Tag Archives: political

Boycott Economics 101

Here I go again. Folks, we need to shut up and do something. It’s time the silent majority, that is if there still is one, start taking some action. Who do these public corporation CEOs think they are that they can make any political statement they so choose and think it doesn’t matter? YES, it does matter, but only if we do something about it. Drink Pepsi instead of Coke. Now there is a company that does so much for Veterans; do some research on Pepsi and see what they do, and they don’t even brag about it. Yet that fool running Coke thinks he can say anything and the dumb, ignorant American will still buy his product. These CEOs monitor their bottom line on a daily basis. If we do as Greg suggests and stop buying  a product, the CEO would know about it in a week — guaranteed. We have the power, but only if we act. Are you willing to walk the walk, or just talk the talk?

 

 

 

 

 

 

By: G. Maresca

When Major League Baseball joined the Cancel Culture by moving their All-Star game out of Georgia thanks to legislation that enhanced the state’s election integrity, talk of boycotting MLB and those that do business with them went vogue.

Politically driven boycotts have deep nationalistic roots. In the 1760s, American colonists exasperated with high British taxation boycotted English goods giving rise to that American revolutionary rally: “taxation without representation.” The civil-rights crusade was initiated by the 1955 boycott of the segregated bus system of Montgomery, Alabama led by Rosa Parks.

In the 1960s, the United Farm Workers boycotted California farmers who employed nonunion workers. After Nike was exposed exploiting foreign sweatshops, sales dropped. However, these two boycotts were about changing business practices.

The comparison to someone burning a $150 Nike football jersey is laughable. Since the jersey has already been paid for such shenanigans only impacts the jersey’s owner. Pseudo-boycotts are identity politics and ineffective.

They are not a solution, but an illusion.

When politics cannot find common ground, boycott. Boycotters must sacrifice. Those who took part in the Montgomery boycott knew their lives would be more difficult.

A sincere and authentic boycott must be logical, organized, and sustained. These qualities are too often lacking in contemporary America.

CEOs do not fear offending the silent majority, who are presumed not to boycott or protest. They see conservatives as submissive and wanting to get along. Political and personal insult are of no substance to them. The time has arrived for the silence to end, particularly when it comes to money. If you want change, spend accordingly.

Companies are not immune to the bottom line; they are its hostage.

If a quarter of the 74 million who voted for Trump started boycotting businesses a long overdue message would be heard and done peacefully unlike how the left operates. The strength of conservative buying power was realized when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for a boycott of Goya and when the Left called out Chick-Fil-A.

In both instances, sales increased.

Economic pain is possible, but it takes a conscious effort. If the corporate world feels the economic heat, change could follow, but keep in mind Rome did not fall in a month.

Neutrality in business is best, but that is lost on Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola who also adamantly opposed Georgia’s legislation. It is easier to vote in Georgia today than it is to check a bag, go through TSA security, and get on a Delta flight that has always required identification.

Coca-Cola promotes racism by telling employees to “be less white” associating whites as being domineering, condescending, and boorish. Imagine the media storm had Coca-Cola asked people to “be less black.” Recall that “New Coke” flopped a generation ago. Today’s Woka-Cola could be its 2.0.

Democrats want to eliminate CO2. Every Coke product and consumer emits CO2. Delta might consider their rising fuel costs in this green era of Biden. Being the Left’s useful idiot is not going to protect them from their extremism, but some must learn the hard way. Their fiduciary responsibility is to their shareholders and customers.

They are failing both.

The power of the bottom line exists, provided it is exercised. It is not complicated. Do not buy from companies who pay more attention to politics and social media than they do running their businesses.

There are no good reasons for any corporation to become involved in politics that don’t directly impact their profitability.  As Michael Jordan said, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” America is already too politically polarized. Corporate leaders could help rather than hinder by not making their brands a political baseball.

Too many conservatives offer up nothing but excuses for not boycotting. The only thing they loathe more than injustice is inconvenience. W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” written in the aftermath of World War I speaks to us today: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

Stop waiting for politicians to collectively change the culture.

Change begins with the reflection you see in the mirror.

MLB Hall of Famer Yogi Berra summarized it like only he could: “If people don’t want to come to the ballpark you cannot stop them.”

Add Ben & Jerry’s to the list of cancel culture, left wing corporations who think they immunize to consumer influence. The ice may be good but it sure is expensive, so buy another brand. Shut their big mouths down!!

Originally posted 2021-04-15 11:14:04.

Sad Time for the Corps

I know you are probably expecting something from me concerning tomorrow. Well, what can I say except if you have not yet cast your ballot, get off your duff and go do it now! Tomorrow will be as we heard once before about a day living in infamy. Remember Martha and Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Streets”? Well, tomorrow there will be a new version called “Rioting in the Streets” Is your powder dry and your canteens full? In any event, it appears it will be a long night.

However, I digress as I have something very disturbing to post today that should be of interest to every Marine  on here, and even to members of the other services as well. It’s another from  Col Andy  that everyone needs to read so I shall not steal his thunder. It’s short, horrifying, and to the point. I have done the Marines a favor that took me a long time to complete. Once you click on the URL he has in his post, click on the one I have inserted in here. I have copied and pasted every Marine on the list thus saving you from having to go down the entire list looking for our “brothers” who have gone to the dark side. I wish I could say enjoy, but I cannot.

Thank you Andy!

May have to copy and paste in browser.

https://acoloneloftruth.blogspot.com/2020/11/question-for-each-u-s-marine-on-list-of.html

 

Go to this link for a list of the Marines and my comments. Click below and a Word.doc will show, click on it, save, and open it. Trust me, it’s clean.

Biden Supporters

Originally posted 2020-11-02 11:51:25.

PLEASE READ!!!!!!!!

and then pass it on. This article needs to go viral. This writer is one of my FAVS; he’s intelligent, knowledgeable, backs up his opinions with researched facts, and is unafraid to speak the truth. This article is dated about a month, so some of you may have seen it. I was gone and off the net in July. A friend had sent it to me, but I had finally waded through the 100’s of emails I had received while in hibernation and found it yesterday. WOW, it is the blueprint of exactly what the left is planning. Victor has once again given us fair warning, a glimpse into the future should the left win in November. Call me a conspiracy theorist nut if you will, but I can see the very things he is pointing out and personally believe everything he says. Please read and make it go viral by sharing with nonevent in your email folders. PLEASE, for the sake of America.

 

Will 2021 Be 1984?

It’s all about the power, not the equality.

Victor Davis Hanson July 19, 2020

Elections

Cultural revolutions are insidious and not just because they seek to change the way people think, write, speak, and act. They are also dangerous because they are fueled by self-righteous sanctimoniousness, expressed in seemingly innocuous terms such as “social activism,” “equality,” and “fairness.”

The ultimate aim of the Jacobin, Bolshevik, or Maoist is raw power—force of the sort sought by Hugo Chavez or the Castro dynasty to get rich, inflict payback on their perceived enemies, reward friends, and pose as saviors.

Cubans and Venezuelans got poor and killed; woke Chavezes and Castros got rich and murderous.

Leftist agendas are harder to thwart than those of right-wing dictators such as Spain’s Francisco Franco because they mask their ruthlessness with talk of sacrifice for the “poor” and concern about the “weak.”

Strong-man Baathists, Iranian Khomeinists, and the German National Socialists claimed they hated capitalism. So beware when the Marxist racialists who run Black Lives Matter, the wannabe Maoists of Antifa, the George Soros-paid activists, “the Squad” and hundreds of state and local officials like them in cities such as Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis, and Big Tech billionaires take power. These are “caring” people who couldn’t care less about the working classes or the hundreds of African-Americans murdered in America’s inner cities.

Vice President as President

If Joe Biden is elected, the effort to remove him by those now supporting him will begin the day after the election and it will not be as crude as rounding up a Yale psychiatrist to testify to his dementia in Congress or shaming the White House physician to give him the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test in the manner that the Left went after Donald Trump.

It will be far more insidious and successful: leaked stories to the New York Times and Washington Post from empathetic White House insiders will speak of how “heroically” Biden is fighting his inevitable decline—and how gamely he tries to marshal his progressive forces even as his faculties desert him. We would read about why Biden is a national treasure by sacrificing his health to get elected and then nobly bowing out as he realized the cost of his sacrifice on his person and family.

In the past until now, there was zero chance that the hard Left would ever win an American election. No socialist has ever come close. Even Bernie Sanders accepted that the Democratic establishment for six years broke rules, leveraged candidates to drop out, and warped the media to ensure that he would remain a septuagenarian blowhard railing at the wind from one of his three houses. George McGovern was buried by a landslide. Most Democrats, after Kennedy and until Obama, never won the popular vote unless possessed of a Southern-accented hinting at centrism.

Only the Great Depression and World War II ensured four terms of FDR, who still knew enough not to let his house socialists ruin the wartime U.S. economy.

But in perfect storm and black swan fashion, the coronavirus, the lockdown, the riots, anarchy and looting, all combined with Trump Derangement Syndrome to be weaponized by the Left—and the media far more successfully than with their failed pro forma, legalistic efforts with Robert Mueller and impeachment to destroy the Trump presidency—have pushed socialism along.

Yet even that chaos and anarchy by itself would not have been able to bring the radical Left into power. Only a “candidate” like Joe Biden could do that.

“Good ‘ole Joe from Scranton” could offer the trifecta formula for a socialist ascension: a reassuring pseudo-centrism, decades’ old establishment familiarity, and his current cognitive decline. In a rare time of virtual campaigning, virtual conventions, and perhaps even virtual debates, Biden alone could successfully massage the virus/quarantine/rioting and panic to win the election, and then nobly exit.

This is not the analysis of a conspiracy theorist but the operating principle behind the Democrats’ and Biden’s basement strategy. It is for that reason that his vice presidential selection is shaping up like none other in memory. In short, Joe Biden of all people is now the face of a cultural revolution, although even he may not fully realize it.

Fundamentally Transforming Everything

What should we expect then if Biden wins and either steps down or more or less is left as a diminished figurehead controlled by the hard Left?

First, there is one theme that unites “the Squad,” Black Lives Matter, the globalist technocracy, and the international Left: unapologetic anti-Semitism. We will see overt anti-Semitism in a way this country has not seen since the early 20th century, all couched in ideological and politically correct attacks on “Zionists” and “the rich” and “Wall Street”—and why Israel has no business being a “Jewish state.”

It has already begun with an NFL player voicing Hitlerian tropes and praising Louis Farrakhan, and then being seconded by an array of rappers, woke Black Lives Matter activists and “Free Palestine” demonstrations. To smear “the Jews” no longer is grounds for an immediate and expected apology, but more “So what are you going to do about it?” Anti-Semitism is deeply embedded within the DNA of the BLM movement—and professional sports as well, as we saw recently from the warnings of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Charles Barkley.

“Eat the rich” sloganeering and plans for a wealth tax, and jacking up capital gains and income tax rates, all seem like they are aimed at the super-rich. But don’t think weaponizing the tax code, the government bureaucracies, and the culture itself will do much to the immense wealth of Jeff Bezos, the heirs to Steve Jobs, the Google zillionaires, George Soros, the Walmart fortunes, the lesser tech billionaires, the Facebook clan, or Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet. None of them will be touched.

Why would any socialist go after the sympathetic mega-funders of the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Google or Apple News, Twitter, or Vox?

Left-wing billionaires are not so strange as we might think. After all, they can afford to be socialists. They like the idea that fewer may follow in their footsteps. They think social activism offers them penance for their hard-driving acquisitiveness. Most of all, they feel their knack for making money is proof that they have the wisdom, the right, and the need to redirect the lives of less successful others—and for the good of all.

Otherwise, the plutocratic class will spend hundreds of millions—a proverbial drop in the bucket in their fortunes—to consult with lawmakers about how to avoid their own progressive legislation and policies. It will hire phalanxes of tax lawyers, trust evaders, and philanthropy scammers that will make the architects of the Clinton Foundation seem a poor joke.

The real enemy in 2021 would be the upper-middle-class as it always is, the kulaks—and not really the professionals such as the lawyers, media grandees, and professors—although many should expect to become collateral damage.

The special targets will be the self-employed successful business class. The enemies of the people will be mostly those striving to be millionaires who run local insurance agencies, the store owners, salespeople, the successful medical practices, car dealerships, large family farms, the millions who keep the country competitive, innovative, and prosperous.

All of them lack the romance of the poor and the cultural tastes of the rich, but for the most part, they are just too damn informed and stubborn to be tolerated. They need to be marginalized by taxes, regulations, and a second-wave cultural assault that renders the prior “you didn’t build that,” “spread the wealth,” “no time to profit,” and “at some point you’ve made enough money” mere sandbox chatter.

The Coming Segregation

Race? We already see the new contours of the always changing commandments of the anointed posted on the Animal Farmbarnyard wall. A new segregation and apartheid will be sold as needed justice and enlightenment. Admission quotas and hiring on the basis of race will no longer be subtle but overt and triumphant. Separate facilities predicated on race will be common on campuses. What will happen if someone of the wrong race drinks from a fountain in a racially-segregated safe space?

Equality or superiority of result for the favored will be “justice.” Reparations will follow. The sort of creepy anti-white propaganda we saw at the Smithsonian Museum of African-American History and Culture will become orthodoxy. Some of the U.S. GDP won’t be devoted to production but rather toward ferreting out “racism” as they reconstruct society in order endlessly to punish “racists.”

Merit will soon become a dirty, counterrevolutionary word.

Discrimination and the one-drop racial rules of the Old Confederacy will be re-branded as woke, hip, and progressive. Expect more Rachel Dolezals and Ward Churchills. In Seattle, the city conducted whites-only, segregated reeducation sessions, teaching the naive how to undo their “whiteness.” It was overseen by an office of “civil rights” and sought to ensure that white employees give up their “comfort,” and even their supposed “guaranteed physical safety.” They were to curb any “expectations or presumptions of emotional safety,” or “control over other people and over the land,” and probably end “relationships with some other white people.”

All that was missing were the Maoist dunce caps.

In 2020 we call racism and segregation “civil rights.” I doubt very many graduates of Seattle’s reeducation efforts decided to dismantle their home security system, will vote to defund the police, will declare their mortgaged home community property, or plan to shun their suburban neighbors if they appear too white looking. But that’s not the point. Instead, the state is joining the racists by institutionalizing venomous tribalism. An Oregon County tried to demand masks for all its residents except African-Americans—the sort of apartheid policy no one in his right mind four months ago would have imagined could be tried in the United States.

Borders? The wall will stop dead in its tracks, and what has been built likely dismantled. Citizenship and residency will be further blurred, with the rights of citizens insidiously transferred to resident aliens. Perhaps the word “citizen” will disappear as discriminatory. Illegal immigration will be favored over legal immigration, in that the latter is too diverse, too meritocratic, and too politically unpredictable.

Farewell to Institutions, Hello to “Progress”

The military? A progressive’s dream. It will transcend its current race and gender edicts in a way no elected slow-coach legislature could imagine. Virtue signaling and quotas will be the quickest route to flag-officer rank, and with it a nice retirement as a woke lobbyist, a wise-man member on an enlightened defense contractor board, a Wall Street “security analyst,” or a cable TV paid woke pundit. How a colonel handled “diversity,” not whether he understands tanks, planes, choppers, or guns will determine his chances at generalship. The Pentagon budget will be re-branded, as “national security” is no longer defined in anachronistic terms like hardware, missiles, ships, and planes, but by diversity and ending implicit bias—a sort of vast ongoing city of Seattle training session.

Finance? The country is broke. Yet the Left wants to borrow trillions for the New Green Deal, reparations, and massive new and expanded old social projects.

It can do that only through one of three ways. It can institutionalize zero or negative interest for a decade or so until the debt crushes the United States. Or it can inflate the economy, eroding accumulated wealth and paying off debt in funny money.

Or it can follow the Chrysler creditor model of the Obama Administration, and begin selectively renouncing debt obligations or reordering the priorities of various creditors. At first, the effort will appear noble and popular by canceling all student debt. But soon the Left will extend such exemptions to minority mortgages and credit card obligations. Debt cancellation and “starting over,” based on race, will be a cornerstone of the “transformation” as it has been since the age of Catiline.

High tech? Like the media, it will formally fuse into the progressive party, as elites go back and forth between jobs in Washington and those at Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. Everything from the order of internet searches to censoring ads and videos for their political content will be green-lighted. Silicon Valley will be seen as the most important asset of the Left, both for its political utility in blocking conservative expression, and its enormous wealth that fuels leftist campaigns.

Finally, if the Senate and House go progressive along with the presidency, the filibuster will end. And we will see fundamental constitutional changes never quite envisioned. Expect legislation to make the Electoral College inert without the use of a clumsy constitutional amendment process.

The Supreme Court will be enlarged and packed on a majority congressional vote to neuter existing conservatives until reinforcements of progressive new justices arrive.

Some will wish to make senators popularly elected on the basis of demography or the Senate expanded into the hundreds—anything to do away with the paleo-idea of two senators from Montana or Wyoming standing in the way of the bending arc of history.

Such are the wages of a global pandemic, national quarantine, sudden recession, cultural revolution in the streets—and an impaired Joe Biden.

Add it all up, and 2020 may be the first, best, and last chance for “1984”—and the Left knows it.

 

Amen! Thank you Victor, I pray America is awake and listening to you!

Originally posted 2020-08-20 11:03:05.