I don’t know if Jesus loves you more than you will know, but I can tell you that many adolescent boys did.
She was, of course, much more than that, but she was that.
My deepest condolences to Mr. Brooks, and family. Anne, we loved ya.
Customer (Dis)Service
I have a Chase credit line. I logged on to the site to pay my bill, and find a message:
ATTENTION! Your account is over its credit limit. Please pay now to protect your credit privileges. Please call us at 866-252-5780 immediately.
Why is my account over its limit? Because they charged me a thirty-five dollar late fee. Why did they charge me a thirty-five dollar late fee? Because I pay it on line, and Chase won’t tell you when your payment will actually post, so it’s pot luck.
I call the number, am put on hold for several minutes, and then finally get someone. She asks me what she can do for me. I explain that I’d like to get my fee waived.
“Oh, we don’t do that here. For that, you have to call 800-551-8340.”
“But this is the number that it said to call on the web site.”
“I wouldn’t know about that, but that’s the number you have to call.”
So I call the other number, and wait again. I finally get a message asking me to input my sixteen-digit number. Of course, since it’s a credit line, and not a credit card, the number has less than sixteen digits. I enter it anyway.
“We’re sorry, but we don’t recognize that account number.”
I then get a person.
“What’s your account number?”
I read it to him.
“Is that a credit card account?”
No, it’s a credit line account.
“We don’t handle those here. I’ll transfer you over.”
(Note, I get no number to call if the transfer doesn’t work–I just get to go through the process again).
Ringing again.
“If you want to use our speech recognition system, say ‘yes.’ If you want to use our touchtone system, press ‘1’.”
I press one, which takes me through a menu of options, none of which are “If you’d like to waive your late fee, because our sucky web site is uninformative about when your bill will actually get paid when you pay it on line, and furthermore can’t even provide the right number to call about it, please press…”
I finally hear an option to talk to a representative, and hit it.
“Please enter your account number, followed by the number sign.”
I do this (this is probably the dozenth time I’ve done it on these two calls).
Long pause.
I don’t know if this is the exact wording of the next words I heard, but it’s close:
“If you think that we’re ending this call by mistake, please feel free to call back.”
Dial tone.
It would never have occurred to me to try to make this stuff up. No one would believe it.
Pet Peeve
Stephen Spruiell has an interesting story about how the Washington Post was used by on-line political operatives, and doesn’t seem to care.
What he doesn’t point out, though, and is an ongoing sign of the continued cluelessness of mainstream reporters, is that while the word “bloggers” is used throughout the saga, including one of the story headlines in the Post, there were no blogs involved. Free Republic is not a blog, any more than it was during Ra
So When Do We Get To See Them?
According to this story (which points out that John Kerry is not the brilliant student that his mythology implies–his grades were actually slightly worse than Dubya’s), Kerry has released his military records to the Boston Globe, which reports:
The military and medical records, however, appear identical to what Kerry has already released.
There’s a follow-up more specifically on it here:
misquoting an expert to do so. Note also that the second piece is by Michael Kranish, one of those “unbiased” Globe reporters who had close ties to the Kerry campaign.The records, which the Navy Personnel Command provided to the Globe, are mostly a duplication of what Kerry released during his 2004 campaign for president, including numerous commendations from commanding officers who later criticized Kerry’s Vietnam service.
We of course don’t know if these are the complete records, or another selective release, as the first one was (though the article states that they were provided by the Navy). Pardon me if I’d prefer to make the judgement myself, or at least have a few other bloggers, like Powerline, etc., check them out, before I’ll give him a clean bill of health. What, for example, do they say about his discharge status? How do the rest of us get a document dump from the Navy?
[Update a couple minutes later]
Michelle Malkin has more, with other links.
The EMP Threat
Here’s something that we’re not worried about enough. At least not enough to actually be doing what we need to do about it.
[Update at 10:45 AM EDT]
A commenter asks if Scuds could reach Kansas City from outside US territorial waters. I suspect that a North Korean No Dong (range of about a thousand miles) might be able to come close to it from the Gulf of Mexico.
“The Wolves Howl Along The Way”
Many look at the rising casualty figures in Iraq and assume that this means that the “insurgents” are winning. Of course, the casualty figures rose dramatically in the Mekong Delta during Tet, but all it meant was the the Viet Cong were on their last legs there, and lashing out in desperation. Similarly, there was a huge increase in American casualties during the Battle of the Bulge, but that didn’t mean that Germany was winning the war.
Smart stock pickers don’t rely on past, or even current performance, or buy into an up and overvalued market. Similarly, the terrorists in Iraq aren’t a good bet at this point. Amir Taheri explains why, in fact, they’re doomed.
“The Wolves Howl Along The Way”
Many look at the rising casualty figures in Iraq and assume that this means that the “insurgents” are winning. Of course, the casualty figures rose dramatically in the Mekong Delta during Tet, but all it meant was the the Viet Cong were on their last legs there, and lashing out in desperation. Similarly, there was a huge increase in American casualties during the Battle of the Bulge, but that didn’t mean that Germany was winning the war.
Smart stock pickers don’t rely on past, or even current performance, or buy into an up and overvalued market. Similarly, the terrorists in Iraq aren’t a good bet at this point. Amir Taheri explains why, in fact, they’re doomed.
“The Wolves Howl Along The Way”
Many look at the rising casualty figures in Iraq and assume that this means that the “insurgents” are winning. Of course, the casualty figures rose dramatically in the Mekong Delta during Tet, but all it meant was the the Viet Cong were on their last legs there, and lashing out in desperation. Similarly, there was a huge increase in American casualties during the Battle of the Bulge, but that didn’t mean that Germany was winning the war.
Smart stock pickers don’t rely on past, or even current performance, or buy into an up and overvalued market. Similarly, the terrorists in Iraq aren’t a good bet at this point. Amir Taheri explains why, in fact, they’re doomed.
Another Blow To Federalism
Apparently, the Supreme Court has ruled that the feds can continue to prosecute medical marijuana users:
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana.
Well, that’s very generous of him.
Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state’s economic activity so long as it involves “interstate commerce” that crosses state borders. The California marijuana in question was homegrown, distributed to patients without charge and without crossing state lines.
Stevens said there are other legal options for patients, “but perhaps even more important than these legal avenues is the democratic process, in which the voices of voters allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls of Congress.”
Yes, to hell with the rights of the states. How in the world can they justify this under the Commerce Clause? It seems to me that if they can justify this, they can justify anything, and federalism is truly dead.
Apparently we need to rein in the Commerce Clause, with an amendment, though I’m not sure what it could say that would be more clear than the clause itself, other than to explicitly say that it must deal with interstate activities. And in today’s political climate, how much support would there be for it, anyway?
I’ll be interested in seeing the opinion, and who was in the minority.
This is quite depressing.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s more, from SCOTUSblog:
The Court relied, as the Justice Department had urged in its appeal, upon the Court’s sweeping endorsement of federal Commerce Clause power in the 1942 case of Wickard v. Filburn.
“The case,” Stevens wrote, “comes down to the claim that a locally cultivated product that is used domestically rather than sold on the open market is not subject to federal regulation. Given the Act’s findings and the undisputed magnitude of the commercial market for marijuana, Wickard and its progency foreclose that claim.” The decision came in the case of Gonzalez v. Raich (03-1454).
Wickard v. Filburn was a truly disastrous case for the cause of federalism and liberty. It’s too bad that the court considers precedent so sanctified. There are some decisions that are simply wrong. I can’t imagine that the Founders would have ever conceived the clause being used as an excuse for a nationwide ban on high-octane hemp. Is this precedent the reason why we had to have a constitutional amendment to prohibit alcohol nationwide, but that now Congress can federally and enforceably ban natural substances by simply passing a law?
[Update at 10:50]
Justice O’Connor wrote the dissent:
Justice Sandra Day O
Storming The Beaches
There’s nowhere near as much hoopla as there was last year, for the sixtieth anniversary, but sixty-one years ago today, in bad weather in the English Channel, Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, with huge casualties. They established a beachhead, however, and it was the beginning of the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi fascism. In light of the recent vote in France over the EU, it might be useful to read what I wrote last year, on the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Paris, about the post-war quagmire there.
[Update at 9:45 AM EDT]
David Galernter had some thoughts last year on the hypocrisy and lack of knowledge of the baby boomer generation when it comes to honoring the “greatest generation.”