Both roads, mismash, The Great Revisionist, Reich for President
So like I mentioned yesterday, I was undecided if I wanted to try to permanently fix the bedroom 360 or just sink the money into a brand new box since it is going to be seeing a lot of use. Well I made a decision, I’m doing both.
First I went on Ebay and bought a 10 dollar kit that is meant to address E74 and RROD problems by stiffening the motherboard to prevent the warping that causes the problem. Then later in the day an email from Buy.com just happened to show up in my inbox pitching good deals on new 360’s. I went to their site and saw I could get a new 4 gig box for less than $200 shipped. After verifying the “my money” account had funds I decided f it, I’m pulling the trigger.
I immediately shared my good deal with Jeremy. A couple minutes later he sends me a link to another deal on Amazon. At first glance it didn’t look better. For $300 you get the Xbox and a $100 Amazon gift credit. I immediately told Jeremy it was basically the same deal as mine except I was handing Amazon an extra $100 just so they can hand it back to me.
Jeremy responded back that I was again demonstrating poor reading comprehension, something I have been known to do from time to time. The Amazon deal was for a 360 that INCLUDED Kinect. Woah.
Kinect typically will cost you an extra $125 or so. I quickly realized this was actually a much better deal. Now depending on your blog retention, you may recall I was given Kinect for Christmas, I don’t need it. My thought is I simply sell the additional Kinect hardware, pocket the money and the Amazon credit and wind up maybe $75 ahead of the Buy.com deal, sweet.
I quickly logged back onto Buy to make sure I could still cancel the order which I could. I then hopped back on Amazon and snagged the deal. I thanked Jeremy for catching that deal, it is a nice one.
My mom called me yesterday in a tizzy. She received a 1-2 punch from both the unemployment office and social security. In a nutshell in a worst case scenario it could have potentially meant she would have ZERO income coming in AND she would be on the hook to SS for several thousand dollars.
Well after trying to work through the situation with her on the phone we came up with a plan of action. I found myself getting frustrated.
Mom had told me information about her social security benefits last year that did not make sense. I in fact went online and found info that pointed 180 degrees from what she was telling me. Despite that she clung to what she believed was true and did not pursue the issue vigorously to verify what was and wasn’t the case. Well it turns out that what she thought was the case, was not.
I told mom that with matters that are this important, she can’t leave the outcome to chance. No one at the unemployment or SS office is going to bend over backwards for her just to be nice. I encouraged her to not be a victim in this situation and instead focus on fixing it.
I talked to her again today and things seem to be ironed out in both fronts. Her unemployment benefits are restored and instead of owing SS money she will start receiving checks several months earlier than she thought she would be. Good job mom.
You saw that video I posted from Robert Reich the other day? He has a few others out there regarding various big issues in politics today. I love the guy. I don’t know if he is a democrat or republican and to be honest I don’t really care. He speaks plain and simple truths but does so in a way that doesn’t mask the vast knowledge that backs up these opinions. If he ran for President I would vote for him.
While we are at it let’s throw Jon Stewart on the ticket. If you have seen Stewart appear on the Chris Wallace and Bill O’Reilly (Fox News) shows you will quickly realize that he is a lot more than just a comedian. He has very thoughtful and logical opinions on important issues. Like me he prefers to not let his views be defined for him by one political party or another. He evaluates on an issue per issue basis.
Let’s talk about my good buddy Rick Scott. A couple days ago the state teacher association filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of what equates to a 3% income tax/pay cut to all employees connected to the state pension system. The new policy was due to take place at the beginning of July.
When Rick Scott was running for office and shortly after his spindly, cold fingers took the reigns of the governorship his justification for f’ing with the pension was based on money. He claimed, despite facts that showed otherwise, that the state pension was a ticking time bomb, an unhealthy monster that unjustly saddled Florida taxpayers with a financial burden they don’t deserve.
Well in recent months the pension system which is the top 5 in the country in regards to health has fully rebounded from the financial trough that affected every investor in the latter part of the last decade. Scott could no longer cling to his claims it was a monstrous financial liability, he would look like an idiot doing so based on the numbers.
So now he invented a new reason for the pension being bad. In an article in the Fort Myers paper he said that the fight to screw with the pensions was “”… about fairness for those who don’t have government jobs.” What the f?
Ok, so now it isn’t “fair” that government employees have a retirement benefit that others do not? Is the new goal to “socialize” employment in Florida where every job in every sector has identical benefits?
What if one employer offers better health insurance plan than another employer? Should the employee that has the better plan be stripped of that privilege because someone else doesn’t have it? If Joe Blow in the private sector is paid $35k to do a certain job but somebody else is getting paid $25k to do the same job somewhere else should we dock Joe $10k immediately so everything remains “fair”?
Is it “fair” that Rick Scott was able to spend $70,000,000 of his personal fortune to brain wash the light thinkers in our state?
This statement by Scott is just so ludicrous I could type until my fingers bleed shooting it full of holes. It is as hypocritical as it gets and is a perfect example of what Robert Reich talks about being a common strategy of the rich, to keep the populace under control, pit them against each other.
I am still in disbelief that this guy actually was elected governor.