obama

The Justice Department is sending letters to banks that hold the mortgages of, as well as the landlords of, property where legal (under California law) marijuana dispensaries are located. In these letters, the Justice Department threatens legal action against the banks and landlords if the tenants aren't evicted within a short time period.

Remember in 2008 when Barack Obama promised to leave the states alone on their marijuana laws? He is now considered the worst President in history on marijuana.

You may have noticed that I've been pretty silent on my blog for the past week or so. I've been so busy with work that I just haven't been able to keep up here. And for the next few weeks, I'm still going to be really busy, but I just wanted to touch on this subject since I have received a few requests asking for what I think.

By now, you probably have read or heard about the assassination of Anwar al-Aulaqi, a New Mexico born man with apparent and alleged ties to terrorism against the United States. And you probably also know that this is at least the second known attempt to take him out of the picture.

There seems to be a lot of questions about the legality and Constitutionality of the killing, as well as the fundamental question of whether this killing in particular was right or wrong. It is important to note that there are three independent questions to answer: legal vs illegal, Constitutional vs unconstitutional, and right vs wrong.

The Obama Justice Department has a draft proposal for amendments to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Among them is to make violations of the CFAA a Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act predicate.

It's pretty obvious that this proposal is meant as a retaliation against hacker groups like Anonymous and LulzSec. If it's not, then the timing couldn't be better. After all, the general public believes that these people do bad things and need to be burned at the stake, so why not nail 'em with RICO charges on top of CFAA charges?

The problem is that the justice system doesn't work that way. First, you have to be able to catch the offenders, and that seems to be quite a problem. Only then can you worry about what to charge them with.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks, you know that Congress reached a "deal" called the Budget Control Act of 2011. The gist of the deal is this: the debt limit gets significantly raised, the budget gets miniscule cuts, and 98% of the House and 94% of the Senate have no say in the process.

That's right. Unless you're lucky enough to be represented by one (or more) of the 12 appointees to the "Super Congress", you've got no representation as to what budget items should be cut or what taxes should be increased. Sound familiar?

The budget deal is being sold to the American People as a "deficit reduction plan" with debt ceiling increases that are "necessary" to prevent the United States from falling into default. Nothing could be further from the truth. And if you're buying their line, you're being played by both sides of the aisle.

From Politico:

Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit.

Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting.

So apparently, if you disagree about what method of fiscal irresponsibility to pursue, you must be a terrorist. I swear the whole "terrorist" label in Washington is turning into one big Jeff Foxworthy joke.

In 2008, Barack Obama campaigned on the promise of reforming America's approach to drug abuse from the current War on Drugs (which causes a very large and far-reaching amount of collateral damage to innocents) to a public health approach — that is, instead of treating all recreational drug users as criminals, he proposed offering addiction recovery and counseling options and seemd to leave a glimpse of hope for decriminalization.

However, on July 22, 2011, he made it clear that decriminalization is not an option in his view. That seems to ignore the fact that criminalization of personal recreational use of naturally-occurring substance is exactly what fuels the War on Drugs.

Well, I just got done wasting 20 minutes of my evening listening to Obama's deficit reduction speech. What I heard was the same ol' smoke an mirrors that we get everyday from Washington, whether the talking head be Democrat or Republican.

However, I did take a few notes.

Early in his speech, President Obama made the usual Democrat claim that President Clinton had a budget surplus. Of course, the basis for that claim is rooted in politics rather than actual numbers. Go ahead and check the data from the U.S. Treasury if you don't believe me.

Later, Obama wrongly compared increased interest rates on mortgages and other credit tools to tax hikes. There's just one fundamental difference: we pay taxes to the government because we earned money, while we pay interest on credit to private (and quasi-private) corporations because we choose to live beyond our means. That's just an apples-to-oranges comparison with the sole purpose of duping the average American.

From the Washington Post:

Wary of a new surge in gas prices, the Obama administration said Thursday it is selling off 30 million barrels of oil from the country’s emergency reserves as part of a broader international response to lost oil supplies caused by turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly Libya.

The release from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve will be the largest ever, amounting to half of a 60 million-barrel international infusion of oil planned for the world market over the next month.

"Particularly Libya." Really? Libya's not even a player in the U.S. oil markets, accounting for less than 1% of imports and therefore less than a 0.5% of the supply here. That's what we call a "negligible" amount.

In 2008, Barack Obama claimed that Presidential signing statements were an unconstitutional exercise of power. In fact, he said "I will obey the Constitution of the United States - we're not going to use signing statements as a way to do an end run around Congress."

In 2008, President Obama complained about the cost of the War in Iraq. Throughout his presidency, he's used Iraq and Afghanistan (both wars authorized by Congress) as opportunities to blame George W. Bush for our current fiscal mess.

Now the Pentagon has come out with the price tag so far for the unauthorized War in Libya. The total so far? $600 million.

191 Tomahawk cruise missiles: $268.8 million.

Downed F15-E fighter jet: $60 million.

And the list keeps going. B-2 Bombers were even flown from Missouri to Libya at a cost of $10,000 per hour.