Why should Republicans have all the fun?

Dear Governor Spitzer:

How could you?

I'm not talking about your dalliances with a call-girl. As certain Republicans and other professional moralists have demonstrated time and again, that kind of thing is par for the course these days. No, I'm talking about how you ignored your better judgment and took the advice of the gubernatorial assistant in your pants.

Back when you were The Sheriff of Wall Street, you should have known that you had some very powerful enemies who would want nothing more than to get revenge on you. When you became governor, with a mandate to dismantle and reconstruct New York's notoriously dysfunctional state government, you should have expected that those who have benefited from the status quo for decades would stop at nothing to frustrate and discredit you. You should have behaved accordingly, refusing to give your enemies any easy opportunity to strike. Instead, you literally bared your flanks.

At least you didn't insult our intelligence by telling us that you did not have sex with that woman. I personally hope that you do survive this incredible blunder. There have certainly been people in Albany and Washington who have done things many orders of magnitude worse than what you've been accused of. And unlike some, I do not wish to see you cop out and resign from office. After over three decades of watching my home state sink further and further into decline, no thanks at all to certain governors who went before you, you were, and in my humble opinion are still, a breath of very fresh air.

Don't screw up like this again, OK?

ADDENDUM - Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks that someone in Washington's not merely prosecuting wrongdoing here, but is actively trying to smear Governor Spitzer.

Vonage Out, In with POTS

Enough is enough.

After having had my fill of their mediocre-to-non-functional telephone service, I closed my Vonage account this morning. And I'll tell you that it was no easy task. First of all, I could find no contact information on their official web site. So I filed a complaint with the New Jersey Better Business Bureau. After about 3 weeks, Vonage e-mailed me a copy of the message they sent to the BBB in response to my complaint, in which their representative said “As stated in the Terms of Service, for the purpose of security, customers are required to contact us if they wish to discontinue the Service. “. Yeah, right.

I called the number mentioned in their letter (1-866-243-4357), and was connected to a Mr. Lopez in a back-office in the Philippines. (Why any American firm has to farm out so-called customer service to some poor schlubs halfway around the world, who are probably getting paid far less than what typical American phone slaves used to earn, is beyond me, but hey, that's progress, right?) Even though I made it clear that I wanted to terminate my Vonage account immediately if not sooner, Mr. Lopez kept on trying – again , again and again - to sell me more Vonage gimmicks and service plans, even offering to charge me only half my monthly fee for I guess 6 months or so if I stayed with them. For several minutes Mr. Lopez and I had a pointless back-and-forth exchange in which I would reiterate my request to terminate my account and Mr. Lopez would immediately ignore my request with an "OK, but..." and then toss out another Vonage come-on. When I told him I didn't want to hear any more scripted sales pitches, he replied that he was making them not from scripts but “from the heart”. Oh, please!

After about 5 more minutes of that, I told him in no uncertain terms that I was no longer interested Vonage in any way, shape manner or form, and asked him one last time to terminate my account. Then I hung up.

A few minutes later my Vonage line stopped functioning, which indicated to me that Mr. Lopez had finally honored my initial request. The fact that I was now disconnected was confirmed when I made a follow-up call to Vonage at the same toll-free number. This time, I got a “Rafael” who said he was located in Vonage's corporate headquarters in Holmdel, NJ. I asked Rafael what I should do with the interface box Vonage supplied me with now that I was no longer a customer. He told me that it was not necessary for me to ship it back, and that I would not be charged for it.

I have never had an experience like this with Verizon, Time-Warner or AT&T. Never before have I been treated in such a hucksterish, unprofessional manner. It'll be interesting to see if I continue to get charged by Vonage for the service that I am now not receiving. Oh yes, I'm told that the New Jersey Attorney General's office has one person in it whose job it is to handle complaints about Vonage.

So much for voice over IP (VOIP). It's back to standard phone service I go.

Tough shit, Dubya (why there might be hope after all)

"Congress' failure to pass this legislation was irresponsible. ... It will leave our nation increasingly vulnerable to attack. ... It is unfair and unjust to threaten [telecommunications] companies with financial ruin only because they are believed to have done the right thing and helped their country". - President Bush in his weekly radio address, 23-February-08









In a rare display of spine, Democrats in the House Of Representatives let the dishonestly-named “Protect America Act” expire rather than permanently sanction the lawless practice of warrantless wiretapping and grant legal immunity to the telecommunications companies which made it happen. President Bush practically accused the Democrats of handing the country over to our enemies on a silver platter.

Dubya, I've got a newsflash for you. America has always had enemies. And you know what? We've dealt with them. And we did it without turning America into a Stalinistic surveillance state.

For instance, ever hear of Adolf Hitler? He was one of the worst criminal sociopaths ever to hold high office. He had a powerful army at his disposal. He was bent on conquering the world, and he almost did it. He declared war on America while his buddy, Japanese Emperor Hirohito was using his air force to bomb the hell out of our naval base at Pearl harbor. It was the most destructive war in human history, but we won it. Did we have wartime security? We sure did. But our government basically left the Constitution intact. When authorities caught a gang of Nazi spies in the New York area, they followed standard criminal law proceedings. The spies were arrested, tried, convicted of espionage, and then executed on New York State's electric chair. No USA PATRIOT Act, no warrantless wiretapping.

How about the Soviet Union? Talk about an enemy. Their leaders once vowed “We will bury you!” No mere ramshackle gang of terrorists with box cutters, they had the world's largest army. They had enough nuclear weapons to reduce not just our country but the entire planet to a fine, radioactive mist. Some were on military bases, some were being moved constantly on railroads and still others traveled unseen on submarines, each of which could carry enough nuclear missiles to wipe out several major U.S. cities in one go. We eventually defeated the Soviet Union, without turning our society into a mirror of their failed totalitarian state.

Pardoning telecom companies for being accomplices in your unwarranted, wrongful surveillance of thousands of law-abiding American citizens would mean the final triumph of official lawlessness. You claim that it was vital for national security. I say to you that gathering dirt on citizens is nothing but a classic instrument of tyranny.

It would be tempting to call you a tyrant, Mister Bush, but that would be unnecessarily glorifying you. All I see in you is a pitiful man who has had everything handed to him all his life by his rich and well-connected daddy, who has never had to do any real work in his life, let alone fight alongside other members of his generation in the Vietnam war. Your drug and alcohol abuse has led you to embrace a twisted, perverted version of religion and given you the paranoiac notion that you are doing God's will. I'm glad that the House of Representatives has finally lived up to its name and, at least this time, delivered you the defeat that you deserve.

More than a jittery feeling

"I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards." - Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Michigan campaign stop, January 18, 2008








Under the heading of “Stranger than Fiction”:

Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is jazzing up his campaign by playing bass guitar in a band he calls “Capitol Offense” (yuk, yuk, yuk!!). Joining him for part of his campaign tour is Barry Godreau, a former member of the 1970's arena-rock band, Boston. One of the tunes Capitol Offense has featured is the 1976 hit single, “More Than A Feeling”, which has also been used as background music in a Huckabee campaign ad. Trouble is ,Tom Scholz, lead singer-songwriter of Boston and the guy who wrote that song didn't give his permission for it to be performed in public, let alone by a band fronted by a man who if elected would probably do whatever it took to get rock music (and “liberal media” news) off of every radio station in America.

Mr. Scholz has publicly expressed his disapproval for Mr. Huckabee's philosophy in general and Mr. Godreau's actions in particular. Mr. Godreau has pretty much chosen to ignore Mr. Scholz's admonishments. Fred Bramante, who was chairman of Huckabee's New Hampshire campaign chimed in: "Gov. Huckabee plays 'Sweet Home Alabama.' Does that mean Lynyrd Skynyrd is endorsing him? He plays 'Louie Louie.' Does that mean the Kingsmen are endorsing him?"

Regardless of whoever does or doesn't endorse Governor Huckabee (who by the way, stands a good chance of becoming John McCain's running mate since McCain has to somehow appease the religious right), what bothers me the most is the image of a virulent, avowed religious extremist trying to make himself look like a regular guy by playing in a band that covers classic rock tunes.

Ramayana Remixed

Why There Is No Hope - Go ahead, insult my intelligence! I love it!

The following paragraph was taken from an article in the Southern Poverty Law Center's magazine Intelligence Report. The article concerns an installment of The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News. The story under discussion is one on which Mr. O'Reilly asserted that gangs of homosexuals armed with pink pistols were terrorizing American cities and recruiting children into the gay and lesbian lifestyle. To back up his story, O'Reilly turned to Fox “news analyst” Rod Wheeler, who it seems once worked as a corporate security officer for McDonald's.

”...Wheeler told the Report that he spent seven years in professional law enforcement before going to work as a corporate security officer for McDonald's Corp., a job he has since left. ... Just this spring, he publicly warned that the Big Mac is vulnerable to bioterrorist attacks at "250 points" during production.”

Well heck, I'd have to say that the company itself is a bioterrorist threat, and a mighty successful one at that. Thanks to Mickey-D's and their competitors, obesity-related illnesses are at an all-time high, Americans' idea of what food is supposed to look and taste like has been thoroughly debauched, American retail and service-sector workers have only slightly more rights than a Soviet conscript-laborer and real wages are at their lowest level in 60 years. Try and top that, Osama Bin Laden!

Read the whole business here:

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/news/item.jsp?aid=274&site_area=1

One costly fiasco is not enough!

"As former US military leaders, we strongly caution against the use of military force against Iran," -

-Lt Gen Robert Gard, a former military assistant to the US defense secretary

-Gen Joseph Hoar, a former commander-in-chief, US Central Command

-Vice Adm Jack Shanahan, a former director of the Center for Defense Information

In 2002, our Dear Leader (and our liberal media) started dishing dirt on Iraq. We were told that Saddam was behind the 9-11 terrorist attacks (even though our intelligence agencies could find no such connection). Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (even though the most diligent inspections uncovered little or nothing). Saddam Hussein was a murderer and a tyrant - which he was, but that didn't stop the United States from supporting him for many years because (1) he was at war with Iran, a country we were miffed at, and (2) after the Iran-Iraq war was over, he kept a lid on internal dissent and kept the oil flowing for American oil companies. When the deal went sour, the drumbeat began; “WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!!!!! MUSHROOM CLOUDS OVER WASHINGTON!!!!”

I do believe the world is better off without Saddam Hussein (or “So-Damn-Insane” as one friend referred to him). Fact is, if all we'd wanted to do was depose him, we could have dispatched an elite tactical squad to pluck him out of the presidential palace and have him on a plane to Guantanamo before most Iraqis even got the news. In other words, the big mess that's been made of Iraq in our names and with our money didn't have to be.

It's been a while since Mr. Bush's much-televised “Mission Accomplished” celebration. Would that it were true, that American friends and loved ones (to say nothing of Iraqi civilians) were no longer getting killed or maimed, that our tax dollars were going to other things (like putting New Orleans back in order), that our administration were functioning more like an administration and less like a slapstick comedy troupe.

Now the drums are beating again for war with Iran. George Dubya has played the Weapons of Mass Destruction card again (“Nucular devices”), even though American intelligence has found that Iran abandoned their nuclear weapons program four years ago. Bush, Cheney and the usual gang of scoundrels are all hot to get us into another costly no-win war, probably just to thumb their nose at Hilary.

Between our misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, our military is stretched pretty thin. If our half-witted power-tripper administration does decide to invade Iran, they're going to need fresh beef. Which of course means that high school and college kids all over the Land of the Free are going to be drafted.

If you do not care for the Bush-Cheney program, then you'd better speak up now. I understand that certain Senators have introduced bills forbidding invasion of Iran. A call to your senator would seem to be of vital importance right now. Find out how to contact your U.S. Senators by following this link:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Please do make a call, send a fax or send an e-mail now. Your life, the lives of your family members and the fate of your country may depend upon it.