Pardon the political post.

United States of America.  My arse.  I am terrified about the Health Care Reform billed being passed this past Sunday.  I’m not terrified about the unknown long-term impacts or affects, or even the reconciliation package that is outstanding.  What I’m most scared about is that NOT A SINGLE REPUBLICAN voted for it.  There are 178 of them, and not a single one voted, "YES"???  That’s effing scary for quite a few reasons.

1. Can we honestly believe that every single district they represent didn’t want the bill?  Do we really assume that each one was overwhelming enough against it, that not a single representative teetered on voting "yes"?
2. If members of the Republican party are all going to vote the same way, can’t we just get rid of them and their salaries and get 1 person to represent the group?  Making this a Dems vs Reps opposition is not productive.  Get over yourselves and start thinking for yourself  THE PEOPLE YOU REPRESENT.

So they aren’t being true to their responsibility to the American people, they are wasting tax-payer money and time, and they are also creating a schism in the way our government works.  Our government was not set-up to be 2 entities deciding what is best for our country.  THAT’S EFFING WHY WE HAVE SO MANY OF YOU SUITS IN WASHINGTON.  If all they do is echo the sentiments of everyone else in their cute little party, then let’s get some consolidating going and get rid of everyone without a brain of their own and save some money and time listening to them ramble on and on.

Even George Washington said, "The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection."

Having agendas based on parties is like having big businesses run the government.  I can’t think of any argument in favor of that happening.  Each representative loses their individuality and becomes part of the group think machine.  They are no longer defending the views and rights of the people who elected them.  

And now we’re talking about creating new political parties???  These things are popping up like fraternities.

Watch this Jesse Ventura interview on Larry King – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yr46X8f4ww

Every time i look at my $75 a month cable bill, I wonder why I pay it.  I was so happy without cable, and if I lived alone, there would be no cable.  I don’t understand why I have to pay so much money for something that gives me commercials.  This opens another topic about why the television was created and marketed the way it was, which really has some interesting literature and documentaries apropos, but this rant is not about that.  It’s just about my recent encounter with comcast.

So I’ve been a comcast customer for over 6 years now in one form or another.  full blown digital subscriber, just basic tv, then to the standard package where I sit now.  All the time, I’ve been enrolled in automatic bill payments with no paper bills mailed to me.  Bliss.  It’s a never changing bill, so i don’t need to look at it, i just expect that much to taken out each month.  So for years this goes on fine.  Back in december, I logged in to change my credit card information.  Still, all works fine, until May, apparently.  In June, I get a "past due" notice in the mail.  WTF?  So i call the number and try to see what’s up.  The representative was utterly useless.  She kept stating the obvious, "No payment was made in May."  And I say, "umm…I know, otherwise I wouldn’t have received a past due notice.  What I need you to do is fix it so it doesn’t happen again."  It’s absolutely ridiculous how inept this person is, and coming from a helpdesk background, I know how things should go here, and this is terrible.  So I ask her to take off the late fee, and she says she doesn’t have the ability to do that.  She doesn’t seem to have the ability to do anything I need her to do, so I ask to speak to her manager, or at least someone with the access to remove late fees.  She says only supervisors can, and they can call me back within a 24 hour period.  So it’s going to be one of those deals, aye?  Whatever.  I leave instructions to call my cell phone and not my home number.

So I log into comcast’s website, and I see that my credit card information shows a credit card that expired in 2006.  WTF?  That’s not my fault.  To me, sounds like someone had a system crash and reverted to a backup with old information.  The last time I changed my info was in december, and it’s been working since then.  I update the information and wait for my call back to get that late fee removed.

Of course, it never comes.  I’m livid.  I do automatic bill payment so i don’t have to deal with crap, now they’re making me take time out of my day to deal with crap that is their fault.  I call them back today, and get some lady who again has this crazy knack for saying things that are utterly useless.  I say that my information was reverted to old information, and I didn’t do anything, so something changed on their end.  She said she doesn’t even have the access to do that, as if I meant SHE did it.  She’s totally defensive at anything I’m saying, and I can see that I will never get retribution for my time wasted with these people.  She was able to remove the late fee pretty easily.  She says that they did try to call me, but they used my home number even though I had left instructions not to use that number.  She said that she could have someone call me back within 24 hours so that I can ask a supervisor why my payments didn’t go through, but honestly, I don’t feel like investing my time, nay, my VACATION, in finding and fixing the flaws in their system.  This is what helpdesk tickets are for.  I open a problem ticket, you fix it.  Don’t call me back until it’s fixed.

So all to appropriately, I don’t expect any calls from Comcast any time soon.