Month: December 2024

Nice Dream, Not Gonna Happen

Bad News

There are dreams that are achievable, unrealistic dreams that can be achieved but where the odds are hugely stacked against you, and then there are those dreams that are just… dreams without any chance of achievement.

Achievable dreams would include that cherry/unfired WWII-era 1911, the restored & modernized E-type Jag, etc.  They are out there, you just haven’t found one yet or else you don’t have the moolah on hand to buy it when you do.

Unrealistic dreams… well, there’s that night in bed with Salma Hayek, winning Powerball, finding that cherry/unfired WWII-era 1911 for only $500… you get my drift.

And then there is that category of dreams where there’s no chance in hell of success.  And here’s where I’m going to get into trouble, but oh well:

Space travel and extraterrestrial planet colonization.

What bollocks.  Given the vast distances between planets, even-vaster distances between habitable (by us) planets, it requires not only advanced science of a degree unimaginable — which may be possible — but most of all it requires a bending of the laws of physics (e.g. the time/space continuum, the frailty and short shelf life of the human body, etc.), which is not so easy.

So while it’s all very nice to ooh and aah over Elon Musk’s latest wizardry, at some point realization is going to set in and we’re going to discover that it’s just an impossible dream.

Nice song, great lyrics, but that’s no way to go through life.

Let’s face it:  we’re stuck here on good old Planet Earth, and that’s the beginning and end of it.  We’ll just have to deal with it, and come to terms with the fact that in a few million years’ time, this planet will become uninhabitable (swallowed by the Sun, our own red star in the making) and all life as we know it will cease.

(I don’t want to hear about Mars — when our sun becomes a red dwarf, it too will be swallowed into the eternal fire / black hole whatever.)

And then, to quote Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister of Great Britain (1902 – 1905):

“Imperishable monuments and immortal deeds, death itself and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been. The energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest.”

He may have got the dimming of the sun wrong — it’s more likely the opposite — but the final outcome will be the same.

At least it’s in the very distant future, so there’s that.

Out Of Control

Government Thugs

Here’s one that will make your nose bleed and your trigger-actuating digit twitch:

One of the more egregious abuses of power is the U.S. Department of Justice’s abuse of its power to harass citizens and companies through frivolous or dramatically expanded charges if that company/person pushes back against their legal threats.

An example of this is an October 21, 2024 lawsuit that the Biden administration brought against Rocket Mortgage because they followed the law.

That’s right, you read it correctly, Rocket Mortgage is having to spend millions of dollars in legal fees to defend itself against charges around actions they legally have no control over.

The DOJ lawsuit stems from a claim that a home was unfairly appraised and somehow that was Rocket Mortgages’ fault.

At this point, people who know anything at all about the business will be going “Huh?  What about Dodds-Frank?”  and rightfully so.  Why?

It is important to note that while a mortgage company may contract with the appraiser, the law requires that the appraisal be completely independent of the mortgage company. In other words, it is illegal for the mortgage company to put their thumb on the scale in the determination of the value of a house under consideration for financing. In fact, to ensure appraisal independence is maintained, mortgage lenders contract through third-party appraisal management companies and have no authority over the independent appraisers.

Yet:

Yet, somehow, the Justice Department chose to splash Rocket Mortgage’s corporate name as the lead in their October 21, 2024 press release announcing a suit for racial discrimination in a clear attempt to grab headlines at the expense of the online mortgage innovator.  Rocket Mortgage has received numerous customer service satisfaction awards from J.D. Power, and the decision by DOJ to very publicly seek to do harm to this company through their news release headline is a demonstration of the soft power to destroy which an out of control Justice Department possesses.

Even worse:

In an Orwellian twist, the Biden DOJ is seeking to harm a company’s reputation using the argument that they should have broken that law by putting pressure on the appraiser to come up with the right number in direct violation of the law.

In true socialist fashion, only the intentions are important.  All that other inconvenient stuff — you know, existing law, the Constitution, actual right vs. wrong [stop sniggering] — none of that matters as long as DEI (All Hail DEI!!) is satisfied.

And if you dare to resist, say hello to lawyers’ fees, millions and millions of dollars’ worth.

The New DoJ — Trump’s — needs to end this shit, and have the charges dismissed, with Rocket’s costs reimbursed, said costs to be partially clawed back from the retirement accounts of all the individuals who initiated, authorized and executed this travesty.

And lest you think that it’s only a corporation involved here, and who cares about them?  let me remind you of a certain individual named Randy Weaver, who refused to break the law at the behest of a federal agency (on this occasion, during the Dark Time Of Clinton).  Things didn’t go well for him, did they?

The principle is precisely the same.

And if you think this one is bad, wait till you see the next post.

No Resistance

Corporate Fuckery, Government Thugs, Shootin' Time, Surveillance Society

When it comes to hatred of corporations, I yield to no man thereof.  Having worked in the festering cesspits of same on more than a couple of occasions, I know how they operate, and the depths of corporate bastardy in which they have no problems swimming.

This is especially loathsome when it comes to rolling over and offering up the corporate belly for the godless government agencies to scratch (and even claw, sometimes).

Small businesses, by comparison, have shown a great deal more spine than their larger brethren.  One has only to recall that gym owner in New Jersey who, when overcoming the totalitarian state government agents and the governor during the Great Covidiocy, ended up giving all of them the finger when the eighty (80!) charges against them were all dismissed with prejudice.

Back when I was running a supermarket chain’s loyalty program, I always made it clear that individuals’ right to privacy was paramount when it came to their shopping data and habits.  On more than one occasion I told divorce lawyers to piss off when they came snooping around, a couple of times facing them down when they threatened me with a subpoena.  (When I shared one of these incidents with the guys who were in my share group, one owner of a small chain said, “Oooh, I wish that some asshole would come after me with a subpoena;  I’d go to jail with the greatest of pleasure, and the positive PR I’d get for the company would be worth millions!”  He was seventy-five years old at the time.)

Of course, the banking industry — to a man, it seems — shows no such defiance when the feds come a-calling:

A new report released by the House Judiciary Committee, in partnership with the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, reveals extensive violations and abuse of the law by the federal government.

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According to congressional investigators, the FBI abused the Bank Secrecy Act in order to work with banks to target opponents of the Biden administration and Trump supporters. 

“The information obtained during the Committee and Select Subcommittee’s investigation, and detailed in this report, is concerning. Documents show that federal law enforcement increasingly works hand-in-glove with financial institutions, obtaining virtually unchecked access to private financial data and testing out new methods and new technology to continue the financial surveillance of American citizens.

“Documents obtained by the Committee and Select Subcommittee demonstrate that federal law enforcement increasingly relies on financial institutions for highly sensitive information about Americans without legal process. Federal law enforcement has effectively deputized financial institutions to advance its investigations and to gain access to the information that financial institutions possess. As financial institutions’ capacity to track and gather data on Americans continues to increase, federal law enforcement will continue to be incentivized to rely on banks for easy access to sensitive information about Americans’ private lives.”

Now I can — sorta — see the point if the purpose is to track down gangster money-launderers or tax evaders (and even then, I’m skeptical in the extreme because nunya).  But that wasn’t the case here:

In a previous investigation done by the Committees, investigators found the FBI was flagging purchases that included “MAGA,” “patriot” and even bibles. As Townhall reported in January 2024: 

Federal law enforcement agencies partnered with a number of financial institutions to flag transactions with the terms “MAGA,” “Trump” and more. They also monitored transactions at stores like Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shop. Other purchases linked to religious texts, like Christian bibles, were flagged under the guise of “preventing extremism.”

Further, the FBI has conducted hundreds of thousands of illegal searches without proper warrants in recent years.

I realize that Trump’s DOJ is going to have its hands full for the first couple years of the new Administration.  But I hope they can spare a few moments to track down the bastards who authorized this nonsense, prosecute and imprison them.

Then again, as it was the FBI themselves who indulged in this un-Constitutional larceny, I’m not holding out much hope.

And they wonder why pics like these are so popular…

Update

Friends and Family, Immigration

It gives me great pleasure to announce to y’all that New Wife has finally jumped through the last citizenship hoop, and is now our newest U.S. citizen.

(The actual swearing-in is in two weeks’ time, but that’s just the formality.)

We arrived at USCIS promptly as ordered at 2pm, and she was interviewed promptly at 3.45pm (#Gummint).  The interview — after all the shit we’ve had thrown at us over the past THREE YEARS — was more or less a formality:  she passed her citizenship quiz with flying colors, and considering that she speaks English rather better than I do, the token literacy test was likewise a breeze.

She celebrated by falling asleep on the couch within about 30 seconds after dinner.  (Being a worrier, no amount of reassurance from me could assuage her terror at the prospect of being kicked out of the country because #RandomGummintBastardy, so the post-interview stress dump took her out.)

But that’s all in the past, now:  as soon as she gets her passport I’m going to take her somewhere where she can toss it at Passport Control with a merry laugh as she returns to her new home country.