Divemedic

and with this, the Republicans prove that they cannot take a hint. There is no way we can vote ourselves out of what is about to come.

We are on the train to national insolvency and dictatorship. The left
claims that they need to tax the rich to pay for all of their programs
and ensure that everyone gets a fair share of the national economic pie.
They ignore the fact that they are spending us into insolvency. Oh, and they want to ban guns and legalize pot.

The right claims that they want to control the left’s spending, but
never seem to do so. They claim that we need to cut spending and taxes.
Just not defense. We need to go to war with everyone until
they all bow down to us as Americans and outlaw gay marriage.

Neither party wants to cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. 

The chief war cry of the right
is: if you don’ t vote for the party hack, it is the same as voting for
the other guy. Except, they forget that it won’t matter which one you
vote for, because other than the D or R behind his name, there is not a
real difference between them.

Lest you forget, our last Republican president brought us a 9 year long
war in Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11;
the Patriot Act; the TSA and their intrusive searches; secret prisons;
torturing prisoners for information; and added more than
$4,900,000,000,000 to the national debt in 8 years.

Our current President has expanded the powers left for him by his Republican predecessor and begun executing
assassinating Americans without trial, forced people to buy products
that they don’t want, and has expanded the national debt by
$7,500,000,000,000 in 6 years.

It
doesn’t matter who we vote for, as our course is set. We aren’t voting
our way out of this. It is only a matter of time before we sink our
national ship under the weight of fiscal irresponsibility.

Cell phone contracts last for two years. The problem is that I usually get a new phone every year, because I am pretty hard on cell phones. When it is time to get a new phone, unless you are close to the end of your contract, the phone company wants you to pay full price for the replacement, and with the advent of smart phones, this is usually around $700 or so.

So what I did in the past was that I had two lines sharing the same account. With this method on Verizon, all you do at upgrade time is sign a new two year contract with Verizon. Now you have a year old phone with a year left on the contract, and a new phone with a two year contract. You put the SIM card that you are using in the new phone, and then sell the old one, usually for $200-300. Now you have two phones, for which you must pay the $40 a month “smart phone access fee,” even though you are only using one of them.

You could just pay the early termination fee, but that is $240, if you still have a year on the contract. To solve this, you tell the Verizon people that you are switching that old smart phone out for an old “dumb” phone. Dumb phones only have a $10 per month fee, meaning that this will only cost you $120.

I did this for years, until I dropped my phone and broke it, only six months after I bought it. Now here I was, with no phone, and no upgrade available for at least 4 months. Along comes Verizon, explaining to me that the new “Edge Up” program would allow me to get a new phone now, and since the Edge program was a purchase agreement, I would no longer be contractually obligated for service. So I signed on the dotted line, content that my phone bills would go down by $30 a month, because I would no longer have to maintain two lines. Once my second contract ran out in December, I would cancel it and only maintain a single line.

The salesman assured me that I would be able to do this. I looked over the contract, and sure enough, the contract appeared to say that as well.

December comes, and they tell me that I cannot shut down the second line without paying the entire price of the phone, which was double what the Edge contract was for. I went to the store and argued with the manager and the very same salesman that sold me the phone. They pointed to the arbitration clause, which reads that Verizon, in their sole discretion, gets to define what the terms of the contact mean, and if you disagree with them, you waive your rights to sue, and must settle in arbitration, using their arbitrators. I told the salesman that they were dishonest and were ripping people off. His reply? “you signed it”

In other words, we gotcha. Yes, I signed it. That doesn’t make it any less dishonest to bury a weasel clause in a 17 page contract.

So now, I have to switch my number so I can lower the one I am currently using to “dumb” phone status, and my cell bill for a single phone is now $140 a month. This may be the end of my journey with Verizon. American cell phone companies are a ripoff. $140 a month for phone service? I was just talking with people from other countries, and most countries pay less than $40 a month for unlimited talk, text, and data. Sure, you have to buy your own phone, but there are no early termination fees, no contracts, and you can switch carriers as you please.

These contracts are distorting the market, and there is no real choice or competition in the cell phone market.

So the law against same sex marriage in the state of Florida was recently declared unconstitutional by a US district judge. In response, some clerks of court have declared that they will not issue same sex marriage licenses until they are forced to. Still other clerks have decided that they will no longer allow anyone to get married in the courthouse, in order to avoid accusations of discrimination.

Duval County Clerk of Courts Ronnie Fussell said tells The Florida Times-Union that none of his staff members who currently officiate wedding ceremonies felt comfortable performing same-sex weddings…  “It was decided as a team, as an office, this would be what we do so
that there wouldn’t be any discrimination,” Fussell said. “The easiest
way is to not do them at all.”… Fussell said he believed marriage “is between a man and a woman.” He
added, “Personally it would go against my beliefs to perform a ceremony
that is other than that.”

I have two thoughts on this:
1 You are a government employee. You don’t get to decide not to follow the law because it makes you uncomfortable, any more than this guy did. If performing same sex marriages makes you uncomfortable, get a new job. No one is forcing you to work there, and it isn’t up to you.

2 Tactically, this is stupid. If same sex couples cannot get married in a government building because the government no longer performs ceremonies, then you set the stage for forcing the court to declare that officiants cannot discriminate, and this would force officials who hold ceremonies for churches to provide that service to same sex couples.

My brother is a business owner.  Just over a year ago, I blogged about him and how Obamacare was affecting small business owners.

Now a new problem. My brother pays his workers $10 an hour (which is $2 per hour higher than minimum wage) plus a percentage of profits that are earned as a result of the worker’s labor. He employs ten, and the highest earning of them made $42,000 this year, meaning that they are making more in profit sharing than they are in salary.

That will come to an end in 2015, when all workers will go to an hourly rate of $14 an hour. Why is that? Is it because my brother is a greedy business owner? No. It is because one of his workers has been sleeping on the clock.

One of his workers was caught taking naps while he was clocked in, and this caused that employee to work more than 40 hours a week. When caught, my brother fired the man. The man filed a complaint, stating that he was not paid properly.

My brother pointed out to the DOL that the employee was paid fully for the time he was on the clock, even while sleeping. The DOL disagreed. They said that ALL funds received by an employee on a regular basis must be a part of the overtime calculation.

What does this mean? Let’s say that your employee makes $10 an hour plus profit sharing. He works 42 hours a week. That means that his “time and a half” overtime rate should be $15 an hour, right?

Wrong. Since the employee got $400 a week in profit sharing, his hourly rate works out to $25 an hour, making his overtime rate $37.50 an hour. So an employee that made $400 in wages and $400 in profit sharing for weeks on end, and then takes a nap and winds up working 42 hours when he oversleeps the end of his shift by two hours, winds up deserving an extra $75 for his two hour nap.

My brother cannot afford this, so profit sharing is coming to an end at his business.

This is why the little guy can’t make it.

In July, blacks were protesting Obama’s immigration policies, and were even calling him ‘the worst President ever.’ Protesters began referring to Clinton, and how he cared more for the black community.

In August, a black teen is shot in Missouri by the cop he was attacking. The press runs with it. Protesters appear with professionally made signs, and are bussed in from hundreds of miles away.By September and into October, the protests had spread to other cities.

The situation has escalated to the point that police officers are now being murdered in the streets, and black people are cheering over it.

Now we have the movie ‘Selma’ that is being released to show how blacks were discriminated against and overcame the adversity.

This appears to be a well orchestrated, well funded campaign to distract and redirect the blacks in America. We as a nation, and blacks in particular, are being manipulated. To what end? Is this merely a distraction to bolster Obama’s sagging approval poll numbers? Is this something more? Something else?

Get off the Internet and go enjoy some family time.

I love the definition for “Zumbo” and especially love the term “Zumborrhea,” which is listed. I am going to try and use that in a sentence this week.

So the Republicans are planning on having either Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney run for President. They will never learn. You might as well get used to hearing about President Clinton again. President Obama, the narcissist,  has given Bush his permission to run, at least.

If you run Huckabee Bush or Romney in the 2012 2016 election, you are not getting
my vote. I am through with voting for the same old crap simply because
that person will take away my liberty at a slightly slower rate than the
other guy. I am also tired of seeing the same old, tired candidates in every election.

Many people keep saying that I am throwing my vote away unless I vote for the R candidate, because a third party candidate can’t win. I have news for you, telling me to vote for a douchebag that can’t win, simply because he has been anointed by the Republican party establishment doesn’t mean that he can win, only that he has bowed down to the big money in charge of the R party.