Give Me a Break category archive
I Get Email 2
Really lame emails from major national insolvent banks.
The subject line said “confidential.” (They had my email because I signed up to get my whatchamaycallit W-4 whatever form the interest is reported on? last year). What the heck is confidential about this?
Call us to discuss your mortgage and services that
may be of interest!Consider one of these simple options to contact us, check your account status and make your monthly mortgage payment if you wish.
Option 1: Go to www.[bankname].com to automatically make your payment.
Option 2: Call us, at [toll-free number] and select Option 2 to make your payment by phone.
Please call us today!
I’m not going to call them to discuss anything (‘cept maybe their bonuses, but you know the poor minimum wage bozo who is doing honest work by answering the telly phone doesn’t get a bonus–after all, he or she is doing honest work; that’s not bonus-worthy).
They send me a bill. I send them a payment.
They have no other services that may be of interest.
Boneheads.
Oh, yeah. It’s ungrammatical also. It is a sin to omit the last comma in a series.
Ungrammatical boneheads.
Swampwater Redux 0
Jesus.
Typical American marketing. If the contents smell, change the packaging; keep the contents.
Mercenaries by any other name are still mercenaries beholdin’ to no one other than the person who signs their paycheck.
Blackwater is not a security company, for heaven’s sake.
Brinks, ADT, and Simplex are security companies.
Blackwater is a private army for hire, a plaything for someone who never outgrew his GI Joes, and it has no place on American soil.
“I Get Aid. You Get Welfare.” 2
Just like money for workers is “pork-barrel spending” and money for bankers is “asset relief.” (Aside: Jeez oh man! you can’t make this stuff up.)
It’s just a question of symantics I’ve been doing computers too long semantics (emphasis added):
“In Nadya’s view, the money that she gets from the food stamp program … and the resources disabilities payments she gets for her three children are not welfare,” he said. “They are part of programs designed to help people with need, and she does not see that as welfare.”
Via Skippy.
Extremely jaundiced commentary here, via Sullivan.
Sour Orange Juice 0
Newt Gingrich is on Marconi’s Magic Box talking about how those who live in civilized society shouldn’t have to help pay for it tax cuts.
A Toad in a Tuxedo Is Still a Toad . . . 3
. . . and this is bigotry, no matter what fancy duds its supporters choose for it.
Sadly, I reckon there will never be a shortage of those who wish to build their political fortunes on fear and hatred.
Oh, Stop with the Republicrap Already 0
Via Dan Froomkin (emphasis added):
“‘I don’t think he needs to apologize. I think what he needed to do is take bold, aggressive action and he has,’ Cheney said. ‘I don’t think anybody saw it coming.’ . . .
Who saw it coming?
Everyone. Anyone.
Rubini. Krugman. Krauss. Just to name three.
But “I don’t think anyone saw it coming” is sure a nice out for those who did it, ain’t it.
Fool. Money. Parted. Soon. 3
Regular readers know that I make no apologies for my faith. It just is.
Faith is the evidence of things unseen, not the denial of things seen.
And, in the full light of that, I have to say that this is gross beyond words. Totally took the edge off my M*A*S*H rerun.
Never Too Old 0
AARP USA:
“Here he’s 50 years old, getting his AARP card, and here he’s being redeployed with all these 18-year-olds,” said Paul’s wife, Linda Bandel.
“I can understand, say, ‘Here, we have this assignment for you stateside. Go do your training,'” said Paul Bandel. “But, ‘Hey, here’s a gun, go back to the desert.'”
If I were slogging through the desert with a full pack when I was 18, I sure wouldn’t have wanted to depend on the 50-year-old me trying to keep up.
But YMMV.
All together now, sing the Bushie theme song.
Via Raw Story.
Where Did the TARP Money Go . . . 0
. . . other than to bonuses down the tubes?
Bill Shein reviews talking points for banks designed to address that question. A sample:
BAD: “Our massive bonuses from the last few years — based on illusory, phony profits from fictional mortgage-backed securities — are ours to keep. Isn’t that awesome? Don’t you wish you worked for a huge bank and not the Associated Press? Send me your résumé and I’ll see what I can do.”
The Republican Party Breaks New Ground in Stupid 0
(Yeah, I know this is going to be blogged to death and no one will notice my little rantings back here in the last row, but, as my mother would have said, “Honestly!“)
Lead* from The Hill:
Gunnar Myrdal said that “the Negro problem in America is a white man’s problem.”
Clearly, these Republicans do have quite a problem.
I will not pretend to understand the dynamics of contemporary race relations in the United States. I will claim to understand a lot of the history of them, because I’ve studied it. And I have lived through major changes in them, from growing up under Jim Crow to living, these days, thankfully, not under Jim Crow.
Anyone who would argue that racial prejudice–not to mention religious prejudice, sex (“gender,” by God! is a grammatical concept–it has to do with words, not persons) prejudice, and other types of prejudice are not part of American society is a fool or a self-justifying bigot or a combination thereof.
Now, I’m not arguing that the “Barack the Magic Negro” guy is personally a bigot. I don’t know the gentleman and, fortunately, hope never to meet him.
I will argue and have argued that the Republican Party made itself the party of bigotry with the odious “Southern strategy.” Whether or not individual party hacks leaders were personally bigots is immaterial; the party set out to take advantage of bigotry for electoral gain (in much the same way as it cynically recruited fundamentalist right-wing Christians with its phony-baloney “family values” rhetoric).
I will say this with great certainty: Anyone who’s lived through any part of the 60 years of the current civil rights struggle and hasn’t figured out what he can’t say (or do) in public without getting into trouble is too stupid for words.
(That, of course, eminently qualifies him for RNC Chairperson.)
Steve has more over at ASZ. A nugget:
(The Hill via Huffington Post.)
______________________
* It’s “lead,” as in the “lead into the story,” not “lede,” dammit. Misspelling a word does not make it more important or more special.
Television Hell 2
All my favorite cable reruns have been replaced by extremely stupid Christmas movies.
Not good Christmas movies.
Really stupid, vapid, mindless ones.
Bah! Humbug! 2
A fool and his money . . . .
The Best Argument I’ve Seen for Gun Control 0
Not that I favor gun control–I’m profoundly ambivalent about the issue–but the sight of Oregon University Young Republicans with guns they clearly don’t know how to use properly, well, see for yourself:
Their stances are wrong, their grips are wrong, they’re holding the weapons at the wrong angles. The list, as they say, goes on.
Guns are nasty, noisy, smelly things that can hurt people. They must be treated with respect.
Furrfu.
Via OLE.
“And the Greatest of These Is Love” 0
Faith, hope, and charity. Over at Mithras’s place.
One More Time: The Internet Is a Public Place 0
Oh, my:
If it’s not something you want everyone to see, don’t show it to everyone.
H/T Karen for the link.
First Amendment 0
Down the hall, second door on the right. What he said.
Aside: Back when I grew up Southern Baptist, Baptists believed in separation of church and state. Why they have chosen to become establishmentarians is beyond me.
No religion ever won a convert by ramming the damned religion down other persons’ throats. It may have won compliance, but not converts.
Jesus.