirty dealing, but it appears he may even be leaking intellectual property to your competitors, helping them take market share from you.

Clearly, he has to go - and go now.

Problem is, many of the senior employees in your conglomerate are loyal to him. If you just fire him and put in your own chosen CEO, you know you could get a lot of backlash from disgruntled employees. And in your business, there is such a small profit-margin that you really can't afford anything at all that threatens performance. So what do you do?

In comes the hatchet man.

The hatchet man is someone you bring in for the sole purpose of slashing the problems and shaking things up over a very short period of time - but doing it in a way that deflects any blame or blowback away from you. As soon as the problems are hacked away, the hatchet man leaves - taking the ire and resentment with him, and leaving you free to bring in your new team for a fresh start.

This happens in the business world all the time. And Donald Trump is a businessman. He knows this. He has lived this. We've seen him do it on "The Apprentice." We've read about it in his books. This is not a surprise to anyone. Except for liberals and never-Trumpers.

Enter Scaramucci.

Liberals and never-Trumpers see the past two weeks as proof of a Hitler-clown-circus spectacle, as evidence that Trump is unhinged and our government is in the hands of madmen. Anyone who understands the business world and Donald Trump fully understands that what we just witnessed was a perfectly executed hatchet man maneuver.

When Trump won the election, he essentially performed the political equivalent of an acquisition and merger. He brought together different political factions - establishment Republicans, conservatives, tea party, religious right, moderates, independents, cross-overs - into one winning political coup. For some, it was a hostile takeover - and if they were going to be dragged in against their will, they would sure as hell resist.

This is where Reince Priebus came in.

Priebus, as the then-chairman of the Republican National Committee, was hired as White House Chief of Staff to be a sort of post-merger CEO. It was his job to bring all these political factions together and get them to work harmoniously. But he failed. Worse, there is ample evidence to suggest he not only failed, but worked against Trump and the Trump agenda.

Look at the leaks. Look at all the chaos. Look at all the bureaucracy continuing to work at odds with the president.

Priebus and a number of other people around him - had to go.

Back to Scaramucci

Donald Trump has known for some time that Priebus was a disaster. He was going to give him his six-month trial period - that's a fairly common thing in the private sector. After that, heads were going to roll. But Trump himself doesn't want to be the hatchet man. He needs to be able to lead after the bloodbath. So what does he do? He turns to an old friend he has known for many years - someone with nothing to lose, someone who can step in with a hatchet and hack away, someone who can then just walk away from it all and leave the slate clean.

He turned to Scaramucci

So what does Scaramucci do? He comes in swinging. He fires a few people to make a quick example. He tells others they can "resign" right now if they want to - but if not, they will be fired. Others see what is going on and just up and quit of their own accord.

That problem CEO, Priebus?

Oh, the new "structure" of the organization puts Scaramucci in direct competition with Priebus - and Priebus throws up his hands and says "fine, I'm out of here." And Scaramucci does it all in a way that is spectacularly visible to draw all the fire from Trump critics.

So how does it all end? It ends with Trump putting in his new CEO - the one he probably wanted from day one, but held back - and the new CEO says “OK, Scaramucci - you are no longer needed here."

Gen. Kelly now has a clean slate to start fresh - and Scaramucci takes all the heat. Where the left and never-Trumpers see a circus freak-show, realists from the business world see a perfectly executed post-merger hatchet-man job.

The political wonks see Kelly taking command as the first sane thing to happen in this administration. They don't realize they've been played, and played perfectly. And soon we will likely see some other changes that move the Executive Branch further towards what Trump has wanted from day one. And then watch the real swamp-drainer get to work.

It sucks to be Hillary Clinton right now…

Oh, and Scaramucci? He gets a sweet deal out of all this - no doubt, he and his friend Donald Trump talked it all out first. Scaramucci was already facing a nasty divorce that would result in the liquidation of his business to divide assets. A little-known law allows people who are legally required to sell a business as a condition of employment in the Executive Branch (to prevent conflicts of interest) to defer the taxes on their profits from the sale.

Scaramucci was going to have to sell his company anyway due to his pending divorce. Now he and his soon-to-be ex-wife just saved $80 million in taxes. So don't think for a moment all this was an unplanned mess that went awry. Scaramucci and Trump knew exactly what they were doing.

All of this was planned - and foreseen. Not just by me, but by others as well.

Scott Adams wrote before Trump was inaugurated that, to his critics, the first year of Trump would be a play in three acts:

Act One - Trump is literally Hitler.

Act Two - Trump is not literally Hitler, but Trump is incompetent.

Act Three - Trump is not incompetent, but we don’t like his policies.

We've seen this play out. From election night up through the first 100 days, the left was out rioting and acting as though Trump taking office was literally the end of Western Civilization.

But after 100 days, when Trump had failed to do evil-dictator things like round up all the brown people and put the gays into camps and force women to stay home and have babies, it became farcical to continue the “Trump is Hitler" narrative.

And so from that 100-day point up until now, it has been the "Trump is incompetent" game. Look at all the chaos, look at all the leaking, look at all the tweets. Now, we begin Act Three. With Priebus out and Kelly in, things will settle down. Pretty soon, all the left will have to say is “we just don't like Trump's policies."...

Act Three.

And once that happens, the left is dead. Because, Trump's policies are policies that most Americans actually agree with. We should put America first. Build back our economy. Create jobs. Strengthen the military. Protect the border.

Outside a few densely-populated liberal strongholds like New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and - of course - Washington, D.C., Americans in general agree with all of this. So when all the left has to say is “Trump's policies are wrong," the left will literally be telling most of America, "you people are stupid."

Trump will win 47 states in 2020. The left will be scratching their heads and wondering what the hell happened. And you'll be able to look back and say, "Hey, some of us told you all this back in 2017."

One Billion Perspective

Sharing an Interesting Email

Aw shucks; what's another billion or ten when the national debt is only 20 trillion?

I think it was John Foster Dulles, a member of the Eisenhower cabinet who said," When you start spending billions of dollars, you're starting to talk about SERIOUS MONEY “!   Now we're almost at 20 TRILLION DOLLARS in national debt.   The country cannot keep spending at this rate and survive as a viable nation!

This is too true to be funny.

The next time you hear a politician use the Word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

A.   A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B.   A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C.   A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

D.   A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E.   A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain... let's take a look at New Orleans ...

It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator, VaMary Landrieu was asking Congress for 250 BILLION DOLLARS  To rebuild New Orleans . Interesting number...

What does it mean?

A.   Well, If you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman and child) You each get   $516,528

B.  Or... If you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1,329,787.

C.   Or... If you are a family of four... Your family gets   $2,066,012.

Washington , D.C. ..... HELLO!  

Are all your calculators broken??

And all you can do is give us:

Building Permit Tax

CDL License Tax

Cigarette Tax

Corporate Income Tax

Dog License Tax

Federal Income Tax (Fed)

Federal Unemployment Tax (FU TA)

Fishing License Tax

Food License Tax

Fuel Permit Tax

Gasoline Tax

Hunting License Tax

Inheritance Tax

Inventory Tax

IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)

IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)

Liquor Tax

Luxury Tax

Marriage License Tax

Medicare Tax

Property Tax

Real Estate Tax

Service charge Taxes

Social Security Tax

Road Usage Tax (Truckers)

Sales Taxes

Recreational Vehicle Tax

School Tax 

State Income Tax 

State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)

Telephone Federal Excise Tax

Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax

Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax

Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax

Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax 

Telephone State and Local Tax

Telephone Usage Charge Tax

Utility Tax

Vehicle License Registration Tax

Vehicle Sales Tax

Watercraft Registration Tax

Well Permit Tax

Workers Compensation Tax

(And to think, we left British Rule to avoid so many taxes)

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago...

And our nation was the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt...

We had the largest middle class in the world...

And Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What happened?

Can you spell 'politicians'!

And I still have to

Press '1'

For English.

I hope this goes around the   U   S   A   At    least 100 times