Divemedic

President Obama’s speech this week on the “prolonged detention” of people who are suspected of being capable of carrying out a terrorist action sometime in the future, but who have not yet committed any crimes scares the crap out of me.

The plan is for persons to be detained indefinitely for crimes they have not committed. Held without trial. Without evidence. See the video from MSNBC:

Couple that with the Administration’s statements that opposition to illegal immigration, being a veteran, opposing restrictions on the Second Amendment (which, by the way we are allowed to do under the FIRST Amendment), and opposing the Obama Administration makes you a potential terrorist, means that anyone that anyone of us can be “disappeared” by a government. If this does not scare you, I do not know what will.

Remember, I warned you that Obama would use the powers you gave to W, and that you would not like it. I told you conservatives that this wa a bad idea. It isn’t as fun to say “I told you so” as I thought it would be.

One of the problems that I have always had with Conservatives is their constant bashing of Unions. Now don’t get me wrong, I think some of the things Unions get in their contracts are outrageous, and I have posted on this topic before. More than once.

The thing is the Corporations are doing the same thing.

1 A Union is a bunch of workers who band together to negotiate better prices for their product (their labor) than they could get as individuals.

2 A Corporation is a bunch of investors who band together to negotiate better deals that they could as individual investors.

No real difference.

The problem I have here is when Corporations are given the same rights as real people in regards to property and even better deals than people in regards to taxes and regulations. Then when the Corporation breaks the law, the only thing the individual investors lose is a little money. (Which the Government then gives you in the form of a “bailout”)

I mean, after 8 years of Bush claiming he was “the decider” and all, it is a refreshing change to see a president who is so well educated, that he doesn’t make those sorts of mistakes.

Or it is that the MSM just doesn’t make as big a deal of Obama’s?

Read how Obama celebrated Cinco de Quatro, er Quatro de Mayo, yeah that’s it.

Max Blumenthal wrote a piece in the Daily Beast, essentially claiming that all gun owners are a bunch of Racist terrorists. some of the memorable quote here are:

If a new militia movement coalesces, its members will have no shortage of sophisticated assault weapons to choose from. At the gun show in Reno, I witnessed the sale of rocket-propelled-grenade launchers and bazooka guns;

Yet the video you published on Youtube doesn’t show a single Bazooka or RPG. Where is the proof? If you witnessed that, why didn’t you inform the police or BATFE agents that are present at every gun show? Selling these items without the proper permits is illegal. Unless, of course, it never happened.

He goes on:

Nearby, I interviewed another dealer retailing a brand of.50-caliber assault rifle that was banned in California because it could supposedly down an airplane. He told me by slightly altering the bullets his gun fired, and by converting the gun from semi-automatic to bolt-action, he was able to sell it in California once again.

In other words, the man complied with the law and produced a legal product. If you outlaw all .50 caliber firearms, anyone producing a .49 caliber or .51 caliber rifle would be legal, wouldn’t they?

You also completely ignore the fact that a bolt action rifle is not going to shoot down an airplane. Heck, a person wanting to down aircraft might as well fire geese at the plane.

More lies, in the form of the “Mexican gun” myth:

Weapons like these are useful to Mexican narco-cartels, too. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ Phoenix field division claimed that “many gun shows attracted large numbers of gang members from Mexico and California. They often bought large quantities of assault weapons and smuggled them into Mexico or transported them to California.”

(Hey BATFE- where are all of the arrests of these ‘gang members’ who are smuggling $1,000 semi auto rifles into a country where fully automatic weapons can be bought for half that much?)

Lets reinforce the racism angle, as well:

Though big guns were the main attraction, a handful of retailers in Reno appealed to some visitors’ apparent enthusiasm for Nazi memorabilia. Swastika-emblazoned flags, photographs of Hitler and his henchmen, and anything related to the Third Reich were available at several booths. There was obviously no way to gauge the percentage of show attendees who adhered to the racist fringe, but the prominence of so much Nazi regalia suggested they maintained a significant presence.

You , Mr Blumenthal, are a liar.

I read today that the left is wishing death to a member of the media that dares question the Messiah, BHO. Of course, when the left wishes someone dead and the President laughs, it is just a joke, right? It isn’t like Obama likes Limbaugh, right?

Then why isn’t it just a joke when someone else jokes that, “Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death.”

CBS Sports distanced itself from Feherty’s writing, saying it was “an unacceptable attempt at humor and is not in any way condoned, endorsed or approved” by the network. The PGA Tour also criticized him for an attempt at humor that “went over the line.”

Why is that so serious, and requires an apology? Why isn’t NBC attempting to distance itself from Sykes? Or is it only humor to wish death on people from the right?

I know I have spent more than a few bytes criticizing Obama and his policies. Today I am going to have to agree with one of them. Obama is seeking legislation to reign in the behavior of credit card companies. The problem is the way contracts have been constructed for years. Hidden clauses, excuses to raise interest rates, punishing fees hidden in contracts, and other abuses need attention.

It goes like this: a credit card company sees an account that has a large balance, and they find a reason (having nothing to do with the performance of the account or the debtor’s payment history) to raise your rate to the penalty rate. That penalty rate is retroactive- that is, the rate applies to purchases already made, and the only way to avoid this rate is to pay off the balance. A person with a large balance cannot do this, so the card company makes some fat cash. Example:

Lets say you owe $10,000 on a CC and the interest is 12%. Your payment is $200, with $100 of that as interest. Then, you get in a billing dispute with your cell phone carrier over an early termination fee, and you refuse to pay it. The cell carrier sends you to collections. You credit card company sees this on your credit report, and you are increased to the default rate of 29%.

That means that your interest is now about $240 each month, and your payment is now $340 per month. You manage it for 3 months before being late. You are charged a $50 late fee. You manage to pay late for 4 more months, before catching up. You pay on time for 4 months, then fall behind over the next six, paying when you can, before defaulting.

In that time, you pay $6120 to the bank. Your new balance is $9,600, and over the 18 months you were being charged the higher interest rate, you paid $5,720 in fees and interest and $400 towards your balance. The bank sells your account to a junk debt buyer for 10% of the balance after you have been delinquent for six months, and writes off the remaining 90% of the balance (they still charge interest and fees while you are in default)- $10,038.

So to sum it up: You pay the bank $6,120, the junk debt buyer pays $1,003, and the federal government gives the bank a $2,500 reduction in taxes because the bank shows a paper loss of $10,038 even though they were paid $9,620. You still owe the $10,000 original loan, and then some. All of this over a year and a half. Every month they can get you to pay beyond that year and a half nets the bank another $380 or so in profit, and does not really reduce your balance. The longer they can keep you out of bankruptcy, the more they make. That is why the banks all fund the “non-profit” credit counseling organizations- to keep you out of bankruptcy for as long as possible.

People should honor their contractual obligations, but contracts are binding on both parties, not just to the benefit of one. Interest changes that apply to balances already charged, as well as “universal default” should not be allowed. After all, would you stand for your bank changing the interest on your car to 30% because of a problem that is totally unrelated to the loan?

Remember several months ago, when I said I would delight in the pain of my Republican friends when they began to complain about the Obama Administration using the powers they gave President Bush? Well, here we have a story about Ashton Lundeby, a 16 year old being held as a suspected terrorist. Without a lawyer, without trial, without any constitutional protections at all.

When the Patriot Act was passed, many Americans warned that this law would be abused. We were told that we were being ridiculous and paranoid. “Everyone deserves their day in court,” we said. We were told that terrorists didn’t deserve constitutional protections. “But what happens when the definition of terrorist is expanded?” we asked. “That won’t happen,” we were told, “stop being paranoid.”

Well, here we are. First, it is kids calling in bomb threats. Then, it will be some other demographic that fits some legally technical definition. It will not be long before people who own evil assault rifles are declared to be terrorists.

You see, when you give power to government in the form of a new law, you must remember that it is in the nature of governments to abuse that law, to use it in ways that you never intended, to find ways to exploit that law to grant themselves even more power. It does not matter whether that government is liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat.

Government can only rule through force, so when you ask the Government to act on your behalf, what you are doing is applying force by proxy. Since Governments are run by people, who by nature always want more power and wealth than they already have, government will always seek more of those resources.

The definition of these evil terrorists has been expanded. The secret police knock on your door, spirit away your child, your spouse, your roommate, and whisk him away to a secret prison, where he or she has no Constitutional rights. Welcome to the dictatorship.

(BTW- Mom in the video says she does not “believe in guns.” Guns are not like the tooth fairy. They exist whether you believe in them or not. As you just saw, the people with the most guns win. That is why the Second Amendment is so important.)

Thanks to David Codrea for the tip.

I am sitting here reading a story about Greenville, South Carolina. This is a story of Obama supporters who are struggling to make it and failing. One of the things that jumped out at me was on page 3 of the article.

Evon Hackett is 38 years old. She was laid off of her $8.59 an hour job two and a half months ago, and has been looking for work since. She decided to make a little money by going on a shopping spree at Wal Mart, which overdrew her bank account by $121. The plan was to use the things she bought to make 17 Easter Baskets. No one would buy them at $25, so she lowered her price to $20. From the article:

The strategy nets Hackett $85 in profits, which she uses toward debts of $121 owed to her bank, $190 to her cellphone company and $59 to a warehouse storing her furniture. Childs is her best customer, paying the full price of $25 and purchasing two baskets.

Apparently Journalism students are not required to take any sort of a business class, because if you have $85 from the sale of easter baskets, but owe the bank $121 for the purchase of the materials to make the baskets, you did not make any profit. You took a loss of $36. This kind of business math is why the economy is failing.

Totally ignoring the fact that she has a cell phone, but is claiming to be poor and in need of government assistance.

(BTW: Ms. Hackett made $85, only because her cousin, the local commissioner, felt sorry for her and paid $50 for two of them. Ms. Hackett would have been $86 ahead if she would have simply asked her cousin for the money in the first place)

The main protagonist of the article shows her racist roots when speaking of a local TEA Party, when she says:

“this mouthy black lady knocked on doors in the whitest, most Republican neighborhoods in town and told them what was on my mind.”

and again when she says:

“Of course it’s going to be a lot of white Republicans, and mostly men,” Childs says as she walks through the crowd and finds a spot alone at the rear of the plaza. “I want to see this, but I’m keeping my distance.”

Racist. Could you imagine if a white politician said, “Oh, the welfare office. It will just be a bunch of black Democrats.” He would be run out of office.

Of course, she fails to mention that every one of the people in this story are not taxpayers. All are people who failed to make sound decisions in their live and now expect someone else (the white Republicans they are so mad at) to pay the bills. Those people who you despise were the ones who stayed in school, and didn’t have children out of wedlock while still in high school. They all call their commissioner because they cannot pay their light bills, rent, or buy food. They are looking to this commissioner and to Obama for handouts. They are almost completely dependent on government.

Wanna support yourself? Have more than a $9 an hour job? Stay in school. Stop having children when you are 18, and not married. Stop doing drugs. Get rid of the cell phone, and use the money to take a class to better yourself and your situation. If you have no skills, and no education, what makes you stand out from the rest of the applicants that are standing in an employer’s door? I guess it is easier to expect a handout than it is to work.

These people voted for Obama because he promised to give them other peoples’ money. Now that he isn’t enslaving people enough to give them the lives they want, they are becoming upset that the Government is not taking enough of my money to pay for their cell phones.