Hamm On Wry

And when the dog dressed as Chewbacca growls, I about peed! I love great ads.

Well, I’ve been busy. And I have a bunch to say, but I kinda want to do something new to say it, so I’m working on that.

In the meantime…

So, I’m reading one of my favorite blogs when I’m shown this particularly inane bit of asshattery, which required me to go forth and read the whole post at AKSARBENT and now, I’m pissed.

I don’t know what you people who call yourself “conservatives” are thinking, but let me lend you a clue: When someone is calling themselves a “Conservative Christian” they are saying they want things to go back to the good ol’ days of the Spanish Inquisition. They aren’t for smaller government, they are for imposing more and more restrictions on how you live your life, and if you don’t follow their rules, why, you’re a sinner, you must be wrong, and you shall be burned at the stake.

Please, people of Evansville, IL, vote this idiot out of office.

I can’t stress this enough, having two parents who are very fiscally conservative – which means they want to go back to the point where the government didn’t spend quadrillions on warfare and instead actually fixed roads and reduced the burdens on the citizenry. My parents, being the loving, awesome parents of a huge homosexual, tend to be socially progressive (although the healthcare thing still gets them, but it’s still a mess, so no wonder there). Even they will agree that this woman is out of her ever-loving mind. Nothing about what she’s proposed has anything to do with what the Republican party purports to be about, so why is she allowed to represent it?

For all you out there that want to make this world a better place, stop voting for someone because they claim belief in Jesus and instead vote for people who show they actually want to make things better. The two roles aren’t technically mutually-exclusive, but it’s getting to the point where they might as well be.

And I’m going to go back to singing the anthem with the real words, because I need a good drinking song dedicated by a homo to his younger, multiple, paramours. No, I’m not kidding. Except at games, where I will 1) sing the National Anthem as I see fit, and 2) will wear pants.

So in the hopes that the Holidays and the festivities and the weather and all that would drown out the news, Verizon decided to institute a $2 “We’re Fucking Our Customers” “convenience fee” for people who pay online via their website, which has long since paid for itself many times over, or by stopping into the stores, if they used a credit or debit card.

Unfortunately for Verizon, the Holidays were blessedly calm, the festivities were humble and the weather has been uneventful, so the news about their little fee was BIG NEWS.

So much so that they basically BofA’d themselves with it. Fun!

But here’s the part that I don’t understand: part of the agreement that businesses sign with Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover is that customers paying with those cards aren’t charged more for doing so. This is integral in their business model.

Yet the LA Times says:

Verizon, which has more than 90 million customers, said it was introducing the fee to help make up for the frees credit card companies take when they process payments.

How is it that Verizon thought it could break that basic part of it’s agreement with these companies? I want to know. And, more importantly, if Verizon is not subject to this clause, I want Attorney General Steve Bullock to investigate why.