Chick-fil-A “Appreciation Day” results in unprecedented sales; CFO fired for protest (+videos)

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By Jacques Couret.  So just how much did Chick-fil-A Inc.’s sales skyrocket on “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day”?

“While we don’t release exact sales numbers, it was an unprecedented day,” Chick-fil-A Executive Vice President of Marketing Steve Robinson said in a statement. “We are very grateful and humbled by the incredible turnout of loyal Chick-fil-A customers on August 1 at Chick-fil-A restaurants around the country. Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day was not a company promotion; it was initiated by others.”

The Atlanta-based chain is private and therefore doesn’t reveal its bottom line. It discloses annual sales figures, with last year’s record haul hitting $4 billion. There are 52 weeks in a year and Chick-fil-A isn’t open on Sundays. So it operates roughly 312 days of the year. Sales of $4 billion divided by 312 is about $12.8 million a day.

One can only guess how much more than $12.8 million Chick-fil-A considers “unprecedented” for sales on Aug. 1.

In other daily Chick-fil-A controversy news, the Newnan [Ga.] Times-Herald published a guest column from Lawrence Reed, president of the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, N.Y., and Atlanta. Reed comes out swinging in defense of Chick-fil-A, calling public figures who have come out against the chain “smug, self-righteous, power-wielding, small-time Nazi-types.”  Read more from this story HERE.

In a related story, the CFO of a major Tucson, Arizona company was fired for the following Appreciation Day “protest” against Chick-fil-A:

 

Finally, if you’re a Tim Hawkins fan, here’s his hilarious Chick-fil-A music video:

Obama Campaign & Democrats sue to prevent soldiers from voting

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President Barack Obama, along with many Democrats, likes to say that, while they may disagree with the GOP on many issues related to national security, they absolutely share their admiration and dedication to members of our armed forces. Obama, in particular, enjoys being seen visiting troops and having photos taken with members of our military. So, why is his campaign and the Democrat party suing to restrict their ability to vote in the upcoming election?

On July 17th, the Obama for America Campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the Ohio Democratic Party filed suit in OH to strike down part of that state’s law governing voting by members of the military. Their suit said that part of the law is “arbitrary” with “no discernible rational basis.”

Currently, Ohio allows the public to vote early in-person up until the Friday before the election. Members of the military are given three extra days to do so. While the Democrats may see this as “arbitrary” and having “no discernible rational basis,” I think it is entirely reasonable given the demands on servicemen and women’s time and their obligations to their sworn duty.

The National Defense Committee reports:

[f]or each of the last three years, the Department of Defense’s Federal Voting Assistance Program has reported to the President and the Congress that the number one reason for military voter disenfranchisement is inadequate time to successfully vote.

I think it’s unconscionable that we as a nation wouldn’t make it as easy as possible for members of the military to vote. They arguably have more right to vote than the rest of us, since it is their service and sacrifice that ensures we have the right to vote in the first place.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama administration released illegal aliens who went on to commit thousands of crimes

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By Stephen Dinan.  The Obama administration released illegal immigrants who went on to commit more crimes, including charges of 19 murders, 3 attempted murders and 142 sex crimes, the House Judiciary Committee said in a report Tuesday.

All told, 16 percent of the nearly 47,000 illegal immigrants the administration was notified of but declined to deport between 2008 and 2011 under its Secure Communities program have gone on to be charged with other crimes, the committee said.

They were part of the nearly 160,000 immigrants — most of them here legally — who were flagged by Secure Communities during the three-year period and who were later charged in nearly 60,000 more crimes, according to the committee and the Congressional Research Service, which looked at data the committee subpoenaed from the Homeland Security Department.

The Secure Communities program was designed to identify immigrants who end up in state and local prisons and jails who the administration decides it wants to deport.

While hundreds of thousands of aliens have been sent back home under the program, 159,286 were not put in deportation proceedings during the period under review, CRS said.  Read more from this story HERE.

This story comes on the heels of DHS’s Janet Napolitano’s admission that terrorists are entering the US through the Mexican border.

Government gone wild: IRS paying billions in fraudulent tax refunds

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Photo credit: saturnism

The IRS is paying out billions of dollars in fraudulent tax refunds to identity thieves; a problem that the tax service’s inspector general told CNBC is a “growing problem” involving numbers that are increasing “exponentially.”

In a new report to be issued Thursday, the inspector general for the IRS says that tax thieves are stealing the identities of taxpayers and then filing bogus returns on their behalf and collecting fraudulent refunds as a result.

The inspector general estimates that the IRS could issue as much as $21 billion in fraudulent tax refunds over the next five years.

The scam is so rampant that thieves are apparently sending in false returns in bulk without even bothering to change the mailing address on the returns. The inspector general said it found one residential address in Lansing, Michigan that was the source of an astonishing 2,137 tax returns, and to which the IRS directed more than $3.3 million in potentially fraudulent refunds.

In another case, a single residential address in Chicago was the source of 765 tax returns, generating more than $900,000 in potentially fraudulent refunds, the report said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s rebels in Syria committing Christian genocide

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U.S.-backed rebels are committing Christian genocide in Syria, where they are sacking churches and issuing threats that all Christians will be cleansed from rebel-held territory. A mass exodus of thousands of Christians is taking place, even as mainstream Western reporters like Robert Fisk demonize those same Christians for being supportive of the secular regime.

The bloody jihad waged against Nigeria’s Christians, which has seen hundreds killed this year alone, now includes plans to kill Christians with poisoned food, as part of the Islamic organization Boko Haram’s stated goal of purging Nigeria of all Christian presence.

During Egypt’s presidential elections, Al Ahram reported that “the Muslim Brotherhood blockaded entire streets, prevented Copts from voting at gunpoint, and threatened Christian families not to let their children go out and vote” for the secular candidate.

Meanwhile, under President Obama, the U.S. State Department, in an unprecedented move, purged the sections dealing with religious persecution from its recently released Country Reports on Human Rights. Likewise, the Obama administration insists that the Nigerian crisis has nothing to do with religion, even as Obama offered his hearty blessings to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president, in the midst of allegations of electoral fraud.

Categorized by theme, June’s assemblage of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed in alphabetical order by country, not severity.  Read more from this story HERE.

If you want to see the Syrian rebels in action, view this video.  [warning: explicit content]

More Pentagon incompetency: Hugo Chavez “does not represent a threat to US security”

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U.S. Gen. Douglas Fraser on Tuesday backed up President Obama’s appraisal that Venezuela does not represent a threat to U.S. security. The only thing that statement proves is that both men refuse to acknowledge a menace that has grown worse on their watch.

Gen. Fraser is the last in a long line of regional commanders who have refused to mud-wrestle with Hugo Chavez. I have profound respect for men and women who are willing to risk their lives fighting our enemies or ordering others to do so, and I understand fully why they want to keep such conflicts to a minimum. However, the best way to prevent such confrontations is to kick over rocks to find the hidden threats and to take careful measure of our foes.

On Gen. Fraser’s watch, Mr. Chavez has consolidated a narco-state in Venezuela. U.S. law enforcement and federal prosecutors have gathered fresh, compelling evidence implicating Venezuela’s National Assembly president, minister of defense and Mr. Chavez himself in narcotics trafficking. If a foreign military using its personnel, vehicles and aircraft to shovel cocaine onto U.S. streets and schoolyards is not a national security threat, what is? If such activities by Venezuela’s government are not a threat, why do we spend billions of dollars to counter the problem? Why does Gen. Fraser’s own command website call drug trafficking “a significant threat to security and stability in the Western Hemisphere”?

On Gen. Fraser’s watch, Mr. Chavez and his senior military commanders have provided material, financial, logistical and political support for Colombian drug traffickers who are branded terrorists by the U.S. government. American authorities know Mr. Chavez’s regime has issued Venezuelan passports or visas to thousands of Middle Eastern terrorists and offered safe haven to Hezbollah trainers, operatives, recruiters and fundraisers. During a March visit to Southern Command headquarters in Miami, now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin E. Dempsey said, “[W]e recognize the threat that transnational organized crime presents, not just because of what they transport to our shores, but what they could also transport — terrorists and weapons and weapons of mass destruction.”

On Gen. Fraser’s watch, a half-dozen Iranian companies sanctioned by United Nations, U.S. or European authorities have built suspicious industrial installations at various sites in Venezuela. Those facilities were important enough to attract secret visits by Iranian Maj. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace commander, who previously headed Iran’s missile program, in July 2009 and November 2011.

Read more from this story HERE.

Court upholds first-ever use of a DHS drone to assist in arrest of citizen inside US

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A North Dakota court has preliminarily upheld the first-ever use of an unmanned drone to assist in the arrest of an American citizen.

A judge denied a request to dismiss charges Wednesday against Rodney Brossart, a man arrested last year after a 16-hour standoff with police at his Lakota, N.D., ranch. Brossart’s lawyer argued that law enforcement’s “warrantless use of [an] unmanned military-like surveillance aircraft” and “outrageous governmental conduct” warranted dismissal of the case, according to court documents obtained by U.S. News.

District Judge Joel Medd wrote that “there was no improper use of an unmanned aerial vehicle” and that the drone “appears to have had no bearing on these charges being contested here,” according to the documents.

Court records state that last June, six cows wandered onto Brossart’s 3,000 acre farm, about 60 miles west of Grand Forks. Brossart allegedly refused to return the cows, which led to a long, armed standoff with the Grand Forks police department. At some point during the standoff, Homeland Security, through an agreement with local police, offered up the use of an unmanned predator drone, which “was used for surveillance,” according to the court documents.

Grand Forks SWAT team chief Bill Macki said in an interview that the drone was used to ensure Brossart and his family members, who were also charged, didn’t leave the farm and were unarmed during the arresting raid.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: The most vile ad in the history of television?

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Reflecting the accelerating moral implosion of the nation, Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company attempts to sell Skittles candy using a disgusting ad suggesting bestiality. This follows the Obama administration’s refusal yesterday to say whether it opposes polygamy.

Palin responds to Cheney’s slam that she was bad VP pick

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In an interview that aired on last weekend’s “This Week” on ABC, former Vice President Dick Cheney revealed his disappointment that Sarah Palin was the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee. That revelation is still being discussed three days later and it has even drawn criticism from conservatives.

But on Tuesday night’s “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren” on the Fox News Channel, Palin herself responded to the former vice president, calling it a “misfire,” and saying that he had bought into the media’s story that has been generated over the last four years.

“Well, seeing as how Dick — excuse me, Vice President Cheney never misfires, then evidently, he’s quite convinced that what he had evidently read about me by the lamestream media having been written what I believe is a false narrative over the last four years, evidently, Dick Cheney believed that stuff, and that’s a shame,” Palin said. “So he characterized me as being a mistake.”

But Palin argued that the mistake wasn’t her selection. It would have been if she declined the nomination and pointed to her high numbers at the time of the 2008 presidential race that made her an attractive candidate.

“Here’s where the mistake would have been, Greta, I believe. It’s had I not answered the call — I was honored to get to run for vice president of the United States alongside Senator John McCain. I was honored to accept the nomination from the GOP. And I think that the mistake would have been me just deciding that, ‘Hey, I love my 86-87 percent approval rating up there in Alaska as the governor, moving and shaking and watching corrupt politicians and businessmen go to prison for crony capitalism, working on 16 to 20 percent of domestic energy supplies being able to be increased via Alaska’s resource development, ethics reform legislation that I was working on — that led to that 86 percent approval rating.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Obama – “People faint at my events because I talk too much”

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While the lamestream media focuses on Romney’s supposed gaffes relating to the Olympics and the Palestinians, it almost complete ignores Obama’s ridiculous comments yesterday when someone fainted in front of him at a campaign event.

Photo credit: DonkeyHotey