December 2009 archive

The Often Disturbing Reality of Social Media

Julia Angwin’s column entitled How Facebook is Making Friending Obsolete provides a revealing look into the ways that supposedly free services like Facebook and Twitter are mining the data of unsuspecting users for profit.  The tactic is unethical at best, but it highlights just how desperate some companies are to turn a profit.  The idea of monthly or yearly subscriptions, which were the bread and butter of old media cannot be relied on in this medium because online users refuse to pay them and then gravitate to the latest platform that can be used for free™.  As for my own personal leanings, any technology that subverts the established system and forces it out of its comfort zone is worthy of praise in my book, but I suppose this degree of perfidy and with it monetary gain ought to be expected under the circumstances.  The basic idea of capitalism is built on the idea of change and the next big thing, but this, of course, threatens the establishment that doesn’t like having to think outside of its cozy comfort zone.  

Angwin sets up her column by saying,

Friending wasn’t used as a verb until about five years ago, when social networks such as Friendster, MySpace and Facebook burst onto the scene.

Suddenly, our friends were something even better – an audience. If blogging felt like shouting into the void, posting updates on a social network felt more like an intimate conversation among friends at a pub.

That degree of false intimacy, however, proved to have consequences.  It lulled many into an imagined sense of security that could be broached by ten mouse clicks or less.  Potentially embarrassing personal details could be accessed easily by complete strangers, and when these users complained and very publicly cried foul, the media picked up on it by running stories and op-eds that adopted the tone of a finger-waggling parent.  Apparently it deemed that the best way to keep from oversharing personal details online was a good hearty dose of stern lecturing and abject moralizing.  To be sure, irresponsible behavior led to the establishment of a thousand or so online-based drama queens and flame wars.  That which had been an interesting concept in drawing people together began to show some serious flaws.      

Or, as Benjamin Franklin put it,

Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

I never recognized how repressive a culture of which we are all a part until I incorporated the internet into my daily routine.  The guise of anonymity that cyberspace provides gives people the opportunity for people to come clean with a million different, but highly related fears, phobias, neuroses, and insecurities as though we were all members of a giant support group.  Unlike some, I don’t get much pleasure out of observing the scars of other people, no matter how selfishly rendered they may be.  I pity those who feel that the only way they can truly be honest with themselves and in so doing brave vulnerability and sincerity is when among those who they cannot see, hear, or speak to face to face.  And yet, each of us is like that to some degree.  

Regarding keeping ourselves in check a bit, I don’t mean it in a kind of Puritanical repressive sense, but rather that the immediate gratification and instant attention the internet provides us caters to a sense of narcissism and me-centered discourse.  If intimacy with friends is what we were seeking, the Wild West freedom provided by the technology makes a true circle of trust and discretion nearly impossible.  One can only work within the limitations of the medium itself.  Whatever ends up being broadcast online usually can be discovered with enough searching.  

When I was younger, I volunteered information in cyberspace that hindsight allows me to recognize that I probably should have been a bit more discerning.  But again, I was a teenager then, and every adolescent is half child, half adult, and all insecure.  I am fortunate I had the internet at that formative time in my life because I met other people my own age going through the same things I was and I had a shared sense of solace there.  Had I been born even five years earlier, I would not have had that outlet and would have suffered mightily in its absence.  

Returning to the larger point, the true lesson here is that major sectors of our capitalist wilderness are desperately trying to find ways to make money and are doing so by methods that openly violate our trust and our sense of security.  I suppose I could jump up and down, screaming about constitutional statutes and right to privacy being broached, shortly after contacting the ACLU, but I doubt it would do much in the way of good.  The recession merely exacerbated trends that had been slowly, steadily progressing of their own accord.  That certain companies would have the testicular fortitude to so sneakily use our own information and thoughts for their gain is damning enough, but provided we remain complicit and enabling in it, more companies will attempt similar tactics.  

Any system based on profit will be adaptive and find a way to use our humanity against us.  In an age where we are lonely, desirous of companionship, isolated by distance, and hoping to find a means to be a part of something larger than ourselves, Facebook arrived to fill the void.  It captured the Zeitgeist, for better or for worse, and now it is merely the latest manipulator for profit.  I am decidedly not a purist in this regard and though I will certainly take care to make sure I don’t resort to blarf on the page, neither will I take stock that someday social networking will replace what face-to-face personal contact ought to provide.

It is a testament to the fact that judge not, lest ye be judged is probably the moral teaching we disregard the most in this day.  That we judge ourselves more harshly than any troll or disapproving person ever could gets down to the root cause of the matter.  These are “guilty before proven innocent” times.  These are Nancy Grace days.  If we wish to change them, learning to forgive ourselves for being imperfect might be a good place to begin.  Embracing this unfair, didactic standard forces us to feel as though jumping through hoops and adhering to an obstacle course of needlessly complex, self-appointed guidelines is the key to living a satisfying life.  Micromanaging every aspect of who we are is the quickest road to misery I’ve ever seen.  We have unfortunately adopted a belief in the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law.

Intentionally following the letter of the law but not the spirit may be accomplished through exploiting technicalities, loopholes, and ambiguous language. Following the letter of the law but not the spirit is also a tactic used by oppressive governments.  

       

This is something, quite predictably, with which we have been struggling for a very long time.

While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.  But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?”  When Jesus heard that, he said to them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor; those who are sick do. I’ve come to call sinners, not people who think they have God’s approval.”  

But neither do we need to appear self-righteous in talking about self-righteous, egocentric behavior.  That is deepest irony and part of this same judge-addicted culture.

Twitter’s updates were also easily searchable on the Web, forcing users to be somewhat thoughtful about their posts. The intimate conversation became a talent show, a challenge to prove your intellectual prowess in 140 characters or less.

People are competitive in nature.  I take it Angwin finds this sort of conduct distasteful.  I myself have used my Twitter posts to underscore the larger points I was mulling over at the time, often while in the process of constructing my posts, but the point was never to be adored or to win a fan base.  Often I felt a compulsion to put down something substantive to counterbalance the vast amount of trite banter that makes its way onto status updates.  Along these same lines, I notice that many people seem to make it a challenge to see how many friends they can achieve on Facebook, no matter whether they actually have ever met in person or not.  Life may be a talent show, but no one forces one to sign up for a space, either.      

Angwin concludes her column, vowing,

…I will also remove the vestiges of my private life from Facebook and make sure I never post anything that I wouldn’t want my parents, employer, next-door neighbor or future employer to see. You’d be smart to do the same.

We’ll need to treat this increasingly public version of Facebook with the same hard-headedness that we treat Twitter: as a place to broadcast, but not a place for vulnerability. A place to carefully calibrate, sanitize and bowdlerize our words for every possible audience, now and forever. Not a place for intimacy with friends.

While I agree with the author’s conclusion, I also add that being careful about that what we post in a public forum might not be a bad habit to get into, after all.  Her frustration with Facebook is quite palpable, but I’m not sure cutting off our nose to spite our face is a good solution.  Nor am I completely certain that there was ever some golden age where vulnerability on any online platform could be safely protected and manipulation of intimacy did not exist.  Secrets have a way of spilling out, even among friends, and even in real life.  

Nothing can be covered up forever and the paradoxical reality about success and increased exposure is that the larger a profile a person has, the more public is his or her life.  When I was growing up, my mother frequently invoked the old saying that just because you have dirty laundry doesn’t mean you ought to put it out on the front porch for all to see.  I’ve always disagreed with the statement and what it implies, because I think being vulnerable need not be purely irresponsible.  It’s a matter of degree and it’s a matter of balance.      

The internet has catered to a fickle side of who we are.  MySpace was once the end-all, be-all of social networking sites, and now it has given way to Facebook.  Twitter, not to be forgotten, has muscled its way into the public consciousness.  Anyone designing a social media network should keep in mind that success is ephemeral in the internet age and that one needs only look back roughly a decade to see all of the companies, platforms, programs and their ilk that have fallen out of public favor.  We are no longer beholden to brand loyalty, which is probably what separates Baby Boomers from their children regarding the strongest sense of disconnect.  

Today Facebook, tomorrow something else.  Whatever comes afterward will probably have to be monitored, too, but my belief in our economic system was that so long as we cling to Adam Smith’s invention, we will have to be our own regulators, but neither does this mean that all of our efforts should be devoted to plugging the dam.  I have no doubt that if we adopted socialism wholesale we’d need to be mindful of its shortcomings as well, but neither should we be utterly consumed with finding fault.  Life is too short.      

America, Where Are You Now?

Don’t you know we need you now,

We can’t fight alone against the monster…



John Kay and Steppenwolf: The Monster

Bernie Sanders Contact Information

is here:

http://sanders.senate.gov/cont…

He may be the only hope to stop the health care bill.  

Also, maybe suggest he run for president in 2012 ?

Levity & Mirth

So, who pissed in YOUR cornflakes this morning, sunshine? 🙂

LIAR!

President Obama Tells Bald-Faced Lie About Health Care Reform Cost Control

By: Jon Walker Tuesday December 15, 2009 1:03 pm

After exiting a meeting with the Senate Democratic caucus, President Obama approached the microphone and proceeded to tell a bald-faced lie about health care reform:

You talk to every health care economist out there, they will tell you that what ever ideas exist in terms of bending the cost curve and starting to reduce cost for families, businesses, and government, those elements are in this bill.

This statement is 100% false-and Obama knows that. This bill does not contain anywhere near most ideas for controlling health care costs. This bill does not even contain most of the cost-reducing ideas that were part of Obama’s health care plan during last year’s presidential campaign.

Mr. President, If you are going to cut secret deals that will force Americans to spend billions more on their prescription drugs, at least have the decency to not publicly lie about how your “health care reform” bill will do everything it can to reduce costs for American families. You know it is a lie, the PhRMA lobbyists you cut the secret deal with know it is a lie, health care reform experts knows it is a lie, and the American people should know it is a lie.

The Senate Bill Is Designed To Make Your Health Insurance Worse

By: Jon Walker Tuesday December 15, 2009 7:46 am

The sole defense of this massive corporate giveaway, formally known as the Senate health care reform bill, is that it would still do some “good,” helping millions of the uninsured. Unfortunately, the bill would dramatically worsen the quality of current insurance coverage for tens of millions Americans, thanks to the new excise tax on insurance plans. It is unlikely that any of the remaining “good” in this bill will outweigh the massive amount of harm.

Most of the “help” this bill will do is dubious at best. Help is being defined as giving insufficient subsides to Americans now forced by the government to buy extremely expensive, poorly regulated, junk insurance. Without banning annual limits and an extremely high out-of-pocket cap (which thanks to a massive loophole is not really capped at all), the insurance regulations are basically meaningless. Having this new, mandated “coverage” will not stop you from being bankrupted by accumulated medical debt should you get seriously ill. Insurance that does not protect you from financial ruin if you get sick makes a mockery of the entire concept health insurance.

The harm this bill will do thanks to the excise tax on employer-provided insurance benefits is enormous. The health care bill is designed with the goal of making millions of middle class Americans’ health insurance coverage much worse. That is not a bug, it is a feature.

Time To Hold Progressives In Congress To Their Promise

By: Jane Hamsher Tuesday December 15, 2009 9:58 am

Instead of a public option, what does the Senate bill contain?

  • A removal of the ban on annual limits that Reid slipped in at the last minute, in violation of the President’s promise in his September address to Congress
  • An exemption from anti-trust law for insurance companies that will reduce competition
  • Taxes that start up in January, but benefits that don’t start until 2014
  • No ability to negotiate for Medicare drug prices (you know, that thing the Democrats passed in the “first hundred days” in 2006 when it didn’t matter)
  • No cost controls, so health insurance premiums will continue to rise at a rate of $1000 a year
  • A tax on middle class insurance plans that is designed to cut back insurance benefits, reduce coverage, and increase co-pays and deductibles.

That reduction in your insurance benefits is a feature, not a bug – it’s how they’re going to “bend the cost curve.”

We Need $120,000 to Run a TV Ad in Nevada against Harry Reid

By: Michael Whitney Tuesday December 15, 2009 11:24 am

Just how bad will the bill be if Lieberman gets his way?

  1. Mandates every American buy expensive insurance from private companies without the choice of a public option
  2. Severely taxes middle class health care plans, rather than wealthy individuals
  3. Insurance premiums will increase in cost $1000 a year
  4. Increased health care costs
  5. Insurance companies will be exempt from anti-trust laws, inhibiting competition
  6. A sweet, sweet deal for PhRMA with no ability to negotiate for Medicare drug prices
  7. Monopolies granted on new biologic drugs so they will never become generics
  8. NO public option
  9. NO medicare expansion

For good measure, Reid slipped in an annual limit on benefits that insurance companies have to pay out, contrary to President Obama’s promise in September. And to top it all off, the IRS fines you if you won’t shell out money to insurance companies!

I don’t know about you, but if I wanted John McCain’s health care plan, I would’ve voted for John McCain. He would have let Lieberman write the health care bill, too.

Without A Public Option, The Individual Mandate Is Unacceptable For Moral, Political, And Policy Reasons

By: Jon Walker Tuesday December 15, 2009 10:38 am

The current Senate bill only creates a sham imitation of these systems. This bill completely fails to uphold the government’s end of this social contract, but would still force Americans to buy expensive, poorly regulated, junk insurance. Insurance policies would only be required to have an actuarial value of 60 percent, a shockingly low number. The insurance companies will not be banned from placing annual caps on benefits and there is a massive loophole to get around an already too high “limit” on out-of-pocket cost. The end result is that having this “insurance” will not prevent Americans from bankruptcy if the get sick, nullifying the entire logic behind universal health insurance. For moral, political, policy, and economic reasons, progressives must oppose any government mandate to buy insurance as long as the government refuses to pass laws ensuring that every American actually has access to decent, affordable health insurance.

The Senate bill does not ensure that Americans get value from the health insurance they would be forced to buy. Insurance companies are not mandated to be non-profits. It lacks a strong minimum medical loss ratio that would force insurance companies to spend the majority of the money they take in through premiums on actual health care. There are no serious price controls of any form put on the insurance companies. The bill lacks a strong third-party review of claims denials. The bill also lacks a central reimbursement negotiator to make sure that insurance companies are not overpaying providers and passing on the cost to their customers.

The health insurance Americans are forced to purchase will not be affordable. Middle class families (making 300%-400% of FPL) will only get subsidies sufficient to make the premiums for the second cheapest insurance at the low quality silver level (70% actuarial) cost 10% of their income. That is only premiums and does not count co-pays, deductibles, non-covered procedures and medications, etc. These plans will have an annual out-of-pocket limit $12,000. If a family actually had a medical emergency, their health care spending could eat up over a third of their income, or go over the annual cap on benefit payments. This is not quality insurance, and will not truly protect people from financial ruin if they get sick. The bill will also allow insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans.

Don’t Forget About Ben Nelson, He Has Demands Too!

By: Jon Walker Tuesday December 15, 2009 3:45 pm

The only small consolation is that without the public option, strong risk adjustment mechanisms, sufficient tax credits, or tougher regulations, the exchanges will end up an awful place to buy insurance. I doubt anyone will use the exchanges unless they have no other choice. The failure of the rest of reform might end having the “benefit” of containing the poison from whatever anti-abortion langauge Nelson ends up getting added.

Kill the Senate Bill

By: Jane Hamsher Tuesday December 15, 2009 2:36 pm

When urging its passage today, President Obama said two things that are manifestly untrue.  He says that the bill fulfills all of the promises he made in his September speech before a joint session of Congress, but it doesn’t.

What the President said in September:

They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime.

But while nobody was looking, Harry Reid slipped in an “arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year”:

The President Obama also said that “what ever ideas exist in terms of bending the cost curve and starting to reduce cost for families, businesses, and government, those elements are in this bill.”  Not true either.

As we speak, Frank Lautenberg and Kay Hagan are destroying Byron Dorgan’s drug reimportation amendment by making a bunch of bullshit claims about drug safety.  The danger of transferring drugs from a CVS warehouse in Canada to a CVS store in the United States?  Zip.  But they’re pretending that everything is coming from Chinese counterfeiters to keep something that could save the government $19 billion and the public over $100 billion from passing so the White House deal  with PhRMA can be upheld.  The Dorgan amendment could have been a way of honestly bending the cost curve, something the President campaigned on.

Instead, the “bend” comes from taxing middle class insurance benefits, which makes them worse.

Don’t Blame Joe Lieberman, Blame Harry Reid

By: Jon Walker Tuesday December 15, 2009 12:39 pm

I would call this move of adding a public option pure theater, but it was, in fact, far more malicious. By adding the public option and dragging out debate until late December, Harry Reid made sure there would not be time to use reconciliation.

I understand why much of the progressive base is angry at Joe Lieberman for what he is doing to the Senate health care reform bill, but you should really be angry at the people who gave Lieberman his power. If Reid had gone with reconciliation, Joe Lieberman would not be writing the bill as we speak. This is what happens when the progressive base believes one of Reid’s worthless promises that he can handle things.

Obama To Tell Senate Democrats Being Unprincipled Spineless Wimps Is A Good Thing

By: Jon Walker Tuesday December 15, 2009 9:45 am

Obama might convince the Senate Democratic caucus that giving up all their principles to appease Joe Lieberman is a smart move. I don’t think he will ever convince the American people to vote en masse for a party that looks like it is made up of only unprincipled spineless wimps.

The Professor of Constitutional Fuckface.

Obama’s effort on the signature issue of healthcare has been truly pathetic.  More generally, he seems to have no problem with US citizens paying tithes and bailouts directly to US corporations as government policy, despite what he says publicly.  

Populist Rhetoric and Symbolic Actions

Barack Obama is so mad at Wall Street! Here, just look at what he told 60 Minutes last night:

BARACK OBAMA: I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street…Nothing has been more frustrating to me this year than having to salvage a financial system at great expense to taxpayers that was precipitated, that was caused, in part by completely irresponsible actions on Wall Street…the people on Wall Street still don’t get it. They don’t get it…you guys are drawing down $10, $20 million bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that’s it’s gone through in decades, and you guys caused the problem.

But he’s not just all talk. He’s also taking action! He’s so furious he’s going to have an hour-long meeting with Wall Street executives. Dear god in heaven!

Meanwhile, the banksters continue pissing on Barack Obama’s shoes, even after he put on a public show to berate them for their financial malpractice.


… Said one CEO who attended: “I expected to be taken to the woodshed, but the tone was quite the opposite.”

Said another senior exec with knowledge of the meeting: “The whole thing was so telegraphed that not much was accomplished, other than giving Obama a PR stunt … He might have sounded mean on ’60 Minutes,’ but during the meeting he was a hell of a lot nicer.”

So far, the dude’s been painfully, strikingly ineffectual, with resulting outcomes always favoring corporations and screwing the public, even though health care and job prospects suggest a fucking blowout for Democrats in 2010.  Worst, his actions, as distinct from his “word-itude,” suggest he is a total corporate sell-out willing to alter the Constitutional fabric of our nation.  Never mind the ineptitude and ineffectualness of Mr. Constitutional Law. And never mind 2010. What a total fuck-face.

Ineffectual

To say that Barack Obama has more hat and less cattle than George Bush is…saying a lot, but I’m really beginning to wonder if I’m going to start feeling sorry for the guy, involuntarily and against my better judgment, long, long before his term is up.    This health care reform effort has been…disastrous, a train wreck of unforced errors, utterly incompetent, yet Obama remains “cautiously optimistic” even still.  I guess Turkana was right: Just pass a sense of the Congress that “Health Care is Good” and call it a fucking day.  Are Barack and Rahm really bumping dickheads over this–I can’t call it a complete failure, because there was so little effort to accomplish anything-but seriously professor, you’re handing this in as homework?

aimai runs it down at nomoremister.blogspot.com:

The problem the Democrats are having with this bill is that they oversold what they would do, and underfought the bill–very, very, very, publicly. Obama came in with a huge reservoir of good will and a big rolodex of names and friends to push for the policies he said he wanted. Health Care Reform was one of his signature issues and he immiediately set about talking, in very vague terms, about getting it done. For pretty good policy reasons he nominally turned it over to the House and Senate to “get it done” while setting out, broadly, some guidelines about what he thought should be in the bill. Those guidelines, of course, ought to have been the most comprehensive, well thought, out, clearly stated set of bullet points he could have come up with. Because those guidelines were what Obama and the Democrats were going to be campaigning on. Those would be “the bill” as far as the public was concerned.

From the get go they refused to aggressively market a single set of bullet points that were clear, cogent, and defensible. Then they refused to activate their own activist network. They refused to demonize a subset of their opposition to force another subset to compromise. They didn’t drum up enough support in the country as a whole–for instance, they didn’t back and organize the free health clinics that we later saw emerge. They allowed Baucus to move from a supporter to an enemy of reform and to drag the entire process out of whack in August. They didn’t organize and orchestrate the August Town Halls and they let them be taken over by the Tea Partiers. Because of their own refusal to activate Obama’s network–which came about because they didn’t want to back actually popular reforms and were wedded to the most insurance friendly set of minor tinkers–they lost the August recess. They didn’t send the Democratic Senators and House members out with a single set of talking points. They didn’t strong arm the weak or conservative members of their own caucus.

Worse, they undercut and undersold the most progressive members of both the Senate and the House while cozening up to, and bargaining with, Pharma, the Insurance Companies, the Hospitals, the Blue Dogs, Baucus, Lieberman, Snowe, Collins, and all the rest of them. When progressives warned them not to let Baucus push the Senate bill farther and farther out that was ignored. In the House the blue dogs were given benefits and attention that the progressive caucus never was, and the progressives found themselves outgunned and outmaneuvered on Stupak. Then we were all promised that, somehow, things would be fixed in the conference report. Now, of course, we are being told that there won’t be any conference report, or at any rate that to placate the worst elements of the Senate and the House there is no chance of ameliorating the worst bits of either bill.

And now Obama goes hat in hand to the progressives and begs them to back the bill right now?

Obama’s effort on a signature issue has been  truly pathetic.

Meanwhile, the banksters continue pissing on Barack Obama’s shoes, even after he put on a public show to berate them for their financial malpractice.


… Said one CEO who attended: “I expected to be taken to the woodshed, but the tone was quite the opposite.”

Said another senior exec with knowledge of the meeting: “The whole thing was so telegraphed that not much was accomplished, other than giving Obama a PR stunt … He might have sounded mean on ’60 Minutes,’ but during the meeting he was a hell of a lot nicer.”

So far, the dude’s been painfully ineffectual.  Health care and job prospects suggest a fucking blowout in 2010.  

20% of your labor belongs to Aetna

Health Care on the Road to Neo-Feudalism

By: emptywheel Tuesday December 15, 2009 8:53 pm

Consider, first of all, this fact. The bill, if it became law, would legally require a portion of Americans to pay more than 20% of the fruits of their labor to a private corporation in exchange for 70% of their health care costs.

It’s one thing to require a citizen to pay taxes-to pay into the commons. It’s another thing to require taxpayers to pay a private corporation, and to have up to 25% of that go to paying for luxuries like private jets and gyms for the company CEOs.

They will, at a minimum, be asked to pay 9.8% of their income to the insurance company. And if they have a significant medical event, they’ll pay 22%…

But for those who think we can fix it, consider this, too. If the Senate bill passes, in its current form, it will mean that the health care industry was able to dictate-through their Senators Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson-what they wanted the US Congress to do. They will have succeeded in dictating the precise terms of legislation.

When this passes, it will become clear that Congress is no longer the sovereign of this nation. Rather, the corporations dictating the laws will be.

I understand the temptation to offer 30 million people health care. What I don’t understand is the nonchalance with which we’re about to fundamentally shift the relationships of governance in doing so.

We’ve seen our Constitution and means of government under attack in the last 8 years. This does so in a different-but every bit as significant way. We don’t mandate tithing corporations in this country-at least not yet. And it troubles me that so many Democrats are rushing to do so, without considering the logical consequences.

Late Night Karaoke

Open Thread

Please Help Dharmaheads! Anyone Have Bank of America (or Any Bank Account Actually) As Their Bank?

I need your input because I think this is on a larger scale then I thought.  If what I described in this diary has happened to anyone else with a Bank of America account (or any account where activity has been “irregular” lately) please tell me in the comment threads or via email if you’re concerned about privacy.  Use

Guerrilla Mail for a fake account to contact me if you’re that paranoid.

[email protected]

Three (3) is the number of overdraft charges people have told me they have incurred even though…well…they shouldn’t have.

The sampling (my “n” I suppose) was somewhat random as well as close friends.  My friends vary in their fiscal responsibility but when even the Republican ones are complaining about it I know that this is a pattern that suggests it is deliberate by Bank of America.

The people I didn’t know were classmates that I overheard talking about BOA charging three (3) overdrafts even though they had hundreds of dollars just a few hours before they made another purchase.  The same response was given when their friends asked “did you call to see what happened?” to which the response (response my friends gave too) was “they told me I needed to take into account the charges I had pending that weren’t shown on my statement”.  Yes, charges are pending, but we ain’t telling you which ones and if you look at the fine print, BOA is allowed to place a hold on charges until they feel it is necessary to release it.

Same excuse they gave when I asked them why it would take 11 days to process a check I put in.

What are the chances that 5 people that know each other (but the bank doesn’t know they know each other) experienced the same problem, with the same frequency, and the same exact situation?

What is the possibility that a random conversation one butts in on to tell others it happened to them and their friends is experiencing the same thing, from the same bank, around the same time as everyone else?

What is the probability of this being random?

Does it show a pattern indicative of a systematic function or a random fluke of continuing coincidence?

Are you ready to puke?

This will be brief!  Brevity because of too much going on today, but I think it’s very important that everyone gets a glimpse of this. I can hardly digest this news, without a feeling of deep, down illness.  And, worse, it’s something that I don’t know if any of us have actually been anticipating or suspecting!

Yemen: Pentagon’s War On The Arabian Peninsula

Yemen will become a battleground for a proxy war between the United States and Saudi Arabia – whose state-to-state relations are among the strongest and most durable of the entire post-World War II era – on one hand and Iran on the other.

It is perhaps impossible to determine the exact moment at which a U.S.- supported self-professed holy warrior – trained to perpetrate acts of urban terrorism and to shoot down civilian airliners – ceases to be a freedom fighter and becomes a terrorist. But a safe assumption is that it occurs when he is no longer of use to Washington. A terrorist who serves American interests is a freedom fighter; a freedom fighter who doesn’t is a terrorist.

Yemenis are the latest to learn the Pentagon’s and the White House’s law of the jungle. Along with Iraq and Afghanistan which counterinsurgency specialist Stanley McChrystal used to perfect his techniques, Yemen is joining the ranks of other nations where the Pentagon is engaged in that variety of warfare, fraught with civilian massacres and other forms of so-called collateral damage: Colombia, Mali, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia and Uganda.

BBC News reported on December 14 that 70 civilians were killed when aircraft bombed a market in the village of Bani Maan in northern Yemen.

The nation’s armed forces claimed responsibility for the deadly attack, but a website of the Houthi rebels against whom the bombing was ostensibly directed stated “Saudi aircraft committed a massacre against the innocent residents of Bani Maan.” [1] . . . .

The conjuring up of the al-Qaeda bogey, however, is a decoy. The rebels in the north of the nation are Shi’ites and not Sunnis, much less Wahhabi Sunnis of the Saudi variety, and as such are not only not linked with any group of groups that could be categorized as al-Qaeda, but instead would be a likely target thereof. . . .

Please read!  Be aware of this latest aggression!

Feeling near “faintness” right now — it all goes ahead without us or any resistance — it’s all so unstoppable, as is so far the reality!  

Overnight Caption Contest

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