11 Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.
13 “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. 14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.
25 “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27 ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
28 “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
31 “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
We should boycott First National Bank of Omaha, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Symantec, Metlife, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, and Best Western.
Seven companies caved to anti-NRA pressure this week and cut ties with the organization, ending discounts for the NRA’s five million members.
First National Bank of Omaha, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Symantec, Metlife, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, and Best Western severed ties following the launch of a PR campaign which made the NRA its focal point following the February 14 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.
Ironically, the PR campaign targeted the NRA even though the NRA is one of the few entities talking specifics about school safety and promoting grants to economically challenged schools to be sure they get the same quality of safety that wealthier schools enjoy.
On February 22, First National Bank of Omaha tweeted it was ending its partnership with the NRA:
Customer feedback has caused us to review our relationship with the NRA. As a result, First National Bank of Omaha will not renew its contract with the National Rifle Association to issue the NRA Visa Card.
Thank you for contacting us! All three of our brands have ended the discount for NRA members. This change will be effective March 26. Thank you again for reaching out. Kind regards, Michael
The next day, February 23, Symantec, a cyber-security company, and Metlife both announced they were terminating their relationship with the NRA.
On February 24 ABC News reported that Delta Airlines, United, and Best Western were breaking with the NRA, too.
This push to drive a wedge between businesses and the NRA began with a Think Progress report suggesting there are “at least 22 corporations that the NRA says offer incentives to NRA members.” That report was followed by an Ed Krassentein tweet listing the Twitter handles of many of the companies and urging anti-Second Amendment activists to put pressure on them and “demand change.”
These too are idiots. Why don’t they stop people from drug overdoses?
MSNBC host and former Republican Joe Scarborough has joined the liberal campaign against the NRA and is calling on video streaming services to ban the NRA’s channel from their platforms.
Liberal activists are trying to pressure Amazon, Apple, Google and Roku into banning NRA from their platforms as a response to last week’s Florida school shooting, which followed a series of law enforcement failures. Scarborough jumped on the bandwagon Friday evening and called on the companies to censor NRATV.
“Lawyers from @Apple @amazon @Google and @RokuPlayer should watch these disturbing videos and remove this channel. They incite violence and could make anyone streaming them liable,” Scarborough claimed.
Former Republican Joe Scarborough comes out as pro-censorship (Screenshot/Twitter)
Scarborough and his co-host, Mika Brzezinski, have both endorsed the liberal campaign to pressure companies into cutting any ties with the NRA.
Screenshot/Twitter
Screenshot/Twitter
Several companies including United Airlines and Delta, among others, have severed partnerships with the NRA in response to the liberal pressure campaign.
Gov. Rick Scott (R) is pushing firearm confiscation orders and stands opposed to the suggestion that teachers should be armed for school safety.
CNN reports that Scott is pushing a “Violent Threat Restraining Order,” which are similar to California’s Gun Violence Restraining Orders in that they a designed to secure court orders to confiscate firearms following a family member’s complaint.
It is difficult to see how such orders–designed to be triggered by family requests–would have been effective against Nikolas Cruz. After all, the family with which he was staying repeatedly called the police on him in November 2017 but refused to file charges when sheriff’s deputies arrived. A member of the family with which Cruz was staying explained away Cruz’s erratic behavior by saying he “had been suffering significantly from the loss of his mother” earlier in the month.
Scott is also pushing a bump stock ban, “tougher background checks,” more stringent rules against the mentally ill, and a ban on purchasing or possessing firearms by anyone “subject to an injunction for protection against stalking, cyberstalking, dating violence, repeat violence, sexual violence, or domestic violence.
In other words, gun control, gun control, gun control.
And in the wake of the heinous school shooting in which students and unarmed, defenseless teachers were killed, Scott stands opposed to arming teachers for defense of themselves and their students. He said, “I think you need to have individuals that are trained, well-trained. My focus is let law enforcement do the keeping us safe and let teachers focus on teaching.”
Scott said this even though the law enforcement officer present on campus during the attack failed to confront Cruz. On February 22 ABC 13 reported that Broward County sheriff’s deputy Scott Peterson was on campus outside building 12 during the attack, but “never went in” after Cruz. Peterson resigned from sheriff’s office after his lack of action was uncovered.
An associate of Arizona Sen. John McCain is invoking his Fifth Amendment rights in order to avoid revealing information to Congress about the Steele dossier.
David J. Kramer, a former State Department official, pleaded the fifth in response to a subpoena issued in December by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Fox News reported.
In a Dec. 19 interview with the committee, Kramer said that he had information about some of the sources of information in the dossier, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele and financed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Kramer learned the information in Nov. 2016, after traveling to London to meet with Steele. Kramer and McCain, a Republican, first learned of the dossier earlier that month after meeting with an associate of Steele’s.
After the London meeting, Steele provided a copy of the dossier to Kramer with instructions to share it with McCain. The senator then provided a copy of the document to then-FBI Director James Comey during a Dec. 9, 2016, meeting.
The House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena on Dec. 27 to compel Kramer to discuss the dossier’s sources.
Kramer, who was a director at the McCain Institute and now works for Florida International University, has avoided speaking publicly about his handling of the dossier. There has also been widespread speculation that he is BuzzFeed’s source for the document. The website published the dossier on Jan. 10, 2017.
In addition to his interview with the Intelligence Committee, Kramer was deposed in December as part of a lawsuit filed against BuzzFeed for publishing the dossier. Kramer’s lawyers have requested that his deposition in that case be sealed.
Steele, McCain and Fusion GPS, the firm that hired Steele to write the dossier, have all denied being BuzzFeed’s source. Kramer is the only person known to have handled the completed dossier who has not denied providing it to BuzzFeed.
Kramer and his attorney have not responded to numerous requests for comment.
McCain Associate Who Handled Dossier Asks Judge To Seal Deposition
An associate of Arizona Sen. John McCain’s who handled the dossier is asking a federal judge to block the release of a videotape and transcript of a deposition he recently gave in a lawsuit related to the salacious document.
David Kramer, a former State Department official and former director at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, filed a motion in federal court in Florida asking a judge for a protective order to block the public release of his deposition.
Kramer was deposed last month by lawyers for a Russian businessman suing BuzzFeed News for publishing the dossier. The lawyers for the businessman, Aleksej Gubarev, are interested in Kramer because he is one of just a few people known to have handled the dossier after it was completed by former British spy Christopher Steele and before its Jan. 10, 2017 publication.
Gubarev’s attorneys want to find out whether BuzzFeed’s source gave any warnings about the veracity of the dossier and whether it was verified or unverified.
Steele, McCain and Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the dossier on behalf of Democrats, have all denied being BuzzFeed’s source.
Kramer has not commented publicly on the issue.
Kramer’s lawyer, Marcos Jiminez, argued in a motion to seal that the release of the deposition would jeopardize his personal safety, make him subject to hounding from the press, and conflict with congressional investigations looking into the dossier.
Kramer was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee last month and has also met with the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“Mr. Kramer seeks to prevent the Plaintiffs from sharing his videotaped deposition and accompanying transcript beyond the instant litigation,” wrote Jiminez.
He asserted that Kramer’s deposition in the BuzzFeed lawsuit “would reveal the extent of the Congressional Committees’ knowledge regarding the information provided by Mr. Kramer in closed-door sessions.”
Jimenez also argues that should Kramer’s deposition be released to the public, he “will be hounded by the press.”
Kramer and McCain first learned of the dossier shortly after the 2016 election while attending the Halifax International Security Forum. On the sidelines of that event, Kramer and McCain had a conversation with Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Russia and associate of Steele’s.
Kramer then traveled to London to meet with Steele. While there, the pair made arrangements for Kramer to obtain the dossier back in the U.S. and to provide a copy to McCain.
McCain shared an incomplete version of the dossier with then-FBI Director James Comey on Dec. 9, 2016. The Republican was unaware at the time that Comey and the FBI were already aware of Steele’s report. FBI agents met with the ex-spy multiple times prior to the election.
Steele published his final dossier memo on Dec. 13, 2016. It is that document which alleges that Gubarev used two of his web-hosting companies to hack into the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems prior to the election. The dossier also alleges that Gubarev was recruited under duress by Russia’s spy services. He denies all of the allegations. In addition to suing BuzzFeed, he is suing Steele in London, where the former spy is based.
In court filings there, Steele has acknowledged that the Dec. 13 memo contained unverified information.
As of the beginning of this month, Steele and Fusion GPS have dodged requests for depositions from Gubarev’s lawyers.
David Kramer Motion to Seal deposition in BuzzFeed lawsuit by Chuck Ross on Scribd
During his February 22 CPAC speech NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre suggested leftists are too focused on pushing gun control to redirect their energies and fight for school safety.
LaPierre said, “The elites don’t care one wit about school children. If they truly cared, they would protect them.”
He suggested a hatred for the NRA is the only passion leftists hold as strongly as they hold gun control.
The bowls are making her fat I’m sure right? Blame everything but the person.
LaPierre said, “It’s not a safety issue, it’s a political issue. They care more about control. Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearms freedoms so they can eliminate all individual freedoms.”
He contrasted this approach with that of the NRA, saying, “They don’t care if their laws work or not. They just want get more laws to get more control over people. But the NRA, the NRA does care.”
The car got him drunk I’m sure.
On February 19 Breitbart News reported on the NRA’s National School Shield, a campus security program built on the NRA’s commitment to keep students safe. The program rests on the NRA maxim that “the only thing that stops a bad buy with a gun is a good guy with gun,” It includes training, installation, and acquaintance with certain communications equipment, surveillance methods, protocols, and security measures (including weapons training where apropos).
