I suppose all cell phone compaines suck and Verizon is no different. Now they are trying to screw me on service. I have a two phone plan that I've had for over 2 years and the phones are more than paid for. Last december I changed the terms of the plan which extended my service for another year.
So - the second phone was for a friend and it costs $20/month extra to be on my plan. However she reciently had to move to Wheeling West Virginia to care for a sick aunt. We would be more than happy to keep the service except for one problem. Verizon has no coverage in Wheeling West Virginia. Not even with roaming. Zero coverage.
So - not needing the second phone anymore I contacted Verizon to cancel the second line and now they want to charge me $175 penalty for early termination. Even though the cost of keeping it is far less.
So - several issues here.
My position is that the contract is a fee for service contract and I'm paying the fee but they aren't providing the service. Wheeling WV is not some small town out in the boondocks. Wheeling is the 3rd largest city in WV with a population of 30,000 or so. Since Verizon is the nations largest cell phone provider and that AT&T has voverage there, Verizon could provide coverage as well. But they don't - so since they don't they are in breach of contract - not me.
Second - I extended the main contract but I see the add on line as an additional feature and that is a separate contract. Since the original contract is over two years old Verizon has already got enogh money to cover the cost of the phone. Since the terms of the contract would be the same regardless of if I had a second phone I don't see the obligation as applying to the second phone.
Verizon said that they would agree to drop the second line but the conditions for doing so didn't apply to our situation. They asked for a copy of the utility bill in her name. But there is no bill in her name because she is living with her dying aunt and the home and the bills are in her aunt's name. I suggested other documentation but they are not cooperating. The are insisting on the utility bill.
Furthermore I read an article where the president of Verizon has said that they were going to stop these termination charges because they were pissing off customers liike me.
I don't know if I'll win this but I will make sure Verizon loses. There are some people you fuck with and some you do't and I am a professional asshole and when someone screws with me I ensure that they lose money doing so. So because of this block Verizon will lose customers. I always make sure that corporate stupidity is never rewarded.
Several years ago MCI burned me. And I ended up doing This Interview on the CBS evening news.
With less than 100 days till elections the Republicans need to shake the boggie man and try to create some terror. Republican need terror and rigged votimg machines to win elections. With Lieberman losing it's Red Alert, new plot to blow up planes.
Lets see what this plot looks like next week. I remember the last two plots that fizzeled out into nothing. Lets see where this one goes. Expect a lot more trror as we get close to the election. Maybe they can even fet Bush's buddy Osama to make an election eve endorsement like he did in 2004.
I want to be the person at the airport who's supposed to inspect the breast milk.
If you are like me and loyal Linuxcong user you might have noticed that the web interface (http) stops working on FC5. I figured out the problem. The pam modules with Linuxconf are not compatible with Fedora Core 5. The fix is simple.
cd /etc/pam.d
rm linuxconf*
ln -s login linuxconf
ln -s login linuxconf-pair
This makes the code in login run for linuxconf. In theory it makes Linuxconf even stronger because it gives it LDAP compatibility. And it will help Linuxconf stay current with future changes.
New details are coming out about Lieberman's lie about the site hack. This Yahoo Story has some interesting new details.
The campaign spends about $100 to $150 a month on Web hosting services with MyHostCamp, said Dan Geary, who administers the site for the campaign. Geary said that MyHostCamp, which is owned by a friend of Geary's, gave the site more than enough bandwidth — 200 gigabytes a month — to handle a crush of visitors.
200 gigs a month? Is that all? If that's a hard limit it's no wonder it's down. This server that this blog is on puts out about 6000 gigs of data a month. Two years ago during the last 2 weeks of the 2004 election we put data out at a rate of 32000 gigs/month. That's over 100 times the capacity that Lieberman had, and I'm not running for Senate.
If Lieberman ran into his bandwidth caps wich considering the national attention he should have then the issue isn't an attack, but that he was just tyring to be cheap.
Additionally the tech admitted something important.
Geary acknowledged that he has no idea who hacked into the site. Lamont's campaign has denied any involvement.
So if Lieberman's tech guy admits he has no idea who is behind the attack then why is Lieberman shooting off his mouth accusing Lamont of doing it. For all he knows it could be Hezbollah or Republicans. Or most likely there wasn't an attack. They just didn't buy the bandwidth to handle the traffic. I'd say that there's no way 200 gigs a month is enough for Lieberman when 200 gigs a day is barey enough for me.
From Lieberman's web site.
UPDATE ON THE ATTACK ON THE LIEBERMAN CAMPAIGN WEBSITE
STATEMENT FROM SEAN SMITH: "For the past 24 hours the Friends for Joe Lieberman's website and email has been totally disrupted and disabled, we believe that this is the result of a coordinated attack by our political opponents. The campaign has notified the US Attorney and the Connecticut Chief State's Attorney and the campaign will be filing a formal complaint reflecting our concerns. The campaign has also notified the State Attorney General Dick Blumenthal for his review."
"We call on Ned Lamont to make an unqualified statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately. Any attempt to suppress voter participation and undermine the voting process on Election Day is deplorable and has no place in our democracy."
The problem is that it's just not true. Lieberman doesn't have a dedicated server. He shares his server with hundreds of other sites that are all working fine. I tested his email and it appears to be fine as well. For more information about Lieberman's server, Click Here. I just sent an email to postmaster@joe2006.com and according to my logs it to 5 seconds to deliver it.
Of course Lieberman has called on Lamont to stop it as if Lamont has something to do with it or can control it. This is just a political ploy. Nothing More.
I remember from the first day of this war that the Bush people was saying things about this was about Syria and Iran - both of which aren't involved. They also used the term "proxy war". Generally one of the Neocon signature traits is to accuse the other side of exactly what you are up to. Israel is fighting a proxy war for America, or maybe we are Israel's proxy.
I know one thing for sure - what they are telling us to believe isn't true. But what is true is sort of a puzzle for us to solve. But without knowing who and how it's happening the intent is clear. The players involved want a far wider regional war and perhaps even a world war. I believe that Israel and America are trying to start World War 3. We have to put a stop to it.
Here's the Article from Consortium News
Three days after the May 23 summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and U.S. President George W. Bush, a car bomb killed two officials of Islamic Jihad in the Lebanese city of Sidon.
Immediately, Lebanese officials, including Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, denounced the murder of brothers Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub and pointed the finger at Israel as the prime suspect. On June 10, a man named Mahmoud Rafeh was arrested for the car bombing and, according to the Lebanese army, confessed that he was a Mossad agent.
Rafeh, a 59-year-old retired police officer, belonged to a “terror network working for the Israeli Mossad,” which had smuggled a booby-trapped door into Lebanon from Israel for use in the assassination, the Lebanese army said.
In retrospect, the Majzoub assassination looks to have been part of a larger U.S.-Israeli strategy – following the Olmert-Bush summit – to encourage a tit-for-tat escalation of violence that would ratchet up pressure on Palestinian and Lebanese militants – and through them their allies in Syria and Iran.
That violence also set the stage for the current Israeli-Lebanese war, which now has raged for almost one month and has claimed the lives of nearly 1,000 Lebanese and 100 Israelis.
A Year for War
According to Israeli sources, Olmert and Bush agreed at the May 23 summit to make 2006 the year for neutralizing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, while deferring a border settlement with the Palestinians until 2007.
Provoking a wider regional conflict also revived hopes among Bush’s neoconservative advisers that they might yet create a “new Middle East” that would be amenable to U.S. and Israeli desires and interests.
In this context, the Israeli-Lebanese war was a confrontation looking for a pretext, not an ad hoc response to Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12. That so-called “kidnapping” has been sold to the American people and many world leaders as the precipitating event for the conflict, but it now appears only to have been a trigger for a prearranged scheme.
Israeli sources indicate that Bush gave Olmert a green light for the conflict at the May 23 summit. The sources said Bush has even encouraged Israel to expand the war by attacking Syria, although Israeli leaders balked at that recommendation because they lacked an immediate justification.
One Israeli source said some Israeli officials considered Bush’s interest in an attack on Syria “nuts” since it would have been viewed by much of the world as an act of overt aggression. Bush, however, is said to still hold out hope that reactions by Syria or Iran – such as coming to the aid of Hezbollah – could open the door to a broader conflict.
In an article on July 30, the Jerusalem Post hinted at Bush’s continued interest in a wider war involving Syria. “Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria,” the newspaper reported.
Bush pursued a similar “pretext” war strategy in 2003 when he sought a provocation by Iraq that would give legal cover for invading that country.
A leaked British document recounted an Oval Office meeting between Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair on Jan. 31, 2003. Even as Bush was publicly telling the American people that he viewed war with Iraq as a “last resort,” he had already made up his mind and was scheming to find excuses for justifying an attack on Iraq.
According to minutes written by Blair’s top foreign policy aide David Manning, “the U.S. was thinking of flying U-2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.”
Regardless of whether a casus belli could be provoked, Bush already had “penciled in” March 10, 2003, as the start of the U.S. bombing of Iraq, according to the memo. “Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning,” Manning wrote.
As it turned, Bush brushed aside Blair’s worries about the legality of an unprovoked invasion of Iraq and went ahead with the assault on March 19, 2003. Though Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted after a three-week U.S.-led assault, Iraqi insurgents have battled the American occupying army since then in a war that has claimed the lives of almost 2,600 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis.
New Ambitions
Many American observers believed that the disaster in Iraq would tamp down Bush’s ambition to remake the region. However, with Olmert’s ascension to power in Israel in 2006, Bush saw a kindred spirit who believed that military force was the only way to get Islamic adversaries to make necessary concessions.
After the May 23 meeting with Bush, Olmert declared that “this is a moment of truth” for addressing Iran’s alleged ambitions to build a nuclear bomb.
In a speech to a joint session of Congress on May 24, Olmert called the possibility of Iran building a nuclear weapon “an existential threat” to Israel, meaning that Israel believed its very existence was in danger.
Two days later, the car bomb killed the Majzoub brothers in Sidon and a new cycle of escalation began. In reaction to the assassinations, Islamic militants fired rockets into Israel, which, in turn, counter-attacked killing one Hezbollah fighter.
Tensions rose further when fighting between Israelis and Palestinians resumed in Gaza. On the night of June 23, Israeli commandos crossed into Gaza and seized Osama and Mustafa Abu Muamar, two sons of Hamas activist Ali Muamar. [BBC, June 24, 2006]
Early on the morning of June 24, Hamas militants snuck into Israel via a tunnel from Gaza and attacked an Israel patrol, killing two soldiers and capturing Corporal Gilad Shalit as a part of a demand for a prisoner exchange. Israel is reported to hold about 10,000 Palestinian prisoners.
On June 27, as these tensions mounted, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was still working to advance a possible peace settlement with Israel. Abbas coaxed the more radical Hamas, which controls the Palestinian parliament, into endorsing a document proposing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Abbas’s success represented a potential breakthrough in a border settlement with Israel, since Hamas implicitly was accepting Israel as a neighbor next to an independent Palestinian state.
But the next day, June 28, Olmert sent the Israeli army crashing into Gaza to avenge the “kidnapping” of Shalit, a phrasing that the U.S. news media immediately adopted in blaming Hamas for instigating the crisis.
As the Israeli army overwhelmed scattered Palestinian resistance and began “detaining” – not “kidnapping” – Hamas legislators, tensions were also mounting on the Israeli-Lebanese border. On July 12, Hezbollah forces attacked an Israeli border outpost, killing three soldiers and capturing – or “kidnapping” – two others, also seeking a prisoner exchange.
The July 12 incident opened up the floodgates of violence. Israel launched a broad air-and-ground offensive aimed at crushing Hezbollah by blasting apart its strongholds in south Lebanon and destroying much of Lebanon’s economic infrastructure, from roads to communications. Hezbollah launched hundreds of Katyusha rockets into northern Israel.
Besides the almost 1,000 Lebanese who have died, an estimated one million – or about one-fourth of Lebanon's population – were displaced from their homes. The Israeli death toll, both military and civilian, stood at about 100.
While many international leaders called for an immediate cease-fire to stop the bloodshed in July, Bush staunchly defended Israel’s actions as a legitimate act of self-defense against “terrorists.”
In an unguarded moment during the G-8 summit in Russia on July 17, Bush – speaking with his mouth full of food – told Blair “what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit.”
Not realizing that a nearby microphone was turned on, Bush also complained about suggestions for a cease-fire and an international peacekeeping force. “We’re not blaming Israel and we’re not blaming the Lebanese government,” Bush said, suggesting that the blame should fall on others, presumably Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.
Meanwhile, John Bolton, Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, suggested that the United States would only accept a multilateral U.N. force if it had the capacity to take on Hezbollah's backers in Syria and Iran.
“The real problem is Hezbollah,” Bolton said. “Would it [a U.N. force] be empowered to deal with countries like Syria and Iran that support Hezbollah?” [NYT, July 18, 2006]
‘Cease-Fire’
By early August, as rage throughout the Middle East rose to a boil, the Bush administration finally put forth a cease-fire plan. But it read as if it were designed to further stir Arab anger and extend the conflict.
While demanding that Hezbollah stop fighting and effectively disarm, it would allow Israeli forces to remain in south Lebanon and only require Israel to cease “offensive” operations. A multinational force would then replace the Israeli army and police a buffer zone carved entirely out of south Lebanon.
Bush said his cease-fire goal was to strike at the “root cause” of the conflict, the existence of Hezbollah as an armed militia inside Lebanon.
“By taking these steps, it will prevent armed militias like Hezbollah and its Iranian and Syrian sponsors from sparking another crisis,” Bush said at an Aug. 7 news conference in Crawford, Texas.
“The loss of life on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border has been a great tragedy,” Bush said. “Millions of Lebanese civilians have been caught in the crossfire of military operations because of the unprovoked attack and kidnappings by Hezbollah. The humanitarian crisis in Lebanon is of deep concern to all Americans, and alleviating it will remain a priority of my government.”
But the reality appears to be quite different. Much as Bush told the American people that he considered war with Iraq “a last resort” long after he had decided to invade, Bush is now saying his goal is to relieve a humanitarian crisis when he actually hopes to expand the conflict and force a showdown with Syria and Iran.
While U.S. officials have been careful not to link the Lebanon conflict to any possible military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, they have spoken privately about using the current conflict to counter growing Iranian influence.
Only days after the Lebanon-Israel conflict began, Washington Post foreign policy analyst Robin Wright wrote that U.S. officials told her that “for the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East. …
“Whatever the outrage on the Arab streets, Washington believes it has strong behind-the-scenes support among key Arab leaders also nervous about the populist militants – with a tacit agreement that the timing is right to strike.” [Washington Post, July 16, 2006]
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
Lieberman doesn't care about archane concepts like the will of the people through democratic elections. He's smarter than us and he can't let the election results stand. "I can not and will not let that result stand," he declared. Nothing else matters to Joe because the rest of us don't matter. The only thing that's important is what he wants. It's all about Joe and what he wants.
Joe Lieberman's web site that he claimed was hacked by Lamont is still down today. When you go to his web page at http://joe2006.com it redirects you here:
http://server1.myhostcamp.com/suspended.page/
Notice the URL is called "suspended.page" which implies that this is not a hacked site, it's a suspended page. That supports the theory that Lieberman got suspended for not paying his bill. So if he called the cops and the FBI in over this he filed a false police report. We need to call the bastard on this lie.
Also - this site is on a shared server with hundreds of other sites. All the other sites are still online. So there's no server damage or denial of service attack. So - think about it - all the other sites are up and Lieberman's site is redirected to a "suspended" page. And - after 40 hours it's still not back up? What does that tell you?
Now that we have defeated Lieberman it's time that the Democrats get the message that we are against the war, against Bush, and against sucking up to the right wing. We aren't going to support Democtats who are in the pockets of big oil, tobacco companie, and vote for tax breaks for the rich.
Our valuse are important and our resources are limited. So we should only support those Democratic candidates who are worthy of support. We should contribute to candidates of our choosing and not to organizations who just fund incumbent dems regardless of their position on important issues like the war. So if the DCCC doesn't take an anti-war stand and Move-on does then give to Move-on. We also need to give to the Democratic organizations who helped defeat Lieberman and to make it clear that Democrats aren't going to get our support unless they are more than just not being a Republican.
Here's the site I've been looking for that has the Real Story about Lieberman's web site.
"Update: DailyKos points out that none of the other 73 sites hosted on that same server are down. That really kills the credibility of the Lieberman campaign claiming it was a DoS attack."
If there was an attack all the web sites on that server would be down. And if someone copied over Liebermans site it only takes a few minutes to restore from backups.
I don't know what's really happening but I know what's not happening and that's Lieberman's version. Someone needs to ask the hosting company for an explanation.
Letter to the Editor
Anti-war activist Ned Lamont, a political unknown who has never held public office has won over a pro-war Democrat Joe Lieberman, who just 6 years ago was almost elected vice president. Clearly the people are sending a message that we are against the war, we are against Bush, and we are going to vote out Democrat collaborators who support a right wing agenda. The time has come for the people to rise up against this failed congress and vote the bums out. If you are a Democrat or a Republican it's time that you get the message. No to war, no to Bush. If you don't get it then we'll replace you with someone who does.
Being a web host myself I'm not buying this story that Jieberman's site was hacked story. His site has been down far too long for that excuse. Unless he is totally incompetent all you have to do is restore from backups and put it back online. If someone hacked any site on my servers it would take me less that 10 minutes to restore.
The other version, that he didn't pay his bill is more likely. Many vendors get stiffed by politicians during elections. If the vendor wasn't paid and thought he was going to get screwed then he might pull the site. There are blogs out there that captured the original message that his site was pulled for not paying his bill.
Lieberman's accusation that he seems to know that Lamont did it is just an election day ploy. Even if he were hacked, how whould he know who did it?
The WHOIS data on the joe2006.com site is interesting.
Friends of Joe Lieberman
P.O. Box 231294
Hartford, CT 06123
US
Domain Name: JOE2006.COM
Administrative Contact:
Diana Fassbender fassbenderdw@yahoo.com
Friends of Joe Lieberman
P.O. Box 231294
Hartford, ct 06123
US
Phone: 203-449-7365
Fax:
Technical Contact:
Domain Administrator hostmaster@securesites.com
Friends of Joe Lieberman
PO Box 3895
Englewood, CO 80155
US
Phone: +180.14370220
Fax:
Billing Contact:
Diana Fassbender fassbenderdw@yahoo.com
Friends of Joe Lieberman
P.O. Box 231294
Hartford, ct 06123
US
Phone: 203-449-7365
Fax:
Record updated on 2005-09-03 13:33:00
Record created on 2002-06-23
Record expires on 2007-06-23
Database last updated on 2006-08-08 16:23:29 EST
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.THEPLANET.COM 207.44.128.228,207.44.128.229,70.86.61.133,70.86.61.134,70.87.7.70,70.87.7.71
NS2.THEPLANET.COM 207.44.128.230,207.44.128.231,70.86.61.135,70.86.61.136,70.87.7.72,70.87.7.73
TransferGuard LOCK Status => DISABLED
Notice the transfer lock as disabled. That's just a little sloppy for a political candidate.