Tag Archives: culture

The Sons of the American Legion is a Gang?

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This happened in a Dave & Buster’s restaurant last Saturday in Kentwood, MI, but corporate headquarters in Dallas has confirmed the thing and said it’s corporate-wide policy.  Two members of the Sons of The American Legion, wearing their SAL vests, and their wives entered the restaurant hoping for a nice dinner.  Management stopped them and told the men to turn their vests inside out.  The men and their wives chose to leave, instead of suffering the insult.  Victor Murdock, Assistant Director of American Legion Post 179 in Grandville, MI, and one of the men, told 24 Hour News 8,

It’s just a good group of guys that want to raise awareness for PTSD, fallen veterans, for the ones that didn’t come back, even for those who did come back and are dealing with situations they never got over.

And

The vest is one way Murdock and other members convey their message. After all, they say, there are few things that define American pride more than the flag and the eagle featured on the vest.

“It says we believe in America. We believe in our troops. We support our veterans,” Murdock said.

The full statement, from April Spearman, Dave & Buster’s Vice corporate President for Marketing:

We are extremely grateful to all of our active military members and veterans and are honored to have them as valued guests in any of our locations.

Our dress code, which prohibits evidence of gang affiliation, is in place to ensure that everyone is able to enjoy themselves in a fun and safe environment. Though we understand that the American Legion promotes a positive mission, for consistency reasons we cannot allow motorcycle jackets displaying patches or rockers. Our policies are in no way meant to be disrespectful and we apologize for any frustration this may have caused.

In addition, please know that this group was not asked to leave, but to simply turn their jackets inside out. Again, we apologize for any misunderstanding.

Because this affiliate of the American Legion is equivalent to a gang.  Notice, too, that last bit of disingenuousity.  No, the four were not asked to leave.  They were just told to disrespect everything they stood for.

Absent a turnover in management, Dave & Buster’s has lost my business.

Constitutional Carry

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That’s the term currently in vogue for the permitless carrying of handguns, whether openly or concealed; it’s the concept that the 2nd Amendment is all the permit an American citizen needs to carry his handgun.

New Hampshire has become the 12th State eliminate the need for a State-issued permit for concealed carry; it already had permitless open carry.  With the bill signed into law by Governor Chris Sununu, a New Hampshire citizen is allowed

the unlicensed transport or carry of a firearm in a vehicle, or on or about one’s person, whether openly or concealed, loaded or unloaded…if that individual is not otherwise prohibited by statute from possessing a firearm in the state of New Hampshire.

[Aside: it’s too bad Federal laws can’t be this brief and to the point.]

Of course, the Progressive-Democrat gun control persons are up in arms about this.  Raymond Buckley, New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman, for instance:

New Hampshire has imminent issues that need the Governor’s attention, but further relaxing the state’s notoriously lax gun laws is not one of them[.]

Never mind that there have been zero school shootings in New Hampshire since 1990.  California has had 19 school shooting deaths just since 2010.

DC had at least 32 incidents of gunfire within 500ft of a school, during school hours, in 2011-2012; the District still has one of the tightest gun control régimes, even after Heller.  Chicago, also with one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation, averaged 82 shootings per week in 2016 through August of that year.  And on and on.

“Notoriously lax”—read: Progressive-Democrats can’t impose their rule asserting government control over the matter.

The NLMSM’s Hurt Feelings

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The Trump administration had a press gaggle Friday.  A gaggle is a press pool that is a subset of the press who then participate in a press conference, and the members of the pool are responsible for getting the content of the conference to the rest of the press.  The Friday gaggle was an expanded one in that, in addition to the pool itself, additional members of the press were explicitly invited to participate—which of course means yet other members, the vast majority of the press, were not explicitly invited to attend.

The additional invitees included reporters from CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox Business, and Fox News. Not invited were Buzzfeed, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the New York Daily News, the Hill, and Politico.

Therein lies the problem, at least in the minds of the Precious Ones (keep in mind that there would have been no outcry had the gaggle not been expanded).  Buzzfeed, NYT, LAT, et al., have their panties in a wedgie over not having been included when the other outlets were.  They’re so special: how dare the White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, the man who made the decision to expand the gaggle for the occasion and who decided who would be the expanded invitees, not exclude (the Precious Ones’ term—”not invited in as extras” not being the same as “kept out”) those others and include themselves instead?

Indeed, they’ve spent the last several days publishing stories about how they were excluded (again, their term), while not reporting on substantive matters (and while not saying who was included in their stead).  They’ve chosen, instead, to create their special selves as the news instead of being reporters of and opiners on the news.

And they’re confused over why they’re not taken seriously by mainstream America.

Free Speech for Me; You Shut Up

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University of Chicago pupils (I can’t call them even students in the scale of pupil-student-scholar) are objecting to non-Left speakers being allowed on “their” campus.

The [pupils] objected to the school’s Institute of Politics’ invitation to former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. They claim that allowing him to speak “normalizes bigotry” and provides a platform for fascism.

These precious ones are actively ducking away from a clear opportunity to “denormalize bigotry” by running away from him.

The coalition of students from U of C Resists, Graduate Students United, Students Working Against Prisons, and UChicago Socialists claim that the school’s “commitment to free expression doesn’t require the institution to host him….

Speech should be free only for the Left, they claim.  They are the epitome of the fascism and bigotry these wondrous ones pretend to oppose.

Alternatively, these precious ones are just so terrified of a different view, just so unconfident of their own reasoning faculties, that they’d rather run screaming for the Midway and avoid debate rather than face the alternatives and demonstrate with rational discourse, logic, and fact the suboptimality of their opponents’ viewpoints.  Or they’re aware of the fragility of their own and so of their own inability to mount a coherent, reasoned demonstration of the superiority of their own.

Confidence in the Press

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“Aren’t you concerned, Sir, that you are undermining the people’s faith in the First Amendment freedom of the press and the press in this country when you call stories you don’t like fake news…?”

That’s what CNN’s White House Correspondent, Jim Acosta, asked President Donald Trump during last Thursday’s mid-day press conference.

No, the NLMSM is doing a fine job all by itself in undermining the people’s faith in the press—the shot about the First Amendment is disingenuously irrelevant and an illustration of the NLMSM’s performance—the undermining needs no help, and is getting none, from Trump.

See, for instance, CNN’s own bruiting about the fake news of a “dossier” of salacious behaviors allegedly engaged in by Trump in Russia and The New York Times‘ carefully misleading headline last Tuesday, Trump Campaign Had Repeated Contacts with Russian Intelligence while the body of the piece said, “Well, nothing was ever found.”

This is how automatic the NLMSM’s dishonesty is; it no longer can tell right from wrong, truth from fiction.  It has needed no assistance from outside the press to earn its sorry condition.