Category: Quote

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Grifters Gonna Grift

As has been pointed out in previous posts, grifters are seizing the opportunity to dupe, uh, low-information voters out of their hard earned cash. These grifters know all they have to do is continue baseless political attacks on perceived ‘liberal’ Democrats, or more often, President Joe Biden, and the money rolls through the door. A perfect example reached my inbox yesterday in a message from The Daily Caller (I don’t provide links to deceitful blogs/websites, so if you’re inclined to seek further information about The Daily Caller, you’re on your own).

The Daily Caller’s email reads as follows:

Urgent Message:If you’re a U.S. Citizen with 25k or more in the Bank, IRA, or 401(k), please read carefully. 

Biden’s history of presidential indecision and failure has prompted him to make aggressive partisan moves to gain favor with America’s left-leaning constituents.


Biden has made it clear that he’s planning on raising income taxes, estate taxes (aka, death tax), capital gains taxes, and corporate taxes.

What does this all mean? To put it bluntly…

Taxation is a coercive (yet legal) seizure of private wealth. And Biden is looking to increase the government’s powers to claim more of it!

This will take place in addition to the more subtle and “indirect” seizure of wealth via inflation; a “hidden tax” on your income.

Higher taxation amid rising inflation is a financially dangerous prospect. 

And all Americans can agree on this, as no citizen will be spared the pain of losing income and wealth to inflation or taxation.

Those who are approaching retirement will be the hardest hit.

If you don’t prepare for this now, a sizable chunk of your retirement savings may end up in the government’s coffers.

But there are a few steps you can take to prevent this from happening to you.

Thousands of concerned Americans are learning how to protect their retirement savings from the negative financial impact of Biden’s policies by reading our 2022 Information Kit, 

The steps outlined in the book are simple to understand, easy to implement, and 100% effective.

Is there some proposal President Biden has offered to target retirement savings of American citizens? Is any of this true, and somehow know one knows about it except The Daily Caller? No, and hell no!

A link (removed) from the message takes you to the website of The GSI Exchange of Palm Beach. According to their website, the GSI Exchange “is a private distributor of Gold & Silver coins from the U.S. Mint and is not affiliated with the U.S. Government. ” The website further offers, “GSI Exchange is a BBB, A plus rated, leading national coin and precious metals company that continues to be highly praised for Low Prices on superb quality products via the direct sale of physical Gold and Silver coins or bars.

Does that sound like an organization fighting to protect you from policies of the federal government, or someone else trying to separate you from your money? No! They’re just betting you’ll trust them because they attacked the politicians you personally dislike and hopefully trust them with some of your hard-earned money. They insist they are a Better Business Bureau A-plus rated company, so they must be trustworthy, right?

Uh, not so much!

In 2021, The Texas State Securities Board (TSSB) and the Alabama Securities Commission (ASC) issued cease and desist orders against TRUE BULLION LLC DBA GSI EXCHANGE, directing it to shut down illegal operations in Alabama and Texas. 

The website of the Texas State Securities Board includes the following:

The Texas and Alabama orders accuse GSI Exchange of engaging in an illegal advisory scheme involving over $32 million. The scam involves 450 investors many of whom are senior citizens.  GSI Exchange allegedly told investors the holdings in their retirement portfolios were high risk and they may lose their assets.  GSI Exchange is accused of encouraging these investors to liquidate their securities portfolios and use the proceeds to purchase gold and silver coins to the benefit of GSI through high commissions. 

Texas State Securities Board

So, the Daily Caller, in the interest of raking in money from a dishonest sponsor, sends out a false message to its readers which very likely will lead to some of their subscribers losing money to GSI Exchange, their co-grifters.

I know my conservative friends don’t want to hear it, but it pays (and saves) to be more discerning when it comes to facts and finances. Be careful.

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Republicans vs. Democracy

GOP power brokers are making sure that our political institutions work at every turn against majority rule. Controlling many more state legislatures than Democrats, Republicans gerrymander Democrats into oblivion in congressional and state legislative elections.

They then block Democratic efforts at redistricting reform in the Senate with the use of the filibuster, another essential antidemocratic instrument. To further obstruct voting and thwart the will of popular majorities in the administrative machinery of government, their gerrymandered legislatures pass laws expressly designed to suppress voter participation, making it harder (or, in the case of baseless voter roll purges, impossible) for some groups to access the ballot.

And then they cement their hold on the whole system by packing the courts with right-wing judges to enforce all the exclusion.

They are fortified in all this self-entrenchment by Supreme Court decisions like Shelby County v. Holder (2013) and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021), which have dismantled the Voting Rights Act and weakened the Constitution, which had both been for a brief shining moment effective guardians of the voting rights of the people.

In short, the leaders of the GOP — not just Trump, mind you — are using every trick in the book to stifle majority rule and to erase popular democracy in the same way they have been working to erase science and history.

The majority of Americans are caught in a vicious circle of anti-democracy.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), in “Unthinkable:Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy
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Do Yourself A Favor – Read Jill Lepore

Do yourself a favor and read the brilliant opinion piece by Jill Lepore in Wednesday’s “The New Yorker.” In the “Daily Comment” section, Lepore brilliantly counters arguments by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion revoking Roe vs. Wade.

Predictably, Alito argues that abortion rights are unconstitutional because they aren’t specifically mentioned in the constitution. Lepore points out that the women were of little or no concern to the men who drafted the document, and in fact, for all intents and purposes of the drafters, weren’t considered “persons.”

Women are indeed missing from the Constitution, as Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked draft opinion suggests. That’s a problem to remedy, not a precedent to honor.

Lepore continues by pointing out:

  1. There were no women among the delegates to the Constitutional Convention.
  2. There were no women among the hundreds of people who participated in ratifying conventions in the states.
  3. There were no women judges.
  4. There were no women legislators.

At the time of the Constitutional Convention, women could neither hold office nor run for office, and, except in New Jersey, and then only fleetingly, women could not vote.

Legally, most women did not exist as persons.

Do yourself a favor, and read the entire article.

Jill Lepore, “Why There Are No Women in the Constitution, published in The New Yorker, May 4, 2022

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Susan Collins — Wrong For Maine (Again!)

Susan Collins

In light of the shocking release of a draft opinion by Supreme Court Justice Alito that would overturn Roe v. Wade, Senator Susan Collins said yesterday that the draft opinion was completely inconsistent with what Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh “said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office.” Of course, since 2017 lying by high government officials is no longer considered improper.

Back in 2018, during consideration of the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh, Collins spoke on several issues she confidently understood Kavanaugh’s position. On the issue of abortion and the importance of precedent, Collin’s speech included this:

There has also been considerable focus on the future of abortion rights based on the concern that Judge Kavanaugh would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade. Protecting this right is important to me. To my knowledge, Judge Kavanaugh is the first Supreme Court nominee to express the view that precedent is not merely a practice and tradition, but rooted in Article 3 of our Constitution itself. He believes that precedent is not just a judicial policy, it is constitutionally dictated to pay attention and pay heed to rules of precedent. In other words, precedent isn’t a goal or an aspiration. It is a constitutional tenet that has to be followed except in the most extraordinary circumstances.

The judge further explained that precedent provides stability, predictability, reliance and fairness. There are, of course, rare and extraordinary times where the Supreme Court would rightly overturn a precedent. The most famous example was when the Supreme Court in Brown vs. The Board of Education overruled Plessy vs. Ferguson, correcting a “grievously wrong decision” to use the judge’s term, allowing racial inequality. But someone who believes that the importance of precedent has been rooted in the Constitution would follow long-established precedent except in those rare circumstances where a decision is grievously wrong or deeply inconsistent with the law. Those are Judge Kavanaugh’s phrases.

As the judge asserted to me, a long-established precedent is not something to be trimmed, narrowed, discarded, or overlooked. Its roots in the Constitution give the concept of stare decisis greater weight simply because a judge might want to on a whim. In short, his views on honoring precedent would preclude attempts to do by stealth that which one has committed not to do overtly.

Noting that Roe v. Wade was decided 45 years ago and reaffirmed 19 years later in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, I asked Judge Kavanaugh whether the passage of times is relevant to following precedent. He said decisions become part of our legal framework with the passage of time and that honoring precedent is essential to maintaining public confidence. Our discussion then turned to the right of privacy on which the Supreme Court relied in Griswold vs. Connecticut, a case that struck down a law banning the use and sale of contraceptions. Griswold established the legal foundation that led to Roe eight years later. In describing Griswold as established law, Judge Kavanaugh observed that it was the correct application of two famous cases from the 1920’s, Meyer and Pierce that are not seriously challenged by anyone today.

Finally, in his testimony, he noted repeatedly that Roe had been upheld by Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, describing it as a precedent. When I asked him would it be sufficient to overturn a long-established precedent if five current justices believed that it was wrongly decided, he emphatically said “no.”

Senator Susan Collins speech on the Senate floor, October 5, 2018

Either Kavanaugh lied to Collins, or Collins lied to the American people. One thing becomes increasingly clear — the Supreme Court is a political entity, with the Republicans now firmly in control of America’s legal system. We are heading down a seriously dark, dangerous path.

Be vigilant!

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Dark Side of the Swamp

“I truly feel sorry for our friend. He’s never had a days peace. On the other side of this, he’s exposed a very dark side of the swamp that’s far worse than I ever imagined and I am not particularly optimistic for the future.”

Fox celebrity Sean Hannity to White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows – December 12, 2020

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Jackass of the Week Nomination

Kansas state representative from, Republican Cheryl Helmer, said she does not “appreciate the huge transgender female who is now in our restrooms in the Capitol,” obviously referring to her colleague, Rep. Stephanie Byers, the first transgender legislator in Kansas, and a Democrat.

Helmer, from Mulvane, responding in an email to a University of Kansas graduate student, saying she was a biology major in college, said that she knows “the difference biologically between a male and a woman.”

…”no surgeon can cut, remove, wop, add to change the biology that is chemically occurring in each and every fiber, bone and molecule of every human being.”

Kansas State Representative Cheryl Helmer

I used to think people who made statements like those by Helmer were simply stupid. Now I think they’re just hateful.

“A doctor can inject meds and dilute but cannot destroy what God has done in the perfection of the HUMAN BEING, Helmer added. We as women have humans that are much larger, stronger, more adrenaline and testosterone and therefore possibly more dangerous and we have to share our restrooms. Not only that but our wee little girls in elementary and middle and high school are having to be exposed and many have been raped, sodomized and beaten in the restrooms by these supposedly transgenders who may or may not be for real.”

I think Helmer has gone out of her way to contradict herself. Whatever/whoever created Helmer (Mom and Pop Helmer?) clearly goofs up on occasion.

Just how hateful must your community be to elect someone like this to office?