EckerNet.Com

The best Constitutional smack-down I’ve ever seen bar NONE.  This soldier has a greater and better grounded understanding of the Constitution that most Supreme Court Judges and far more than ANY politician I’ve ever listened to.

And he does it in less than two minutes, and that includes applause from the audience.

Word is that some progress may have been paid as far as crafting a compromise version of ObamaCare between hardcore liberals and Blue Dog Democrats. Some big parts of ObamaCare have been ripped out, but there was so much wrong with this bill that even with major components ripped out, there’s still alot wrong with it.

As evidence of that, in reading about the compromise I noticed something I hadn’t previously. Well I had consciously known of it previously but I hadn’t quite connected the dots until just now.

Like bills drafted by Democrats, the proposal under discussion by six members on the Senate Finance Committee would bar insurance companies from denying coverage to any applicant. Nor could insurers charge higher premiums on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions.

So basically if you’re sick, you can get insurance regardless of what your illness is, and they can’t charge you more. So essentially healthy people are having to pay higher premiums than non-healthy people. You young people are getting put to the flame to pay for the elderly, I imagine that’s going to be a problem for many young people just getting started in life.

Which brings to mind what really caught my attention. Why buy insurance at all?? I mean until you get sick?? If I’m healthy, I don’t need insurance. If I’m sick, I’ll sign my coughing ass up and get my benefits. They can’t deny me for a pre-existing condition and I don’t have to pay more just because I’m sick. What’s the benefit of signing up when I’m NOT sick?? I feel better about feeding a government blackhole?? Sorry, I already get that “thrill” every April 15th.

Removing the incentives for signing up for insurance kinda destroys the underlying premise of insurance in general. That being that you sign up for insurance in case bad things happen. I really don’t expect my house to burn down, but I’ll still pay for insurance in case it does. My premiums may or my not go used, but in the long run, the insurance companies use those payments to pay out for people whose house DID burn down. You get peace of mind, they earn a tidy profit. Win-win.

But if you applied these rules to home insurance, I wouldn’t sign up for home insurance until I smelled smoke, saw water rising or heard the hail start to hit my roof. I wouldn’t sign up for car insurance until after getting out my wrecked car. I wouldn’t even blame my doctor for not signing up for malpractice insurance until after I sued him.

This is just one aspect, I could write on a couple more, but it’s a good example of lots of ideas that “sound good” but in practice are really really awful since they completely ignore human nature and all sorts of natural laws.

It’s a testament to how bad this bill is that awfulness like this is only noticed once even worse parts of the bill are eliminated.

[Crossposted at True North]

Here’s a scam that bloggers may want to be aware of.  Many bloggers own their domain but may very well be tempted by a scam like this, especially new bloggers. The domain appraisal scam used to be a big back in 2005/2006 but I hadn’t heard much about it since. Turns out it’s back!

Here’s how it works, you receive an email (sharrisgo@gmail.com) like this.

We are interested to buy your domain name ECKERNET.COM and offer to buy it from you for 75% of the appraised market value.

As of now we accept appraisals from either one of the following leading appraisal companies:

fleos.com
sedo.com

If you already have an appraisal please forward it to us.

As soon as we have received your appraisal we will send you our payment (we use paypal for amounts less than $2,000 and escrow.com for amounts above $2,000) as well as further instructions on how to complete the transfer of the domain name.

We appreciate your business,

Yours truly,

Steven Harris

You think, “Heh!! Someone is willing to pay me for a domain I really don’t use that much anyway?? Or at least not enough where I couldn’t find another one just as easily?? SURE!” So you charge off to get your domain appraised.

What you find out is you have to pay for domain appraisals, but you figure why not, it’s only $20 or whatever.

You send your appraisal into Mr. Dipshit (aka Steven Harris or whatever name they’re using today) and you never hear another word. Basically he/she/it (probably it) either works for the domain appraiser or is a paid affiliate. All they want it to generate more domain appraisal business, since domain appraisal is a bullshit fabricated industry anyway.

So be aware that this scam is back, and from the looks of it they are alphabetically spamming domain owners, not necessarily from this same email addy/name combination but the text of the email is similiar.

And now you know, and knowing is half the battle….the other half involves blood, lots of it.

Yeah...we've devolved to running informercials now.

I’ve spoken before what is either arrogance, or willful ignorance, on the part of the Obama administration in pretending that past statements just haven’t been made and therefore it’s okay for them to operate however serves them best at this particular moment.  It’s been documented by others on YouTube as well, and now comes another example, this time from the left itself.

BARACK OBAMA: …When you rush these budgets that are a foot high and nobody has any idea what’s in them and nobody has read them.

RANDI RHODES: 14 pounds it was!

BARACK OBAMA: Yeah. And it gets rushed through without any clear deliberation or debate then these kinds of things happen. And I think that this is in some ways what happened to the Patriot Act. I mean you remember that there was no real debate about that. It was so quick after 9/11 that it was introduced that people felt very intimidated by the administration.

So it wasn’t okay when Bush did it, but it is now when you do it? I got it.  Completely understand.

Although his clear recognition of the fact that if you rush bills through Congress, it’s not a good thing and for the most part you get a bad product on the other end.  The only reason you generally have to do that, is if the bill itself is bad, and the author knows it’s bad and wants to rush it through before the public has any idea what’s in it.

They tried that with amnesty and the public revolted and melted the switchboards in Washington.  They tried this with the bailouts and we had all sorts of issues with that Congress claimed ignorance of.  They tried this with Porkulus and we’re just now realizing how crappy that bill was.  Now they want to try this with health care.

Now while a bank bailout may piss you off and sink us more in debt, it’s not likely to directly kill you.  Same with porkulus.  Mostly true with amnesty as well.  But a bad health care bill very well could, yet they still want to rush it through.  They want to rush it through, knowing that when you do that, you end up with a horrible product.

They can claim all the ignorance they want, but we all know that Obama knows that very simple lesson.  His willingness to ignore it and move forward anyway is rather telling about what his true priorities….himself.

It’s always a please when members of Congress get a little too honest.

“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers.

“What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

So he’s not going to read the bill because he couldn’t understand it even if he did.  Sounds like a problem right?

Oh and I don’t mean the problem is with him, although you could probably make a convincing case, but believe it or not I sympathize.  For both personal interest and for political research, I’ve dived into no small number of bills both at the state and federal level and they are written in an entirely different language not known to common man.

However, that shouldn’t be an excuse to not do your job.  I’d say you’re using one problem to justify another, when you should be fixing one or both problems.  Bills are long, arduous and impossible to understand.  Well there is a fix for that.  Limit the scope of bills and simply them.

Don’t believe it can be done? The Constitution setup our entire system of government in only 4543, including the signatures.  The Magna Carta laid the basis for our entire system of law in roughly 2500 words (count varies by the version you reference).   Yet I’m sure the federal regulations on the import of turnips is probably several tens of thousands of words in length.

And if it’s hard to read, simplify it.  True they are written in legalese in order to make the meaning precise, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be made easier to understand.  If you’re going to say “ignorance of the law is no defense”, certainly you have an obligation to make that law understandable to the common man yeah?  And I’m certain to a great degree that limiting the length of such legislation would aid this venture a great deal.

It’s a worth goal to be sure, and it would certainly save me quite a few headaches.  But simply claiming “I’m too stupid to do my job” is less of an excuse and more of a reason you shouldn’t have that job.  If your job is too complex, either get out or else simplify it down to your level.  And if you actually accomplish that, then great, because then we can start teaching constitutional law in third grade…..in between Political Correctness class and Global Climate Change class of course.

The owner of a Missouri dealership is giving away free AK-47s with the purchase of any truck, so CNN interviews him about it. The CNN hosts ignorance about firearms in general and her blind obedience to anti-gun talking points is pretty annoying, but the responses are amusing.

Word is that Norm Coleman is seriously considering a run for Governor, which if he does so would make him the fifty-second Republican that is pursuing the seat.  And heh, why not?? I mean sure he lost to a clown and a wrestler, but at least he beat a dead man.  So why not, he’s got a shot.  Except he doesn’t…

Spokesman Tom Erickson said Monday that Coleman won’t announce whether he’s in or out until March or April. Coleman, who wasn’t made available for an interview with the Associated Press, told WCCO-AM that he’s not “ruling in or ruling out anything regarding the governor’s race.”

March or April is too late.  To have a reasonable chance at winning the Governor’s seat, the GOP candidate has to raise in the neighborhood of $3-5 million.  To have a chance at doing that, you’d have to be in the race right now, raising thousands per day.  Waiting until April means financially you aren’t a realistic option.  Plus keep in mind that most campaigns have already geared up and are starting to hire staffers.  The best workers are already going to be committed far before April, leaving Norm at a financial and logistical disadvantage.

Really all he’s accomplishing is further dividing and complicating an already divided and complicated field of Republican candidates.  Not to mention that the state has already rejected him twice for a statewide seat, and that was before they had to hear his name every single day for about a year.

Norm is not a serious candidate and he needs to accept that.  The longer he flirts with the idea otherwise, the more he hurts other serious candidates.

This is an issue that honestly I thought would come and go but it seems to have caught on with many corners.  Understandably so, considering some of the concern over big government interference in our lives with Obama at the helm.

In the Amazon case, they sold a copy of a book that is in the public domain everywhere but here in the USA, 1984 and Animal Farm (why we have such screwed-up copyright law is another matter entirely). Amazon sold the “books” to people who thought they were buying books. The US copyright holder complained, and Amazon not only removed the book from its shelves, it went into the personal property of Kindle users and deleted the books in question from their machines (giving them a refund, of course).

This has taken on a life of it’s own as a case of Orwellian Big Brother come to life.  Eastasia has never been at war with Oceania Winston!  To a certain extent I understand and sympathize with the outrage.  It’s a bit scary that someone can reach in and grab what you thought you had purchased.

At the same time, I’m not sure this is the best example to hitch this movement to.  In this case, Amazon was selling something it didn’t have the legal right to.  Once notified it retracted the sales, in essence protecting the rights of the copyright owner.  If you bought the Brooklyn Bridge from someone and they later turned out not to be the rightful owner, you wouldn’t object to not taking possession of the bridge as long as your money was returned right?

Analogies have been made that it’s like Amazon “breaking into your house and stealing a book that they changed their minds about selling to you“.  Except it’s not like that at all.  You haven’t physically bought anything.  You’ve bought the right to view something, not a physical object….and as it turns out that sale of the right to view something was invalid.  Plus when you sign up for this service you sign away your rights to anything you’ve bought through this service.

So if you’re really that worried about electronic censorship, be a little more selective in your vendors and actually read your Terms of Service.  Buy something that actually physically resides on your own PC or else buy the physical book.  When you sign on for the convenience of online viewing, you’re also giving up some other aspects of ownership.  This is an issue worth being vigilant of but this is hardly the best example to circle the wagons around.  Amazon made an invalid sale and corrected the situation, end of story.

President Obama’s comment on the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates arrest reveals a much deeper problem with his approach to politics- cronyism. 

The broader public may not have understood the political paybacks involved in jumping the UAW’s unsecured claims ahead of secured creditors in the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies.   There is minimal realization of the politically connected pork dished out in the So-Called-Stimulus package.  But, here, the raw politics of “doing favors for my friends” is on full display.

 Professor Gates is a friend of Obama’s.  He was unhappy with how he was treated by police.  Obama saw fit to use the power of his office to help his friend in a very local, very minor matter.  And he cynically spun through the prism of race relations when it has become known that a multi-ethnic team of cops was on the scene, and the arresting officer himself has taught courses on preventing racial profiling .  

Obama wrapped himself in the cloak of social justice to defend someone who could minimally be defined as “elite”, and with his connections to the POTUS also powerful. 

Perhaps this is the moment when the public begins to realize that the Emperor has no clothes.  It seems clear that Obama’s primary objective across his administration is to use the power of the Presidency and whatever populist sloganeering necessary to benefit his friends with no care as to whom he damages.