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“Coffee or Die”

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You may have never heard of this company. I had a while back but never thought much about them until my friend Doug who reads the WSJ daily sent me this article. I hope I am not stepping on any toes at the WSJ by posting this. Every Veteran needs to read this. I’ve not tasted their brew, but plan to. What is interesting is how the company was (is) treated by some of our major commercial banking institutions and prestigious law firms. I do business with one of those banks, and you can bet your sweet bippy they are going to hear from me. How about you?

If you’ve tasted their brew, let us hear your comments on it.

Friday September 16, 2022

A Socially Conscious but Politically Incorrect Company

You might call Black Rifle Coffee Co. a socially conscious enterprise. “This is a veterans’ corporation,” founder and CEO Evan Hafer, a former Green Beret, says in a Zoom interview. More than half of Black Rifle’s employees have served in the military or are family of veterans. In 2021 the company put $5.3 million in shares toward starting the BRCC Fund, a charity dedicated to helping wounded or traumatized veterans and their families. That was on top of $1.2 million in charitable contributions and $3 million worth of coffee and related products to active-duty military and first responders.

But Mr. Hafer says Black Rifle struggled to find banks and law firms to help it arrange an initial public offering. Since he founded the company in 2014, companies have told him that it was “too irreverent” and poses “reputational risk.”

You can see why Black Rifle wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Its blends include AK- 47 and Silencer Smooth, and its social media presence is colorful, to say the least. The company’s YouTube channel features a shooting contest that ends with Mr. Hafer trying to get a bull’s-eye after taking a direct shot of bear spray to the eyes and a video titled “Could You Be a Pregnant Man?” Mr. Hafer’s personal politics have also drawn outrage from the media—he voted for Donald Trump twice—as has the company’s popularity with some controversial figures on the right. Kyle Rittenhouse was photographed wearing a Black Rifle T-shirt. But none of this seems to have hurt the company’s revenue, which reached $233.1 million last year.

Mr. Hafer thinks the numbers should be evidence enough that Black Rifle’s reputation isn’t a material risk. But his company “started hitting a lot of resistance” from high-level finance companies and law firms, although they claimed they were interested in working with veteran- run corporations.

In 2019 and 2020, a Black Rifle spokeswoman says, company leaders were talking to Chase, Bank of America and Macquarie Group about raising capital. After initially showing interest, all three companies declined to work with Black Rifle, citing the company’s image. In 2018 Black Rifle had tried to open an account at a Chase branch in San Antonio and had been turned away over reputational concerns. The spokeswoman says that Macquarie was particularly fixated on the name of its in-house magazine, Coffee or Die, which covers military issues and won the Military Reporters & Editors Association’s 2022 journalism contest for overseas coverage.

Bank of America and Chase declined to comment. Macquarie said in an email: “We take into account a broad range of factors in making financing and investment decisions. We do not comment on confidential commercially sensitive discussions, including those that did not move beyond a very preliminary stage like this one.”

Black Rifle hit similar roadblocks in 2019 and 2020 with Skadden Arps, Latham & Watkins and Simp-son Thacher & Bartlett. All three law firms passed on working with the coffee company because of its image. According to the Black Rifle spokeswoman, Latham & Watkins said that its reputational risk committee thought no one from top law schools would be willing to work at the firm if it took on Black Rifle as a client, especially because its name included the word “rifle.” The name “is an homage to the service rifle,” Mr. Hafer says. Like the guns he taught special-operations soldiers to shoot, he says, coffee is “ lifesaving equipment.”

Simpson Thacher declined to comment. Skadden Arps and Latham & Watkins didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Despite these obstacles, Black Rifle is thriving. The company went public in February through a special- purpose acquisition merger with SilverBox Engaged Merger Corp and this summer rolled out marketing partnerships with the Dallas Cowboys and Amazon Prime Video.

Yet Mr. Hafer worries what the seemingly arbitrary treatment he experienced will mean for other veterans. “I think it’s going to be really important for those guys—men and women both—to understand, these are the types of doors that are going to be slammed in your face if you’re not conforming to a very specific narrative,” he says. “I don’t want them to go through some of the same issues that we’ve had to go through to get access to capital.”

Ms. Keller is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.

Originally posted 2022-09-17 11:01:29.

Current Events

Words From a Legend

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Good morning gang, hope your celebration of America yesterday went as planned. We went to church, then literally took the day off. Edgar and I sat in a recliner and watch golf all afternoon — something I have never done before as I am not a golfer, only played five times in my life. However, it was a relaxing, enjoyable day for both of us.

I guess everyone has off today, but of course the swamp creatures never take a day off. They remain alert to attack anyone who disagrees with their agendas. But I care not to publish any of their diatribe or goings on today, but to post comments from a legend and forever hero of mine. The infamous Lou Holtz of Notre Dame. In his own words. Enjoy.

When I coached football, I’d tell my players that “life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you respond to it.” It was a way to get them to focus on themselves and on the things they could control – and to get them to understand that they were ultimately the authors of their own destinies.

It didn’t mean they weren’t on a team: football isn’t a game for committed individualists. It did mean, though, that when events unfolded – when they found themselves far downfield and wide open, or when they found themselves knocked flat by linemen twice their size – the measure of themselves was revealed in the very next moment.

You don’t know a player by what’s done to him. You know him by what he does.

It’s a lesson America could use now. My teams looked a lot like America – and they worked a lot like how America is supposed to work.

Every race, every ethnicity, and every point of origin was represented among our players across my career. They all had two things in common. The first was that they were passionately committed to making Notre Dame Football the country’s best – and a few times, they succeeded. The second was that each of them earned their spot. Yes, they were diverse, but the diversity wasn’t the reason for their presence. Every single player who wore the Notre Dame uniform deserved to do it.

That’s meritocracy. But why use the five-dollar word? I was born in West Virginia and raised in Ohio: out there, we just call it the American way.

There are a lot of enemies of the American way these days – right here in America. They’re men and women, mostly elites from academia and media, who would, if they could, walk into a football locker room and tell the players the exact opposite of my counsel: “life is 90% what happens to you, and 10% how you respond to it.” Then, having said that, they would probably demand to know why the team was gender imbalanced. Then, having said that, the team – now dispirited and infused with a victim mentality – would head out to the field to lose.

What’s true of a football team is true of a country. America’s promise has always been the opportunity for self-definition, self-advancement, self-creation. Where we’ve fallen short of that ideal – and we have – we’ve labored to correct ourselves. On the whole, we’ve done a pretty good job.

It’s fashionable now to lament failures in our history, but that myopic focus ignores the triumph of the present. In my lifetime alone, this country has defeated three malevolent empires, ended de jure racial segregation, and crafted a society so rich in opportunity that people from all over the world risk everything to get in.

Set against that record, unmatched anywhere, anytime, by anyone, we have the proponents of national decline and national lamentation – whether going by the name of critical-race theorists or the 1619 Project – arguing that America was flawed from the start and requires a wholesale purge of its own society before it is worth saving, or admiration.

We should be charitable to this crowd. Some of them genuinely believe the country requires a reckoning. Some of them are simply hucksters, selling books and clawing forth column inches in the timeless American tradition of media by any means. All of them, though, see themselves as on top and enriched when the reckoning comes. These aren’t radicals sacrificing for a better world: they’re power-seekers making their bid to rule with the acquiescence of a compliant elite.

That’s why we have to fight them. That’s why we have to win. When a football team believes that “life is 90% what happens to you, and 10% how you respond to it,” it loses. When a nation believes it, it ends. The stakes are that existential.

The creed set forth by the other side transforms our national life from a glorious constellation of mutual cooperation and community flourishing into a grim and zero-sum exercise of group versus group, with no winner – and many losers.

Football, I used to tell my players, is a rehearsal for life. That’s true for nearly any endeavor in which we strive and contend for the betterment of ourselves, our families and our communities. Our duty is to see that it’s a rehearsal for a triumph – not a decline. To make it happen, we must be willing to tell simple truths: among them, that no impersonal “structure” is the author of our fate, that each of us possesses the dignity and opportunity to make our own best lives, and that America is the greatest republic in the history of man.

Those used to be truisms. Today they’re radical dissents. But then, America was born in radical dissent. I couldn’t be happier to stand in that tradition. 

Lou Holtz is a legendary college football coach and chairman of the Center for 1776 at the America First Policy Institute

The comments from the FOX news page where I retrieved this might be worth reading. Simply reinforces there are many of us out here who refuse to give up.  Press ON!

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/july-fourth-america-truths-fight-lou-holtz

Originally posted 2021-07-05 12:15:03.

Current Events

The NFL

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Well, let’s see what the Nation’s Scum is up today? Oh dear, the infamous NFL who cares only about one thing, $$$$$$. They have never  cared about the players, the sport, the franchises, or the fans — that is as long as they continue to spend mega bucks at the games for $10 hot dogs and beers, not to mention the price of the ticket. I am fast approaching the eight decades mark, and I have never paid a dime to attend an NFL game. Oh as a kid I used to go watch Johnny Unitas and the Colts, but my girlfriend’s father paid; he had season tickets and I was sometimes invited to tag along. I do watch some on TV but not a priority in my life. But I will be scanning the games this year; see the epilogue as to the reason.

Open Letter To NFL Players. The Boycott is coming

You graduated high school in 2011. Your teenage years were a struggle.

You grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. Your mother was the leader of the family and worked tirelessly to keep a roof over your head and food on your plate.

Academics were a struggle for you and your grades were mediocre at best. The only thing that made you stand out is you weighed 225 lbs and could run 40 yards in 4.2 seconds while carrying a football. Your best friend was just like you, except he didn’t play football. Instead of going to football practice after school, he went to work at McDonald’s for minimum wage.

You were recruited by all the big colleges and spent every weekend of your senior year making visits to universities where coaches and boosters tried to convince you their school was best. They laid out the red carpet for you. Your best friend worked double shifts at Mickey Ds. College was not an option for him.

On the day you signed with Big State University, your best friend signed paperwork with his Army recruiter. You went to summer workouts.

He went to basic training.

You spent the next four years living in the athletic dorm, eating at the training table. You spent your Saturdays on the football field, cheered on by adoring fans. Tutors attended to your every academic need.

You attended class when you felt like it. Sure, you worked hard. You lifted weights, ran sprints, studied plays, and soon became one of the top football players in the country.

Your best friend was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division. While you were in college, he deployed to Iraq once and Afghanistan twice. He became a Sergeant and led a squad of 19 year-old soldiers who grew up just like he did. He shed his blood in Afghanistan and watched young American’s give their lives, limbs, and innocence for the US.

You went to the NFL combine and scored off the charts. You hired an agent and waited for draft day. You were drafted in the first round and your agent immediately went to work, ensuring that you received the most money possible. You signed for $16 million although you had never played a single down of professional football.

Your best friend re-enlisted in the Army for four more years. As a combat tested sergeant, he will be paid $32,000 per year.

You will drive a Ferrari on the streets of South Beach. He will ride in the back of a Blackhawk helicopter with 10 other combat loaded soldiers.

You will sleep at the Ritz. He will dig a hole in the ground and try to sleep. You will “make it rain” in the club. He will pray for rain as the temperature reaches 120 degrees.

On Sunday, you will run into a stadium as tens of thousands of fans cheer and yell your name.

For your best friend, there is little difference between Sunday and any other day of the week. There are no adoring fans. There are only people trying to kill him and his soldiers. Every now and then, he and his soldiers leave the front lines and “go to the rear” to rest. He might be lucky enough to catch an NFL game on TV.

When the National Anthem plays and you take a knee, he will jump to his feet and salute the television. While you protest the unfairness of life in the United States, he will give thanks to God that he has the honor of defending his great country.

To the players of the NFL: We are the people who buy your tickets, watch you on TV, and wear your jerseys. We anxiously wait for Sundays so we can cheer for you and marvel at your athleticism. Although we love to watch you play, we care little about your opinions until you offend us.

You have the absolute right to express yourselves, but we have the absolute right to boycott you.

We have tolerated your drug use and DUIs, your domestic violence, and your vulgar displays of wealth. We should be ashamed for putting our admiration of your physical skills before what is morally right.

But now you have gone too far. You have insulted our flag, our country, our soldiers, our police officers, and our veterans. You are living the American dream, yet you disparage our great country. I encourage all like minded Americans to boycott the NFL.

National boycott of the NFL for Sunday November 11, 2020 “Veterans Day“ Weekend. Boycott all football telecast, all fans, all ticket holders, stay away from attending any games, let them play to empty stadiums.

Pass this post along to all your friends and family. Honor our military, some of whom come home with the American Flag draped over their coffin.

Epilogue: OK, Here is why I will scan this year and I recommend you and your friends do the same.  You know the sayings, : Money Talks,  follow the money, money is everything, etc. Where would the NFL be today without advertisements during the game breaks; hell they even delay the game to get the advertisements aired. And do you have any idea what those companies pay for a thirty second advertisement? I remember when the J Walter came out with the sword advertisement for the Corps. They got a thirty second ad and even got to pick when the ad would be air i.e.,  the first station break after kick off at the Super Bowl. The ad cost the Corps $100K. Hell that was a big chunk of the Corps’ total annual ad budget. LOL Anyway, the Corps caught all sorts of hell from the legislatures over that issue. Now I am told the ads cost in the millions for just twenty seconds.

So, my goal is to watch the commercials only and take note of who is buying air time, and I will flood those companies mail and emails, with written complaints and let them know I will buy china rather than their products. Can you imagine if 1000’s of folks did that and the company experienced a sudden drop in sales and eventually pulled their ads from the games? I know one thing, I had better not see a USAA ad this year, as in the past I have been with that company for over 45 years for everything e.g., investments, banking, home, car, and life insurance, and mortgages. I will drop them in a heartbeat. Think of the hypocrisy. They cater only to veterans, yet they buy air time, thus supporting a company who  supports players disgracing the American Flag and our National Anthem. OMG. I have already warned them with emails, you should too!

Spread the word folks, we can have a voice!!!

 

 

Originally posted 2020-07-31 11:55:26.

Current Events

National Fatherless League – NFL

7 Comments

I’m finished with Mattis, he’s a has been in order of priorities, time to move folks. I have nothing to add to this shameful act and the actions of of the National Football League. I’ll stick to the NCAA on Saturday and go fishing on Sunday!

 

 

 

 

 

The knee is not the only problem . . . 68 children by 52 women!  7 players!

Children raised in fatherless homes, especially black children, are far more likely than children raised in two parent homes to engage in criminal behavior and thus, have contact with police.

Ergo when they father a child with a woman to whom they are not married—or at least living with—they are contributing to the problem against which these football players are taking a knee.  If you look at many of these players’ records on out-of-wedlock children, you find that they are contributing significantly to the problem against which they are protesting.

For example,

Antonio Cromartie has 12 children by 9 different women.  Apparently the NFL had to shell out $500,000 before he could even play football for them.

Travis Henry has 11 children by 10 women,

Willis McGahee has 9 children by 8 women,

Derrick Thomas has 7 children by 5 different women, Bennie Blades has 6 children by 6 women,

Ray Lewis has 6 children by 4 women and

Marshall Faulk has 6 children by 3 women.

They forgot to include

Adrian Peterson: 11 kids from 7 different women.

Before these guys take a knee they should take a good look in the mirror .

It appears that their problem is not their knees.

Originally posted 2020-06-23 08:19:00.

Recent Posts

Colonel of Truth and Nike

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Another great post from my friend and Marine brother. My bet is  Nike will regret this, and I am hoping they do. I, like Col Andy, own nothing adorned with the name Nike, and never will. I prefer Under Armour. As an Economist by education, I am always amazed at some of the actions corporations do to please the owners (shareholders for those who think otherwise). I believe the company board of directors’ email boxes are now overloaded with protests. Good for them, shame on them! BTW, have you looked at the maker’s labels on Nike products lately? You should. Once an American icon, now a has been.

Sorry, but you’ll have to copy and paste the below URL, I seem to have lost some of my computer tech talent of late.

https://acoloneloftruth.blogspot.com/2018/09/in-one-fell-swoosh.html

Originally posted 2018-09-04 12:55:31.

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