Poodles!
Great stuff!

Aloha, ES and Newt…!

Buenos nachos, perritos fuegos!

How’s everybody?

FunnyWheelieDiva

Pups!

Duck soup, Funny. How about you?

Hey ES, newt, and CTuttle!

Yo!

Hiya Loo Hoo.

OK, liking the second track even more on the second-go-round.

Play something, big boy!

Check this:

Dear Customer:

Your 2009 Annual Tax and Interest information will be available at
http://www.littonloan.com after January 5, 2010. The paper statement will be mailed to
you by January 31, 2010.

Sincerely,

Litton Loan Servicing LP

LITTON LOAN SERVICING LP IS A DEBT COLLECTOR. THIS IS AN ATTEMPT TO COLLECT
YOUR DEBT AND ANY INFORMATION OBTAINED WILL BE USED FOR THAT PURPOSE.

IF YOU ARE NOT OBLIGATED ON THE DEBT OR IF THE DEBT HAS BEEN DISCHARGED IN A
BANKRUPTCY PROCEEDING, THIS IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT AN
ATTEMPT TO ASSESS OR COLLECT THE DEBT FROM YOU PERSONALLY.

This is an automated message. Please do not reply.

This from my mortgage corp. to a customer with no late payments of any sort.

I have late payments and more. I tell them it is UnAmerican to pay your debts….I do.

You think that’s crazy? I was called the other day by one of those agencies (in a very discreet manner) about a bill for a video I’d forgotten to return. Could the assholes call me themselves to see if I had it? Apparently not.

Needless to say, I’m not setting foot in that video store again.

Meh. Ok ‘cept for being as disgusted as everyone else with the HCR shenannigans…

Markos’ takedown of Tweety sure was elegant. Totally factual, very cool. I’m glad Teh Ed gave him a forum for that. I’d asked KO to do the same, but he’s out again.

FWDiva

Really? They won’t take your money at the store? Could save you the collection fees…and stiff the kind of creeps that work as debt collectors…

FWDiva

Tengo frio, and you?

ES, I really like Garatos Suecos (which I read means “Swedish Girls”).

Here’s another one by them, great band:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFSZWESSUH8

:) Dude, I don’t have anything new on film yet.

And I was just across the street at me neighbors party; played for 2 hours. Good singer there, so it was natural.

I still got an oldie from last year though: “Christmastime Is Here” by Guaraldi.

Belch and I had a great buzz on when we made it…

That kind of treatment makes me want to stop paying.

Nice.
I can’t even sit up straight with a buzz.

KO’s dad is in the hospital…or at least he was. I think he’s being a good son.

Hey, buddy
My local Classical station played the prisoners’ chorus from Fidelio yesterday…Beethoven’s baptism anniversary ya know!

FWDiva

I remember years ago when Blockbuster tried to get $16 for a video that was late by hours. Ended that relationship right quick!

Yes, I suppose, but I do passive-aggressive so well. You really have to stay with your strengths.

Not to mention that it wasn’t that much money to find out they were someone I shouldn’t do business with.

“O Welche Lust” !

I love that piece so much….

Hi back buddy

I don’t know what to think about this POS health care bill, except that it has taught me that our government is irreparably corrupt.

Do we pass it and let the IRS become the strong arm of Aetna?

Do we not pass it and worry that that the democrats we elected will have their little feelings hurt and so we will never see any sort of health care reform in our lifetime?

I am undecided.

Either way, the IRS should never become the collection agency for Aetna, that is unprecedented.

I’ve been suspecting that…even if his dad is at home now, he’s needing a lot of care.
I gotta say, Lawrence O’Donnell has been a surprisingly good substitute on the HCR stuff.
So…sorry for bein’ selfish, Keef.

FWDiva

I’m still wondering how that’s going to work. How much trouble do I have to go through to demonstrate that no insurance companies will offer me a policy at a price I can “afford” according to their formula? Since I’m at an age where they can charge me a lot, I think it’s a good to excellent chance that I’d qualify.

I have lots of questions along those lines, in fact.

Larry has been good.
And for a guy who knows the workings behind the curtain in the Senate, his view has been interesting to have around once or twice a week.

(((Keef & Keef’s Pa)))

Yup, it’s been great to have his perspective. So glad he’s not out of the Chris Todd mold…blech.

(((Keef, Keef’s Pa, Keef’s sister and the grandkids)))

FWDiva

I have a big problem with allowing the to IRS to take peoples wages from them for anything other than they already do.

As you might recall, there are no debtors prisons in the US (Thank You Founding Fathers) except for in the case you owe the IRS, then they can and will send you to prison.

Presumably they are trying to comply with statutes, brainlessly.

A hot reply might be in order:
Why are they slandering your creditworthiness via e-mail? Why do they assume your e-mail is private? Do you need to contact your congressional representative to stop their framing informative communications as collection actions?

If you know who they are servicing the loan for, write the president. Servicing is big bucks. Spring for certified mail, return receipt requested .. that always gets attention.

Lawrence is really good. He deserves his own show, imo.

I loved that special on health care he did a couple of months ago. His most recent special comment tells me he really does get what the problems are. He’s rich enough now that he doesn’t have to. That deserves respect. There are plenty of “progressives” who just as clearly don’t.

He’s clearly a genuinely good guy. Still has heart and compassion, and knows he’s fortunate. Also, doesn’t really take himself too seriously.
And putting thousands of his own dollars where his mouth is says a lot, too.

FWDiva

Thanks, I think I’ll copy this email and send it to my trusted congressman, Darrell Issa! I should send it to Feinstein and Boxer as well, long as I’m at it!

Just really rude, wasn’t it? Imagine trying to do business that way outside of banking.

And don’t forget this, Sunny:

This is an automated message. Please do not reply.

Here’s the parts of the bill as regards the IRS and Enforcement:

Section 1502, Subpart D: “Information Regarding Health Insurance Coverage”

(c)NOTIFICATION OF NONENROLLMENT.—Not later
14 than June 30 of each year, the Secretary of the Treasury,
15 acting through the Internal Revenue Service and in con16
sultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Serv17
ices, shall send a notification to each individual who files
18 an individual income tax return and who is not enrolled
19 in minimum essential coverage (as defined in section
20 5000A of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986). Such noti
21 fication shall contain information on the services available
22 through the Exchange operating in the State in which
23 such individual resides.

That would be the letter of the law.

@Loo Hoo: Amen, bro.
I got my first American Express Card when I was twenty-something. Last month I turned seventy. If I ever missed a payment before, it would be news to me. I’ve paid off the total due maybe 30 times. I had been hanging out with my kids in Timbuktu and missed a $25.00 payment because the USPS couldn’t find me.
I got a really nasty letter that said that my interest rate had been raised to 29% and that my hope of heaven had been downgraded to nearly zero. I paid it off the next day, and will not do business with them again until there’s a cool breeze blowing in hell.
I can only imagine what it’s like to get that kind of shit from a mortgage holder. Jesus, you ruined my whole night.
Solidarity!

I loved that, he owned them all. Sadly, I can’t avoid thinking that our govt is bought and paid for by people like you and me, but owned by corporate interests.

And th real pisser is that, as prostitutes go, they are on rather the cheap end of the scale.

What, $500K to buy off a United States Senator?

Maybe we should all band together and buy them out ourselves.

Did you see where we are spending 10 times the gross national domestic in Afghanistan to “win” a war.

Hell, it would be cheaper to buy them off as well.

Should prices change to the point where they are no longer “affordable” between the time they give this notice and when someone tries to buy the insurance, what then? Is this person presumed guilty until he shows up at an IRS office?

Who is doing that research? Is it the IRS or another agency? Sounds like the latter.

This thing sounds utterly absurd.

And this:

(h) PENALTIES.—
6 (1) FALSE OR FRAUDULENT INFORMATION.—
7 (A) CIVIL PENALTY.—
8 (i) IN GENERAL.—If—
9 (I) any person fails to provides
10 correct information under subsection
11 (b); and
12 (II) such failure is attributable to
13 negligence or disregard of any rules or
14 regulations of the Secretary,
15 such person shall be subject, in addition to
16 any other penalties that may be prescribed
17 by law, to a civil penalty of not more than
18 $25,000 with respect to any failures involv19
ing an application for a plan year. For
20 purposes of this subparagraph, the terms
21 ‘‘negligence’’ and ‘‘disregard’’ shall have
22 the same meanings as when used in section
23 6662 of the Internal Revenue Code of
24 1986.

So if you fail to mention say, “Acne” you might just owe a $25k fine if you’re in the “exchange.” How about that?

I know the notice is computer generated, but can’t they find programmers smart enough to figure out a way to send different letters to customers?

How rude. Course there’s nothing I can do about it in this market, but the market will change, and these idiots will lose huge amounts of money.

No, I hadn’t. But it isn’t the first time I’ve observed that I’d rather use that money to fix our country than to destroy someone else’s. Cripes, with a little thought we could probably do both for that money. Maybe we could even help fix theirs, instead.

Timbuktu, cool! nice to meet you.

There is no rescinding of “rescission” in this law as proposed. I just frikking KNEW it!

The above clause works for pre-existing conditions. They get to charge different prices. Just give me a minute to find the exact lines of the proposed law.

I knew it; there is no protection under this bill, except for insurance companies.

The reason everyone in the EU gets govt heath coverage, the reason that everyone in the EU gets 6 weeks of vacation a year, is because the people revolted after WWII.

They had enough of the killing, eonough of the sacrafice, and they stood up.

OK, wait, sorry…

I give up on wonk crap. This is a party Late Night fun thread. I shall cease my earlier business, and I say “Let’s party!”

Zappadan!

I’d hate to have to go through what they did for us to get to that point, but it’s probably going to be necessary. Our ruling class clearly don’t have a problem with how things are going, and the rest of the population don’t seem to be anywhere near angry enough at them yet. They’re too busy fighting with each other.

Don’t blame you. I’m amazed that you’re finding these things so quickly. Do you have an annotated copy of the bill?

Looks like ZD09 is just around the corner.

For months, I’ve been getting very courteous collection calls on my emergency (pre-paid) cell phone from a local hospital. I’ve explained to each caller they’ve got a wrong number. They invariably agree to stop calling… But they don’t.

Yesterday, they left a message they had received “my” check. Hallelujah!
I hope it clears *g*

Each time they call, it costs me $1 plus time. They’re probably into me for over $25.

The last time american workers stood up was the Air Traffic Controllers under Regan, they got beat down.

You know, I would like my Air Traffic Controllers to be happy and well rested, it is a small price to pay for our safety.

No price is too large to pay for 100 taliban in Afghanistan!

Funny story, except the $25. How do you even go about collecting that???

Cujo, the bills come with headings and sections. In PDF format. Go to senate.gov and look for 3590 if you want it.

There, public service done.

Now, let’s get stoopid! I need a fekking break, don’t you?

The last time american workers stood up was the Air Traffic Controllers under Regan, they got beat down.

When Reagan went after PATCO, my dad said, “They’re trying to bust the unions and turn us into a third-world country, where the rich get richer and the middle class disappears.” He was even more livid when NAFTA passed. RIP, Dad.

I wanted to get people’s opinions on a couple of very disturbing news stories in the intl media about David Coleman Headley – the man under arrest in Chicago for planning the Mumbai terror attacks last year. The articles appear to suggest that CIA could conceivably have planned and executed the terror attacks, possibly to advance US interests in driving India closer to us. US intelligence is denying Indian intelligence access to Headley, despite the fact that the Indians have evidence that he was directed the Mumbai attacks by cellphone from inside a Pakistani AQ command center. Headley was an AQ double agent inside CIA, which itself would be terrifying, or he was an expendable American operative sent to try to provoke a confrontation between India and Pakistan. Are these journos reading too much into this, or is there potentially something very very spooky going on here?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6826571/Mumbai-suspect-is-US-double-agent-India-claims.html

http://www.hindustantimes.com/newdelhi/India-investigates-possible-US-double-agent-Headley/487519/H1-Article1-487188.aspx

So funny. Mr Issa could instill fear if he had a mind to do so.

Lonely Goatherd! Now, With Muppets!

Dunno. Send a bill?

Um, yes, thanks. Here’s an oldy but goody.

Holy crap, if that is true, it is worse than I thought.

Heh! Good one!

… the rest of the population don’t seem to be anywhere near angry enough at them yet. They’re too busy fighting with each other.

Yup. That’s the strategy. Divide and conquer!

Fascinating, hadn’t heard about this yet. Thanks.

Lordy.

False Flag

Reading between the lines, and there are some big spaces between the lines, it looks like the CIA, DEA, and possibly the FBI were all using this guy as a source of information. Were any of those agencies involved in the attack? I don’t see anything there that would suggest that. They would almost certainly try to protect someone they thought was an information asset out of general principles.

It’s possible, I just don’t see any reason to think that they did.

Maybe that is why Obama is not going after the Bush Corporation, maybe he now knows that the dirt is so deep and so bad, that it can not be revealed.

… maybe he now knows that the dirt is so deep and so bad, that it can not be revealed.

Confession is good for the soul!

If this story turns out to have legs, this is very scary stuff I think. If India was able to prove their allegations about US complicity in the Mumbai attacks or even that the US knew in advance that the attacks were going to happen (as all the major Indian papers are now alleging), then the geopolitical consequences would be almost unimaginable. We could be talking about a major geopolitical realignment on a scale not seen in generations. Any pretense toward Indo-American alliance would probably evaporate, and New Delhi would have to respond to the accelerating diplomatic overtures it is now receiving from Beijing and Moscow

Too much to contemplate at this hour. Night.

Not if you are going to be President of the United States and have any kind of moral authority in the world.

I think the allegation coming from India – possibly baseless – is more extreme than that. I posted the most staid versions of the story. The Indian press seems to be reporting that there is evidence that this guy was some type of US double agent – not just an informant – and that he was one of several assets involved… who knew about the attacks in advance and passed information back and forth about it. This could all be Indian yellow journalism (they seem to have a lot of that), but, as you say, there are a lot of threads and gaps here.

Great cartoon.

That’s awesome. Lemme guess.. the guy speaking in the tie is Senator Inhofe.

Those agencies all pay rather seedy folks to give them tips and so forth. This guy came to DEA’s attention because he was smuggling heroin. Until something more damning than the fact that a guy U.S. law enforcement agencies paid for information has been involved with terrorists comes along, I’ll remain skeptical.

Paying shady characters for information, and guarding information like raving paranoids are, unfortunately, rather standard behavior in certain parts of the U.S. government. People who aren’t familiar with how things work there would probably be more inclined to being suspicious.

Like I say, it’s possible, but I see no reason to assume it’s true at this point.

Not if you are going to be President of the United States and have any kind of moral authority in the world.

Presumably, when he made that descision, Bush’s sins were not on his hands. But, I grant, that is no longer so.

There are really so many possible candidates.

Night, Loo Hoo.

Disturbing indeed.

I think Obama’s tendencies in this area have more to do with the folks he’s chosen as foreign policy advisors. Or, to be less charitable, his choice of advisors reflects his tendencies. I wrote this when I started to find out about them. The only thing good you can say about them is that they’re not as bad as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. They do, however, have formidable abilities to be wrong and rather unconcerned with things that ought to concern them.

Perhaps those two traits are related.

Look, you get into office, they tell you, yeah, we let them bomb Pearl Harbor, we manufactured wars across the globe, hell we even let the planes fly into the twin towers in New York.

Now what do you do?

If you admit these things to the world, you seriously undermine your power base, and your future effectiveness as a leader.

Obama at least admitted that we overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran.

Not that any of this lets him off the health care debacle.

I think that’s right. It looks like Headley was arrested based on a Brit tip-off and now appears to be subject to a somewhat normal judicial proceeding. The Indians said that they were denied access to him on the grounds that US law protected him. Heck, under shrub, we had Chinese state security over at Gitmo to torture their nationals on our soil. Presumably, Headley would’ve just been sent to Gitmo and tortured there (assuming he’s a jihadi.. if we was a double agent, he would’ve just been disappeared, probably).

My suspicions don’t relate to things that would’ve happened under the current admin. The Mumbai attacks were November 2008, under shrubco. And if there’s anything I don’t trust, it’s shrubco’s secret policemen in Pakistan.

Frankly, I think it’s scary enough that one of the Mumbai attack’s masterminds may have been a homegrown US jihadi (the most charitable interpretation of Mr. Headley’s actions, assuming he’s guilty of the crimes of which he is accused). If he is more than that, I have to think there’s a chance he might just.. meet with a premature end before he testifies under oath.

evening, all

In response to karendotcom @ #79

Look, you get into office, they tell you, yeah, we let them bomb Pearl Harbor, we manufactured wars across the globe, hell we even let the planes fly into the twin towers in New York.

Now what do you do?

Presumably, a decent person would stop perpetrating such atrocities. No?

Ironically, I wrote that article about a week before the Mumbai attacks. Yes, if it turns out that he was doing this on the U.S. government’s behalf, the previous Administration is the one responsible. Still, I’m skeptical that it did. It makes more sense that he was into a lot of other stuff besides what he talked to the CIA, et. al, about.

OTOH, as you say, it’s a bit disturbing that he was associated with them and, apparently, involved in terrorism at the same time.

I think the risk with such spycraft under a regime like shrubco is that one can easily imagine that political leaders might never have been told about some of the shadier ops… such as using questionable informants like Headley. I could easily picture Headley’s American handlers simply not communicating to higher ups reports that a major terror attack in another country was being planned. I don’t get the impression that shrubco’s intelligence services were that keen on chain-of-command an’ all that.

Well, all this talk about our government’s foolishness and/or insanity has me drained. Good night, all.

Oh, and this video seems like a good way to sign off.

Man…! If anybody is still around… Check this out… That’s live from up top here on Mauna Kea…! ;-)

Nice, takes a while to load. What else is happenin? I watching the news from Central Va because we have a house rented at Smith Mountain Lake next week and they are now over a foot of snow.

A large lightning head is going off right near by… They’re scrambling to close the dome and battening down all the hatches…!

Whoa, hang on!

Good morning, pups. Mr. Herbert and Mr. Blow are both off today, so Ms. Collins is flying solo. In “The New Perils of Pauline” she has a question — Has the health care bill been so abused by the various politicians who’ve held its fate in their hands that it’s time to put it out of its misery? I wish I had an answer to that one. I hate the mandate…

Here she is.

The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready and I’ve got waffles with warm maple syrup and/or a dusting of confectioner’s sugar. I absolutely refuse to believe that it’s almost Christmas. We have the tree up, but the poor thing is still as naked as a jay bird. As far as decorating outside, maybe it will stop raining one day… Have a great day.

Good morning Marion. I received your Christmas card. Thanks. I haven’t yet packaged the sake, so it will be awhile until you get it.

Yesterday I made venison liver pate. It’s heavenly.

Too little, Too late…

Congress must resist health insurance lobby: Obama…

“They want to preserve a system that works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people,” Obama said in his weekly Internet and radio address.

They got what they paid for…! 8-(

Obama actually said that???!!!! That’s what I call audacity (of despair).

Don’t fret over that — I thought we’d discussed January, after the tumult and the shouting has calmed down.

which of course is why obama went back on his campaign against individual mandates and made them the center piece of his insurance reform plan. /s

fabulous! thank you!