Willes lee responds to a question about the NRA and silencers.

Feinstein's argument was, essentially, that "possession" =/= "use." It's not enough to own an AR-15 (or two, or three, or ten or twenty) -- you have to take each and every one of them out and shoot it on a regular basis or your ownership & possession counts for nothing in terms of "in common use." Never mind that, for many of us, the "use" is standing in the corner of the bedroom, loaded and locked and ready to repel boarders in the dark of the night. Feinstein's definition doesn't include that "purpose" as "use."

Of course, by her definition, the 1911 I wear just about every day isn't in common use because I only carry it -- I haven't shot it for months. So I'm not "using" it -- I'm just carrying it around.

It's all in the spin. Lewis Carroll told us that in Through the Looking Glass (Alice in Wonderland):

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty Senator Feinstein said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
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Willis Lee is not the enemy here. Snarky moles and gun banners are the people who would WANT NRA members turning their backs on the people the SHOULD be thanking.

http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/st...hwRm49kmrx7sV0DoRCD0I0niiJa2c5qknm8Yt_oM9J44s


Marion Hammer

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly people believe distortions printed by the media -- particularly in their efforts to help the enemies of freedom and the Second Amendment and to try to destroy the NRA. Nor does it cease to amaze me how willing the media are to deliberately distort and mislead.
 
If Willes Lee is not the enemy ... who is?

Do you think his response to the member who expressed a legitimate opinion was appropriate? Do you think it was appropriate for Mr. Lee, when called out on the snarkiness of his response, to play the "My personal account" card when the name of the account absolutely screams out that it's an account relating to his NRA position?

As to Ms. Hammer's contention that the Post article distorted the numbers and that the numbers are available to the members at the annual meetings: the fact is, the vast majority of the members can't attend the annual meetings. And, even if they can, that's not an assurance that the numbers presented are telling the truth. As I often comment, it's all in the spin.

Example: Not too many years ago, when my wife was alive, we got somewhat involved in the activities of the church we were attending. The church's finances were open. At the first annual meeting I attended, the treasurer read the financial statement. One item listed was "Endowment Income." The amount was, IIRC, around $350,000. That sounds very good, doesn't it?

Except that it was a lie. It wasn't a deliberate lie -- the woman who was treasurer had no financial or accounting background, she was just repeating the format that had been used by her predecessor, who had no doubt followed the format used by his or her predecessor. The problem was that what was reported as "endowment income" was NOT income earned from investment of the endowment. The vast bulk of that $350,000 was not earned interest or dividends, it was actually endowment principal that was transferred from endowment to the operating budget and spent. That's not "income."

I believed then and I believe now that this was an error made in good faith by someone who didn't understand the implications of that way of reporting the transfer. It caused people who didn't look deeper than the cover sheet to think that the church's finances were in better shape than they were. It came to a head a few years later, when the long-time pastor (who had been the prime mover in spending down the endowment principal) retired, and the interim pastor who came on board while we searched for a new pastor raised a red flag about the church's financial condition ... which was, at best, "tenuous."

Which is a long-winded way of saying that I am not impressed by a claim that the numbers are there for the members to see, when the numbers don't necessarily reflect the truth. This can be accidental (as I believe was the case with my church), or it can be deliberate (as might be the case with a large organization with paid accountants, and the ability to shift money back and forth between the organization and its captive advertising agency.)
 
Prndll Wrote:
.....

As for Mr. Morgan: there are things he can kiss.
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Trump should have never agreed to that interview with Piers Morgan!!!
Nothing good will ever come of these interviews.
Seems Piers Morgan got Trump talking on anything that would easy to spin and miss-quote.
Believe that was Morgan's very well rehearsed plan from the start.
 
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Example: Not too many years ago, when my wife was alive, we got somewhat involved in the activities of the church we were attending. The church's finances were open. At the first annual meeting I attended, the treasurer read the financial statement. One item listed was "Endowment Income." The amount was, IIRC, around $350,000. That sounds very good, doesn't it?

Except that it was a lie. It wasn't a deliberate lie -- the woman who was treasurer had no financial or accounting background, she was just repeating the format that had been used by her predecessor, who had no doubt followed the format used by his or her predecessor. The problem was that what was reported as "endowment income" was NOT income earned from investment of the endowment. The vast bulk of that $350,000 was not earned interest or dividends, it was actually endowment principal that was transferred from endowment to the operating budget and spent. That's not "income."

I believed then and I believe now that this was an error made in good faith by someone who didn't understand the implications of that way of reporting the transfer. It caused people who didn't look deeper than the cover sheet to think that the church's finances were in better shape than they were. It came to a head a few years later, when the long-time pastor (who had been the prime mover in spending down the endowment principal) retired, and the interim pastor who came on board while we searched for a new pastor raised a red flag about the church's financial condition ... which was, at best, "tenuous."

Which is a long-winded way of saying that I am not impressed by a claim that the numbers are there for the members to see, when the numbers don't necessarily reflect the truth. This can be accidental (as I believe was the case with my church), or it can be deliberate (as might be the case with a large organization with paid accountants, and the ability to shift money back and forth between the organization and its captive advertising agency.
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Excellent example of how the books may be "cooked," even inadvertently. I have investigated a few embezzlement and financial crimes. It often is sloppy as someone at a relatively low level in the company just has too easy and unsupervised access to the company's money. Often times the embezzlement has gone on years simply because no audit was performed, and when one was finally done it was identified rather easily.

And then there are the complex ones. Many of these never really come to full light, and often-times they involve non-criminal but unethical acts to muddy the waters. Skilled accountants with poor ethics and morals working for a non-profit that is less than transparent with it's finances can make things look nice and rosy for a very long time. Indefinitely even, unless there's a whistleblower. I looked into one a few years ago that was a scam company providing a scam service, yet convinced local courts to release defendants into their custody for drug rehab and was on the list at the local department of social services as a drug treatment source. When the first whistleblower reported it and I learned that it was a trusted drug rehab by DSS and the courts I didn't believe the whistleblower. For a while. Turned out the whistleblower was telling the truth.

The moral of the story? Just because a few pro-NRA media sources and a few board members come out to say that everything is just fine, and on the surface things maybe look ok, doesn't make it so...
 
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