My letter to Sirius Satellite Radio

From Daily Kos

The liberal channel is called "SIRIUS Left."

The conservative channel is called "SIRIUS Patriot."

SIRIUS Satellite Radio doesn't think you're patriotic. This is an obscenity.

SIRIUS's media relations representative for talk radio is Hillary Schupf. Her email is hschupf@siriusradio.com.

Hello Ms. Schupf -

I am an XM, not a Sirius subscriber. I've been an XM subscriber for about four years now, and have four radios on my account.

The choice of Sirius to define people who believe in any left of center politics and sociology as NOT patriotic is deeply disturbing and inconsistent with the founding principles of this country.

XM and Sirius are scheduled to merge.

If this remains the policy of Sirius, which appears to be the likely dominant entity in the proposed merger of XM and your firm, I can assure you that I can live without satellite radio as I did for the 43 years before I became an XM subscriber.

In the meantime, I intend to inform everyone with whom I have contact that XM does not so label persons who view life in a way that is not right of center as anti-American and that Sirius does. Perhaps that single market distinction can provide XM with sufficient advantage to avoid the need for the proposed merger.

Saturday quiet time

It looks like rain, but not raining. I'm just lap topping away and watching a DVD. Nothing else to do here, really at this point.

So, it seems that the Minnie Phaeton is gone. It will re-appear, probably, but the Phaeton popularity is on the mend. However, today I stumbled upon ANOTHER Phaeton, that's just gorgeous. GORGEOUS, do you hear me? Overpriced, though. Bleh. Black with black.

Bram seems to have found employment here in town, and he's very pleased with those prospects. Hopefully the Comcast people can fix the internet connection tomorrow ... bleh.

Phaeton Phantasm

Yeah, I'm all up for a Phaeton again.

I was reading today - some guy was saying he wanted a Phaeton badly, a twelve cylinder as I want to have. He wanted to know whether they were reliable, and whether it was true that an oil change cost $300.

The explanation that followed made me want the car even more. The bit about the engine compartment being completely sealed from the bottom?

Brian is going to spew his coffee when he reads this, but I am not dissuaded, I want it MORE.

Here are a few pictures of the exact one I've had dreams about driving or being driven in...









Blue leather interior! Rarer than hens teeth for the very few Phaeton W12s that were imported here. And, I think it's a custom blue color on the outside. Gorgeous.

Thursday that feels like Thursday

Last night was amusing. Erik, who I rarely talk to, hit me up on IM and was talking about Houston being nuked - had I ever heard of such a thing?

Why, yes, I have!

That led to a long conversation that brought Bram in, and everyone (but me) was freaking out for a while. I was nonchalant, as I already spent my nights awake worrying about that issue. Anyway, it was a hoot all around. This morning, I could barely drag myself out of bed and get to it. I finally did, and mid-posting the garage refrigerator on Craigslist, the cable modem went out. Knowing Bram couldn't survive without internet access, I fiddled with that for about an hour, and made myself very late to the office. Bleh.

That refrigerator is generating a lot of attention, and I only thought about dealing with selling it after talking to Guy about that when his grandparents disconnected their big freezer, their electric bill plummeted. I asked Bram last night whether we really needed that fridge, and the answer was clearly no.

I just fired another client who was telling me "another loan officer told me the rate would be 6.85%" Adios.

Monday, Monday ver. 911.01

So, it's an interesting day. I started working with a pipeline sheet, which I've never done - I've always tried to keep it in my head. It both motivates and rewards, as it shows what is actually true, and what needs to happen to keep things going. I've asked Tom to help me with that, making it more custom for my needs.

A few weeks ago, I sent an old friend a snail mail piece, nearly twelve years since we were last in touch. He wrote me back by email, and we've been having a lot of fun getting the communication re-established. It's so cool to learn about how someone else saw something and thought of something, and compare it to how it was for yourself.

Went to lunch today, had a great bowl of French Onion soup and picked up nearly $1.1 Million in new loans. Whoopie!

Tonight, Jackie goes into the tub for a soak and a bath. She'll not be happy going in, and will be VERY happy coming out.

And, we have lunch with an appraiser tomorrow .. oof. He's handsome. Okay, more workie must be done here.

Just a couple of late Sunday things...

First, two reviews of Michael Moore's "Sicko." A couple of quotes from the reviews to entice you to click the link and read:

There is one story in the film of a woman whose husband was denied a bone marrow transplant allegedly because it was an "experimental procedure," --- is one a thousand excuses health insurance companies use to keep from having to provide care for those whose premiums they eagerly cashed in the years before their customer got sick. But I think what got me about that particular story was the fact that this woman worked in the hospital where the board of directors of this managed care company also worked. She spoke to them personally. She wasn't just a piece of paper in an in-box. It was a real live person, a colleague and neighbor, literally begging for her husbands life ... and they said no. For profit. It makes me want to howl in pain and outrage.

(Apparently, the film is making the insurers howl too. Check out this post from Michael Moore today in which he posts an internal Blue cross memo. The rep they sent to see the movie and report back wrote: "You'd have to be dead to be unaffected by Moore's movie.")

Moore's movie is actually quite successful in showing that people in other first world countries with universal care live very well despite the fact that they pay higher taxes for medical care (and other things) because --- they don't have to pay for medical care and those other things. The people who live middle and upper middle class lives as professionals don't lose anything --- and the society as a whole gains tremendously because those crippling worries are removed from all, the poor and middle class alike.

Is my sister reading this?

Next, an article about how the Iran-Contra affair (you don't remember that, because you intentionally forgot. The whole thing was hard to understand, no one was really driving it as a news story, and the Iran-Contra investigation committee neatly whitewashed the whole thing.)

Tell me we're not paying for that now. Tell me we're not paying for tolerating a renegade theory of Executive power. Tell me we're not hearing how inconvenient and cumbersome and counterproductive the impeachment process of the Constitution is. Tell me the Democratic candidates aren't soft-pedaling the whole issue, preferring to micromanage the end of the kind of war that the renegade theory of Executive power makes not only likely, but inevitable. (Go back and read the minority report of the Iran-Contra committee. Go see who wrote the part about how the president has an inherent right to do stuff like this. Hint -- he has a lesbian daughter, a bad heart, and lousy aim.) Tell me the press isn't running away from the gravity of the whole business. Tell me you haven't heard some anchor-drone or another sigh about how hard it all is to understand. Tell me that Bush presidencies don't invariably come down to buying the silence of the people who can put you away. Tell me Alberto Gonzales isn't Edwin Meese, except less competent. Tell me that Elliott Abrams, John Negroponte, Michael Ledeen, and the rest of the Iran-Contra Legends Tour ever would have found their bloody hands back on the levers of government if we'd done what we should have done as a nation 20 years ago. Jesus, even Ghorbanifar's back in the news.

It's official - the NYT says 'Get out of Iraq now"

You should read it.

Later today, at 3:30 Pacific/5:30 Central, you can watch the roll out ceremonies for Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner - webcast at http://www.newairplane.com. As part of the ceremonies, they're going to have a sequential landing of each of the Boeing "7" aircraft, starting with the 707, through the end - presumably the 777, since the 787 hasn't flown yet.