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Changing Cards

Corporate Fuckery, Scam Artists

Last Monday morning I went out to run some errands — nothing fancy, just dropping off a document at the tax guy, paying for the sooper-seekrit mailbox, and a quick trip to Kroger for some top-up items.  Basically my spend was less than a hundred dollars, but I knew I had way more than that in the bank account, so no big deal, right?

Wrong.  I got home, check the email and there was a warning message from the bank saying I had less than $100 in my account (I am so glad I have this feature).  When I looked at the account, there was an ATM charge from some company for $336 dollars — a company I’d never heard of nor visited, and when I looked at the details, it noted that the transaction method was a “tap”.

Didn’t happen.

I then called the bank and told them about the fraudulent claim, which got the wheels turning.  Net result:  they changed the transaction to “pending”, but then the crap began:  policy is to issue a new card number/card, which takes ta-da!  up to five business days to process and deliver.  So basically, I end up without an ATM card for that period, plus I have to contact all the autopay vendors and give them the new card number so that my life can continue uninterrupted, without such things as wifi being disconnected and so on — you know the deal.

What disturbs me about all this is that apparently there’s no guarantee that a fraudulent transaction can be “clawed back” if it’s been made against a checking account — it’s considered your problem — but with a credit card, however, it’s the bank’s problem and they have all sorts of ways to get the money back.  Seems weird, but that’s banks for you.

I remember seeing one of those EeewwwChoob videos a while ago wherein some smart money guy said that he refused to use an ATM card, ever, and only used a credit card because of just such a situation.

Here’s my take:  I don’t owe a lot of money on my credit card, and thanks to an upcoming tax refund I could pay it all off without any problem.  (I normally pay 6x the “minimum” each month, so I don’t get stung too badly by their loanshark interest rates.)

I am thinking, now, that maybe I should do what the Smart Money Guy said, do away with the ATM card and treat the paid-off credit card like it’s an ATM card, and just pay the balance in full each month.  (I don’t spend a lot of money on the Visa card so this shouldn’t be a problem, and our income — from New Wife’s job and my SocSec gets automatically transferred out of our current accounts into an interest-bearing account anyway, so we never have that much cash in the current accounts.)  I have full faith in my and New Wife’s self-discipline to do this, by the way, so on that score there should be no problem.

My question for y’all:  if I do the above and pay off the credit card balance in full each month, is there a risk that Global MegaBank Inc. will realize that they’re making no money off their loansharking, only from their transaction fees, and cancel my credit card?

All input is welcome.

Short-Range Zero

Advice, The Gun Thing

Ron Spomer tells you how to sight in your scoped rifle when you don’t have access to a long range.  (You may sometimes need a buddy to help you, I think — Ron does.)  And I have to tell you

Here’s my take on this.

A vast preponderance of shots are made at what I’d call short range:  less than 150 yards.  And if you do most of your hunting in any kind of woodland, it’s likely to be less than that — think 50 yards.  So if you’re doing this kind of shooting, then a 30- or 50-yard zero makes a lot more sense.  (Frankly, if you’re shooting at about 50 yards or less, I seriously question whether you need a scope at all.)

I think the longest shot I ever took back in South Africa was a measured (by pacing off) 325 yards, and I have to tell you, had I been more experienced a hunter back then, I probably would have backed off and not taken it.

Now?  If I were to go hunting at all (which is highly unlikely), I’d set my limit at 100 yards, and probably less than that.  I’d use a low-power scope (maximum 5x) if indeed I used a scope at all — and I’m pretty sure a red-dot scope would do the trick, instead of a crosshair or mil-dot reticle.

Remember that most of the time, you’re shooting at a side plate-sized target, and as such, a 3-MOA sighting group would be more than adequate.

Leave the sub-1″ stuff to the target professionals, and let’s not even begin to talk about the ultra-long distance 1,000 yard shooting.  That’s sniper-grade accuracy, and 99% of all riflemen aren’t snipers or even close to being snipers.  Hell, at my very best I wasn’t a sniper, mostly because of my crappy eyes.  But I was quite a competent hunter.

Know your limitations.

Related Actions

Military, Wars & Other Fun Games

First up, there’s this excellent thought from Bill Lehman (and read all of it because it’s excellent):

Take down their military structure. All of it. Take out their Quds Force, the entire IRGC in as far as we can find it, and leave their government, their military and their military logistics a pile of burning rubble. I would be a fan of flying a few hundred supply runs over Iran, C-17s and C-5s, full of crates of rifles, and ammunition, and dropping them, for the People of Iran to use, to finish the job. Then we need to LEAVE.

And here’s a manifestation of the above:

Thousands of Kurdish fighters have launched a ground invasion in Iran, according to a US official.  The Kurdish militias, based across the border in Iraq, began the offensive in northwestern Iran on Wednesday.  The Kurdish groups are widely seen as the most well-organized faction of the fragmented Iranian opposition and are believed to have thousands of battle-hardened fighters. 

President Donald Trump on Sunday night spoke with the heads of Kurdish militant groups in Iraq to discuss the situation in Iran.  The CIA was exploring plans to arm the Kurdish forces with the aim of sparking a popular uprising, CNN reported Tuesday. 

Yeah, I’m all over this idea, as long as we remember that sometime not so long ago we armed a group called the Taliban to rebel against the Russian invaders of Afghanistan, and that didn’t work out so well.  And I’m also a little apprehensive that these guys are coming over the border from Iraq — FFS, that whole area is a snake pit, isn’t it?

And just to remind everyone:  the PKK (main Kurdish political party) is soft-core Muslim but hardcore Marxist.  If that combination isn’t a toxic brew, I can’t think of a better one.  None of which bodes well for the future.

Me, I’d prefer to drop those rifles and machine guns into towns and villages all over Iran, after first notifying the local resistance leaders — we know who they are, right, CIA? — where and when the guns are going to arrive so that they aren’t just taken by the IRGC fanatics when the crates hit the ground.  Using history as a pointer, this would be akin to randomly air-dropping guns into Nazi-occupied Europe, only to have the SS intercept the shipments and use them for their own purposes, i.e. killing resistance fighters (and a few Jews, just for fun).

It’s all a little complicated and so on, but in this case, anything is better than dropping American boots on the ground to handle the thing.  Once again, a history lesson:  Afghanistan and a little further back, Vietnam.

Guns and ammo are cheap;  American lives are expensive, and worth more than the game.  Especially in this Middle Eastern shit pit.

Yeah, About That

Good Stuff, Marxists, Muzzies

So Iranian protestors are burning down mosques?  Why?  Well, here’s the reason:

These mosques are not places of worship, they serve as operation bases for the regime’s militias in residential neighborhoods. Mosques house armories for the Basij militias. They function as headquarters for repression and temporary detention centers for protesters.

Sounds like an excellent reason to set fire to the things and destroy them, then.  Then there’s this:

In Iran, for decades, mosques served as recruitment and indoctrination centers for the regime. The regime uses them to radicalize vulnerable people and transform them into hate filled killing machines against their own society.

If that sounds familiar, then it should, because we have similar institutions right here in the U.S.

Now I’m not going to suggest doing the same to American Ivy League universities, even though they’re doing pretty much the same thing (and not just with radical Islam, but with radical Marxism as well).  But the above link does help us focus our thinking, does it not?

And for the faint-hearted, I’m suggesting that we shut the damn things down and not burn them to the ground.  (College campuses could be used for so many good things, e.g. art galleries, shopping malls and shooting ranges;  it’d be a waste just to level them.)

Propositions

Elections, Politics

Also in last Tuesday’s Republican ballots were a series of “propositions” — basically, a way for the Texas Republican Party to gauge the feelings of their supporters for ideas that should be considered for inclusion as planks in their party platform in future elections.  They make for interesting reading (with my vote + reasons):

Proposition 1:
Texas property taxes should be assessed at the purchase price and phased out entirely over the next six years through spending reductions. — Yes (government should get only one bite at the cherry, not an annual one;  if they need more money, let them beg for it at election time, or sell bonds)

Proposition 2:
Texas should require any local government budget that raises property taxes to be approved by voters at a November general election. — Yes (one of my buddies recently moved to a “growing” area, and was presented with a 40% increase in his property tax for next year;  municipalities should never think they have an open checkbook)

Proposition 3:
Texas should prohibit denial of healthcare or any medical service based solely on the patient’s vaccination status. — Yes (screw those Covid-type excrescences)

Proposition 4:
Texas should require its public schools to teach that life begins at fertilization. — Yes (although I have some reservations about this, I can see why it’s been suggested)

Proposition 5:
Texas should ban gender, sexuality, and reproductive clinics and services in K-12 schools. — Yes (if the kids feel they need any of those, they can do it with their parents, outside school)

Proposition 6:
Texas should enact term limits on all elected officials. — Yes (although I sometimes like it when we get a good ‘un, I don’t like any politician to get too comfortable in a sinecure)

Proposition 7:
Texas should ban the large-scale export or sale of our groundwater and surface water to any single private or public entity. — Yes (we don’t have a lot of water in the Lone Star State, and we need to guard it jealously)

Proposition 8:
The Texas Legislature should reduce the burden of illegal immigration on taxpayers by ending public services for illegal aliens. — Yes (especially education, which has stuck in my craw for decades)

Proposition 9:
The Republican-controlled Texas Legislature should stop awarding leadership positions, including committee and subcommittee chairmanships and vice chairmanships, to Democrats. — Yes (because Democrats are not to be trusted with any levers of power)

Proposition 10:
Texas should prohibit Sharia Law. — Yes (to address any First Amendment qualms on this issue, see what’s happened in Britishland)

I’ll be interested to see how this all plays out.