Been kind of busy, so a number of things to catch up on(bad language alert for the first part)

So the editors in Congress have passed 'credit card reform', which is causing the companies to think about screwing people who actually pay in full and on time. Yeah, that's going to work.
People who routinely pay off their credit card balances have been enjoying the equivalent of a free ride, he said, because many have not had to pay an annual fee even as they collect points for air travel and other perks.
To Mr. Robertson, and every clown saying things like this: fuck you. Every time someone uses a card, you make money from the fee you charge the merchants(that's why a lot of places which sell firearms and ammo have two prices: cash and credit card, the latter to cover the fee for the credit card company). You, you miserable little worm, have been 'making out like a bandit' for years, and now you want to insult me and screw me over for handling my debts on time? I repeat, fuck you. You start charging me interest from the moment I buy something? You start charging me an annual fee? I'll cut up the card, close the account and use either a debit card or cash, and then you're getting NOTHING from me.

YOU are the people who decided to give points and whatever; if it's not affordable anymore, then inform every customer "We're not going to give points for purchases anymore." The 'perks' aren't affordable? Inform your customers, and drop them. Stop playing the Obama game and telling me that because I don't spend money I don't have, and don't make payments late, and don't default on what I owe, that I'm going to be screwed to take care of the people who do. You'll lose me as a customer, and then you get squat.


Someone who, more than 90% of the time, I'm very happy to call one of my senators, has given the Brady Ban Guns Group and the Violence Policy Center a massive case of hemorrhoids:
The Bush Administration rule required among other things that:
The gun owner have a concealed carry license.
The gun owner carry a handgun concealed.
The state in which the park was located had to allow carry in state parks. (Not 100% sure about this).

The Brady Campaign sued and successfully blocked this in the federal courts.

Coburn’s amendment goes much further:

The Secretary of the Interior shall not promulgate or enforce any regulation that prohibits an individual from possessing a firearm including an assembled or functional firearm in any unit of the National Park System or the National Wildlife Refuge System if–
(1) the individual is not otherwise prohibited by law from possessing the firearm; and
(2) the possession of the firearm is in compliance with the law of the State in which the unit of the National Park System or the National Wildlife Refuge System is located.

Thus Arizonans without a license can now carry any firearm openly in their national parks and Texans can now carry rifles and shotguns openly (and handguns in their cars without a license) in their national parks since those activities are in compliance with the law outside the Park.

This must burn up the Brady Campaign - they won a battle and lost a much bigger war!
As I recall, the measure to ban any new machine guns from becoming available to citizens was passed by slipping it into another bill; so the same method screws the gun-banners. It comes around, people.


Let's see, an extortionist uses Alinsky tactics to mess with bankers. And I'm sure feels all warm and snuggly inside that he's screwing with people in the name of deadbeats. Note this from the comments:
Mr. Marks had better pray that the lenders he demonizes never wake up one days and decide, yeah, they’re really as eeeeeeevvilll as Marks claims they are. Because, if they do, Marky-Mark may well end his days in a car trunk out in the Jersey weeds.

Unwritten Alinsky rule: Your tactics will only work as long as the other side is willing to play by them. The day two large guys named “Paulie” and “Sal” show up in your driveway, all bets are off.
One of these days, an awful lot of 'activists' are going to find out that this crap works both ways; they're going to start finding their personal lives and connections being plastered all over town. And it wouldn't surprise me of some who get particularly nasty find themselves facing the same kind of crap from people sick of them.

Speaking of 'sick of them', a while back I read A Slobbering Love Affair, Bernard Goldberg's book on the major media and their sucking up to Obama. This is near the end:
Caddell worries that some day a demagogue is going to come along, somebody who makes Huey Long look like a shut-in. Somebody, Caddell told me, “who gets up at the start of his campaign and says, ‘I want you to see the press. They are the enemy of the American people. They will do everything they can to stop me because they want to stop YOU.’ And the American people will believe it. What if this is the most dangerous man that ever came along? Nobody will care what the press says.”

And THAT, my friends, is why the corruption of the media matters. The press has constitutional protections for one man reason: to keep watch over a powerful government. The fundamental job of journalists is to look out for US- the American people! If nobody cares what the press says, journalists will be watchdogs in name only. They may bark from time to time, but nobody will listen. And their weakness will make it easy for a corrupt government to get away with murder. THAT is the danger we all face when the mainstream media go on a noble mission to make history. THAT is what can happen when the media, like that liberal professor at American University in Washington, believe that their role is not simply to report the news, fairly and accurately, but to EFFECT THEIR KIND OF CHANGE IN SOCIETY.

This time, they really screwed up!
Yeah, they did. Some of them have known for years that they(up to that point) and their colleagues(still) did; many are still doing it, because they either don't care that more and more people discard them as untrustworthy, or think that The Obama will somehow make it right by screwing with the new media. And some see themselves as 'saving us from ourselves' by slanting the news/selective reporting; after all, they know what we should be allowed to hear. Some, I think, have truly realized how they've screwed the pooch and are really worried about it. But, like I told the kids years ago, when you destroy the trust someone had in you, it takes a long damn time to try to get it back; you may never get it back. And it's your own damn fault.

And, as various people have pointed out, what happens when these media weenies start facing the same kind of crap they pull? When some politician or businessman or plain guy who's been screwed over by them starts investigating the reporter'sjournalists' private life? And starts spreading everything that can be found about his finances and his personal life and his family around?* They're not going to like it, and they won't have a leg to stand on for bitching about it, because it's simply the same garbage they use on people, used on them. There's been a few bits and pieces of it, like when Ann Coulter put out the facts on that jackass Olbermann's 'ivy-league school'; the one he actually attended, not the one he kept claiming. Bastard didn't like it; neither will a lot of other media weenies when someone starts digging.


A plot to bomb Jewish centers and military targets broken up by the NYPD and FBI doing the kind of thing they're actually supposed to do, and are good at when they do it.
Agents and police watched Wednesday night as the suspects allegedly planted what they thought were bombs outside two Jewish community centers in Riverdale, a Bronx, New York neighborhood. In one case the suspected terrorists planted a bomb inside a parked car. However, officials said the suspects were actually using fake explosives given to them in an earlier sting operation to make sure they didn't get their hands on real bombs.

"The bombs had been made by the FBI technicians, they were totally inert, no one was ever at risk," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
...
The FBI said the Muslim suspects were angry and full of hate for America.

"Hatred of the West. The leader of the group, James Cromitie was concerned about deaths at the hands of the U.S. military in Afghanistan," and also expressed anti-Jewish sentiment, Joseph Demarest the head of the New York FBI said.
The fun part about this?
"It shows you can't let your guard down," Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said. "They did intend to use car bombs by remote control but the bombs the informant sold them were duds."

“I have spoken to both the New York office of the FBI and Commissioner Kelly and I want to commend them both on an outstanding job. They have told me they have been monitoring this group for some time and that the men arrested did not have any connection to other terrorists," Schumer added.
Yeah it's great when something in NYEffin'C is stopped, isn't it, Schumer? So why do you so bitch and whine and threaten about trying to find and track terrorists the rest of the time?


Let's note that while the Obama administration is basically renaming lots of Bush policies and keeping them, he's also nominating people like Koh to positions where they can screw this country over.


"Was it something I said? Or wrote?"


On a personal note, I'll be retiring soon from the place I've been working for a bunch of years. Which is nice, though it's going to be strange. I have noticed, however, that when a lot of people find out you hear the story about "George, he retired a while back. Was really happy, then he had that stroke/heart attack/died." Kind of "You'll enjoy it, right up until they bury you. Or check you into the care facility."

Ah well, I've got grocery shopping to do.


*These people we'll have to call 'journalists'; they're very sorry excuses for reporters.