You know who I mean. Companies who rely on “small print” to steal your money.
Banks and insurance companies are probably the biggest culprits. Somewhere
in page after page of legalese they slip it to you. The contracts you are forced
to sign because you are required by law to purchase services, like auto insurance for example, are written entirely in the company’s favor. After all, they are the ones paying the attorney fees. A common tactic of lawyers is to design run on sentences whose content is so convoluted only company lawyers can figure them out. Somewhere within those often paragraph sized sentences they provide themselves with “weasel clauses” giving them the right to screw you somewhere down the line.

How about credit card companies? These are my personal favorite leaders in the legitimate thief category. They offer what appears to be a good deal up front and then allow you to develop self-destructive habits like overspending. If you were doing fine without something yesterday, chances are you can manage without that something today. But if you own a credit card, why wait? Once you’re in over your head these companies increase your rate. You go “hey, how come my interest jumped from 10 to 20% overnight?”, and they go “read the fine print”. If you have a credit card and have never read the small print I will summarize it for you here. Essentially they can do whatever they want and you are stuck with it.

Then came the Internet. I try to be careful but at least several times a year I get “educated”. The most recent example of internet screwing came to me by way of a company called Ryder Marketing. They offered a “how to make a million online” CD which had some brilliant sales copy and a cheap price, $7.95 delivered, so I decided I might learn something. I was right! About three weeks later I received my disk and before I even opened the package my account was charged an additional $105.00. Long story short, by ordering the disk I was automatically
enrolled in a $1260 year long course payable in 12 easy $105.00 payments. I attempted to have the charges reversed but apparently somewhere in the video “fine print”, which I hadn’t even viewed prior to the charge, I “agreed” to accept one additional disk per month.

Agreed my ass. Moral of that story (and we can thank the Bush banking gangsters for this) is if you don’t know who you are dealing with online, cancel your card after every online transaction. It is your only protection. It turns out even a punk like Ryder has a better attorney than the banks do. (My personal moral to the story is if my money is with Chase, it is no longer safe.)
An interesting note to the Ryder ripoff was my attempt to destroy this guy by posting a scam alert. To my chagrin I had to get in line, and the line was, at that point in time, almost three half-million people long. The guy wasn’t lying. He really is making millions online… by stealing! The worst part was his video wasn’t worth the substrate it was printed on.

I’m not even going to get into health insurance legitimate thievery except to say the only way for us little guys with small money to survive is to align ourselves with bigger money than the legitimate thieves can muster. Unfortunately, and in spite of all the pitfalls and potential for disaster, the only bigger money in Washington than lobby money is the government’s money itself.

We need a government option to keep the health-care legitimate thieves in line.

Preview: Obama may tank faster than the Titanic.

He is championing the right causes but…
Put simply, people are not as gullible as they used to be.

On the war front:
The administration is expanding our wars on and off budget,
increasing the use of agencies like Prince’s Blackwater militia in areas
like Afghanistan. Blackwater is part of the CIA assassination program
which uses a private militia to fill in where official government action
could be called into question. They operate above the law, courtesy
of policies established in the Bush administration, and they cost
at least 10 times what our own military personnel would cost.
And the deaths of their forces don’t enter into “official” statistics.

On the health front:
It is hard for many Americans NOT to hold obese people
or drug addicts or people with unwanted pregnancies responsible
for their condition. While aids has lost steam as a major contributor
to death in our nation, to fight the disease costs a fortune and it is hard NOT to hold the indiscriminate drug user or sex deviant responsible for the consequences of their actions. People who live on Big Macs and dingdongs at the expense of their bodies earn little sympathy from those who protect their body’s health with a proper diet. Unwanted pregnancies are a result of raging hormones, but are also a result of a disgusting head in the sand approach to sex education on the part of our government. The backward facing Bush administration and religious communities can be held directly responsible for the lack of responsible sex education but we all share the burden of these irresponsible policies.

We can’t trust the government to solve our problems since they are in many respects enablers. We can’t expect “for profit” businesses like insurance companies not to capitalize on opportunities created by our own personal lack of self discipline or self-respect.

So our only answer is to rely upon ourselves, our own good judgment,
and the hope that wisdom and experience will win out.

Geez we are in trouble.

It seems impossible to believe that the President’s

mandate has been squashed already.

But facts are facts.  The party of “no” can’t

promulgate any policies worth following but

they seem to be able to torpedo anything

which may benefit the “average” American.

The “average” American, by my definition,

is a person who works for a living. This precludes

the “fat cats” who have already earned or inherited

enough money to live forever.  It does include

the “low cats” who can’t afford the price of a cup

of coffee at Starbucks.  It includes about 300

million Americans.

It includes everybody everywhere who contributes

to the “industrial nations” statistics, or those who

belong to the wealthiest nations category

of which we are, temporarily, number one.

It includes those nations (28 of them) who have

better standards of living than ours.  It includes

all those nations who have better health care

then we do.  It includes every nation who educates

their children better than we do.  It includes virtually

every nation included in the third world category…

It is time to change our statistics.  Any politics

which contributed to the previous 40 years of failed

policies need to be jettisoned.  Those who seek

to perpetuate those policies are either in the top

1% of income earners (it would be ridiculous to

suggest to these winners that they change what

works for them– voluntarily) or are those brain-dead

among us who have never have enjoyed the Eureka

moment which accompanies an original thought.

In other words, the incredible majority of Americans

who have been brainwashed into believing the drivel

of past administrations or current lobbyists are not

in a position to move us into a better place.

Either we get ahead of the curve or we will suffer

the disgrace of losers who populate the rubble of history.

This could be a fitting eulogy:

Fellow Romans,

We learned nothing from your failed republic. In fact,

we took your arrogance to a whole new level.  We actually

try to outspend the rest of the combined budgets among the

planet’s various militarys on a military offensive budget

(misnomer = “defense”) against no certain enemy.  Your

losing strategy to conquer the world we proudly embrace although

it will bury us in the rock pile of past great civilations like yours.

President Barak Obama needs to bully this nation into

the 21st century. And he needs to stick by his campaign

promises. All the arguments to the contrary are

assuring our speedy descent into a has been super power.

We are not far from Russia my friends.  They are currently,

if not always, in the grip of gangsters who pillage and plunder

their economy at will.  We’re on the edge.

Bob Parmelee                       Robert-Parmelee.blogspot.com

Interesting concept.  Taken at face value I guess it could mean laundering the dirt from our brains.

But brains don’t have dirt.  I know this from watching Grey’s anatomy.  So it must mean something else.

How about this? Brainwashing means replacing either what was already in your brain with something else or placing something in a space in your brain formally unoccupied.

The result of washing anything is supposed to be a positive experience.  In actuality brainwashing never is.  I can say that because I know brainwashing either modifies ideas gained by your own experience, or brainwashing puts ideas of others in your head which you now claim as your own.

In either case you are now no longer your own man.  Pieces of you, or more importantly pieces of your brain, are now in the care and custody of other’s thoughts.

All people are good people at birth and most people manage to stay that way through life.  Most people just want to live and let live.

But some of us are really sick, and who can say why.  When good people fall victim to brainwashing from extremists and sickos and don’t have the advantage of contrary points of view bad things happen.

Fighting terrorism with an army is ridiculous.  Armies never get inside anyone’s head; they only destroy their bodies. Fighting terrorism is a one-on-one business.  You must win over people by example.  You can only show them a better way; you can’t force them to follow you.  We must lead by example, not try to force compliance.  One must show respect, not contempt, for people of different faiths and their beliefs.

Everybody has one.  Nobody’s is the same.

Some say let the sun shine in.  Others don’t

want anything more than a single ray to get

through their filter.

So what happened?  Who won?  I guess you

could say two opposites developed. Google,

on one side, said give me all your mail, spam

and all.  I’ve got storage for everything.

AOL, on the other hand, said they needed

permission from their client’s to forward anything

at all to their inboxes.  “Unless you, the sender,

are white-listed by our client, your mail will be

forwarded to the trash can”.

Every other mail service like Yahoo, MSN, AT&T,

etc. all have different tolerance levels.  This

spawned a whole bunch of bad grammar. All of a

sudden money became mo*ney, and free became

fr*e or fr.ee.  I am an agreeable guy but I don’t

like my lexicon mangled.

Here is my open letter to my provider:

Dear filter screen thwarter,

I like reading the Queen’s English.  I like to

connect with what I am reading and I don’t

connect with fr.ee, or fr*e or some other spam

filter frustrator abomination of the English

language.

If what you are trying to sell me you need to

sneak past my filter, I want your message to be

screened. If you can state your pitch clearly and

I like don’t like your pitch, I want you to be

spammed, damned, and banned forever more!

If, on the other hand, I like your message, I want

to be connected immediately to your server, so my

order can be processed without delay. 

And I expect you to know the difference.

Any questions?