Things That Just Piss Me Off

One of our readers had an unfortunate experience with the do not call list and brought it to my attention here on the blog. He asked if I would write about the do not call list, but instead I wanted to get his point of view, so I asked him to write the do not call list post. Here is what John wanted everyone to know about the do not call list.

The Do Not Call List - What You Need to Know

Last year was a bad year for my family. A Family member was diagnosed with breast cancer and was facing surgery and a long period of recovery. On the day of the initial surgery, I waited for the phone call with news concerning the outcome.

Finally the phone rang. A voice on the other end asked me to stand by for an important message concerning my family. My heart sank, I assumed it was a hospital representative but no it was Tuwanna Franklin wanting to get a better interest rate on my credit card for me.

I can’t say what I could have done to Tuwanna at that moment . . . I had this vision of my hands around Her throat and her eyes bulging out, but no . . . I quickly realized that it wasn’t Tuwanna’s fault. It was the owner of the credit Services company that should be taken to account for this insult to me and my family.

It was also the fault of a cynical congress that passes “Swiss cheese” laws and then underfunds the agency responsible for enforcing them. So, congress passed a law that created the “no call list”. Great! Nobody can call trying to solicit except Religious organizations, politicians, and people that have contacted you in the past!

Well what the hell kind of law is that? Its a law that was created by a congress that is beholden to the moral majority and business interests. It was the congress who doesn’t give a damn about your privacy.

The FTC is charged with enforcing this law,that’s a farce. If you receive an illegal call you must ” file a complaint”. A complaint that you write and then flush down your toilet has a better chance of being acted upon by the FTC.

Now comes a new tactic to circumvent the law . . . Your phone rings, a voice asks you to please press 1 for an important message or 2 to hang up. If you press one and ask the party to identify themselves (as stipulated in the law) they hang up.

Star 69 will give you their number. When you call that number the telephone company announces that number is not recallable. Is that a conspiracy or what. I have decided to track these people down. I have enlisted the local police dept. to request a subpoena which will require the phone company to cough up the information.

I suggest to anyone that has been annoyed by unwanted phone interuptions to do the same. The telephone company won’t cooperate until they are forced to, after all they have a vested interest in preserving this lucrative source of revenue, they are a business.

Now is the time to contact your congressional representative and threaten to vote their ass out into the street , I know I will. JR

Thank you John. I appreciate your post to the blog and for you bringing this topic up for discussion and to warn people about it. I think the suggestion that people write their congressman about it is a good one.

This is the link to email your congressman. Just choose your state on the left if you do not know their name.

Pretty strong words, but let’s take a look at a few things.

Bush, when first elected, wanted to give corporations 15 years of taxes back to them with no strings attached. They had paid their taxes for those 15 years and Bush said let’s give it all back to them with no strings attached.

At that time, he had a budget surplus left over from the Clinton administration. So rather than give a bonus to the rest of America, he wanted to give it to the corporations.

When congress said, ok, but we do want some strings attached, like the corporations have to create x number of new jobs in order to get that money back, Bush said no. He said the corporations were American corporations and we should just give them the money and they will do what is right for the country.

That did not go through. No one was buying it. However, he did get his tax cuts for corporations through in his second term with the full support of John McCain. John McCain still supports upholding those tax cuts.

Now, with the new financial crisis, we found that these corporations did not do the right thing as Bush said they would if we gave them lots of money. Instead, they ripped off home buyers and played games with the money, while the CEOs of these companies raked in the cash for themselves, some even buying shower curtains that cost $30,000.

Giving these tax breaks and money to the wealthiest people in our nation led to excess. They bought multiple mansions all over the world and outsourced our job opportunities to people in other countries all in the name of profit and greed.

Now, that there is a financial crisis because of the excess created by giving them all of these tax breaks and incentives with no strings attached, what does George Bush want us to do?

Give them 700 billion more dollars to play with, again with no strings attached.

The bill requesting the money is 3 pages long. There cannot be any strings in a 3-page bill folks. They tell us we have to pass this 3-page bill, “or else”.

Bush used the exact same speech to get us into the Iraq war. They say that war was not about oil, but during that war, gas prices are higher than ever and oil companies are making more money than ever. But that is another blog post.

The bottom line is that Dictators use fear to get their people to do what they want them to do. And when a Dictator is about to be ousted from office, they steal all the money they can.

Bush uses fear to get us to do what he wants us to do and just when he is about to no longer be president and it looks like Barack Obama will be, what does he do? Comes up with a bill to give away $700 billion dollars of tax money to his friends on wallstreet before he leaves.

I am very suspicious of this bill and the need for a bailout. I believe that Bush was a puppet of these corporations for the last 8 years and now they see their gravy train coming to a stop and this is a last ditch effort to get all of the money they can before it’s over.

Since the republican party is afraid to let Sarah Palin answer questions, reporters, bloggers, and others have had to do their own research to find out what Sarah Palin is really like. I can understand why the republicans and John McCain do not want her out answering questions in public after watching the interviews she has done so far.

Like announcing she has foreign policy expertise because Alaska is next to Canada and that Putin flies over Alaska if he visits the US. She has also said it was possible that we might need to go to war with Russia to defend the country of Georgia. She hasn’t been outside of the US, except for one trip to visit the Alaska national Guard in Kuwait, but when asked about foreign policy and if she had ever negotiated with foriegn leaders, she dodged by saying that Alaska has sent trade delegations to other countries, implying that she had participated in those trade delegations, which she had not.

Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission Member Sarah Palin

According to wikipedia, The Commission is tasked to work in-hand with the oil industry to maximize production. Just what we need. Another person in the white house who works hand-in-hand with oil companies. The more oil that gets drilled in Alaska, the more moiney Alaskans receive just for being Alaskan citizens. No conflict oif interest there.

The commission also administers an underground injection program for enhanced oil recovery and underground disposal of oil field waste. As part of this injection process, oil corporations must obtain an Aquifer Exemption Order granted by the AOGCC in areas with deep groundwater supplies. Some environmental groups such as the Cook Inletkeeper as well as First Nation People have contested these Orders, fearing they may contaminate groundwater supplies.

The Commission also holds oversight of wastewater disposal known as “wastewater drain fields”; as such, oil corporations are permitted to dispose of wastewater in the soil when certain requirements are met. Additionally, the Commission adjudicates certain oil and gas disputes between owners, including disputes where the state is a party. It is designed to cooperate with the oil industry.

The Cook Inletkeeper website notes “2 billion gallons of toxic waste” are disposed of in the Cook Inlet waterway every year by oil corporations.

City Councilwoman Sarah Palin

According to Laura Chase of Wasilla, Palin as city councilwoman mentioned to her colleagues in 1995 that she saw the book Daddy’s Roommate in the library and did not think it belonged there.

Mayor Sarah Palin

The election was a nonpartisan blanket primary, the state Republican Party ran advertisements on her behalf. Shortly after taking office in October 1996, Palin asked for updated resumes and resignation letters from top officials, including the police chief, public works director, finance director and librarian. Palin stated this request was to find out their intentions and whether they supported her.

She temporarily required department heads to get her approval before talking to reporters, saying that they first needed to become acquainted with her administration’s policies.

According to city librarian Mary Ellen Emmons, Palin inquired in October 1996 as to whether Emmons would object to library censorship.

Palin also joined with nearby communities in jointly hiring the Anchorage-based lobbying firm of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh to lobby for federal funds. The effort was led by Steven Silver, a former chief of staff for Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.[53] The firm secured nearly $27 million in earmarked funds for public and private entities in the Wasilla valley area.

Before Governor Sarah Palin

From 2003 to June 2005, Palin served as one of three directors of “Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.,” a 527 group designed to provide political training for Republican women in Alaska. Yes, the same Ted Stevens that was indicted and facing criminal charges. I guess she was trained well.

Shortly before his July 2008 indictment, she held a joint news conference with Stevens, described by The Washington Post as being “to make clear she had not abandoned him politically.”

Governor Sarah Palin

While running for governor, she lobbied for and supported the bridge to nowhere, promising voters she would stand behind it. Once elected and once the bridge to nowhere was in the public eye, she decided she was against the bridge to nowhere after all.

In 2005, a $442 million earmark for bridge construction was included in an early version of a 2006 omnibus spending bill, but generated strong criticism in Congress and was stripped from the bill before final passage in November 2005.

Congress instead gave unrestricted transportation money to Alaska. In 2006, Palin ran for governor with a “build-the-bridge” plank in her platform, saying she would “not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project … into something that’s so negative.” She criticized the use of the word “nowhere” as insulting to local residents and urged speedy work on building the bridges “while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.”

In September 2007, Palin said that Congress had “little interest in spending any more money” on the Gravina Bridge due to what she called “inaccurate portrayals of the projects”. She directed Alaskan officials to look for an alternative way to connect Gravina Island with the mainland.

Palin opted not to return the $442 million in federal transportation funds, and spent $25 million in federal funds on a Gravina Island access road to where the bridge would have gone so that, as state officials said, none of this sum would have to be returned to the federal government; Palin’s spokesperson said that the island road would also open territory for development. Palin continues to support the Knik Arm Bridge and ordered a funding and feasibility review in June 2008.

After being chosen for John McCain’s running mate, she now says she told the federal government, “Thanks but no thanks” to the bridge to nowhere. Yet as governor she still received the funds earmarked for that project and instead built a road to nowhere. The road literally goes to nowhere. It ends where the bridge to nowhere would have been built.

McCain and Palin have both said she sold the private jet the state owned on eBay. Actually, in August 2007, the jet WAS listed on eBay, but the sale fell through, and the plane was later sold for $2.1 million through a private brokerage firm.

Alaska is still the largest per-capita recipient of federal earmarks, requesting nearly $750 million in special federal spending over her two years as governor. Yet she claims that she is the right person to eliminate earmarks in bills if elected as VP.

For the 2009 budget, Palin gave a list of 31 proposed federal earmarks or requests for funding, totaling $197 million, to Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. Yes, again, that Ted Stevens.

Then there is troopergate, where she said she would cooperate fully . . . until John McCain called her his running mate. Now she refuses to cooperate with the investigation.

Source

Why did the election commission grant an extension to Sarah Palin for revealing her income?

Also yesterday, Palin received an extension of the deadline for revealing her personal finances, until the day after her only scheduled debate with Democrat Joe Biden. The federal financial disclosure report was initially due Monday, but the Federal Election Commission granted a four-day reprieve until next Friday, the day after her debate in St. Louis with Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

What a coincidence. Her new deadline falls on the day AFTER her debate with joe Biden. What else are we going to learn about Sarah Palin when she reveals her finances?

Surprise, Surprise, More McCain Lies

Even after all of the news stations, including the pretend news station Fox has proven that John McCain ads are full of lies, he continues to lie anyway. He said that his campaign manager has had nothing to do with Freddie Mac for years. Hmm, really?

Freddie Mac, one of the giant mortgage companies at the crux of the credit crisis, continued to pay a lobbying firm owned by John McCain’s campaign manager up to and including last month, it emerged last night.

According to news reports, Freddie Mac paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to Davis & Manafort, a firm owned by McCain campaign manager Rick Davis. The disclosure would appear to undercut a statement by McCain as recently as Sunday night that Davis had no involvement with the mortgage giant for the last several years.

Say it ain’t so. Say John McCain is not a liar who has no integrity at all. Say John McCain will not do or say anything to get himself elected.

Davis’ firm received the payments from Freddie Mac until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, people with knowledge of the arrangement told The New York Times. The total paid to the Davis firm since 2006 amounts to at least $345,000, Newsweek reported on its Web site. Freddie Mac had previously paid an advocacy group run by Davis, called the Homeownership Alliance, $30,000 a month until the end 2005, when that group was dissolved, Newsweek reported.

People familiar with the arrangement told the Times Davis’ firm had been kept on the payroll because of Mr. Davis’ close ties to McCain. Davis took leave from his firm for the presidential campaign, but as a partner and equity-holder continues to benefit from its income, the Times reported. A Freddie Mac spokeswoman declined to comment.

The lies keep coming and then are exposed, yet people will support John Mccain anyway because it is more important to them to keep republicans in the white house than it is to choose what is best for our country.

It has already been proven that Barack Obama received campaign donations from EMPLOYEES of Freddie Mac while John McCain received financial contributions to his campaign from the DIRECTORS and OFFICERS of Freddie Mac. That should tell you the difference between the two as far as ties to lobbyists go.

I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight…..

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re ‘exotic, different.’

Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.

If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you’re a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you’re well-grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you’re very responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.

If you’re husband is nicknamed ‘First Dude’, with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

Best campaign ad I have seen about John McCain. He was a member of the keating 5 if you need further proof that John McCain will sell his influence to the highest bidder.

This is undeniable fact. There are republicans that are so concerned about winning elections that they will continue to deny, dispute, spin, and defend Bush’s economic policies. They will do it just because they do not want the republican party to look bad.

Bush never admitted to any mistakes the whole time he was in office. His republican supporters never admit he was wrong about anything either. They will say John McCain should be elected, despite the fact that he supported all of Bush’s economic policies.

Republicans want to win. That is all that matters to them. What is good for this country is second to winning the election at all costs. They will lie, cheat, and steal to get there.

This is not the republican party of the eighties. This is the pissed-off-that-clinton-got-elected republicans. They will not back down even when there is proof that those republicans they elected screwed up on almost every front.

The Iraq War was a mistake. The way it was handled was a mistake. Republicans cry out, “But the surge worked!” That’s like your football team being beat by 60 points, but in the 4th quarter, a “surge” in the backfield allowed your team to score one touchdown, then finding out that they were playing a team they were not supposed to be playing in the first place. Your team was supposed to be playing Afghanistan where the people responsible for 911 were.

On the economy John McCain not only supported George Bush’s economic policies, he still supports those same failed policies. Just 2 months ago, he stated that the economy was sound. His spokesperson said that we are just in a “mental recession” less than 3 months ago.

So it is not just during the Bush term that he supports these economic policies, he was campaigning on how he would continue those wonderful economic policies. He still supports the same tax cuts to big corporations and the wealthy and wants to renew them or increase them.

McCain claimed Obama would not admit the surge worked. When is John McCain going to admit that the Bushonomics that he supported were wrong? Better yet, when will republicans realize they are in denial about how bad the Bush Presidency was and realize that john Mccain is just Bush’s Mini Me.

Wall Street Posts Worst Loss Since 2001

In another unnerving day for Wall Street, investors suffered their worst losses since the terrorist attacks of 2001, and government officials raced to prevent the financial crisis from spreading.

Trading opened sharply down Monday morning, and the mood later turned even gloomier, despite efforts by President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., in separate appearances at the White House, to reassure markets that Wall Street’s deepening problems would not weaken an already anemic economy.

Can you still defend George Bush’s economic policy? Can you still say John Mccain is the right choice for president when he supported that policy and by his own admission does not know much about the economy?

Amid worries that the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the sale of Merrill Lynch over the weekend might not be enough to stop the downward spiral, stocks fell sharply in the last half hour of trading. By the end of the day, the Dow Jones industrial average had dropped 504.48 points, or 4.4 percent, as a record volume of more than 8 billion shares traded hands on the New York Stock Exchange. It was the biggest decline since Sept. 17, 2001 — the day the index reopened after the 9/11 terrorist attacks — when it fell 7 percent, or 684.81 points.

Are you better off now than you were 8 years ago? Maybe you are, but this country is in much worse shape than it was before Bush took office. Denying that just makes you look stupid. Not a nice thing to say? Let me repeat; If you think George Bush’s economic policies, that John Mccain supported and still supports, worked to our benefit, then you are by definition stupid.

Nervous investors around the nation logged onto their investment accounts on the Internet to see what toll the financial tumult had taken on retirement and college-education funds.

Yes, Bush’s economic policies will also hurt education. College education is already unaffordable for most Americans and now those funds that do help our children go to college will take huge losses and more of them will not be able to afford to go to college.

Merrill employees who are laid off will have plenty of company, as many financial workers have lost jobs in the last year, leaving many without a paycheck. Appearing briefly in the morning before reporters in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush characterized the recent events as short-term market adjustments that would have a limited effect on an otherwise sound economy.

And Bush is still in denial that there is anything wrong. McCain still thinks the economy is fundamentally sound. You do not need to be an expert on economics to see that with millions of foreclosures, the failing of Fanny Mae and Fanny Mac, the failing of Leahman Brothers, The failing of AIG, The failing of Merril Lynch, the closing of at least 10 banks, and more prove the economy is going downhill.

Bush created a business atmosphere that was “anything goes” and allowed shady lenders to make bad loans, allowed the SEC to turn away at wrongdoing by CEOs and Corporations, and allowed the FTC to approve any takeover or merger that came along. Name the last time you heard a merger was not approved.

Look at this photo of John Mccain, proudly smiling next to the article about the Keating 5.

The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The five senators, Alan Cranston (D-CA), Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), John Glenn (D-OH), John McCain (R-AZ), and Donald W. Riegle (D-MI), were accused of improperly aiding Charles H. Keating, Jr., chairman of the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of an investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB).

The U.S. Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was the failure of 747 savings and loan associations (S&Ls) in the United States. The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around $160.1 billion, about $124.6 billion of which was directly paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.

The core allegation of the Keating Five affair is that Keating had made contributions of about $1.3 million to various U.S. Senators, including John Mccain, and he called on those Senators to help him resist regulators. The regulators backed off, to later disastrous consequences.

DeConcini told Keating that McCain was nervous about interfering. Keating called McCain a “wimp” behind his back, and on March 24, Keating and McCain had a heated, contentious meeting.

On April 2, 1987, a meeting with chairman Gray of the FHLBB was held in DeConcini’s Capitol office, with Senators Cranston, Glenn, and McCain also in attendance.

On April 9, 1987, a two-hour meeting with three members of the FHLBB San Francisco branch was held, again in DeConcini’s office, to discuss the government’s investigation of Lincoln. Present were Cranston, DeConcini, Glenn, McCain, and additionally Riegle.

The regulators felt that the meeting was very unusual and that they were being pressured by a united front, as the senators presented their reasons for having the meeting. McCain said, “One of our jobs as elected officials is to help constituents in a proper fashion. ACC [American Continental Corporation] is a big employer and important to the local economy.

American Continental went bankrupt in April 1989, and Lincoln was seized by the FHLBB on April 14, 1989. More than 21,000 mostly elderly investors lost their life savings. This total came to about $285 million.[citation needed] The federal government was liable for $2 billion to cover Lincoln’s losses when it seized the institution.

McCain said, “I have done this kind of thing many, many times,” and said the Lincoln case was like “helping the little lady who didn’t get her Social Security.”

McCain “of the five Senators was the closest socially to Mr. Keating,” according to the New York Times. Like DeConcini, McCain considered Keating a constituent as he lived in Arizona. Between 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.

In addition, McCain’s wife Cindy McCain and her father Jim Hensley had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators.

McCain, his family, and their baby-sitter had made nine trips at Keating’s expense, sometimes aboard Keating’s jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating’s opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay. McCain did not pay Keating (in the amount of $13,433) for some of the trips until years after they were taken, when he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln.

So John Mccain paid keating back for the trips only after it was a high profile news story. He never paid back the contributions that got him to help Charles keating bilk thousands of senior citizens out of their money.

John Mccain was more concerned about getting campaign contributions than he was about how the failing of those savings and loans would affect this country. It was the last big banking crisis before the one we are currently in and John Mccain still supports those corporations and banks who will fold and cause millions to lose money again.

In a time of economic crisis with bank failures, home foreclosures, rising gas prices, rising profits for oil companies, and more, it is not time to re-elect one of the Keating 5.

It seems that everyone around Mccain follows his lead when it comes to making up stories or embellishing stories.

Hypocritical Rhetoric from John McCain claims Obama was insulting Sarah Palin when he said lipstick on a pig.