More Opt Out Swindles-ATT&T

Your home phone is like a credit card. Unless you call your phone company, anyone who knows your phone number can call from your home phone and order services at social networks.
For example. IMVU and Gaia, social networks for kids will charge your home phone for any services purchased from them on the internet, with only the phone number!
No code, no password, no authorization code!!
Your kids, you may have already discovered, have free rein, with the permission of your phone company, to order additional services without your authorization!!
When I called AT&T they told me I had to order a block on additional services, even though I never gave permission in the first place!!
This scam of opting out of services you didn't order in the first place has got to stop!!
Just another way business screws the honest citizen, ordering services, just certain services, and gets screwed.

"Automatic Renewals-More "Opt Outs"

Did I ask to renew my Vanity Fair magazine?
No-But they are billing me for another year-because I didn't "opt out"
Did I sign a contract asking for additional years? No
But in the fine print it says I must cancel my subscription even though I paid them for only one year.
I didn't pay them for anything else but ONE YEAR.

TMobile pulls the same "opt out" trick.
If you do not call  the company and tell them you do not want incoming text messages-although you told them you do not want the texting feature-they  allow others to text you and charge you for it.

We have banks that require you opt out of overdraft when you didn't ask for it in the first place.
Satellite radio claims they have the right to bill you an additional month even if you have a contract for a specific amount of time-because you didn't cancel-I paid for a year of service, they claim I owe them an additional month.

This has to stop.
Sneaky, crummy business practices.
Make sure you ask each time you pay for something which you believe is for a certain amount of time-or for a specific service.
You may find yourself paying for something you never asked for.

Bizzarro America-Wall Street Bonus and Massive Unemployment

Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch are formally taking those last few bucks you have in those 401K's-the sham retirement funds lobbed off on American people a decade ago.
They call them bonuses-I call it theft.

If someone came to your door with an Uzi, busted into your house, held your family hostage while others raped and pillaged, you bet you would scream and call the cops.
Yet when Wall Street, after playing one sleight of hand card trick on American citizens comes back with another, "Look!, Now You See it -Now you Don't", not a peep from all those unemployed, out of benefits, homeless, Americans. Those who are employed smugly watch neighbors lose their homes, and go to bed each night believing, for some grandiose reason, they are immune.
What is the difference between blatant rape and pillage and polite rape and pillage?
We are supposed to be grateful they are polite while taking our last dollars?

What will it take for Americans to start running their government again?
This isn't  about President Obama.
God forbid we get in the Limburger crowd. Crazy loonies are who believe in conspiratorial birth certificates and Islamic heehaws these are just plain crazy and nonsensical.
Those who have Tea Bags in their eyes and deeply embedded elsewhere have a right to be angry--too bad they are so far off base in their protests.
They all got some big tax breaks for the next few years and they worry about the national deficit?
Unemployment isn't about finding another job in two weeks anymore.

The National deficit pretty much reflects the state of the average American.
Over extended-and broke.
Conservative fiscal spending isn't going to help us a bit.
Government needs to spend our money to get us moving again.
Too bad the business world has found a way to rape and pillage the government stimulus money as well.

The Day My Daughter Almost Died

It isn't as if she was just a little girl that needed our protection so much. It is the question I ask myself-How old are kids supposed to be when they take responsibility and adults take none?
My daughter was 16 when she was playing cards with her dad's girlfriend and sister one night. They fed her alcohol all night long. Enough to create a dangerous level of alcohol in her system-she stopped breathing and went by ambulance to the Emergency room with a blood alcohol level of  250.
The ensuing fallout between her dad, his girlfriend and myself went something like this-
(Since he did not go to the emergency room with us, stayed at his front door in his bathrobe watching me help her out the door)-since no one woke when she screamed and she called me at 330 in the morning-
his girlfriend denied she ever gave drinks to my 16 year old daughter. Claimed she must have had them after they all passed out.
The police came and asked me if I wanted them to investigate-and I downplayed it-because I did not want to get her father (who is well known in the community) in trouble.

Her father immediately blamed her, eventually blaming me-accusing me of poisoning her mind against him.
I knew the trashing of me might happen, but after having known him for twenty years, and considering him my best friend, I hoped with some time he might think about the events and start questioning the events, rather than blaming her.
He and his girlfriend responded by claiming they would keep alcohol locked up around her-because of course she drank without their knowledge.
This response brought only disgust and disappointment from our daughter.
All the claims of love by him or my running interference with her, didn't budge her off the fact he never even asked her about the events of that night, believes his girlfriends story and now blames me.
I grieve for my friend (or what I thought was a friendship) and I am sad that they do not speak.
If his girlfriend told him the truth there might be a chance for their relationship, I would gladly stay out of the picture for the remainder of our lives, if it made a difference for my daughter and her dad.
It saddens me that he would think I would trash him to his daughter. Although I have raised her alone, I have always supported their relationship, making the effort to keep the communication lines open.
Now that I am aware of his feelings about me after all these years, I wonder, did he ever really see me as his friend?
Sometimes I think women(me) paint pictures in their heads of things that maybe really don't exist.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew, when I took a stand on this situation, and told him I felt it was dangerous and his girlfriend could not be trusted with our daughter, that would be the end of any communication we had.
It is up to my daughter now, two months later and now seventeern.
She wants nothing to do with him.
She feels betrayed. She is hurt that he would disparage me -after years of seeing us get along.
Or perhaps, maybe she and I both thought that but it wan't true?
She is alive, and I am thankful. I love my daughter. Her relationship with her dad is up to her, not me.
No more running interference. I would call him and give him a heads up about how she was feeling, and try to do the same for him during the rough patches. I see that was a mistake.
Now that it is up to her-she doesn't want to talk to him.
Perhaps time will heal this for them.
For me, I can't seem to get the picture out of my head of her face, cold, blue and white, and unmoving, not breathing, in my arms, in the back of the car at 3:30 in the morning.
I am so thankful she is ok, as I write this, I realize, nothing else is as important.

Huffington Post Jumps the Shark

Huffington Post Jumps the Shark

"Huffington Post-Breaking News" has become a joke.
The headline? "Ariana -Why Joe Biden should resign -What the headline should read is, "Ariana, the new Rush Limbaugh-taking herself too seriously, now believing her own hype....
Huffington Post has become a parody of news.
Tina Fey, 24-Year-Old Virgin: I 'Couldn't Give It Away'

Glenn Beck Shows Off His Olbermann, Matthews Impersonations

Conservative Attack Dog Slams Fox News And Bush

Megan Fox Gets Armani Gig, But Who's The Hottest Celeb Underwear Model Ever?

Gov. Perry: Executed Inmate "Was A Monster

Huffington Post has become another sensationalized media rag. Add it to the junkpile with CNN, USA Today, and of course, the spokesrag for the Republican Party-Fox aka blatantly bizarro news for the crazies.

Huffington Post has gone to the "light side".

Light on news, light on intellect and light on reason.

The Glee in Taking down the government-Fox News

What is it about relishing taking down our government? Why is it okay?
"Fox News" can call itself whatever it wants-millions of us ignore it-yet they prey upon ignorant, angry or racist citizens by lying, twisting or outright challenging our current presidential administration.
What people don't get is they are in it for the dollar.
Your dollar.
The one Bush stole from you and gave to his rich buddies-including Rupert Murdoch(the Australian?)
While the Obama Administration tries to pick up the pieces of the biggest mess in the history of our nation, Fox News, with great fanfare and relish, spends 24/7 lying, ambushing, twisting and hammering.
Ah, Bring back the Bush administration, who received white glove treatment from Fox news, which led us to this disastrous war we can't seem to stop, the climbing unemployment of our citizens, New Orleans, Wall Street.

What is with this craziness in the United States?
Why not just hand over what little  the citizens have left to Fox News, the oil companies, Citibank, and other corporations taking your jobs and money offshore?
The United States of Fox News -taking down the US government one lie at a time-and taking your money with it. Fools

Let's Lobby the Lobbyists Out!!!

The first priority of President Obama when taking office was to restrict lobbying of our legislators and government officials.
Impossible. Their insidious tentacles weave throughout our government affecting every small business, farmer, entrepreneur, educational system, dairy farmer, health care,  government worker and yes, even the Avon ladies of our country.

Those who freak at media scares over the swine flu should be paying more attention to the virus currently killing thousands, if not millions in our country.

Lobbyists-for corporations which have taken our jobs overseas, broken the backs of unions, jacked up the prices of produce and dairy products, kept our energy prices exaggeratedly inflated, created massive layoffs in the auto industry by allowing foreign auto companies huge tax breaks to build in our country, won concessions from the government to hide massive amounts of our dollars in offshore banking institutions, and continue each day to rape our country of our natural and made made resources, leaving us citizens unemployed .
Welcome to the new poor.
Those having worked all their lives, followed the governmen'ts recommendations to invest in 401k's,
buy homes and purchase goods and services in the USA, now, losing their homes, no safety net, working as if we were in the early 1900's, for a pittance, with the corporations calling the shots.
The world of reduced hours which means no benefits, no health insurance and no holiday pay.

We have regressed. We need to recognize it and get mad.
Do not kill the messenger. Get over your prejudices. Those feelings are only a smokescreen for the inability to take responsibility for the stupid trust we have given to past administrations handing over our livlihoods to greedy corporations.

Our first step?
Kick the lobbysists out of Washington.
Now!
Kick them out.
Kick out any legislator who accepts anything -campaign money, a trip to the Bahamas, a dinner, a pen.
No lobbyists.
Force legislators to make policy based upon the citizens of this country.
Kick them out.
Our government system is so corrupt with payoffs and lobbyists, our nation has become a mass of angry cynics.
Rather than clean it up we are on a road to self destruct.
Stop acting like petulant, grounded teenagers.
Let's work together and unravel the tentacles which strangle our democracy.

Start our own lobby.
Each citizen is a part of it.
Lobby the Lobbyists Out!