Unless you've been living under a very large, soundproofed rock, you have been subjected to the barrage of commentary on Ms. Rosen's quick-tounged quip about Mitt Romney's wife not being the ideal person to ask about women in the workforce and their economic/social struggles...
MY GOD! ARE THE REPUBLICANS THIS DESPERATE FOR SOMETHING TO GRIPE ABOUT??
After all the apologies by Rosen and the White House (for a comment which, after all the smoke
clears, is accurate and hardly insulting) the RNC and their cronies continue to bleat and beat their
breasts about how all stay-at-home moms have been insulted by the Democrats...
Which is, of course, pure bullshit...
My mother, along with obviously millions of others (look at the divorce rate in this country and figure it out for yourself) had no choice but to hold down a full-time job and raise a family... Luckily, the household contained an extended family, 4 generations, which helped in the raising of the children....but they all had full-time jobs, too. There are military wives who "stay home" when their husbands are out on a 3rd and 4th tour in war zones, and these women "stay home" (often working at paying jobs simultaneously) not by choice but from necessity. There are countless numbers of single-parent households in the same situation. It has given rise to a lucrative and ever-growing industry in this country--daycare centers, preschools, etc.--which further deplete the parent's resources in the effort to raise their children...
For Romney to need his wife to act as an interpreter of women and their mystical needs is baffling. For him to chose a wife who has lived a life of privilege and luxury for that task is even more perplexing.
For this to be turned into some kind of rallying call to all those Red State women who hold bake sales, make scrap books, and generally live the stay-at-home-soccer-mom life to march in unison behind the Republican Party is the true insult here. Those women have access to their bank balances, and they know how hard they are struggling to put Walmart clothes on the backs of their kids and how many coupons they have to clip to feed their families....
Enough of this crap...from both sides... In fairness (even though the preponderance of asshole statements have come from the Right--Rush Limbaugh included), my Progressive friends are making too much of Foster Frieze's comment about "bulletproof teleprompters" for Obama...
I heard the comment, and it had nothing to do with assassination of the President. It was about the Republicans now focusing their "guns" at Obama and not at each other now that the candidate is chosen...
So let's stick it back in our pants...or where the sun will never shine...and get back to the issues...
Friday, April 13, 2012
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Eye in the Sky...
Listening to KNX Radio (yes, the Republicans are right on one thing: the media is an evil influence...) On comes an ad touting the new version of GARMIN...that wonderful little GPS/Direction/Best-Chinese-Restaurant-in-the-current-neighborhood device...
One of the main new features? "It also displays your speed," the announcer joyfully said. Hmmm...
Won't be long now before the same is said about ONSTAR, or any of the other little mamas-little-helper devices on our dashboards or hanging from our visors... Then it's only a matter of time
before Big Brother really becomes Oz, the man behind the curtain, and starts to subcontract
things like speed violation enforcement, outsourcing them to Raytheon and friends...
After all, your subscription to the service means they have your id info, probably your
car's VIN and registration, and a credit card or bank account on file for payment...
It's a short leap to sending that info about you doing 45 in a 35 on Highland to Culver City Police,
and a nice prepaid ticket arriving at your home address...
Let's not forget that info is already being gathered by insurance companies ("Snapshot" being an example) and it plays a large role in your renewal premiums... So, double whammy, your insurance premiums skyrocket...
BUY A MAP, STUDY IT...DO A GOOGLE EARTH SEARCH...then take off for your location.
Screw Garmin...half the time it gives you instructions to make a left at a no-turn intersection anyway.
Just a thought...
One of the main new features? "It also displays your speed," the announcer joyfully said. Hmmm...
Won't be long now before the same is said about ONSTAR, or any of the other little mamas-little-helper devices on our dashboards or hanging from our visors... Then it's only a matter of time
before Big Brother really becomes Oz, the man behind the curtain, and starts to subcontract
things like speed violation enforcement, outsourcing them to Raytheon and friends...
After all, your subscription to the service means they have your id info, probably your
car's VIN and registration, and a credit card or bank account on file for payment...
It's a short leap to sending that info about you doing 45 in a 35 on Highland to Culver City Police,
and a nice prepaid ticket arriving at your home address...
Let's not forget that info is already being gathered by insurance companies ("Snapshot" being an example) and it plays a large role in your renewal premiums... So, double whammy, your insurance premiums skyrocket...
BUY A MAP, STUDY IT...DO A GOOGLE EARTH SEARCH...then take off for your location.
Screw Garmin...half the time it gives you instructions to make a left at a no-turn intersection anyway.
Just a thought...
From my cold dead hands...
Watching the "progressive" cable channel "Current"--a documentary on the guns being used by the Mexican drug cartels which are purchased here in the US...mostly at "gun shows" without any type of background check or documentation...and hearing the comments of the "gun lobby" about not constricting our SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS (which have to do with militias, not individuals) to curtail the murders in Juarez...
I am so sick to death of hearing this "2nd amendment" argument as an excuse for our flooding our streets, and those of neighboring countries, with automatic weapons... Seven dead in Oakland yesterday...five wounded in Mississippi...Thirty-five dead in one swoop in Juarez... "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" is the most lame of all the platitudes mouthed by these John-Wayne-wannabes... The NRA with its nearly-billion-dollar lobbying is the most insidious organization since the SS...
I think it's ironic that the AK-47, the favorite weapon of my friends in the NLF who (luckily) shot at us with bad aim in Nam, is the sweetheart weapon of the NRA right here at home. Thanks to those cretins, we are more likely to be killed here than we were flying over the DMZ... Thanks, guys. Love you, too...
I am so sick to death of hearing this "2nd amendment" argument as an excuse for our flooding our streets, and those of neighboring countries, with automatic weapons... Seven dead in Oakland yesterday...five wounded in Mississippi...Thirty-five dead in one swoop in Juarez... "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" is the most lame of all the platitudes mouthed by these John-Wayne-wannabes... The NRA with its nearly-billion-dollar lobbying is the most insidious organization since the SS...
I think it's ironic that the AK-47, the favorite weapon of my friends in the NLF who (luckily) shot at us with bad aim in Nam, is the sweetheart weapon of the NRA right here at home. Thanks to those cretins, we are more likely to be killed here than we were flying over the DMZ... Thanks, guys. Love you, too...
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Gentrification...
Watching BBC News this am...it seems the folks in Berlin are unhappy about the nature
and composition of the city changing as all the money and the people who make it
are flooding into their city, driving out the hippie/grunge contingent which, since the demise
of The Wall, has recently given the city its counterculture energy...
Welcome to my nightmare...
I watched, personally and closeup, as my Manhattan went from a trans-European, multicultural
Nirvana, composed of working-class (and hard-working) immigrants and their children, to
a Disney/Starbucks/Gap, Vegas-version parody of itself, populated by overpaid, over-dressed,
self-appointed Ubermensch with little but cash-flow to contribute to the lifeblood of the city.
I witnessed the destruction of all the little ethnic neighborhoods, from the Irish to the Italian to the
Eastern-European Jew to the German, with their walk-up apartments with bathtubs in the
kitchen and 6, 7, 10 people living in them--mostly happily--and saw the city hemmorage as it
suffered the transplantation of its vital organs, replacing them with Armani and Gucci
and Patek Philippe-adorned mannequins..
It's the way of the world, it seems... Los Angeles, the place I live now (God help me), has suffered
a similar fate, of sorts... Of course, to call LA a city is kind of a joke...it is a loosely-knit, over-
populated amalgam of lots of different, independent but interdependent cities/towns with their own
police departments and city councils...but DOWNTOWN LA (another misnomer) has suffered
this kind of gentrification, driving out the homeless who used to roam its streets after dark, or
the vagrants who roamed the pier locations of Santa Monica... But that is hardly the same
as the forced diaspora of employed, working class people who were made to leave the
dwellings where they bore, birthed and raised children...where they tended to and, eventually,
laid out for burial their elderly... That was the singular fate of the New Yorkers of
Little Italy, or Greenwich Village, or the Lower East Side, or Chelsea, or Clinton, or
Yorkville...
I am sure other cities suffered similar fates, but I do not come from Chicago, or Boston, or
Oakland... If you have similar stories to share, then please do so. I am sure that the slow
and inexorable death of cities as havens for the middle/working class is pandemic, marching along
in perfect step with the slow and inexorable death of the middle/working class...
and composition of the city changing as all the money and the people who make it
are flooding into their city, driving out the hippie/grunge contingent which, since the demise
of The Wall, has recently given the city its counterculture energy...
Welcome to my nightmare...
I watched, personally and closeup, as my Manhattan went from a trans-European, multicultural
Nirvana, composed of working-class (and hard-working) immigrants and their children, to
a Disney/Starbucks/Gap, Vegas-version parody of itself, populated by overpaid, over-dressed,
self-appointed Ubermensch with little but cash-flow to contribute to the lifeblood of the city.
I witnessed the destruction of all the little ethnic neighborhoods, from the Irish to the Italian to the
Eastern-European Jew to the German, with their walk-up apartments with bathtubs in the
kitchen and 6, 7, 10 people living in them--mostly happily--and saw the city hemmorage as it
suffered the transplantation of its vital organs, replacing them with Armani and Gucci
and Patek Philippe-adorned mannequins..
It's the way of the world, it seems... Los Angeles, the place I live now (God help me), has suffered
a similar fate, of sorts... Of course, to call LA a city is kind of a joke...it is a loosely-knit, over-
populated amalgam of lots of different, independent but interdependent cities/towns with their own
police departments and city councils...but DOWNTOWN LA (another misnomer) has suffered
this kind of gentrification, driving out the homeless who used to roam its streets after dark, or
the vagrants who roamed the pier locations of Santa Monica... But that is hardly the same
as the forced diaspora of employed, working class people who were made to leave the
dwellings where they bore, birthed and raised children...where they tended to and, eventually,
laid out for burial their elderly... That was the singular fate of the New Yorkers of
Little Italy, or Greenwich Village, or the Lower East Side, or Chelsea, or Clinton, or
Yorkville...
I am sure other cities suffered similar fates, but I do not come from Chicago, or Boston, or
Oakland... If you have similar stories to share, then please do so. I am sure that the slow
and inexorable death of cities as havens for the middle/working class is pandemic, marching along
in perfect step with the slow and inexorable death of the middle/working class...
Mandate, Schmandate...
The Supremes...that off-tune, badly-dressed group of mentally and physically decaying
lifetime-appointed cretins sitting on The Bench (if only they were only bench-warmers) in DC...
seem to be concerned about the big, bad government forcing broccoli, or burial, upon the
poor citizens of this country. One of them, shamefully named Kennedy, is concerned that
this mandate will change the relationship of government to the citizen...
he says that forcing the citizen to do something against his (possible) will is unconstitutional...
WHAT??? Has this idiot heard of INCOME TAX? AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE?? PROPERTY TAX??? THE FRIGGING DRAFT???????? This country has a long history of NECESSARY EVILS
being forced upon its citizenry since its inception. IT'S CALLED BEING A CITIZEN. IT'S CALLED ADULTHOOD.
Ah, crap....who cares? Why bother? Go back to sleep, Richard...
lifetime-appointed cretins sitting on The Bench (if only they were only bench-warmers) in DC...
seem to be concerned about the big, bad government forcing broccoli, or burial, upon the
poor citizens of this country. One of them, shamefully named Kennedy, is concerned that
this mandate will change the relationship of government to the citizen...
he says that forcing the citizen to do something against his (possible) will is unconstitutional...
WHAT??? Has this idiot heard of INCOME TAX? AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE?? PROPERTY TAX??? THE FRIGGING DRAFT???????? This country has a long history of NECESSARY EVILS
being forced upon its citizenry since its inception. IT'S CALLED BEING A CITIZEN. IT'S CALLED ADULTHOOD.
Ah, crap....who cares? Why bother? Go back to sleep, Richard...
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Usery...(no, not "sic")
So...I recently canceled all my credit cards...let's say voluntarily...and started living on a cash-only (including debit cards) basis... For practical reasons, however, it was deemed wise to acquire a secured credit card (try renting a car without a cc)... I applied for, and was approved by, an outfit called FIRST PREMIERE BANK...very high "independent" ratings from consumer bureaus--yeah.... I sent them a certain amount of money, allocating that $50 of that money be used for their "annual membership fee", and waited to hear that all was ok. After about 3 weeks, I called their "customer service" number and was assured that, yes, all was ok and I would be receiving my card "soon." Another 3 weeks passed with no card arriving. Then, yesterday, I received an email to which was attached a copy of my BILL for a minimum payment of $30...for a card I had never received, let alone used. True, the card did arrive later in the mail, but the fact remains that it was never used, and that there should have been no charges against it, hence no minimum payment due.
I called the lovely folks in Kansas or some other Red State to ask what this charge was all about, and I was told that there was an unpaid balance of $50 charged to my card... "What?", I asked. "The fifty dollars for the annual membership was already paid, and with MY MONEY, not yours, so why do I owe anyone anything??"
This line of questioning went unanswered, with the customer service rep parroting an
obviously-scripted response to a question doubtlessly heard hundreds of times a day.
To make matter worse, if I (like countless others) decided to only pay the "minimum payment due"
of $30, I WOULD HAVE AN UNPAID BALANCE OF $20 ON WHICH I WOULD THEN BE CHARGED 19.5% INTEREST!!!
So...I have placed myself in a situation where I would have pay usurious rates of interest to SOMEONE ELSE for the use of MY MONEY.
And people wonder why banks are hated more than lawyers.
CAVEAT EMPTOR. Stay away from First Premiere Bank if you can, although I imagine they are no worse than the other vultures in this game.
I called the lovely folks in Kansas or some other Red State to ask what this charge was all about, and I was told that there was an unpaid balance of $50 charged to my card... "What?", I asked. "The fifty dollars for the annual membership was already paid, and with MY MONEY, not yours, so why do I owe anyone anything??"
This line of questioning went unanswered, with the customer service rep parroting an
obviously-scripted response to a question doubtlessly heard hundreds of times a day.
To make matter worse, if I (like countless others) decided to only pay the "minimum payment due"
of $30, I WOULD HAVE AN UNPAID BALANCE OF $20 ON WHICH I WOULD THEN BE CHARGED 19.5% INTEREST!!!
So...I have placed myself in a situation where I would have pay usurious rates of interest to SOMEONE ELSE for the use of MY MONEY.
And people wonder why banks are hated more than lawyers.
CAVEAT EMPTOR. Stay away from First Premiere Bank if you can, although I imagine they are no worse than the other vultures in this game.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Smile...
I got a FB response from a friend...it seems she was shocked that I put a "smiley face" on my post to her timeline...and it kind of perplexed me. I am a "professional curmudgeon"...an old, bearded fart who grunts and snorts and generally provides the "Ed Asner" note to the proceedings...but people who really know and love me know I'm a softie who loves to laugh.
Perhaps my readiness to smile broadly is tempered by my progressively lengthening upper teeth...a cross between Milton Berle and Mr. Ed...brought about by years of not flossing, heavy smoking and a dental insurance establishment which is criminally skimping on plan payments. It would take about $6-8 thousand dollars to fix my problem...some painful and expensive gum surgery followed by a nice bridge or implants to make my upper teeth look as good as my (already done) lowers. I'll never be George Hamilton, but they would look acceptable in this LA-land of overdone cosmetic dental work.
The problem I, and about 30 million other Americans, face is that the dental insurance companies have yearly limits of between $1000-$1500 on what they will pay, and astronomical exclusions on procedures which, if they pay for at all, they pay ridiculously small amounts. It means nothing if, like me, you haven't used their services for 2-3 years...there is no "roll-over" (like cell phone plans)...the yearly limit remains the same. So you can't "bank" the money to use at a later time. Use it, or lose it.
So, if (again) like me you are broke and unable to fork over large amounts of cash to oral surgeons, cosmetic dentists and the like, you are screwed. Going for cleanings is a waste of time now, and that's about all your dental insurance covers.
I hope Obama-Care looks at this problem and comes up with a solution. All the current thinking, and all the current research, shows that dental health is crucial to the health of other bodily systems, including heart and blood vessels. I've never understood why DENTAL INSURANCE is not pooled in with HEALTH INSURANCE...is this someone else's mouth??
One body, one system, except to CIGNA, Blue Cross, Met Life and the like.
Someone please explain, because I am at a loss...
Perhaps my readiness to smile broadly is tempered by my progressively lengthening upper teeth...a cross between Milton Berle and Mr. Ed...brought about by years of not flossing, heavy smoking and a dental insurance establishment which is criminally skimping on plan payments. It would take about $6-8 thousand dollars to fix my problem...some painful and expensive gum surgery followed by a nice bridge or implants to make my upper teeth look as good as my (already done) lowers. I'll never be George Hamilton, but they would look acceptable in this LA-land of overdone cosmetic dental work.
The problem I, and about 30 million other Americans, face is that the dental insurance companies have yearly limits of between $1000-$1500 on what they will pay, and astronomical exclusions on procedures which, if they pay for at all, they pay ridiculously small amounts. It means nothing if, like me, you haven't used their services for 2-3 years...there is no "roll-over" (like cell phone plans)...the yearly limit remains the same. So you can't "bank" the money to use at a later time. Use it, or lose it.
So, if (again) like me you are broke and unable to fork over large amounts of cash to oral surgeons, cosmetic dentists and the like, you are screwed. Going for cleanings is a waste of time now, and that's about all your dental insurance covers.
I hope Obama-Care looks at this problem and comes up with a solution. All the current thinking, and all the current research, shows that dental health is crucial to the health of other bodily systems, including heart and blood vessels. I've never understood why DENTAL INSURANCE is not pooled in with HEALTH INSURANCE...is this someone else's mouth??
One body, one system, except to CIGNA, Blue Cross, Met Life and the like.
Someone please explain, because I am at a loss...
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