Complaint (Not Really) I want to complain. Your do-not-call site is too easy to use! Also, you have no email address listed specifically for sending love letters. The final test of this initiative will be in how well it cuts down on unwanted calls. But for ease of use and lack of red tape it can hardly be beat by any other .gov site I've seen. Kudos to all involved, and thank you.
This evening I got one from comeseecanada.com. That's the outfit that has been running some fairly funny ads on radio touting Canada as a tourist destination for Americans squeamish about taking the waters in Baghdad. The SPAM directed me to Travel Canada - Spring/Summer Canadian Getaways , which contained a gag similar to the ones they've been running on radio and TV.
Now, there is NFW I could have "opted-in"
to their SPAM list, so I knew it was a genuine SPAM. I looked
them up in whois, and sure enough, the record had been created
this past May. This was a new marketing organization, or a new
division of an old one, whose techies were either clueless or
unable to restrain the marketing honchos.I sent the following love
letter to the admin and technical contact, both the same person
Along with many another ignorant American, I always cherished an
illusion that Canadians were just a little more civil than their
cousins to the south. This evening, that illusion was rudely
shattered by the attached email.
NOW I KNOW YOU ARE NO MORE THAN NO GOOD, LOW DOWN, SLIME SUCKING SPAM
MONGERS!
I make it a policy never to do business with anyone who has sent me
SPAM. I can't tell from your site whether you are affiliated with the
Canadian Government. It's a good thing too, because if you were,
I'd have to WRITE OFF YOUR ENTIRE COUNTRY!
Finally, there's a mantra you might want to chant to ward off
hyper-angry, ex-potential customers:
OPT-OUT IS SPAM
OPT-OUT IS SPAM
OPT-OUT IS SPAM
Fondly,
The Democrats are starting to show their hand in the upcoming presidential political poker game. We'll be hearing a lot more talk about pre-war intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons programs, with pointed questions about how that intelligence was used by the Bush administration to rally support for the war.
In the manner of politicians of all parties and persuasions, the Dems will be beating their breasts over their concern that intelligence was misused for political purposes, using the term in such a way as to curl the lip in contempt. This will be cynical speech for political purposes itself, of course. It was clear to me from early on that the WMD concerns were a smoke-screen for the real reasons Bush committed us to war with Iraq. And I suppose it's simple justice that his feet be held to the political fire because of it.
However talk of impeachment by John Dean and others crosses a line for me. If the Democrats are smart, they will keep such talk at arms-length. I suspect many Americans would regard such a move as disloyal, without any spin from the Bush administration. The right wing would surely call it treasonous, and a lot of political face time would be burned up trying to explain why it wasn't, if indeed it isn't. Then too, a move to impeach Bush would just perpetuate the nasty, low-down "cycle of violence" that has existed between the major parties since Watergate, and significantly worsened in recent years.
I regarded the successful Republican attempt to impeach Clinton as reckless because of two factors. First, there was no real prospect of getting a conviction in the Senate of the United States, so it was all just distracting political theater. Second, we were facing a decision to commit American forces in Kosovo at the time. The distraction was therefore interfering with the Executive branch's decision making at a time of national risk. In the current situation, getting impeachment of Bush through the House of Representatives is laughably unlikely, so the political theater objection counts in spades. And still graver is the military situation facing our country now than in 1998. Making the WMD intelligence an issue in next year's political campaign is both justified and politically advantageous for the Democrats. Trying to whip the hobby horse of impeachment over the issue is both wrong and politically dangerous.
The tendency for the Bush administration to paint opposition to its policies as unpatriotic is well documented. Now, according to Reuters,
Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told foreign journalists last week that what was particularly disappointing to the U.S. side was that "there were times that it appeared that American power was seen to be more dangerous than, perhaps, Saddam Hussein."
I suppose there is a certain rhetorical economy in using the same tack with erstwhile allies in Europe as with domestic opponents. And, to be fair, French president Jacques Chirac is explicitly trying to counter American power . Still, there is a level of absurdity in comparing the power of the US with that of the former dictator of Iraq. Of course, intentions in using power are crucial to assessing the threat it poses. However, as it turns out, it was American power, not Iraqi that was unleashed in the recent war. How are European observers to assess the threat of American power now?