I know I’ve been inactive lately (“lately” being very loosely applied here!), but I came across this and was so inspired and enthusiastic about sharing it that I had to find my way back to my blog if only to share this.

Apparently, the NY Times—in its warped sense of “balance”—figured it would balance its recent track record of 19 anti-Israel op-ed pieces (out of 20 Israel-themed pieces total) with a single op-ed solicited from Netanyahu.

That the NY Times isn’t actually looking for real balance, but simply a token piece, is evident by the fact that they rejected a pro-Israel piece recently submitted by majority leader of the House of Congress, Eric Cantor (R-VA) and the minority whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), in which they jointly oppose the Palestinian Authority’s recent unilateral statehood bid.

Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s senior advisor, had this beautiful response to the NY Times:

Dear Sasha,

I received your email requesting that Prime Minister Netanyahu submit an op-ed to the New York Times. Unfortunately, we must respectfully decline.

On matters relating to Israel, the op-ed page of the “paper of record” has failed to heed the late Senator Moynihan’s admonition that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but that no one is entitled to their own facts.

A case in point was your decision last May to publish the following bit of historical revision by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas:

It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued.

This paragraph effectively turns on its head an event within living memory in which the Palestinians rejected the UN partition plan accepted by the Jews and then joined five Arab states in launching a war to annihilate the embryonic Jewish state. It should not have made it past the most rudimentary fact-checking.

The opinions of some of your regular columnists regarding Israel are well known. They consistently distort the positions of our government and ignore the steps it has taken to advance peace. They cavalierly defame our country by suggesting that marginal phenomena condemned by Prime Minister Netanyahu and virtually every Israeli official somehow reflects government policy or Israeli society as a whole. Worse, one columnist even stooped to suggesting that the strong expressions of support for Prime Minister Netanyahu during his speech this year to Congress was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby” rather than a reflection of the broad support for Israel among the American people.

Yet instead of trying to balance these views with a different opinion, it would seem as if the surest way to get an op-ed published in the New York Times these days, no matter how obscure the writer or the viewpoint, is to attack Israel.

Even so, the recent piece on “Pinkwashing,” in which Israel is vilified for having the temerity to champion its record on gay-rights, set a new bar that will be hard for you to lower in the future.

Not to be accused of cherry-picking to prove a point, I discovered that during the last three months (September through November) you published 20 op-eds about Israel in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune. After dividing the op-eds into two categories, “positive” and “negative,” with “negative” meaning an attack against the State of Israel or the policies of its democratically elected government, I found that 19 out of 20 columns were “negative.”

The only “positive” piece was penned by Richard Goldstone (of the infamous Goldstone Report), in which he defended Israel against the slanderous charge of Apartheid.

Yet your decision to publish that op-ed came a few months after your paper reportedly rejected Goldstone’s previous submission. In that earlier piece, which was ultimately published in the Washington Post, the man who was quoted the world over for alleging that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza, fundamentally changed his position. According to the New York Times op-ed page, that was apparently news unfit to print.

Your refusal to publish “positive” pieces about Israel apparently does not stem from a shortage of supply. It was brought to my attention that the Majority Leader and Minority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives jointly submitted an op-ed to your paper in September opposing the Palestinian action at the United Nations and supporting the call of both Israel and the Obama administration for direct negotiations without preconditions. In an age of intense partisanship, one would have thought that strong bipartisan support for Israel on such a timely issue would have made your cut.

So with all due respect to your prestigious paper, you will forgive us for declining your offer. We wouldn’t want to be seen as “Bibiwashing” the op-ed page of the New York Times.

Sincerely,

Ron Dermer
Senior advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu

THESE PEOPLE ARE DISHONEST, DECEPTIVE, SCAMMERS!
This is a public service announcement!

I’m taking a brief break in my usual articles to post this public service announcement in the hopes that this can save even at least one other person from getting taken in by the following dishonest sites:

http://computechnologiesinc.com
http://computerpartsnmore.com

These sites are operated by a company called CompuTechnologies, and I would like to share with everyone an outrageous experience with them.

On March 14, 2011, an order was placed on their site. Following the placement of the order, a very strange email was received showing no return address and no contact information, and containing FIVE PAGES of pseudo-legal mumbo-jumbo. Within that text, a promise was made for another followup email within 5 business days with further details.

That email never came.

Finding no contact information in the email and then going back and finding no contact information on the site itself, an inquiry was made with the credit card used. The inquiry resulted in no response from the merchant, CompuTechnologies.

About a month later, a letter was received from CompuTechnologies. This letter was the most bizarre thing imaginable. For starters, it was dated 3 months prior to the sale date. But, that was only the beginning. What followed in the letter was two pages chock full of lies, along with a $60 “penalty” for disputing the charge, along with a blatant threat to send it to a collection agency and report it to the major credit agencies.

A reply is being sent today with a vehement response, clearly illuminating their deceptive practices and lies.

To save anyone possible hassles, and because there is nothing to hide, I am attaching here on this blog the reply with all the related documentation so that this can be seen by anyone who might do business with them. I am submitting this page to Google along with all other related pages in the hopes that this will turn up in searches for their company as well.

The other related pages can be found at:

arking.com/computechnologies
arking.com/computerpartsnmore
indisputableblog.com/2011/05/05/computechnologies
echabotdb.com/computechnologies
echabotdb.com/computerpartsnmore

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/computechnologies-aka-computechnologiesinccom-aka-computerpartsnmorecom-c463465.html

http://www.scaminformer.com/scam-report/compu-technologies-aka-computechnologiesinccom-aka-computerpartsnmorecom-c31214.html

Please feel free to pass this around!!!

The reply is as follows (and all the attachments can be seen here in this PDF):

CompuTechnologies
PO Box 472
Denville, NJ 07834

Re: File number 0133

To whom it may concern:

I recently received your “notice of chargeback/dispute repayment” and have found it to be fraught with errors and unsubstantiated claims. Furthermore, the entire nature of your operations is rife with poor, if not outright deceptive, business practices.

I will call attention to some of these right here in this letter, and you can be sure that if this matter is not dropped immediately, that I will be calling similar attention to these and other inconsistencies in your communications to not only the major credit reporting agencies, but also to the Federal Trade Commission, the Attorneys General in your region of business, and the Better Business Bureau, as well as any other consumer affairs agencies. For a further idea of what will be disseminated, feel free to visit the sites listed in Exhibit A, which I have set up or collaborated with in order to help prevent others from being taken in by your deceptive practices.

Let’s start with your letter.

As you can see from Exhibit B (a copy of your letter), your facts are so ungrounded in truth and accuracy that even the date of your letter (highlighted) is an impossible December 10, 2010—prior by over 3 months to the placement of the order by your own statements!

Next, the terms and conditions that were displayed prior to checkout (as mentioned by your letter) differed from the terms and conditions that were sent via email following the purchase, notably the lack of any such statements regarding chargeback and collections, shipping times, etc.

As for your claims to have “clearly outlined in more than five emails” the procedures for contacting your company, that it an outright lie. For one thing, I only received a single email from you, not five emails, and that one email was anything but clear in this aspect.

Exhibit C (the email) was lacking standard protocol headers, namely a “From:” header, thereby cloaking where the email was sent from. Additionally, the only email address in the entirety of the email headers (see Exhibit D, a complete list of the email’s headers) was “compute1@spectra.superdomainzone.com”, an email address which is not a working destination (see Exhibit E, the failed mail status from my postfix server).

So, to recap so far, you sent one email, not five, and that one email was sent from an invalid return path and was missing the protocol-required “From:” mail header. To round out the discussion of this email supposedly containing “clearly outlined” procedures for contacting your company, the only thing written there was the following (highlighted in Exhibit C):

COMMUNICATION : The buyer understands they must contact our company via the support site provided by company. The buyer is not to use any other contact method other than the support link provided by the company. The support site information will be given to the buyer shortly after the completion of the checkout process. There will be a link in each email sent to email address which has been provided by the buyer on the checkout process. Buyer understands they must contact our company with any questions via this support link only and by no other means. Buyer understands they are responsible for the receipt of these emails at the email address which has been provided to company by them. The buyer is responsible to ensure they have a valid email address and checking any type of spam filter software or any other application or methods which prevent the transmission of any information by our company.

The buyer will receive all the necessary purchase information from our company, no later than five business days from the date of purchase.

So, in short, your policy states that the only contact permitted is via the support site information, which will be given to the buyer shortly after completion of the checkout process, or at the very latest within five business days from the date of purchase. Well, as I pointed out, nothing further was sent to me, thereby leaving me with absolutely no valid method of contacting your company.

Furthermore, contrary to honest business practices, your site itself contains absolutely no contact information (email, telephone, postal mail, etc.). In fact, your site contains a link labeled “Contact”, which points back to the home page containing no such information (see Exhibit F, a screenshot of the link hovered over in my browser with the destination URL exhibited at the bottom by the browser’s built-in function).

So, when left with no further communication from your company, despite your own self-admitted contractual promise for further communication within five days which never came, and thereby constituting your own breach of the supposed contract, I was left with no contractual or communicative alternative but to have my credit card company try to contact you on my behalf. I therefore opened a case with them which had them then attempt to contact you for information regarding the purchase. As you can see from Exhibit G, you were given several weeks to respond to them, which you never did; apparently, you are unreachable not only to customers, but to your affiliated credit card agencies, as well!

Next, let me address your statement that I “purposely lied to credit card company stating he had contacted company and cancelled order.”  This it completely false, and I have the record of my initial online complaint to American Express to prove this. You have similar access to my claim with American Express, so you can look it up for yourself: I simply stated the truth, which was that I placed an order a week prior and never received the promised further communication from you within the promised five day period, and had no way to contact you for any information. That was the extent of my complaint. At no point was there any mention of having contacted you, nor was there any mention of cancelling the order. Again, feel free to reference the case with American Express, which you have access to as a merchant with them.

Next, let me address your statement that “USPS has been attempting to delivery [sic] product since March 31, 2011” and that I am “purposely playing games into not accepting delivery of item”. For starters, being that I never cancelled the order, I would have no reason not to accept delivery. Had the delivery come, I would gladly have accepted it. Unfortunately, though, the delivery never came. There have never been any problems with receiving any products from USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, or any other carrier to that shipping address. Furthermore, I personally queried each person at that address who might accept or refuse deliveries and was told emphatically that at no time did any of them refuse any such deliveries. They are willing to sign notarized letters to that effect if it comes to that.

At this point, based on your own breach of your own supposed contract and your own “games” that I have clearly outlined here in this letter, the burden of proof is on you to prove that your delivery was attempted by USPS and that I refused delivery. Please show the delivery receipts/attempts, or any tracking information that can substantiate your statement. Otherwise, as I stated at the outset of this letter, I demand that you drop this matter immediately and save us all the hassle of dealing with the Federal Trade Commission, the relevant Attorneys General, and any other consumer affairs agencies—all hassles that I will gladly pursue until final resolution of this, on principle alone.

I receive regular monthly reports from the major credit agencies, and at the first sign of any such false claims by your company either by those credit agencies or by any collection agencies, you can be sure that all such action just outlined will be initiated to the fullest extent of my abilities, sparing no expense.

One last point: if I do hear back from you within a reasonable timeframe that you have reconsidered and are willing to drop this frivolous matter, then I will consider removing the web pages listed in Exhibit A based on such reasonable action.

Just a reminder: all the attachments can be seen here in this PDF):

While reading last month’s issue of AAA’s Car & Travel magazine, I was surprised to discover that Bloomberg (with the FDNY behind him) is now trying to push a “crash tax” on anyone involved in a car accident, with such taxes ranging from $365 up to $490, depending on the severity of the crash.

The article mentioned the slippery slope of this harebrained scheme, as did this post by Gothamist, whereby this tax could lead to other taxes, like taxing shopkeepers who call the police to come apprehend shoplifters at a higher rate than other shops. In short, where would the line be drawn? When does it end up becoming “pay for service” for some of the basic services we expect from our city and from the taxes we already pay??

One repercussion of this that neither Car & Travel nor Gothamist mention (nor any opinion piece I’ve read yet), is the significant concern of increased hit-and-runs. Faced with an inevitable wallet gouging of several hundred dollars, you can be sure that many people will opt for the quick getaway—from the accident and from the unnecessary additional financial loss.

Mark my words: with this tax, the incidence rate of hit-and-runs will skyrocket.

Thankfully, though, the city council appears to be working hard to defeat this initiative, as reported in the Gothamist post mentioned above, as well as other numerous sources, like the Wall Street Journal.

Here’s hoping that this ludicrous initiative dies a quick and painless death.

This story from NBC New York is just so bizarre, I can’t even find the words to introduce it:

Man Brings Beer to DWI Court Appearance

A 49-year-old man is in Sullivan County Jail without bail after authorities say he showed up for a court hearing on a felony DWI charge drunk and carrying an open can of Busch beer, plus four more cans in a bag.

The Middletown Times Herald-Record reports that Keith Gruber of Swan Lake was an hour and a half late for his court appearance Monday before Sullivan County Judge Frank LaBuda, who asked him if he enjoyed his “liquid lunch.”

Gruber said he did, then said he was sorry.

LaBuda sent him to jail with no bail.

“It was obvious he was intoxicated,” LaBuda said.

Gruber, who has prior DWI convictions, was arrested on Dec. 27 in the town of Liberty and was out on $30,000 cash bail.

Since many people have [believe it or not!] asked me what is the current status of the human excrement issue, here’s the latest (and final) update:

Fox 5 News at 10 called me to set up an interview in the subway last Thursday. It aired last Thursday night in a surprisingly substantial segment on their show, really throwing a spotlight on the disgusting neglect that the MTA has been showing for their subway station.

I believe that it was as a direct result of that show, that the MTA finally decided to do their job the following day, when they finally cleaned up the mess. And, even better, shortly after that, the NYPD finally made their way down to that part of the subway station and “evicted” the odoriferous squatters.

So, thanks to Fox 5, the job was finally done!

I recently wrote about some smeared human excrement (yes, you’re reading this correctly) in the middle of a subway station ramp.  Well, guess what?  It’s still there, and it’s now going on over two weeks.

I just sent a whole new slew of letters to the same recipients as last week (Straphangers Campaign, MTA Chairman Jay Walder, MTA President Thomas Predergast, MTA Sr VP of Subways Steven Feil, and Mayor Bloomberg). This time, for good measure, I added City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and my local councilman to the list.  They each got a beautifully printed color 8×10 photograph souvenir of the excrement, too.  (And, if this is still there next week, maybe I should send them actual samples of it?)

And for even more good measure (“better measure?”), I sent in tips to CBS 2 News, NBC 4 News, Fox 5 News, ABC 7 News, MY9 TV News, and WB 11 News.

Just in case any MTA officials happen to be reading this in sheer and literal disbelief, allow me to share this high quality (if not highly distasteful) photo that I just took this morning (note that the caution sign has also been there all this time, indicating that the station employees have in fact all along been aware of this disgusting insult to all straphangers):

I’ve finally had enough.

For over a week now, I’ve had to walk past the same splatter of human excrement in the middle of a primary subway ramp at the 34th Street Herald Square station, and I’m genuinely outraged by the apparent lack of any effort by the MTA to clean it up. I know that they are aware of it because they took the time to put a “CAUTION” cone/pyramid next to it, but that appears to be the extent to which they’re addressing the problem.

For anyone else who goes through that station and is as sickened as I am by this blatant disregard for sanitary conditions (or even anyone who experiences similar problems in other stations or on the trains itself), I strongly urge you to write to as many officials as possible.

For inspiration, feel free to check out my own letter below. Some addresses of interest are:

Steven Feil
Senior Vice President, Department of Subways
MTA New York City Transit
2 Broadway
New York, NY 10004

Thomas Predergast
President
MTA New York City Transit
2 Broadway
New York, NY 10004

Jay H. Walder
Chairman
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
347 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10017

The Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg
Mayor, City of New York
City Hall
New York, NY 10007

Straphangers Campaign
9 Murray Street
New York, NY 10007

The text of one of my letters is:

Dear Mr. Feil,

I am writing to you concerning a shocking and blatant disregard for sanitary conditions—by even the most forgiving of standards—at your 34^th Street Herald Square station.

For over a month now, I have seen the same two unfortunately filthy homeless people literally living on one of the station’s largest access ramps (the main ramp leading down to the uptown B, D, F, and M platform), calling it their home. Their unfortunately horrible odor is offensive enough and strong enough to cause all commuters to pass them as quickly as possible in the widest arc around them as possible. (I can’t speak for others, but I personally have to hold my breath for most of my journey up the ramp, as the odor extends for at least 30 feet in all directions.)

Had this been the extent of the problem, I might not have gone to the effort of writing this letter, especially considering the homeless squatting that is rampant in the subway system. But, last week this was amplified to an entirely new level when the homeless people—for lack of a bathroom, I suppose—apparently decided that the ramp would also make a nice toilet.

The human excrement they left behind has been there for over a week. Rather than cleaning it up, the station’s maintenance crew last week simply put out one of those “CAUTION” pyramids (the ones they use when the floors are slippery).

I am not sure what the delay is but, after a week, there can be no rational explanation for human excrement still smeared across the middle of a subway station ramp.

I urge you to look into this matter without further delay and to please hold accountable all those employees responsible for not addressing this public health threat in a proper timeframe.

The news coming out of the New York Post is no surprise:  informants from within the Sanitation Department have come out secretly exposing that workers deliberately slowed down the blizzard cleanup efforts in an underhanded move to make Bloomberg look bad.

It was obvious to most New Yorkers (especially those in Brooklyn who were hit hardest) that the Sanitation Department was not doing its job. After all, this is not the first snowstorm we’ve had and the weather conditions related to the blizzard were well-known prior to the blizzard’s onset, giving the city plenty of time to prepare accordingly. So, no matter what some city apologists have been saying (“we were cut several hundred trucks from our fleet of several thousand”… and “there were higher winds than usual with this blizzard”), there is still no explaining why some parts of the city went 3 or 4 days before seeing their first snow plow.

Talk about a snow job. Watching those union bosses and sanitation officials on TV making one excuse after another as to why the cleanup was so slow… and now some informants from within the department have exposed the real—and brutally ugly—truth.

The NY Post writes (emphasis mine):

Selfish Sanitation Department bosses from the snow-slammed outer boroughs ordered their drivers to snarl the blizzard cleanup to protest budget cuts — a disastrous move that turned streets into a minefield for emergency-services vehicles, The Post has learned.

Miles of roads stretching from as north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed last night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said, which was over a raft of demotions, attrition and budget cuts.

“They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important,” said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens), who was visited yesterday by a group of guilt-ridden sanitation workers who confessed the shameless plot.

Halloran said he met with three plow workers from the Sanitation Department — and two Department of Transportation supervisors who were on loan — at his office after he was flooded with irate calls from constituents.

The snitches “didn’t want to be identified because they were afraid of retaliation,” Halloran said. “They were told [by supervisors] to take off routes [and] not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file.”

New York’s Strongest used a variety of tactics to drag out the plowing process — and pad overtime checks — which included keeping plows slightly higher than the roadways and skipping over streets along their routes, the sources said.

The snow-removal snitches said they were told to keep their plows off most streets and to wait for orders before attacking the accumulating piles of snow.

…multiple Sanitation Department sources told The Post yesterday that angry plow drivers have only been clearing streets assigned to them even if that means they have to drive through snowed-in roads with their plows raised.And they are keeping their plow blades unusually high, making it necessary for them to have to run extra passes, adding time and extra pay.

One mechanic said some drivers are purposely smashing plows and salt spreaders to further stall the cleanup effort.

This is an absolute outrage.

Not only should those supervisors responsible be fired, but if the mayor has any brains and foresight, he would throw the book at these people and have them arrested and charged with public endangerment, criminal mischief, destruction of public property, obstructing emergency vehicles, and any and every other remote charge than can be found.

These people’s names and pictures should also be posted in the newspaper so that everyone knows clearly who they are, and they should be banned from ever getting another public job with the city or state of NY again.

Better yet: they should all be locked inside a burning building in Brooklyn and let them all wait for the fire trucks to figure out how to reach them through the snow.

Yes, I just wrote about this last night, but after seeing more mentions of this in the news, some of which seemed to defend Cablevision, I wanted to point out a few fallacies in Cablevision’s arguments.

Cablevision is claiming that they didn’t pull the programming, News Corp did. Well, when you refuse to pay for something, then yes, it will be pulled.

Let me provide an analogy here: What would happen if a hotel didn’t pay its Cablevision bill? Cablevision would “pull” the hotel’s cable programming. Yes, it would be technically accurate at that point for the hotel management to tell the guests that Cablevision turned off the hotel’s service, not the hotel, but if the hotel wasn’t paying the bill, it’s not exactly a big surprise when their screens go dark!

Here, too, while it’s technically accurate for Cablevision to blame News Corp for “pulling the programming”, it overly simplifies the finger-pointing in an attempt to rile their subscribers up against News Corp. Which brings me to my next point…

Rather than apologize to their subscribers for their inability to negotiate in time with News Corp, instead Cablevision is focusing all their energy on pointing fingers and trying to channel their subscribers’ anger for their own advantage at the bargaining table. They are callously dragging their subscribers as pawns into their corporate war with News Corp.

I might not be so quick to come to that conclusion if it weren’t for the fact that this is already the third time this year that Cablevision has employed that tactic! First with the provider of the Food Network & HGTV channels in early 2010, then with ABC on Oscars day! Cablevision has repeatedly shown a preference for using their subscribers as bargaining tools, rather than fairly sitting down at the negotiating table with their providers.

Quite frankly, I find it reprehensible that they take their subscribers for mindless idiots who they can use as tools for their own benefit. Sure, News Corp is no angel either in this fight, but they seemed to have been able to work something out with all the other providers without this much of a problem (okay, maybe not Dish Network…). And that brings me to my final point…

There are plenty of other subscription sources out there carrying Fox: DirecTV and Verizon FIOS being two of them (and depending on your neighborhood, you maybe have even more). So, exactly how is it that those providers can work out at deal with News Corp and still offer competitive rates to their subscribers? How are they able to do this without holding their subscribers hostage in corporate wars? Obviously they are doing something right, while Cablevision is doing something wrong, and in this great capitalist society, companies like Cablevision who can’t see that quickly enough will be punished with customer defection, much to the joy of their competitors.

On a personal note, I’m one such customer who refuses to be used as a tool—a bargaining chip. I just want all my channels intact in peace. Since I can’t get it with Cablevision, and since I am highly offended at their unapologetic full frontal assault, I’m happy to have switched now to Verizon FIOS (a move, I should mention which was greeted—after being a customer for several years—with noticeable indifference by the Cablevision representative I had the misfortune of dealing with when I called yesterday first thinking about switching).

I’m departing momentarily from my usual national and world politics to just vent on a frustration of an entirely different nature: television. In particular, the dispute between Fox and Cablevision.

A quick recap for anyone not familiar with the situation: Cablevision is no longer broadcasting the Fox broadcast channel because of a dispute between the two companies. Fox wants more money for Cablevision to carry its signal, and Cablevision refuses to pay the exorbitant amount demanded by Fox. The excrement really hit the fan today when subscribers had to make alternative arrangements for their weekly dose of NFL on Fox. You just don’t mess with football.

So, that’s what brings me to this post. I want to say that I don’t give a damn who’s right and who’s wrong. As the end user and customer, I am right and they are both wrong. That’s simply how I see it. And, quite frankly, I’m happy that they’re both going to get royally screwed by this decision: Fox is going to lose a nice chunk of advertising revenue, and Cablevision is going to lose a nice chunk of their subscriber base, including me.

Yes, that’s right. I just placed my order today for Verizon FIOS. After a year or two of tossing their triple play fliers in the trash, I decided to take them up on their offer and move all my business from Cablevision to Verizon FIOS—and pay 40% less on my monthly bill, to boot.

Of course, as someone who has been loyal to Cablevision for years, I took the time to first call them (and sit on hold for a long time, of course) just to see if they had anything they could say to me to convince me to stay with them. I knew almost immediately, though, that I was making the right decision when all I got from the Cablevision representative was a bit of attitude coupled with absolutely zero effort to convince me to stay or to even express that I was a valued customer to them!

If I sensed at least some effort on their part or some appreciation for my loyalty, I might have stayed with them. But, after that dismayingly empty and virtually pointless conversation, I had no doubts about what I was doing to do. I hung up with them, and within minutes I was already placing my order for Verizon FIOS.

I just hope that there are many other unsatisfied customers out there who are expressing their dissatisfaction with their choice of patronage.

Granted, I’m sure Verizon FIOS comes with its own bundle of issues and gripes, but until I get stopped up by one of them, they’ve got my business. And when and if that does happen, let’s see if they show any more concern for their customers than Cablevision does. Chances are that if they do, then they’ll still have me as their customer despite that.

So, by the time next Sunday rolls around, I’ll be watching the NFL on Fox with my new Verizon FIOS subscription!  Goodbye, Cablevision, and good luck with your mutual mud-slinging campaign against Fox, which I’ll be happy not to have to concern myself with as I welcome Verizon FIOS into my home.

(Oh, and Cablevision, if you’re reading this: your customers don’t want to hear how greedy Fox is. They just want their channels, and if other providers are able to give it to them, then you’re doing something wrong and the other providers are doing something right. It’s that simple. As long as there is a capitalist free market out there with supply and demand, and as long as the other providers are somehow able to work out a deal with Fox and still charge competitive prices in your market, then you’re obviously doing something wrong—and doing a disservice, regardless, to your customers.)

TheSmokingGun.com reports on a crime where a man got into an argument with two teenagers over their stupid habit of wearing their pants hanging down below their asses, and ended up shooting one of them in the ass.

I can’t say that I blame him.

In fact, I think they should probably give the guy a medal instead of arresting him.

Here’s the story:

Incensed when two teenagers ignored his demands to pull up their saggy pants, a Memphis man allegedly shot one of the youths in the back, according to police.

Kenneth Bonds was arrested Saturday night and charged with two counts of aggravated assault and jailed on $25,000 bond. Bonds, 45, is pictured in the mug shot at right.

Investigators contend that Bonds admitted to shooting Cameron Tucker, 17, following a September 25 argument on a Memphis sidewalk. The teenager was accompanied by Isaac Taylor, a 16-year-old friend.

Tucker told cops that he and Taylor were walking to a candy store when Bonds “began yelling at them to pull their pants up,” according to a Memphis Police Department arrest warrant affidavit. “Bonds got angry when Tucker and Taylor refused and that’s when the three got into a heated argument,” reported police.

At that point, Bonds allegedly pulled out a pistol and fired a shot at the older boy. The shot missed, but as the boys fled, Bonds continued firing at them. One bullet hit the 17-year-old in the buttocks and exited through his thigh (the boy was treated for the wound at two different hospitals).

A witness, Percy Chalmers, told cops that he saw Bonds “pull a large black semi auto handgun from his waist band” and fire several shots. Both Tucker and Taylor were able to identify Bonds in a photo spread prepared by Memphis police.

When contacted by phone, Bonds reportedly “admitted to shooting Cameron Tucker after an argument,” according to the police affidavit. Bonds was scheduled to be arraigned this morning on the felony counts

Mitch Albom, of the Detroit Free Press, recently penned this great opinion piece that is so good, it deserves to be reproduced everywhere possible!

It is already one of the most embarrassing video clips in sports history, and it has nothing to do with dropped passes or missed dunks. It is footage of New York Jets defensive back Antonio Cromartie, a 26-year-old man, trying to list the names of his children.

Cromartie, in the HBO reality series “Hard Knocks,” sits on the field, counting his kids on his fingers. At times he seems to struggle remembering them, and he skips one of their names altogether.

Then again, who could blame him? He has, by his own count, fathered eight children, apparently with six different women. Only at the end of his list does he say, “And I have my newborn with my wife.”

So Cromartie is the new face of irresponsible fatherhood. But while he has more than earned the honor (the Jets, according to reports, had to front him $500,000 for paternity suits), he is hardly alone.

Fathering kids as if you’re watering plants is a growing problem in the sports world, particularly in African-American circles. And if we are going to talk about this issue, we need to drop our sensitivities toward this fact.

No, African Americans aren’t the only ones having kids out of wedlock. But, yes, the news is worst in that community, where, in recent data from the National Center for Health Statistics, 72% of new babies were born out of wedlock, versus 28% among whites and 17% among Asians. This is not in the skin. It is not about color. It’s about culture.

And if the culture doesn’t change, neither will the pattern.

Cromartie, in listing his offspring on “Hard Knocks,” mentions four who are around age 3. I’ll never understand men who father kids as if opening Starbucks franchises. But four in one year?

That’s unforgivable. Obviously, Cromartie enjoys his sex, but is it a sin to take precautions? Or does he think his seed is so special he needs to procreate on a quarterly basis?

And what about the women involved? Are they that naive? Or do some figure the fastest route to a sports star’s wallet is through the delivery room?

Both parties ignore the well-documented consequences of absent fathers. Lack of guidance, discipline or demonstration of the love and respect needed in a marriage. Crime rates, dropout rates, violence rates — all are higher for kids without fathers. It’s not like this is a secret.

Yet the situation repeats, over and over. It is simply cruel. How will children ever learn their way out of the cycle? If we, in the 21st Century, have fostered a culture where “baby mama” is an acceptable term, we have little to be proud of.

“A house without a father is a challenge,” Bill Cosby once wrote. “A neighborhood without fathers is a catastrophe.”

Travis Henry, the former NFL running back, reportedly has fathered at least 11 children with 10 different women. Evander Holyfield, the boxing champ who claims to be a man of God, fathered two children with two women a month apart — while being married to another.

Now comes Cromartie — on prime-time TV — to again demonstrate how flippant fatherhood can be. He actually has the nerve to tell the camera, “Soon as you leave (work) and get home, you got to be that father figure.”

He is not a father figure.

But, sadly, a white columnist bemoaning this issue won’t change it in the black community. An older couple wagging fingers won’t make young people listen. Critics may be dismissed with, “It’s not your place to say anything.”

But it is my place and it is your place, black or white or brown, because we share this country, and playing Johnny Appleseed to kids you won’t tend to makes our country a more difficult place. That holds for Antonio Cromartie or Kevin Federline.

Cromartie’s video is now the butt of endless Internet jokes. And almost unbelievably, Cromartie has complained only that HBO didn’t show another clip in which he recited his children’s names faster.

Hey, Antonio. It isn’t how fast you remembered the kids. It’s how fast you created them. And there’s nothing funny about your story. It’s sad. Really sad.

This has to be one of the most disturbing news items I’ve seen in a while: a two-year-old boy with a two-pack-a-day smoking habit.

I’m surprised, though, that this news report, in which they report on the father’s opinions regarding the baby’s health, doesn’t answer the most glaring question: how did a baby get addicted to cigarettes like that??? What do the parents have to say about that??

In what has to be one of the strangest news stories I’ve read in a long time, a woman is intentionally trying to become the world’s fattest woman.

This stupid woman, Donna Simpson of NJ, who obviously isn’t too concerned about being alive to watch her 3-year old daughter grow up, is already 600 lbs and counting. She

eats huge amounts of junk food each week and tries to move as little as possible so she doesn’t burn off as many calories.

“I do love cakes and sweet things, doughnuts are my favourite,” she said.

Ms Simpson said she also loved eating sushi and would often eat 70 big pieces in one go.

I was debating putting her picture up here, but I don’t feel like running a freak show, and it’s really disgusting (for those more curious out there, feel free to follow the news story link and check out the picture there).

Now, keep in mind I’m not picking on people who are obese and can’t help it for whatever reason, because this is clearly not the case here. This is a person who is intentionally killing herself by stuffing her fat belly (and arteries) with all kinds of disgustingly fattening foods, and without a care in the world, apparently.

Side note: the story doesn’t even stop there with the bizarreness; here’s the last line:

In order to pay for the enormous amounts of food she is eating — her weekly grocery bill is $815 — Ms Simpson makes money by running a website where men pay to watch her consume fast food.