Entries from February 2008 ↓

George W. Bush is not as stupid as he often looks, sounds, or seems to be. If he was, he wouldn’t be pushing Congress to pass a bill retroactively giving immunity to the telecommunication companies that illegally wiretapped US citizens for the president’s illegal KGB civilian spying program.

An initial act, allowing warrantless tapping of phone calls and e-mails of suspected terrorists, expired on 17 February but did not grant immunity.

Lawsuits have been filed against some of the firms which took part.

They are accused of violation of privacy.

He told the White House on Tuesday “abusive” lawsuits against telecoms firms would “aid our enemies” by teaching them how to duck surveillance.

He went on to say that when he said enemies, he meant the fake ones in his phony war on an abstract concept commonly referred to as the “War on Terror”. He clarified that he did not mean the country’s true enemy, which is to say, the Bush Administration.

(Image courtesy of BoingBoing.net)

If this is true, it will not only be the coup of the century, but funny to boot.

In 1934, Dr. A. Nordenholz wrote a book called “Scientology: Science of the Constitution and Usefulness of Knowledge” which reportedly scans pretty closely, if not too closely, to L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology, according to those who read it. (You can read the first two chapters of Nordenholz’ book here.)

Of course, if you’re not a former Scientology member, you can’t really say beyond a shadow of a doubt that Hubbard copied Nordenholz because unlike other religions, Scientologist literature is only available to members who pay for it.

Maybe this book is the reason why — you can’t prove plagiarism unless you have two texts to compare to each other, n’est pas?

According to an article by the BBC, certifiableed financial genius and Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke has stated that he may cut interest rates *again*:

In his semi-annual report to the US Congress, Mr Bernanke said the Fed would continue to “act in a timely manner as needed to support growth”.

Analysts said his comments increased the likelihood of another rate cut at the Fed’s next meeting on 18 March.

Are you kidding me?

Okay, it seems counterintuitive for any rational American to be upset about interests rates being cut, I mean, it’s going to prevent a recession, right?

WRONG!

Here’s what happens when the fed cuts rates: mortgage, loan, and credit APRs decrease by fractions of a percent, which the Fed hopes will spur people taking out newer, bigger loans at the lower APR to pay off those old, high ones, also known as refinancing (re-fi). When people re-fi, banks can try and sell more money than they need to them, so that the borrowers can spend the extra cash while paying the same amount on their home or credit card (with credit cards, it’s called a balance transfer onto a newly opened account. Car loans are immune to this sort of re-fi). Even if you just take the exact amount to pay off the high interest balance and end up with lower monthly payments overall, this will free up your wallet for extra spending and spur the economy.

Now, here’s the problem: It Doesn’t Work Like That.

What will happen is that your credit card rate will decease by a fraction of a percent. If you are in such dire straights that you need to refi to free up cash to pay on that soon-to-be-repo’d house, sorry, but your credit probably sucks so much right now that no one’s going to lend to you anyway. So you fail, or more accurately, the Fed fails you.

And then there are those of us who have high-yield savings accounts and little to no debt. All this is doing is decreasing your savings because that tiny fraction of a percent you’re saving on my credit cards (assuming that you don’t pay your cards in full every month like I do) isn’t going to make up for the half a percent (or more) hit your bank account interest rate (you know, what they pay *you*) will take, so if you’re are responsible borrower, you lose too! The Fed fails again!

The only people who will benefit are those Middle Class Jerks who live beyond their means, who bounce from 0% card to 0% card with their massive balances from vacations to wherever the $160k-$80k/year people go, who’ll refi their homes to make repairs, who’ll buy repo’d homes and cars and flip them in a few years, who have no savings or retirement accounts because Social Security will take care of things, who vote Republicican….

…I’ve said too much, haven’t I?

I don’t know about the rest of you, but the theme song to Barney (that “I Love You” song the giant purple dinosaur sings. If you’re not familiar with it, I’m sure the President is…) sends chills up my spine, and not because as a young girl, I installed a hack so that the bosses and demons in Doom sang it when they snuck up behind you in dark hallways on Mars/The Moon/Wherever the hell that portal to hell was. There’s something just really, really disturbing about a rather effeminate purple t-rex telling children how much he loves them (and loves to kiss them! HELLO!)

Apparently, I’m not the only one (who finds the song disturbing, played Doom as a child, or both) because the US military prisons have, apparently, been using it along with a few other songs I find annoying, including:

Bulls on Parade – Rage Against the Machine
Stayin’ Alive – The Bee Gees
Babylon – David Gray
Bodies – Drowning Pool
Kim – Eminem
Enter Sandman – Metallica.

I hope that they paid for the rights to Enter Sandman — we all know litigious Metallica can be when it comes to downloads of their music, and I’m sure playing it for untold numbers of people counts as performance.

LINK: The Torture Playlist

We Americans like to think of ourselves as a progressive lot. We pat ourselves on the back for free speech, even though 20% of high school students do not believe it’s a big deal, and like to think of ourselves as the land of the free.

We who live in the so-called Blue States also like to believe ourselves superior to those hicks from the sticks in the Bible Belt, those inbred Red State types. They ignore all evidence, we say, and just run with their eagerly embraced ignorance.

Wrong on both counts, lads.

A controversy has been brewing on the Web since a “60 Minutes” segment failed to appear on a CBS affiliated TV station in Alabama last night. The report covered a bitter flashpoint between Democrats and the Bush administration: the case of Don Siegelman, a former Democratic governor of Alabama who was jailed for corruption last June.

So hot was the anticipation of the segment in left-leaning circles that one political site published an article, “Bama TIVOs at the ready for ‘60 Minutes’.” But many Alabamans did not see initial broadcast of the report, which included new allegations that Karl Rove, President Bush’s former top adviser, waged a campaign against Mr. Siegelman.

Instead, just before the segment was to start, people in the northern part of the state who were tuned in to WHNT-TV, Channel 19 in Huntsville, found this on their screen instead:

We apologize that you missed the first segment of 60 Minutes tonight featuring ‘The Prosecution of Don Siegelman.’ It was a technical problem with CBS out of New York.

LINK: Media Blackout Update: Pakistan and Alabama?

Except, when reached for comment, CBS said there was no difficulty. It was a transmissions problem on Channel 19’s end, probably due to an editorial decision.

What?

“There is no delicate way to put this: the WHNT claim is not true. There were no transmission difficulties. The problems were peculiar to Channel 19, which had the signal and had functioning transmitters.” I was told that the decision to blacken screens across Northern Alabama “could only have been an editorial call.”

Of course, then Channel 19 back-peddled faster than the President trying to reverse a bicycle. It was the receiver in Alabama that caused the problem. It was absolutely, positively not an editorial decision.

But the assurance alone seemed unlikely to appease all of his viewers. According to Mr. Pylant, the problem was fixed quickly, resulting in only 12 minutes of down time. But that mostly covered the controversial segment, which lasted about 13 minutes. (”Strange coincidence,” one viewer called it.)

Afterward, the station took measures to counteract any appearance of censorship, while also presumably bringing in some nice ratings for its own local programming. The missed segment was broadcast on the local newscast later on Sunday evening, and posted on its Web site. (Hmm.)

I wonder how much else in Alabama and our neighboring Red States ends up down the Memory Hole? At least Pakistan, Iran, China, and other censorship-embracing countries are upfront about their tactical measures to keep bad press from the eyes and ears of the viewing public.

I can’t help but wonder if maybe election coverage in some areas isn’t dissimilar to the time Diamond Joe Quimby ran against Sideshow Bob on the Simpsons, complete with computer-added flames and devil horns over the Democratic candidate? Maybe news about such liberal concerns as the never-ending war in Iraq or extraordinary rendition is spun harder and faster than a certain President’s door on nickel-beer night (to steal a joke from SNL.) Perhaps they haven’t seen any news media but those of happy Iraqi children dancing on Saddam Hussein’s grave and refugees returning home since George Bush declared mission accomplished. Maybe all the news about Iraq not being tied to Al Qaeda and there being no WMDs in the country were not broadcast to the Bible Belt due to technical difficulties. Maybe extraordinary rendition is still a complement that Simon Cowell gives to American Dreamz Idol hopefuls and completely lacks any sinister connotations due to network problems.

Maybe the reason the Southern Democrats have disappeared is because the media has as well. Maybe they hate the liberal media so much because the liberal media too often is just a dark black screen of technical difficulties.

Maybe, in the South, the revolution will not be televised.

My husband and I went into CompUSA today to look for some good deals take in the wreckage of the once mighty CompUSA and laugh at the store that pissed me off with not only high prices but also it’s horrible business practices such as forcing employees to work on Thanksgiving Day to get a jump on the competition’s Black Friday sales. Ick! Going in there while it was open always left me feeling a little dirty inside, and seeing the carcas of that model of everything wrong with retail in America today made me feel just scummy, and yet simultaneously wonderful.

In any case, after wandering through two of the four remaining aisles, we came across a Sony DVD player that looked pretty solid and was discounted at 40% off. That’s when I read the hand-printed words on the sales tag.

"Defective"

and

"DOES NOT WORK"

There was also an ‘As Is’ tag on the item, just in case you didn’t read the hand writing on the big yellow sales tag and decided to try and return it later.

Wow, $179.98 for a brick sounds like a deal to me! Thanks CompUSA! This is why you’re in liquidation now!

They also had a heavily-used tape dispenser for $2.00 and used, broken bar stool for $10. WOW! WHAT A GREAT DEAL!

The thing is, The Husband worked for Circuit City, so we price checked some of the other items in the store to see how good the discounts were. Many of them were selling at 40% off some inflated price so that the final discounted price was only $20 or so below the price of Circuit City or Best Buy right next door. I looked at a .Mac subscription pack, and it was selling for $10 below the price at the Apple store, though this was 40% off the highly inflated price. The pack was for a basic membership ($99.99 at apple.com) and was originally $179.99 (price of a family membership) and reduced to $89.99.

Then, there was the little Zune nano for $139.99 — also only reduced by $10, and it was a display item. It admittedly was that puke green color, but still, I could walk to two other places right down the street and buy it for ten dollars more, brand new, free of the greasy hands of teenagers? I’ll pay for that convenience!

My husband later said to me, “I thought the purpose of a liquidation sale was to get rid of merchandise, not to inflate the prices to what they were before the store went out of business.”

And here I thought the purpose of liquidation was to see who could get the most copper wiring out of the building before getting caught. They *were* selling everything that wasn’t nailed down, of course, including the above-mentioned chair and tape dispenser, the security cases for video games (which, at $37.99 each are worth more than the DVDs they hold. Maybe that’s why thieves steal video games!), and old plastic trashcans (the kind you can buy at Staples — right across the street — for five bucks) for ten dollars. Used DVDs were also in the $10 category too, which was sad, as you can get them new at Target for the same price.

Of course, there were no sales people to be had, and we actively talked one gentleman out of buying an Apple TV (which he believed worked like a TiVo and would allow him to burn his favorite shows to DVD as well. Sorry, hun!)

Even in liquidation, CompUSA is still full of fail.

(Full of fail, except for the cut out drawing of Christopher Walken’s head above the registers, his eyes glowing red, hovering over the “no refunds” sign. Walken is always FTW.)

My parents have been stockpiling goods recently — pounds of meat in the freezer; dozens of cans of soup, vegetables, and fruit; bags of other frozen foods like vegetables and prepared meat like hamburgers; and gallons of olive oil.

“What the hell?” I said to my parents recently, counting the six tins of tomato soup and four of corned beef. “It’s a recession, not a depression.”

I may be wrong.

Banks in the United States have been quietly borrowing “massive amounts” from the U.S. Federal Reserve in recent weeks, using a new measure the Fed introduced two months ago to help ease the credit crunch, according to a report on the web site of The Financial Times.

The Financial Times said the move has sparked unease among some analysts about the stress developing in opaque corners of the U.S. banking system and the banks’ growing reliance on indirect forms of government support.

Reuters: Banks “quietly” borrow $50 billion from Fed: report