Category Archives: Scotland

Friday’s Follies for September 19, 2014

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The Scottish Secession vote is over. The Secessionists lost—by 10 percentage points. That is significant. In my opinion, it was a wise choice.

We’re now seeing some of the demographics of the voters. In general, the older Scots voted to stay in the UK. The younger, twenty-somethings, steeped in European socialism, voted to secede. They point to the North Sea oil fields and those around the outer islands as sources of income. One problem they’ve overlooked…or more likely ignored, is that those North Sea oil fields are in international territory. Territory that is closer to Norway and in several areas, inside Norwegian sovereign territory.

Another oversight is just who will those ‘outer islands’ choose? Are they Scottish? Not necessarily. The British WW1 and WW2 naval base at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands is one such example. While they have some Scottish ancestry, a hundred or more years as a Royal Naval base has diluted their loyalties from Scotland to the UK. Some if the smaller islands are closer to Ireland than Scotland. To whom would they align?

All open questions. And, fortunately, questions that will not need answers. At least, not at this time.

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But the Scottish referendum, brings secession before the public, the American public. The result of discussions on that topic may be surprising to those in Washington. Reuters reports the 1 in 4, 25% of Americans would prefer to secede from the Federal government in Washington, DC.

Exclusive: Angry with Washington, 1 in 4 Americans open to secession

By Scott Malone, BOSTON Fri Sep 19, 2014 7:41am EDT

(Reuters) – The failed Scottish vote to pull out from the United Kingdom stirred secessionist hopes for some in the United States, where almost a quarter of people are open to their states leaving the union, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

Some 23.9 percent of Americans polled from Aug. 23 through Sept. 16 said they strongly supported or tended to support the idea of their state breaking away, while 53.3 percent of the 8,952 respondents strongly opposed or tended to oppose the notion.

The urge to sever ties with Washington cuts across party lines and regions, though Republicans and residents of rural Western states are generally warmer to the idea than Democrats and Northeasterners, according to the poll.

Anger with President Barack Obama’s handling of issues ranging from healthcare reform to the rise of Islamic State militants drives some of the feeling, with Republican respondents citing dissatisfaction with his administration as coloring their thinking.

But others said long-running Washington gridlock had prompted them to wonder if their states would be better off striking out on their own, a move no U.S. state has tried in the 150 years since the bloody Civil War that led to the end of slavery in the South.

“I don’t think it makes a whole lot of difference anymore which political party is running things. Nothing gets done,” said Roy Gustafson, 61, of Camden, South Carolina, who lives on disability payments. “The state would be better off handling things on its own.”

Scottish separatists proclaim that the idea of independence will never die. A growing number of Americans are adopting that thought as well—independence from a tyrannical central government. To quote Roy Gustafson above, “The state(s) would be better off handling things on its (their) own.”

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A week or more ago I asked the question, if Chad Taylor is unfit or incapable of holding the office of US Senator, would he not also be unfit or incapable of holding his office as Wichita District Attorney? It appears I’m not the only one asking that question.

Kansas court rules withdrawn Democratic Senate candidate incapable of serving

By Byron York | September 19, 2014 | 8:13 am

…

On Thursday, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled in favor of Taylor; he can withdraw and have his name taken off the ballot. The justices accepted Taylor’s argument that he meant to declare that he is incapable of serving:

We conclude the plain meaning of “pursuant to K.S.A. 25-306b(b)” contained in Taylor’s letter effectively declares he is incapable of fulfilling the duties of office if elected. Simply put, the phrase operates as an incorporation by reference of this particular requirement…

So Taylor is out. Coverage of the decision has focused on the conclusion that the removal of Taylor’s name from the ballot will help Orman and hurt Roberts’ chances of re-election. That’s of course the national significance of the decision. But in Kansas, questions will remain. Why did Democrats nominate a candidate who is incapable of serving? And just why is Taylor incapable? Also, Taylor is the district attorney of Shawnee County in Kansas. Is he capable of doing that job? And if he is, why is it that he is capable of serving as district attorney but incapable of serving as senator?

From the start of his campaign through the Aug. 5 Democratic primary (which he won with 53 percent of the vote), through the beginning of September, Taylor told voters he was the best choice to represent Kansas in the United States Senate. Then, overnight, he decided he was “incapable of fulfilling the duties of office if elected.” He owes the voters of Kansas an explanation of what happened.

I skipped most of the article and reproduced only the last few paragraphs. You can read the entire column here.

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The NRSC and Karl Rove have come to the ‘pubs out here in flyover land with their hands out—for our money. They spent their money fighting us in the primary. Now it general election time and they are broke.

There’s an old adage that says, “What goes around, comes around.” You should have thought of that, Karl, before you betrayed the conservatives across the country to prop up your elitist buds in Washington.

No money for YOU!

The result of Rove’s and the NRSC’s tactics during the primaries this summer may have cost those Washington elitists control of the Senate.

Circle of Stupid: How the NRSC and Karl Rove Cost the GOP as Many as Five Senate Seats

posted at 7:23 am on November 7, 2010

The National Republican Senatorial Committee spent $3 million in the week before the election on the ill-fated campaign of Carly Fiorina, despite polling that showed her trailing by 9 points to the tiny Marxist Barbara Boxer (Fiorina ended up losing by… 9.8%).

In the mean time, Ken Buck lost by a tiny margin in Colorado; Nevada’s Sharron Angle lost by a similar narrow vote total, Dino Rossi was edged by Patty Murray in Washington, 27,000 votes swung the election against Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and and Joe Miller is hanging by a thread in Alaska.

In Alaska, the final results may not be known for some time, but the NRSC’s final ads actually ended up helping Lisa Murkowski in her write-in campaign against GOP nominee Joe Miller. Instead of attacking Murkowski — the candidate who most threatened the party’s nominee — the NRSC instead took aim at Democrat Scott McAdams, who had no chance of winning. Any support they drove from McAdams was far more likely to go to Murkowski than to Miller — meaning the NRSC effort probably did more harm than good for Miller’s campaign.

In other words, the NRSC’s idiocy — combined with outrageous remarks by Karl Rove on national television — likely doomed four or five true conservative candidates to extinction.

In the post-election debrief, the Nixonian RINO contingent of Whimsy Graham, John Cornyn and the rest of the NRSC’s ludicrous cadre of losers blamed… staunch conservative Jim DeMint, who had funded a handful of Tea Party-backed Senatorial winners like Pat Toomey (PA), Marco Rubio (FL), Rand Paul (KY), Mike Lee (UT) and Ron Johnson (WI).

Oh, but that $8 million spent on Fiorina’s campaign didn’t hurt at all — right, boys?

I know one thing: that $3 million spent in the final weeks on those five campaigns could have swung four or five seats to the GOP. But the idiots at the NRSC are selfish, insular Beltway Republicans who are wedded to the status quo.

News flash, boys: we just stamped expiration dates on your foreheads.

You can read the entire column on Hot Air. What Karl Rove and the NRSC has sown, so will they reap.

 

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Different vision

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It’s amazing how the libs and conservatives can see the same thing and interpret that ‘thing’ so differently. Wishful thinking? Partially. Self-deception? That, too. What are we talking about? The Iowa Senate race.

Yesterday, an article appeared on Drudge. The headline read, POLL SHOCK: Dems now have 51% chance of holding Senate. According to the Washington Post, the Iowa Senate race 'leans' left towards democrat candidate Bruce Braley. The article states that two weeks ago, Joni Ernst led Braley.

The Washington Post says,

* Iowa: Two weeks ago, the model gave state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) a 72 percent chance of winning. Today she has a 59 percent chance.

The Washington Post’s own poll has Joni Ernst leading Braley 59% to 41% and they say the state is ‘leaning’ left to Braley. FOXNews ran an article about the same Iowa race using another poll. Their poll, too, had Ernst well out in front by 6 percentage points. The astounding item in all this is that the Washington Post poll has Ernst further ahead than the FOXNews/Quinnipiac University poll. Both sides see the same fact, Joni Ernst is well out in front, and both sides report that fact oppositely.

I believe the dems are grasping at straws. It is common knowledge that the closer we approach the election, the tighter the races appear. To the dems, Ernst dropping from 72% to 59%, according to their poll, means Ernst is losing.

FOX just reports that Ernst continues to poll higher than Braley by 6%. That, my friends, is the difference between FOX and the Main Stream Media. The MSM filters all news through their bias, FOX just reports the facts as they are.

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Have you heard about the new Form 4473? What is the Form 4473? It’s the form you must complete to buy a firearm through a federally licensed dealer. What has been changed? The new form requires the buyer to state his race and ethnicity. The Obama administration changed the form, quietly, without little fanfare—until it hit the dealers.

Obama administration forcing new gun buyers to declare race, ethnicity

ATF policy irks dealers, risks privacy intrusion, racial profiling: critics
By Kelly Riddell – The Washington Times – Tuesday, September 16, 2014

The Obama administration quietly has been forcing new gun buyers to declare their race and ethnicity, a policy change that critics say provides little law enforcement value while creating the risk of privacy intrusions and racial profiling.

With little fanfare, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2012 amended its Form 4473 — the transactional record the government requires gun purchasers and sellers to fill out when buying a firearm — to identify buyers as either Hispanic, Latino or not. Then a buyer must check his or her race: Indian, Asian, black, Pacific Islander or white.

The amendment is causing a headache for gun retailers, as each box needs to be checked off or else it’s an ATF violation — severe enough for the government to shut a business down. Many times people skip over the Hispanic/Latino box and only check their race, or vice versa — both of which are federal errors that can be held against the dealer.

Requiring the race and ethnic information of gun buyers is not required by federal law and provides little law enforcement value, legal experts say. And gun industry officials worry about how the information is being used and whether it constitutes an unnecessary intrusion on privacy.

“This issue concerns me deeply because, first, it’s offensive, and, secondly, there’s no need for it,” said Evan Nappen, a private practice firearms lawyer in New Jersey. “If there’s no need for an amendment, then there’s usually a political reason for the change. What this indicates is it was done for political reasons, not law enforcement reasons.”

ATF said the change came about because it needed to update its forms to comply with an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reporting standard put into effect during the Clinton administration. The ATF declined to comment on why race and ethnicity information are needed in the first place or what they are used for. On its prior 4473 forms, the bureau had been collecting race data.

The BATFE is blaming Bill Clinton for this change. It’s strange that for eight years of the Bush Administration and four years of the Obama Administration, the BATFE saw no need to change the Form 4473. I don’t believe their excuse.

“OMB’s race and ethnicity standards require agencies to ask both race and ethnicity in a specific manner (as done on [Form 4473]), and agencies may not ask for one without asking for the other,” wrote Elizabeth Gosselin, a spokeswoman for the ATF, in an emailed response to The Washington Times. She did not say why the agency suddenly made the change in response to a rule that was more than a decade old.

For ATF to ask for a purchaser’s race and ethnicity is not specifically authorized under federal statute, and since a government-issued photo ID — like a driver’s license — and a background check are already required by law to purchase a gun, the ethnicity/race boxes aren’t there for identification reasons, Mr. Nappen said.

“There is nothing [in ATF or OMB’s website links addressing the change in policy] that supports the requirement that ATF collect race-based information. The OMB guidance merely describes what categories of race should look like if information is collected,” Laura Murphy, the American Civil Liberties Union director for legislative affairs in Washington, said in an emailed statement.

In addition, Mrs. Murphy notes, the OMB guidance was supposed to be implemented by 2003; there’s no information given why ATF decided to make this change almost a decade later, she said.

“If there is a civil rights enforcement reason for the ATF to collect this data, I have not heard that explanation from ATF or any other federal agency,” said Mrs. Murphy.

Both the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza — the nation’s largest national Hispanic civil rights group — declined comment. — The Washington Times. 

The column continues at the Washington Times website. You can read the entire column here.

There is no justification, nor federal requirement for Obama to collect this information. Why are they? What purpose does it server? Perhaps, just to intimidate those who want to buy a weapon.

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If you like single-malt Scots whisky, you may see prices going up if Scotland votes to secede from the United Kingdom.

Scottish Secession a Sobering Prospect for Scotch Whiskey Drinkers

Sep 16, 2014, 1:41 PM ET, By

Scotch drinkers might want to brace themselves if Scots vote to secede from the United Kingdom and, consequently, the European Union Thursday.

Among the likely outcomes would be higher prices for Americans and others who import the brown elixir from secession saddled producers with rising costs.

Scotch whiskey, commonly referred to as Scotch and spelled without the “e” in Great Britain, is a tightly regulated spirit that can only come from oak casks that have matured for at least three years in Scotland. Exports are a giant piece of business for the Scotch industry, which says it ships 40 bottles overseas each second, while Scotch accounts for a quarter of U.K.’s food and drink exports.

The prospect of a Scotch trade interruption alone is enough to rattle the industry.

David Frost, the chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association in Edinburgh, said “any regulatory divergence between Scotland and the rest of the U.K. may increase costs to business,” according to his group’s annual review in May.

And Frost isn’t just bluffing. In the European Union, Scotch producers can export the stuff tariff-free to the region, and the geographical indication of “Scotch Whisky” is protected by E.U. law. Only 109 distilleries are licensed to produce Scotch, according to the association.

“But even a temporary interruption of E.U. membership involving exclusion from the single market or the customs union, if this were a consequence of independence, would be damaging and difficult to manage,” Frost wrote in the annual review.

I guess all you Scotch drinkers will have to switch to Bourbon.

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Today in History.

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I’m sitting here taking a break from work. I have been remotely coordinating the installation of circuits at two locations and there are cable issues at each site.

**Sigh**

Seems these small details are always overlooked even when they are on the project plan.

So during my break I noticed that on this date in 1863, the Union Army won the third and final Battle of Chattanooga. Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederate forces lead by General Braxton Bragg and opened the door for Sherman’s march to the sea via Atlanta. This advance split the Confederacy and was a direct precursor to the defeat of the Army of Northern Virginia some seventeen months later.

In 1034 “ After Malcolm II of Scotland died, Duncan, the son of his second daughter, instead of Macbeth , the son of his eldest daughter, inherited the throne to become the King of Scots.

Also in England in 1120, William Adelin, the only legitimate son of King Henry I of England, drowned in the White Ship Disaster, leading to a succession crisis which would bring down the Norman monarchy of England.

Reading history can be an awaking. Just when you think something new has come down the pike, you realize it’s all happened before. Perhaps not in the same exact way but close enough to see the parallels.

I have a strong interest in England, Scotland and Ireland. My Father was born in New Castle, UK. My paternal Grandfather was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and my paternal Grandmother was born in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland just outside Dublin.

I’ve never visited the UK. Given the rising stupidity of the UK socialist government, I’m not sure now that I’d want to. So much of our heritage has been destroyed. The legacy of free Englishmen, Welshmen, Scots and the Irish is no more.