cyclonefence
cyclonefence's JournalPete Hegseth's
pocket square is a little American flag. Has anyone caught him blowing his nose on it?
(fingers crossed)
This scam is new to me,
and they've gone to a lot of trouble to make it look real. It's titled "Thank you for you payment" and says it needs me to go to docusign.com because they need an e-signature. Lots of links, including one to a pdf. I didn't click on any of them.
It seems I sent them $795 "us dollars" for *something*--they don't tell me what I bought, but they do explain exchange rates so I know I wasn't being ripped off. I made this payment through paypal.
BEWARE!!!
They're determined to get all our money--plus our precious bodily fluids!
I did change my paypal password.
Anybody for vertigo?
It's a new one on me! What do you do for it? I hesitate to mention it to my doctor because I don't want to deal with something else going wrong with my body. I find it kind of entertaining, actually.
About Lowe's and my earlier post
I perhaps did not make it clear that the item in question was in a damaged carton and had been placed in an aisle with other damaged items that had been marked down. Sam did not open a sealed package; the package was partially opened and damaged. I don't know what the employees thought he was going to do--stick the sink under his shirt and walk out with it?
My son also worked at Lowe's and rose to a managerial position in the store I'm talking about.
No one has ever greeted anyone I know at the entrance to that store. It is a busy store with too few employees, and I have always had to seek out assistance.
There is nothing hokey about Sam's story.
I know Lowe's does not have racist policies; I believe the two salesmen in question were behaving in a racist manner toward my friend, who is a fine young man and does not lie. I think management needs to have a brief in-service to remind the sales force that hanging around watching black customers is likely to be interpreted as racism, intended or not.
Racism at Lowe's
This is an email I just sent to Marvin Ellison, CEO of Lowe's--who happens to be a black man:
Dear Mr. Ellison,
Organized Democrats generally shop at Lowe's rather than Home Depot for political reasons; my husband and I have not shopped at Home Depot since the second George Bush administration. We shop at the Langhorne PA Lowe's and have always been treated with respect and even friendliness by the staff. We are white.
Our friend, Sam (I am omitting his last name because he does not know I'm writing this) is a black man who works two jobs (he is a counselor at a nationally-recognized residential school for people with disabilities and a personal trainer at a prestigious national chain of gyms) in order to support a charity he founded several years ago in Liberia, where he was born. He has made it his mission to help his native village become independent and prosperous through supplying them with modern farming equipment, educational materials for the school, and general donations of clothing and household goods. He has even raised enough money through his salaries and donations to send them a truck.
He was in our local Lowe's looking at marked-down items he might buy to send to Liberia. He saw a sink in the sale aisle which had been reduced in price because the packaging was damaged. He further opened the box to see how badly damaged the sink itself was. Two salesmen swooped down on him and asked if he needed help. He said no, he was just trying to see what the sink looked like. The two men lingered nearby until he was so uncomfortable he left the store.
I have never been approached by a salesperson at Lowe's. It is a busy store, and I have always had to flag down someone when I've needed help finding something or getting information.
Sam's story made me sad and ashamed, and I think Lowe's owes him an apology.
Sincerely,
cc: democraticunderground.com
We need an orator
Teddy Kennedy sans Chappiquidick or however the hell you spell it. Bernie has it, but he's too old. We know MAGA's weaknesses, or some of them--their racism and their misogyny--so we should keep them in mind. For instance, we've had two magnificent candidates for president, both of them defeated (I know; Hillary won the popular vote) and both of them women. We need MAGAs to see the light (which Trump is helping us do by his blatant mishandling of everything), so we need to ease them out of the cult.
It goes against all I believe in, but I think Democrats need to forget trying to elect a woman president for the time being. The misogyny even among some Democrats is deep.
Because of MAGA's racism, our spokesman should be white. Again, deplorable.
I can't think of anything else that will make them listen to us.
Thank you to posters who re-post rants (and I mean that in the kindest way)
from Youtube and elsewhere who have stopped using the ranters' sensationalist titles as titles for the reposting. I really do appreciate it. 
A new Amazon(ptui)-related scam to watch out for
I got an email from "Amazon" (I canceled my membership in Prime, but since I paid for a year it will be active until the end of August) saying my method of payment needed to be updated.
Well. As it happened, I'd lost my credit card a few days before this, so I clicked on the link.
There were many questions beyond giving a new credit card number. When I got to "mother's maiden name" I snapped to (finally) and went back to check the address on the email. As expected, it was amazon@slkmvmdb.com.
What a dumbass I am. My Prime account has its own credit card, and I don't actually have a physical card. I get a monthly bill from Amazon. Or I used to get a bill. But see, somebody else could order stuff if they could get into my account.
I immediately erased everything I'd filled in and then went to Amazon and changed my password.
Anyway, if there are any other dumbasses like me, be sure to check the email address if "Amazon" comes calling.
I'm almost 78 years old, and I don't know if I'll ever learn.
I want to get this off my chest
Posts with titles like "Trump Handed His Ass On Air" or "Watch the Humiliation of Some Trumpist" are generally, in my experience, posts of you-tube videos, which is fine--I watch and enjoy and appreciate them--but the titles are always imo misleading. I know they're intentionally sensational--they're click-bait, after all--but I wonder if posters here could possibly re-title their posts (some already do) with words like "Meidas Touch catches Trump in lie" or something less exciting. I will still watch the videos, I promise, but you don't know how many times I sit here waiting for the payoff promised in the title, and *it never comes*, at least not as powerfully as promised.
Whew. Off my chest. I'll never complain again.
I'm trying to help Elon Musk find places to cut costs
and I was wondering about Congressional pensions and health care benefits. I read several government websites and couldn't make hide nor hair of them, but my takeaway was that congressmen and women get pensions and the vast majority of Americans, especially young Americans don't. Most Americans, I think, get IRAs and 401ks. Here's the best summary about congressional pensions I could find:
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the proposal to change the congressional retirement system, focusing on: (1) the cost of congressional retirement benefits; (2) the potential savings from the proposal; (3) how private sector retirement systems compare with the congressional retirement system; and (4) the extent to which private sector employers are replacing defined benefit pension plans with defined contribution plans. GAO noted that: (1) the estimated cost of providing future retirement benefits to 1994 Congressional members would total $14,327,224; (2) over a 5-year period, the cost of providing retirement benefits would total $71.5 million; (3) if the proposal were enacted, it would significantly reduce the cost of Member retirement programs; (4) the cost of providing retirement benefits to 1994 Congressional staff members would total $116.5 million; (5) although federal employees receive greater benefit amounts under the Civil Service Retirement System than nonfederal employees before age 62, they receive smaller amounts after age 62 and older when social security benefits are available to nonfederal employees; and (6) the private sector does not appear to be moving toward replacing defined benefit plans with defined contribution plans.
https://www.gao.gov/products/ggd-96-24r
So in 1994--1994!--we paid over $116 million for congressional pensions? I think they must contribute *something* but I can't figure out how much. And what about healthcare? I'm off to search.
But it seems to me that cutting congressional benefits--free gym membership, for instance-- could save us at lease a few million bucks a year. I'll get back to you, Elon.
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