Long overdue.
Despicable AT&T
Is there any possible way that AT&T doesn’t suck? After imposing 150 GB/month usage caps on customers, it turns out that they can’t even count usage correctly:
AT&T’s data appears to be wholely corrupted. Some days, AT&T will under-report my data usage by as much as 91%. […] Some days, AT&T will over-report my data usage by as much as 4700%. […]
AT&T’s data doesn’t add up. If I take AT&T’s data, and add up the individual day’s usage as provided by them the totals don’t add up to the automatically calculated total for that date range! For example, for my account from February 18th to March 17th, AT&T says the total usage is 221GB down, 12.8GB up, 234GB total. But if I actually add up the individual days from feb 18th to march 17th, the totals are 206GB down and 11.95GB up, 217GB total! That’s an 8% difference just adding up the daily totals!
The major cable ISP (Time/Warner) in my area is offering “turbo” and “extreme” download rates, where users can choose to have an additional 10 or 20 Mbps downstream bandwidth. The additional speeds cost $10 and $20/month. Paying more for more I can understand. Paying the same for less, well, that’s the AT&T way.
Fukushima by Morning
The new bad news from Fukushima is that unit #1 has extremely radioactive water in the turbine room (more than 1 sievert/hour at the surface), which is even more dangerous to workers than the water that injured workers in #3 (which is now reported at .75 sievert/hour). This level of radiation can only come from core of the reactor, so the question is how it got there.
In my feeble understanding of boiling water reactors (BWR), radioactive water is sent from the reactor core into the turbine room, so any leak in the piping there could lead to a release of radioactive water. In other words, it’s upsetting but not surprising that there’s a leak after a major earthquake. The question is whether that water indicates that there’s a more major breach in reactor containment, which nobody knows.
The other issue with the discovery of this water is that the turbine rooms need to be pumped out before human workers spend any length of time there.
The more serious public health problem at the moment is that leakage into the sea is increasing. The level of iodine-131 is now 1850 times the allowed limit, up from 1250x yesterday.
The Times’ reporting on this has been excellent, and this morning’s story is a good round-up.
The Old Nit Diddler’s Mississippi miracle…
So Haley Barbour is fixin’ to run for President. In a sane world, his long career as a lobbyists and bagman for our Galtian Overlords would disqualify him out of hand. After all, could a lifetime Washington Insider and bold advocate of fat cats everywhere really win? Maybe. The hotline just moved him up to number three in their horse race for the GOP nomination.
The reason why is simple. The Old Nit Diddler is running in the Republican Confederate Party and as such he is in the mid to low range of crazy when it comes to possible GOP Presidential candidates. Money will flow to him and all he has to do to win any primaries is embrace the clowns from crazy town that make up the base of the Party and pander to them like hell. Haley is embracing the panderfest with gusto. Auto-attacks on everything Obama: check. Attacks on the gays: check. Attacks on the Affordable Care Act: check. Obama is a secret mooslum foreigner: check. If you have a wingnut POV that requires some pandering, it is a safe bet that Haley has some talking point to please your gullible mind.
But attacks alone will not get you elected President. You have to stand for something and Haley is standing on his “record” as a fiscal conservative who knows how to solve problems. As he told CPAC earlier this year:
“Our problem is not that we tax too little, it’s that we spend too much.”
And to prove his skills as an expert on the economy, Barbour points to his record in Mississippi:
The Old Nit Diddler’s Mississippi miracle…Post + Comments (102)
Koch adds life
The Weekly Standard has a McArdle-length article about the persecution of the Koch brothers by liberal extremists. By all means, click through, the more hits this stuff gets, the more right-wing media will feature the Koch brothers.
Conservatives have gotten a lot of mileage out of demonizing George Soros, but at least Soros had the sense to stay out of the spotlight for the most part.
If the Koch brothers go Charlie Sheen on us, it’s a win for Democrats. I think Obama beats whatever aw-shucks cornfed motherfucker the Republicans put up in 2012, but I’m more certain that he wins if he can run against the Koch brothers.
Inside Job
I made it all the way to the opening credits before I wanted to kill someone write my Senator to bring back the pillory for financial crimes. I almost feel guilty for hating the spokesman for the financial trade association as much as I do; unlike his bosses, at least he earns an honest paycheck. Whatever. I keep hoping that Aragorn will ride in on a horse.
You just end up feeling like the world is a different place than you thought it was. It’s like Alan Moore wrote down what is real in 1987, newspapers are comic books and people who understand it can end up like either Rorschach or the Comedian. Fight it and lose, or roll with it until one day you realize that the system is even more of a cruel joke than you thought.
***Update***
Thirty minutes in and my wife wants to turn it off. She asked me why we should bother to know more of this crap when nothing can or will be done about it.
Ideas?
***Update 2***
An hour in, and now my wife’s chief problem is that the people who destroyed the world look like a bunch of overdressed schmucks. She could almost handle some brilliant cabal executing an evil plan behind the scenes. This idea that we are actually at the mercy of careless douchebags who would need help to fill out a 1040-EZ scares her more than anything else. I watched the Bush years close enough that I got over that already, though ‘got over it’ is really not the right word.
Saturday Night Open Thread
Here is a question for you- why aren’t all clothes as comfortable as PJ’s? I’m seriously at my absolute most comfortably when I am putzing around the house in pajama bottoms, a bathrobe (I have one of those big, thick, terry-cloth ones- with pockets!), and slippers. Why can’t all my clothing feel like that? That Hugh Hefner might be on to something.