Friday, January 15, 2010

The Ides of January hath come

Good MLK Day. Today is the iconic leader's real birthday, but we'll be celebrating it on Monday so the bonus babies on Wall Street and city, state and federal workers have a long weekend.

For the financial bonus babies, that means another day without them screwing up the financial system.

MLK, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had the shoulders the rest of us are standing on in the fight for equality for all. He worked when it was still dangerous to be for equality for all and against such things as separate bathrooms, restaurants and the rest. King, with the inspiration of President Kennedy inspired and President Johnson, got the work passed and we are all better off for it, even if we are Tea Party types or Sarah-ites.

That's one thing we don't have today. We have a president to inspire us, but we don't have anyone to get the stuff through the Congress, like LBJ did. We could have had Tom Daschle, the former senator, who could have strong armed the health insurance reform through, but we lost him to some chickencrap about taxes.

A friend who has been a bastion of liberal causes is starting to say that perhaps liberals have helped screw up the world. Perhaps.

AT&T: Shut up already

It would be hard for me to put into words my upset, actually anger, at AT&T's claims against Verizon.

AT&T claims that only AT&T phones allow you to talk and surf the Web at the same time. That's because their system supports the iPhone. Hopefully, that will come to an end this summer when, one hopes, the wonderful Apple phone will be available to Verizon customers.

But anyway, it's not such a big deal. Since you are probably going to be driving a car at the same time, maybe just being able to do one function at a time is safer.

But AT&T's 3G, third generation, coverage area is so anemic that the only thing many of these iPhone customers are able to do is redial their phones and wait for a Web signal. So, AT&T, shut up already. Nobody's buying. And, friends at Apple, I love your products (this blog is written on one), but hate that you put your own profit ahead of your customers' good.

Please fix that by offering the iPhone on Verizon as soon as you can.

All that baby type

Since I am ranting against things on television, let me get going on the baby type at the bottom of almost any ad. You know, the little paragraph with words much too small to read and displayed for such a short time that you didn't have time to read, even if you could see it, which you can't.

The ads go by on television, and a claim is made. Then comes those paragraphs of legal weasel-wording that the claim is only good (this is an exaggeration, but not by much) on alternate Tuesdays between 3 and 4 in the morning when the wind is from the west at more than four by less than six miles per hour.

How is this allowed?

A claim is made from a lawyer that you pay no money unless you win. The tiny type saying you are responsible for all expenses, costs, copying costs, phone charges and staff time no matter what, lasts a nanosecond on the screen.

The claim that the car has all this great stuff is countered by the wonderful word "available" in tiny type. The car starts at $23,000 -- the tiny type that appears for three seconds says "as shown, $39,990."

How is this allowed?

Think, then change

Let's change gears. It is possible that Susan Bysiewicz is not ready for prime time?

She is the secretary of the state (pronounced BUYsowitz everyplace but New Britain, where it is pronounced BySEVitch) who was running for governor and is now running for attorney general, who was for the state's public funding scheme when she was running for governor but won't use it running for attorney general where, one would suspect, she would be spending less.

Now she is asking the present attorney general whether she has been a practicing lawyer in Connecticut long enough to run for attorney general.

Maybe the time to worry about that was before she announced.

Hey, even Hamlet, in the guise of longtime Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, (you know, to run or not to run, that is the question) has settled on an office to seek -- Chris Dodd's Senate seat. Maybe she should sit down and think about what she wants to do, make up her mind, and than announce.

It's not as if the election were next week.

Made it though another week.

This is a long weekend for some of us...all government and quasi-governments (like the post office) are closed. Have a great week.

But think about two things -- Dr. King and his work, and those poor, poor people in Haiti.

We should all pitch in and help. Give through your church or synagogue or someplace you trust. Stay away from charities with large administrative ratios. You don't need to fund some bureaucrat's $300 grand a year salary or Jimmy Carter's anti-Semitic rantings. And, believe it or not, there are scammers out there, so watch out.

And thank God or fate or whoever or whatever you believe runs the world...there but for the grace....go we.

Have a great weekend and for those in the Tribe, a great Shabbos.

Until next time...

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