July 30, 2004

Nancy Reagan won't Support Bush

The widow of former President, and Republican icon, Ronald Reagan has told the GOP she wants nothing to do with their upcoming national convention or the re-election campaign of President George W. Bush.

Nancy Reagan turned down numerous invitations to appear at the Republican National Convention and has warned the Bush campaign she will not tolerate any use of her or her late husbands words or images in the President’s re-election effort.

“Mrs. Reagan does not support President Bush’s re-election and neither to most members of the President’s family,” says a spokesman for the former First Lady.

Nancy Reagan

Reagan’s son, Ron, spoke at the just-concluded Democratic National Convention and writes in next month’s Esquire magazine that “George W. Bush and his administration have taken normal mendacity to a startling new level far beyond lies of convenience. They traffic in big lies.”

Ron Reagan is joined by his sister Patty in opposing Bush’s re-election effort. Only brother Michael Reagan, a conservative talk show host, supports the President and claims Ron is manipulating his mother.

Unlike the other Reagan children, Michael is not Reagan’s biological child. He was adopted by Reagan during the actor’s first marriage to actress Jane Wyman and often complains that his stepmother, Nancy, likes Ron best.

“He is her favorite,” Michael Reagan told Fox News. “Ron can do no wrong. I mean, basically that's it, Ron can do no wrong.”

Ron, however, claims George W. Bush has destroyed the Republican Party his father helped build.

“My father, acting roles excepted, never pretended to be anyone but himself,” Reagan writes in Esquire. “His Republican Party, furthermore, seems a far cry from the current model, with its cringing obeisance to the religious right.”

The Reagans’ split with Bush and the party centers around stem cell research which many believe can help find a cure for Alzheimer’s, the disease that crippled President Reagan in his final years. Bush and the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party oppose use of new stem cells. The Reagans, with the exception of Michael, support such use.

There’s more to the feud than that, however. Nancy Reagan has told close followers she believes Bush and the current Republican leadership have divided America with their extreme views. She has told Republican leaders she wants nothing to do with the party or Bush.

During the week of Reagan’s funeral, the former First Lady “went ballistic” when she learned the Bush campaign was test marketing new ads that used Reagan’s photos and speeches in an effort to show he supported Bush and his re-election. She personally called Republican Party Chief Ed Gillespie to demand the ads be destroyed.

Republican strategists admit the ads were produced but never ran. They were pulled after scoring poorly with focus groups where viewers found them in “poor taste.”

“Mrs. Reagan doesn’t care why the ads were pulled. She just wanted to make sure they never went on the air,” says a spokesman for the First Lady. “She does care about whether or not the memory of President Reagan is used for political purposes.”

Posted by marc at 04:38 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Dropping AT&T for Verizon cell phone service

I'm tired of the poor service and the dropped phone calls and audio so choppy that you can't make out what was said. After many many complaints I just decided that I can't take it anymore and need real cell phone service that works.

I don't know about other areas but in San Francisco AT&Y sucks. The are merging with Cingular which also sucks and they are already sharing relay towers. I had hoped the service would get better - but it's worse.

AT7T wants to try to confuse me claiming it might be my phone(s) and other things. But - I'm a tech and I know how this works. The problem occurrs mostly at peak hours - and it's clearly an overload problem.

Here's how it works. There is a limit to how much information that can be transmitted down a data pipe and AT7T's pipe is too small. This results in "packet loss" which means that chunks of words are just plain dropped or lost. That creates the "choppy" effect.

Signal strength is plenty good and the problem isn't related to my location. And I have two phones and they are both doing the same thing. The problem is that the service is oversold.

What AT&T is doing is probably illegal and certianly immoral. What they are doing is selling something they don't have. Here's an analogy. Suppose that a movie theather sold more tickets than they had seats. If enough people didn't show up - no one would notice. But - when the overselling gets to a severe point then people who pay for the movie don't get to see it.

In my case I'm paying for service 24 hours a day - but during peak hours I can't make or receive phone calls. I'm not getting what I'm paying for.

I have heard good things about Verizon - I'm hoping that they will be better. We will see. I would warn everyone though that AT&T - in the San Francisco area - is cheating their customers and if you are considering AT&T you might want to go elsewhere.

But not to Sprint - they are even worse!

Posted by marc at 11:25 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack