Category: Uncategorized

Tired of telemarketers trying to work their way around “no call” lists?

Yeh, well, so am I. And as far as I’m concerned, this is a Civil Liberties issue: I feel perfect at liberty to do everything within my power to spike these scammers, liars and cheats (Oh! My!) any old way I can.

Recently, we’ve gotten several calls from a Caller ID-blocked number, an obvious machine-generated voice message, “informing” us that the call “is not a telemarketing call” and “the head of household needs” to call a certain number.

Riiiiight.

Soooo, from a Caller ID blocked phone of my own, I called the number and discovered that it was a company trying to sell debt consolidation.

I tried to warn ‘em… really, I tried.

After a few calls attempting to escalate things to some manager to warn I gave up and called our State Attorney General’s office. Now, ya have to understand, this guy made his bones taking down telemarketers. It’s his main claim to fame. The consumer complaint rep I talked to promised fast action (and from the office’s record, that’s one of the few government bureaucratic pledges I give a little weight) and thanked me for reporting the scam.

Then… heh, then I called the scammers back. Told the person that answered the phone that I had gotten a call telling me to call that number. (True) She asked me what the number where I received the call was (caller ID blocking on the phone I was using).

I gave her our State Attorney General’s consumer complaint number. (OK, a small, wee, teen-eintsy fib)

*click-click-clickety-click* “Oh… “ CLICK, BUZZZZZZ

“Wha-fo’ the dialtone, Boopsy?” thought I.

Heh

“Submitted” at Cao’s Friday Open Trackback Party, Adam’s Blog’s Open Trackbacks,  Stop the ACLU’s Open Trackback Weekend and Open Trackbacks at Big Dog’s Weblog.

Oxymoron of the day: Corporate Creativity. A mini-rant

First we have this: Grandfather sued for $600,000 for 12-year-okd grandson’s downloads. Yep. The kid downloaded copies of DVDs he already owned and the MPAA is suing his grandfather for owning the computer they were downloaded to, then deleted from.

Kinda makes ya wanna go right out and watch another crappy movie made by Hollyweird, doesn’t it?

Then there’s this: Sony institutes crippling anti-use software on CDs. But here’s the kicker: it’s done so on the recordings of at least one group that it does not “own” (just distributes their independently-produced stuff), a group that has said it does not want the crippling “feature”.

Yeh, that’ll encourage sales (and artist creativity thereby, all right. Make it darned near impossible (or damnably difficult) to use a legally purchased CD for legally-allowed uses. Consumers’ll love that!

But this loon takes the cake: 1st Story Line Patent Published. Words fail me. (But that’s probably a good thing, cos someone, somewhere is probably going to patent the thought processes I’d use to comment and then I’d end up being sued outa house and home… oops! There I go… )

Come the revolution (heh, riiiiight), lawyers first in line for the guillotine, followed by the RIAA, MPAA, and all their partners in crime like Fritz Holling (the wholly-owned Senator from Disney) and his ilk.

While our Congresscritters fiddle, Islamic savages are burning whatever is handy. Ya think it won’t happen here if our government’s “Homeland Security” keystone kops routine isn’t amended? Well, maybe… just not likely in America’s Third World Countyâ„¢

In a convergence of thoughtful pieces, Committees of Correspondence’s Dan Kaufman posts “Lest we forget“* reminding us that November 2 also marks the anniversary of Theo van Gogh’s brutal murder at the hands of an Islamic savage, while Big Lizards’ Dafydd ab Hugh notes the emminent collapse of Old Europe in the face of Islamic savages with “Arms For the Poor“.

Dafydd ab Hugh (I just love typing that Welsh name 🙂 does note a potential way for European leaders to enable their peoples to withstand the armed Islamic barbarians in their midst, but I hardly see the elite of Old Europe’s political rulers vigorously encouraging something like our Second Amendment rights… heh

I don’t often do this, but in fortuitous (or well-planned) simultaneity with Michelle Malkin’s latest book, Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild, comes Do As I Say (Not As I Do) : Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy

Among the eye-opening revelations of “Do As I Say”:

• Filmmaker Michael Moore insists that corporations are evil and claims he doesn’t invest in the stock market due to moral principle. But Moore’s IRS forms, viewed by Schweizer, show that over the past five years he has owned shares in such corporate giants as Halliburton, Merck, Pfizer, Sunoco, Tenet Healthcare, Ford, General Electric and McDonald’s.
• Staunch union supporter Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) has received the Cesar Chavez Award from the United Farmworkers Union. But the $25 million Northern California vineyard she and her husband own is a non-union shop.

The hypocrisy doesn’t end there. Pelosi has received more money from the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union than any other member of Congress in recent election cycles.

But the Pelosis own a large stake in an exclusive hotel in Rutherford, Calif. It has more than 250 employees. But none of them are in a union, according to Schweizer, author of “The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty” and a regular contributor to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other periodicals.

The Pelosis are also partners in a restaurant chain called Piatti, which has 900 employees. The chain is – that’s right, a non-union shop.

• Ralph Nader is another liberal who claims that unions are essential to protect worker rights. But when an editor of one of his publications tried to form a union to ameliorate miserable working conditions, the editor was fired and the locks changed on the office door.
• Self-described socialist Noam Chomsky has described the Pentagon as “the most vile institution on the face of the earth” and lashed out against tax havens and trusts that benefit only the rich.

But Chomsky has been paid millions of dollars by the Pentagon over the last 40 years, and he used a venerable law firm to set up his irrevocable trust to shield his assets from the IRS.

• Air America radio host Al Franken says conservatives are racist because they lack diversity and oppose affirmative action. But fewer than 1 percent of the people he has hired over the past 15 years have been African-American.
• Ted Kennedy has fought for the estate tax and spoken out against tax shelters. But he has repeatedly benefited from an intricate web of trusts and private foundations that have shielded most of his family’s fortune from the IRS.

One Kennedy family trust wasn’t even set up in the U.S., but in Fiji.

Another family member, environmentalist Robert Kennedy Jr., has said that it is not moral to profit from natural resources. But he receives an annual check from the family’s large holdings in the oil industry.

• Barbra Streisand has talked about the necessity of unions to protect a “living wage.” But she prefers to do her filming and postproduction work in Canada, where she can pay less than American union wages.
• Bill and Hillary Clinton have spoken in favor of the estate tax, and in 2000 Bill vetoed a bill seeking to end it. But the Clintons have set up a contract trust that allows them to substantially reduce the amount of inheritance tax their estate will pay when they die.

Hillary, for her part, has written and spoken extensively about the right of children to make major decisions regarding their own lives. But she barred 13-year-old daughter Chelsea from getting her ears pierced and forbid the teen from watching MTV or HBO.

• Billionaire Bush-basher George Soros says the wealthy should pay higher, more progressive tax rates. But he holds the bulk of his money in tax-free overseas accounts in Curacao, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

Schweizer writes: “Liberals claim to support affirmative action but don’t practice it. They support higher taxes but set up complicated tax shelters to avoid paying them. They claim to be ardent environmentalists but abandon their cause when it impinges on their own property rights.

“The reality is that liberals like to preach in moral platitudes. They like to condemn ordinary Americans and Republicans for a whole host of things – racism, lack of concern for the poor, polluting the environment, and greed.

“But when it comes to applying those same standards to themselves, liberals are found to be shockingly guilty of hypocrisy.

“The media and the American people need to hold them accountable.”

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I guess I’ll be putting these books on my Amazon Wishlist along with this:

…and this:

See the post at The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns.

No. I’m not going to say more here. (Beef panties… what’ll they think of next? Fish bras? And why recall them, anyway? It’s painful enough even contemplating such a thing to begin with. 🙂

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Originally uploaded by mnmus.

Yeh, yeh: ever since I saw this posted at Parrot Check with the title “Paris Hilton Screwing By the Pool” I’ve been highly conflicted. Puke? Laugh myself silly (surely a redundancy) and then puke? Succomb to the temptation to mimic his post title in my own?

I never have understood the Paris Hilton thing. Someone is famous for being a rich slut? What’s going on there? She’s just Madonna without the recording contracts (of course, she may well sing better than Madonna, but that’s damning with faint and merely potential praise. A gutted tomcat sings better than Madonna).

Well, here is it, anyway. The stupidest pun-on-a-pic I’ve seen on a blog yet. Congrats, Parrot Check. That’s (seriously) quite an accomplishment. No one and nothing was damaged by the thing, save for whatever eyes actually look at the pic.