Divemedic

Biden, Trump, COVID

Biden was a nearly constant critic of the Trump administration’s COVID response. Biden vowed to do better. Now that he is President, he is claiming that there is nothing that can be done to change COVID’s trajectory.

Biden’s plan for dealing with COVID has nothing to do with controlling, mitigating, or curing the disease. Here’s what Biden’s $2 trillion plan calls for:

  • Direct payments of $1,400 to most Americans, bringing the total relief to $2,000, including December’s $600 payments
  • Increasing the federal, per-week unemployment benefit to $400 and extending it through the end of September
  • Increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour
  • Extending the eviction and foreclosure moratoriums until the end of September
  • $350 billion in state and local government aid
  • $170 billion for K-12 schools and institutions of higher education
  • $50 billion toward Covid-19 testing
  • $20 billion toward a national vaccine program in partnership with states, localities and tribes
  • Making the Child Tax Credit fully refundable for the year and increasing the credit to $3,000 per child ($3,600 for a child under age 6)

The only items there that have anything to do with COVID are the testing and vaccine points, and those were already being done by the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed.”

Meanwhile, we are $27.8 trillion in debt, a number that is $4.5 trillion higher than it was a year ago, and Biden is aiming to increase that debt by another $4 trillion in his first year.

Biden is a fraud, and his only goal is to eliminate the American system of government to install communism. Fuck him and his dictatorship bullshit. Am I still allowed to say that, or is dissent no longer patriotism? I can’t keep track anymore.

By Divemedic, ago

Graft and corruption

Microsoft President describes the bribery that makes our government work.

It (cash) plays an important role. Not because the checks are big, but because the way the political process works. Politicians in the United States have events, they have weekend retreats, you have to write a check and then you’re invited and participate. If you work in the government affairs team in the United States, you spend your weekends going to these events; you spend your evenings going to these dinners, and the reason you go is because the PAC writes a check.

Smith added that the relationships built at these events make it more likely lawmakers will be receptive when he calls them to ask for their help on employees’ immigration cases, as well as “issues around national security, or privacy, or procurement reform. Or the tax issues our finance team manages.”

When legislation controls what gets bought and sold, the first thing that is bought and sold are the legislators themselves.

By Divemedic, ago

Ex-President Club

There is a story in the national press that Trump is shunning the “ex-President” club that goes on to note that the club doesn’t want him, either. According to the story:

Members of the ex-presidents club pose together for pictures. They smile and pat each other on the back while milling around historic events, or sit somberly side by side at VIP funerals. They take on special projects together. They rarely criticize one another and tend to offer even fewer harsh words about their White House successors.

I call bullshit on that last sentence. George W Bush was critical of Trump from his first year in office. So did serial philanderer, possible pedophile, and sex pervert Bill Clinton. Obama spent Trump’s entire term criticizing Trump and organizing “the resistance.” Carter even refused to accept the results of the 2016 election, something we are told is traitorous and rises to the level where removing sitting members of Congress is the only possible remedy.

So it comes to no surprise that Trump doesn’t want to hang out with the assholes. I wouldn’t either. Would you?

By Divemedic, ago

Weapons and the Military

When I was in the Navy, a buddy of mine and I were FFL holders. We had gotten the FFL because we wanted to buy guns at wholesale prices. We also made a bit of cash on the side, selling guns to fellow service members. This was in the Reagan/Bush timeframe, so Clinton hadn’t yet begun his attempt at killing “kitchen table gun dealers.” To make it legal for the weapons to be in my off base apartment while we were out doing various Navy things, we made my (then) wife a part owner of the business.

I had this hardcore, lefty Lieutenant (O-3) from New York city that was in my chain of command, and he found out about our little side gig. He called us into the office and began yelling at us, calling us “Soldier of Fortune, Rambo wannabes.” He then ordered my buddy and I to shut down our business and turn over all inventory to the police. He claimed it was a direct order, and we would be prosecuted under the UCMJ under Articles 89, 91, 92, and 134, and he would have us court-martialed. We both refused, and pointed out that since my (then) wife was part owner of the business, such an order would be unlawful, as he had no jurisdiction.

He became irate, and called us “sea lawyers” and then promised to make our lives “a living hell.” The point of this story is that Big Country’s tale is not a surprise to me. It has been going on for years.

By Divemedic, ago

Leaving the party

Hundreds of voters who were registered to vote as Republicans are changing their party affiliation. The press is claiming that Republicans are leaving the party because they disagree with the riots in the Capitol.

I think that they are getting it wrong. There is a good number of voters who are sickened by how tone deaf the Republican leadership is towards its members. Perhaps many of them are leaving the party because they have come to realize, as I did more than a decade ago, that just because the Democrats are your enemy doesn’t mean that the Republicans are your friend, and the Democrats telling lies does not mean that Republicans are speaking the truth.

Too many of us are tired of being ignored by the political class in this country- a political class that intends to be our master, rather than our servant.

By Divemedic, ago

Spying on America

One of the first orders that Biden gave to his new director of intelligence (DNI) was an order to spy on American citizens. Sure, he couched it as if he is going after “domestic terrorism,” but that is merely a fig leaf. They have been spying on Parler and its users with the intent of making sure that they STAY shut down.

It is illegal for intelligence agencies to spy on American citizens within the United States, but the CIA and their assistants at the NSA and other US intelligence agencies don’t let little things like the law, the Constitution, or civil rights get in the way.

For at least the past twelve years, the government has claimed that you have no rights against searches and spying. I warned the right that the Patriot act would one day be used against them. They didn’t listen.

By Divemedic, ago