James L. Paris's Blog, page 131
October 26, 2016
Sweden Bans Christmas Street Lights; Security Measure���or Something Else?
Infowars.com is reporting on a rather startling development in Sweden, wherein the Swedish Transport Administration has made the decision to ban cities from erecting Christmas lights on any utility poles managed by the agency. One of the consequences of that move is that some towns will see no Christmas lights whatsoever on their most prominent thoroughfares.
According to the Administration, the reason why the lights are no more is, simply, ���security.���
Clarifying what is meant by ���security,��� Eilin Isaksson, the Swedish Transport Administration���s national coordinator, said,
���Poles are not designed for the weight of Christmas lights, and we have to remove anything that should not be there.���
Does that justification strike anyone else as being, well, a little goofy?
It sure strikes Infowars.com writer Paul Joseph Watson that way, who writes that the ���argument that the lights are too heavy and pose a safety risk sounds like complete baloney.���
OK, good; it wasn���t just me.
Watson goes on, saying, ���Swedes are being asked to believe that lights normally held up by tree branches are now too weighty to be supported by metal poles.���
He next gets to what he believes is really at the heart of the matter, writing, ���Despite there being no safety issue with the street lights for decades, this new rule has been instituted right after record numbers of Muslim migrants flooded into the country ��� just a coincidence I���m sure.���
And there it is ��� an accusation that the Christmas lights ban is based on an insanely-applied standard of political correctness.
Is Watson right? I don���t know, but let���s put it this way: the whole ���lights are suddenly too heavy for metal poles��� justification seems awfully���curious.
Don���t you think?
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
October 25, 2016
Wells Fargo Kicks Off TV Campaign to Inform the World It���s All Okay Now
Wells Fargo wants you to know that it���s safe to go back in the water.
Since news of the fake accounts scandal broke, Wells has been engaged, as you would surely imagine, in a great deal of damage control. Part of that effort includes doing what it can to rehabilitate its image through the use of advertising in both online and newspaper mediums. Well, beginning Monday night, the advertising campaign reached the television airwaves, as the banking giant desperately tries to spread the message that it has, indeed, changed its ways.
Wells spokesman Mark Folk, in an interview reported by Bloomberg, said, ���The advertising reiterates Wells Fargo���s commitment to customers and the steps we are taking to move forward and make things right.���
Although customer traffic data and records of deposit amounts through September are said to reflect no evidence of deterioration, a recent poll indicates that 14 percent of the bank���s customers have elected to move on from Wells.
Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
Pentagon to California Soldiers: Thanks for Your Service ��� Now Give Back Your Reenlistment Bonuses
Talk about a kick in the head.
According to Newsmax, it turns out that almost 10,000 soldiers in the California Army National Guard who received reenlistment bonuses years ago in return for adding years to their original service terms, years that included deployment to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, are now being served with demands from the Pentagon to give that money back.
The real source of the trouble here appears to be a less-than-honest effort on the part of the California Guard to hit enlistment targets. A federal investigation has revealed that millions given out to Guard members in the form of bonuses and student loan repayments should have never left the government���s coffers.
Deputy commander of the California Guard, Maj. Gen. Matthew Beevers, said, ���At the end of the day, the soldiers ended up paying the largest price. We'd be more than happy to absolve these people of their debts. We just can't do it. We'd be breaking the law.���
There���s no question that it���s the soldiers themselves who have received the very shortest end of the stick in all of this. Newsmax tells of Christopher Van Meter, a former captain in the Army and recipient of the Purple Heart, who was handed a bill for $46,000 by the government for his share of improperly-dispensed bonuses and benefits ��� Van Meter was given $25,000 in reenlistment bonuses, as well as $21,000 in the form of repayments of student loans.
Van Meter says, flatly, ���These bonuses were used to keep people in. People like me just got screwed.���
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
October 24, 2016
Scarlett Johansson: Abortion is a ���Human Rights Issue������but Not for Babies
Actress Scarlett Johansson believes abortion to be a ���human rights issue.���
Sounds pretty good, right? After all, abortion clearly is a human rights issue, and how wonderful to hear one of the Hollywood elite say it.
Except, as it turns out, Johansson does not believe it is a human rights issue for the unborn���but, rather, for the women availing themselves of abortion services.
The fact is that Johansson is a passionate supporter of abortion rights, a position for which she was recently rewarded at the 2016 Power of Women Los Angeles luncheon, when she was recognized for her work on behalf of Planned Parenthood.
In her comments to the gathered, Johansson said, in part, ���A women���s right to choose what to do with her body shouldn���t just be a women���s rights issue ��� it���s the year 2016 and this is a human rights issue.���
Continuing, Johansson said, ���A women���s right to choose is a deeply personal one and should not be a part of anyone���s political platform. It has nothing to do with politics in the slightest. It is about honoring and respecting women and upholding the law. ��� It is time we all stand united so this conversation is taken off the ballot, so to speak, and out of the mouths of politicians.���
So, abortion is about ���honoring and respecting women?��� Really?
And here, all this time, I thought it was about killing babies.
In presenting her with the award, actor Robert Downey Jr. said, ���She���s utilized her worldwide visibility ��� she is a true ambassador for women���s health initiatives.���
She���s an ambassador for women���s health initiatives?
Sounds to me like she���s an ambassador for abortion.
Now THAT would be quite a title, don���t you think?
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
Amazon Seeks to Put a Big Foot Forward in the Grocery Business
Amazon, as its name implies, is, indeed, a giant, and now the retail behemoth is looking in earnest for ways to take over the grocery business.
The problem with adapting its online shopping model to the buying of groceries is that���you���re buying groceries. Food, and particularly meats, dairy, fresh produce, and other very perishable perishables, hardly lends itself to being left on doorsteps for hours at a time.
Still, Amazon very much likes the core model of shopping for everything on the Internet, and believes it may have found a way to capitalize on the interest of people���particularly millennials���to buy groceries the same way.
The answer, for Amazon, may be to split the difference just a little, and create bricks-and-mortar ���pickup locations��� to which customers who���ve ordered their groceries online may travel to gather their purchases.
As it is, Amazon has been slowly rolling out its AmazonFresh concept since 2007, wherein it does deliver a full slate of grocery choices, including perishables, to customers within 24 hours from time of order. However, the service, which began in 2007, is still available in just a handful of markets.
The problem with this method of grocery shopping remains the ���delivery��� part of the process. When Amazon drops your microwave oven off at the front door at 10 A.M. on a hot July day while you are at work, it doesn���t matter if the box sits there for another eight hours waiting for you to return home. Groceries, however, are a different story, which is probably the biggest reason AmazonFresh has struggled to gain real traction.
By putting more of the responsibility for the receipt of the grocery order back in the hands of the customer, however, Amazon may have found a way to have its cake and eat it, too. ���Click-and-collect��� grocery shopping models, where customers place their grocery orders online and then travel to a store parking lot for pickup, have been in place for a while now at retailers like Wal-Mart and Kroger. Now, Amazon is going to the trouble of trying out its own expressly-built pickup locations���that look something like gas stations���to mimic what the other click-and-collect grocery retailers have been doing.
Will this be the key to Amazon finally capturing a sizable portion of the grocery market?
Only time will tell, but when it comes to shopping online in any form, and for anything, one would be wise not to bet against Amazon.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
October 23, 2016
Clinton Campaign was Concerned About ���Overdoing��� Tributes to the ���Four Guys��� Killed in Benghazi
Wikileaks - the gift that keeps on giving.
Oh, I���m not suggesting that the ���outed��� emails will be a difference-maker in the upcoming general election. I think that if you���re inclined to vote for Hillary Clinton after everything we know about how ruthless and corrupt she, and everyone around her, is, then, to steal a Trump line about himself, she could shoot someone in the street and still enjoy your vote.
Still, it is interesting to see from the messages in just how much contempt so many Americans are held by the Clintonites.
As reported by Townhall, Exhibit Z (multiplied by infinity) on that note is an email by a political consultant for Hillary, Mandy Grunwald, who, after examining a draft of Clinton���s then-upcoming opening statement to the Select Committee on Benghazi, thought it a bad idea that any ���tributes��� to the Americans killed there be included in said statement.
More specifically, Grunwald���s thinking was that it would be ���odd to put the tributes to the four guys��� in the statement, and that, more generally, Clinton should not ���overdo the tributes to them.���
���The four guys?��� You mean Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods?
We sure wouldn���t want to overdo any tributes to them.
Then again, maybe leaving out the mention of them entirely would have been the way to go. After all, the men were literally abandoned by Hillary���it would only be consistent that they were ignored in her opening statement, as well.
Ultimately, Hillary kept the mention of the ���four guys��� in her statement to the Select Committee. As I suggested, keeping them out would have at least been more honest somehow, but, well, when it comes to Hillary and honesty���
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
Think ���Regular��� Credit Cards are Bad? Check Out What Store Credit Cards are Doing to You
We���ve never been entirely against credit cards in this space. The fact is that regular, or general purpose, credit cards, if used carefully and strategically, can be marvelous tools to assist you in everything from enjoying an easier, more manageable vacation, to capitalizing on select rewards that essentially outsize the cost of the cards, to building your credit score.
However, we strongly remain against the use of credit cards if one is relying on them to enjoy goods and services that his income and/or savings would not otherwise permit him to indulge. Carrying a large amount of credit card debt, as you know, is typically very expensive.
That said, it is not costing you nearly as much as is the debt from store-specific, or retail, credit cards. CNBC.com is reporting on an analysis done over at CreditCards.com that reveals retail credit cards are currently sporting an average annual interest rate of 23.84 percent, compared to an average rate of 15.22 percent for all cards.
The most expensive of the store cards? That would be Big Lots, with a whopping interest rate of 29.99 percent; yikes!
Something else that can make store cards a bad deal are the ���no interest if you pay off the balance in X months��� offer, a tactic frequently used by places like furniture stores to get you to come in and basically refurnish the house at one time. While the deals, on their face, are real, the problem is that your purchase can become mega-expensive if you are not, in fact, able to pay off the balance during the set period. Should that become the reality, stores typically have the right���courtesy of the contract terms located in the fine print of the credit agreement���to charge you their standard astronomically-high rate against the original balance, and to do so retroactively.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
October 22, 2016
Catholic DePaul University Bans ���Unborn Lives Matter��� Poster on Campus
Once again, DePaul University, once one of America���s preeminent Catholic universities, shows signs of struggling with its���Catholicism.
According to Life News, the now-standardly liberal college, which last year offered students the opportunity to volunteer at Planned Parenthood clinics, brought the hammer down on the campus��� College Republicans group for hanging a pro-life poster that read, ���Unborn Lives Matter.���
Posters like this must be submitted to administrators for approval, and ���Unborn Lives Matter��� did not pass. The approval process eventually saw the poster make its way to the desk of Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, university president, who kicked it back because the message expressed by the words is ���bigotry that occurs under the cover of free speech.���
Holtschneider followed up his decision with a letter to the entire school population, which read, in part:
���By our nature, we are committed to developing arguments and exploring important issues that can be steeped in controversy and, oftentimes, emotion. Yet there will be times when some forms of speech challenge our grounding in Catholic and Vincentian values. When that happens, you will see us refuse to allow members of our community to be subjected to bigotry that occurs under the cover of free speech.���
An aside: A poster that reads ���Unborn Lives Matter��� challenges the school���s grounding in Catholic values?
The vice president of the DePaul College Republicans, John Minster, spoke about the matter with The Daily Wire, saying, ���Once again, DePaul University has shown its true colors. Rather than standing up for the pro-life and free speech ethics this ���Catholic��� university claims to uphold, administration has bent the knee to radical leftists, banning more speech despite the pro-life message.���
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
Majority of White Evangelicals Say a Politician���s Private Immorality Not an Issue for Public Service
Hmmm.
Christian Post is reporting on the results of a joint survey conducted recently by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and the Brookings Institution that reveal 70 percent of white evangelicals think a politician���s private, moral missteps are unrelated to how well he or she can govern in office.
The matter of discounting so-called personal character issues of politicians has become a more prominent topic in recent years as the ubiquitousness of both old and new media makes it ever less likely that something a politician does in private will remain there.
The change in survey results from 2011, when the question was previously asked, suggests that tolerance, if you want to call it that, of these personal failings, is growing. Back in 2011, when PRRI asked the same question, the results indicated a rather prominent split in opinion among Americans: At that time, 44 percent said that private immorality was an issue, while another 44 percent said it was not.
In this election year, the perceived immorality by some of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has put a particularly bright spotlight on this issue. Although Trump has evidenced historical personal behavior of a kind that many, if not all, evangelicals would normally find objectionable, his public declarations of political positions with which evangelicals largely agree have clearly prompted many to ���reprocess��� how they look at such personal troubles besetting prospective government leaders.
So���is there a sort of ���logic of convenience��� at work here? Are these evangelicals, in fact, compromising their principles in the interest of political expediency? Or is it the case that America is not electing a ���pastor in chief,��� and so there is no inconsistency in this position?
Hmmm.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
October 21, 2016
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James L. Paris
Editor-In-Chief ChristianMoney.com
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