Yowsa

Movie review

My review of The Happening.

23%

Bush's latest approval, in LA Times/Bloomberg poll. 73% disapprove, which is the highest for any president in a poll, I believe.

Yahoo! resignation form letter

This should make things easier.

New movie reviews...

On Narrative Junkie.

Catalogue of wrongs

Covad charges me $20 every year for a cancelled domain name registration, and every year I have to tell them to remove it.

Verizon doesn't itemize my phone calls, so who knows what I'm getting charged for. I've received several text msg ads I never asked for, but because I don't see the numbers on the bill, I keep forgetting to complain about getting charged for them.

A window repair company sent me two invoices for the same service, and I stupidly paid them twice. Now I have left two messages and they haven't returned my call.

I put the wrong bank ID number in for an electronic payment to two different credit card companies, and they both charged me a late payment fee and a returned check fee. Even though both web sites accepted the ID number and confirmed my payment. Both removed the  late fee, but won't remove the return fee.

Last year Covad charged me hundreds of dollars for a customer support housecall, even though none was made. After hours upon hours on the phone, they removed it, and to their credit, gave me a special deal for the upcoming year.

I tried to cancel the MLB package on my satellite service, but called one day after the season started, so they wouldn't do it. (You have to call before the season starts.) I was about to take the call up another level when I decided the situation was a sign that I should watch the Mets for yet another year. Now I can probably sue for emotional damages to boot...

And speaking of DirectTV, I got one of the many annoying phone calls one gets during the evening hours from them last year, asking me to sign up for a too-good-to-be-believed "customer retention" fee of $50 per month including HBO, Showtime, and the NFL package.  So I took it, then waited 3 months for it to start. It didn't, so I had to spend another hour or so on the phone explaining to another dept what had been offered to me, and they said sometimes contractors sign people up for these deals and don't inform the main office. Now I'm wondering if the whole thing was a scam...(To their credit, DirecTV made good on the deal.)

We were billed $265 for a medical test, but our insurance company says the provider can only bill us $87. So now I have to call one or both of them.

In order to avoid being overcharged or otherwise ripped off, the average household would have to employee a full-time worker to track all the bills and derelictions of service. How carefully do you check all the bills that come in?

Chipper Jones II

As of right now, he's hitting .414.

Blogs blogs blogs

On the "Vanity Fair" Blogopticon.

Obama campaign sets record straight

• Fight the Smears

An important site.

Here we go again...

Exposing the GOP's Voter Suppression Campaign (Truthdig)
If Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, is to defeat John McCain, he’d better get started organizing teams of election law attorneys and other specialists to guard against efforts already underway to disenfranchise Democratic voters. full article

Gail Collins on Hillary campaign

Good analysis of what it has meant and will mean for women.

Scott McClellan on Daily Show

Great interview by Jon Stewart.

Chipper Jones

As of right now, he's hitting .420.

Another rat deserts the sinking ship

Wow. Scott McClellan, as the Bush press secretary, stood at a podium for a couple of years telling lie after lie, and now he turns around and writes a book called “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception”?

In the words of Tony Soprano, where does he get the balls?

Journalist with a conscience

Comcast news anchor Barry Nolan gets the boot for protesting a New England media association's journalistic award to Bill O'Reilly.

Return of the Amazing World of Dick Brooks!

By popular demand.

• Dick analyzes the Microsoft - Yahoo! situation

Priceless

You have to see this clip of some right-wing radio bozo Kevin James having his head handed to him on national TV by Chris Matthews.

They do! Shifting the tax burden to the poor and middle class, perpetual war, voter disenfranchisement...

...dismantling the entire governmental regulatory system, protecting  corporate interests at the expense of  individuals,  cowtowing to the values of conservative white men, ostracizing gays and lesbians...The list goes on and on.

-The GOP must stand for something  (Karl Rove, Wall St Journal)

O'Reilly loses it on set

The YouTube videos of this keep coming down. Try here.

I did it

Completed only my second-ever Saturday Times crossword puzzle.

Susan Faludi on Hillary

In today's Times: The Fight Stuff

Very interesting analysis, except for persistent references to a methaphorical "umpire" as the officiant in a boxing match. Considering the topic of the article, this is an ironic and almost incredible mistake. I wonder if some copy editor at the Times meant to undermine her by letting this stand. (For those who don't know, it's a referee who oversees a boxing match, an umpire officiates at baseball games.)

Another milestone for Bush

Bush beats his previous disapproval mark of 69% with an even worse 71% in a new poll. That's worse than Nixon right before he resigned.