asses

So how many out there have received one of these robo-calls to their phone saying “your car warranty is about to expire”? These things have been a total nuisance, and I have even received calls on my cell phone about it. Well it looks like the government has had enough of it:

Federal regulators filed suits Thursday against several companies they say are behind a national wave of spam "robo-calls" that warn people their auto warranties are expiring and offer new service plans.

Federal Trade Commission officials said they asked a federal court in Chicago to halt the illegal telemarketing campaign of "Your Car Warranty Has Expired." Officials say as many as 1 billion of the nuisance calls have been made to Americans.

The FTC named Voice Touch Inc. and Transcontinental Warranty Inc., which it called the telemarketer and promoter of the scheme, respectively, in the lawsuits. The agency is seeking injunctions forcing them to return allegedly ill-gotten gains.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz called it "one of the most aggressive" telemarketing schemes the agency has ever seen.

"I'm not sure which is worse, the abusive telemarketing tactics of these companies, or the way they try to deceive people once they get them on the phone," Leibowitz said. "Either way, we intend to shut them down."

I think a public flogging is in line for the assholes that came up with this scheme. I know that won’t happen, but it will be fun to watch them get their asses handed to them in a court of law.

Following the news the other day of a former Gitmo detainee now heading al Qaeda’s Yemen group, now we have a report of two more former detainees showing up in an al Qaeda video:

Two men released from the US "war on terror" prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have appeared in a video posted on a jihadist website, the SITE monitoring service reported.

One of the two former inmates, a Saudi man identified as Abu Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri, or prisoner number 372, has been elevated to the senior ranks of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, a US counter-terrorism official told AFP.

And just like the other day, the right is using this as their argument to keep Gitmo open. Will someone please ask these wingnuts why they want to keep the policies intact the play catch and release with these terrorists? This was George W. Bush’s policies that let these people go back into the wild, and the right seems content on having it that way, It would be nice if they could pull their heads out of their asses long enough to realize they are champion for al Qaeda.

Jed posted this video of a Republican strategist saying that Democrats and Obama need to reach out to Lieberman. Should the Democrats really take advice from the party that just got their asses handed to them and is still to afraid to admin what really happened? I don’t think so.

Oh yeah - we have become a socialist nation. Not being online gave me more time to surf the channels and catch all the economic gurus talking about this collapse. It's funny how everyone is now saying "oh I predicted it would happen". I remember last summer when Jim Cramer was talking about it and people called him a doom and gloomer. Well he was right on.

So now we get to fork out $700 billion in bad loans in order to save Wall Street. That's right, WE, as in the American taxpayer. There's a chance we could end up making money off of it, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Will this finally put an end to the "no regulation" beliefs of the GOP? I highly doubt it.

Something that does need to occur now is enacting legislation to limit the severance packages of failed executives of corporations. If you or me went into work and cost our company everything, we would get booted out and have trouble finding employment again. Instead these executives receive millions upon millions of dollars as they leave. It's a practice that was unfair to the stock holders and the consumers, but now it is also unfair to the taxpayer since we are left saving their asses.

Everyone seems to be breathing a little easier this weekend as Wall Street rebounded some yesterday, but wouldn't you also rebound with the early Christmas present given to you by the U.S. taxpayer? We definitely are not out of the woods yet. There are still a lot of problems facing our economy, especially Detroit. We also are paying out all this money to bail out the financial institutes, while everyone seems to ignore the fact that America is broke. America is having to use its credit from overseas to bail out the credit crisis. An oxymoron if I ever heard one.

Yesterday when I blogged about the Marine being convicted of killing an Iraqi citizen, I also talked about the problems out troops are facing by being forced into these extended stays. To further that point, here is an article, published today, about a soldier being released from medical care earlier and sent back to Iraq:

A Fort Carson soldier who says he was in treatment at Cedar Springs Hospital for bipolar disorder and alcohol abuse was released early and ordered to deploy to the Middle East with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team.

The 28-year-old specialist spent 31 days in Kuwait and was returned to Fort Carson on Dec. 31 after health care professionals in Kuwait concurred that his symptoms met criteria for bipolar disorder and "some paranoia and possible homicidal tendencies," according to e-mails obtained by a Denver newspaper.

This is a serious problem. Our military is hurting with man power, so they make idiotic decisions like this to get people back to fight. When innocent Iraqis get shot, you can't blame just the soldiers, but must look seriously at the system. The soldiers aren't getting the mental health they need, and when they do the military half asses it. With that, is there any wonder why we have soldiers killing the wrong people?

The Republicans are working harder to save their own asses this November, and that includes eating their own:

U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Davis has joined the growing chorus of those who believe Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should be out of a job.

"I told my husband that when (Sen.) Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) came out and said he should resign, it's probably the only thing in my life I've ever agreed with Hillary Clinton about," said Davis, R-Gloucester.

Clinton's call came on Aug. 3 after she dressed down Rumsfeld before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

The unusual aspect of Davis' stance is that she is a Republican. In her most public comments on the issue in her district, Davis said she has felt this way about Rumsfeld for awhile.

"I've made no bones about it the last two years," Davis told members of the Hampton Roads Chapter of the American Society of Military Comptrollers on Thursday. "He's probably a nice guy, but I don't think he's a great secretary of defense."

Later she amended her "nice guy" assessment by saying Rumsfeld had come across as arrogant in her dealings with him, which stretch back to committee work during her freshman term in Congress, in 2001.

Interesting how that works - she has felt this way about Rumsfeld "for awhile" yet only comes out and says it less than 3 months from the primary. This shows that Rep. Davis is playing politics and doing so at the cost of the lives of our soldiers and Iraqi citizens. Her saying Rumsfeld should go at this point in the game means she really deserves no votes this fall.