Citi's Weird Security Processes

I got a call a phone call this morning, the Caller ID said "Unavailable". I answered and it said it was from Citibank fraud prevention and about my MasterCard and the automated voice said my full name from the account. It seemed real and shortly thereafter a woman came on and tried to verifiy I was who I said. I answered a couple of questions and then they wanted to send a text message and asked for a cell phone number. I said you called me and I'm not sure you are who you say you are. She said she understood and encouraged me to call the number on the back of the card which is the right thing.

So I hung up and did that. I called the customer service number and the automated system seemed to forward me directly to the fraud department. I got a guy this time. He wanted to verify I was who I said I was. He asked me for a cell phone number to send a text message. I gave it and said but that doesn't help since you're just sending the message to the number I told you to. He said that was a good point but they check the number in a database to verify it or something. Anyway somehow they never sent the text and that didn't help. I suspect this account never had my cell phone number but am not sure. He asked if I had other accounts with Citi, I said no, just an AmEx linked to the same account they sent me some time ago. He took the last five digits of that and said yes, since it was linked to the same account it didn't help. He asked if I had any car loans. I said no and this is ridiculous, he indistinguishable from a phisher. I said you called me, the agent told me to call back and said she'd write something in the account indicating this. I did and am calling from the landline linked to the account and you're asking me about the rest of my financial history when you should know that I don't have other Citi accounts.

He checked and said there was nothing he could do and that Citi Security Dept would call me in the next 24-48 hours and theres a hold on my account. I said that was fine, that I hadn't used the card in six months and that any recent charges on it are probably fraudulent. He said he'd make a note of it.

I suspect someone made some charges on the card and Citi noticed it hadn't been used in a while and that triggered an alert, that's great. I suppose that someone might have tried opening other accounts in my name and maybe he was seeing those on his screen (though he kept saying without passing security checks he couldn't see account details) but those accounts would have been recently created and therefore shouldn't be required to verify identity.

I get that Citi is trying to accurately verify I am who I say I am, but their processes have to make more sense. If I can't trust them when they call me (because I get about 4 spam calls a day) and they can't trust me when I call them (particularly right after they called me), then it can't ever work.

The Day the Internet Became “internet”

The Day the Internet Became “internet”. Apparently today several style guides are switching to not capitalize Internet. I think this is absurd. I fall into this camp:

Most of those reasons come down to this: In the 1970s, the word “internet” was derived from the word “inter-network,” which was defined as a set of smaller networks that exchanged data using one set of rules. So, in the eyes of the general population (or at least of the engineers who used inter-networks) there were multiple internets, and they were always lowercase. When people started using dial-up internet services, however, the need to disambiguate wedged a the before the word and encouraged capitalizing

And I don't get the counter argument:

“There’s a huge generational divide on this issue,” she said. “Making it have a proper name, made sense. It was the Thing, the Internet. Now, for people who are born after 1990, it’s where you live, and where you exist and any notion of it being a proper name seems very strange.”

I live and exist in Massachusetts not massachusetts.

One reason for this passionate response, according to McCulloch, is that the internet has made casual, informal writing more visible and available to the average person. Whereas written material produced by older generations may have been largely formal — a work memo, or a college paper — texting and chatting is an everyday exercise for most these days. And in participating in this way, people quickly attach a sense of identity to the style of writing they use.

“Even if they’re not consciously aware, people might be subconsciously aware of the trajectories for linguistic change, like which forms seem new, which forms seem associated with young people,” McCulloch said. “If you want to indicate you are a young person and you are with it, then you’re going to use the forms that are associated with people who are more technologically savvy. So if you want to show that you’re someone who really gets the internet I think you’re more likely to use lowercase internet.”

I've been writing informally on the Internet for 35 years. As far as I can tell from "young people texting", no words should ever be capitalized and most are spelled differently than in the dictionary (vowels seem optional, like in Hebrew).

There's one Internet, it's a proper noun. It's not like phonograph or electricity (other counter examples I've seen recently of words that were originally capitalized).

And as far as this comment on the article: "Whenever I see people write it as ‘Internet’ or ‘Inter-net’ or the ‘Web’ or the ancient ‘World Wide Web’ it just made me think that person was old and didn’t really understand how the internet worked." Hah! (or should I say LOL, I'm fine with that), the odds are I understand how the Internet works better than you. "For my peers and I the internet is just a part of life, there was never really a time before it. You use it all the time to help you find a restaurant, watch movies or it teaches you how to tie a tie. You’re part of the internet all the time because you have a social media account and everything you post on Instagram or Twitter is from you." The same can be said for the Earth and we capitalize that when we're not referring to dirt.

How Not To Conduct Online Surveys

I subscribe to a few magazines including Wired, Entertainment Weekly, The Atlantic, Boston Magazine, and Sky & Telescope. I also recently subscribed to Ars Technica, mostly so I could get single page views of articles to save in Instapaper but also to feel good about how much I consume their well written and researched content.

Today I got email from "WIRED psn@survey1.condenast.com". It was reasonably formatted and had a top portion that looked like a Condé Nast letterhead listing their publications. I recognized Wired and Ars Technica. I know the name Condé Nast but I wouldn't have been able to tell you what publications they own. Here's the text:

At Condé Nast, we really care what you think. That's why we are asking for your help with this online survey. As a thank-you for your valuable time, you will be entered into a sweepstakes giveaway for a chance to win $50,000.*

We know you may receive countless emails each day, but since this is one of the most important surveys we conduct all year, we hope you will take some time to fill it out. Simply click on the link below or cut and paste the link into your browser.

http://www.CN2014survey.com/Instructions.html?magID=37&id=XXXXXXXXXXXX&w=4056&b=s&c=2&s=C

Many, many thanks for your help.

Kind regards,

Condé Nast Research and Insights

There's also some boilerplate legalese at the bottom about no purchase necessary, etc. I've X'ed out the id in the URL above since I don't really know what it identifies. Now I suspect this is actually real and I'd actually be willing to give them my opinion of their publications (though I suspect their survey will not have the questions I really care about). But the problem is, this email looks like spam. Sure it passed Gmail's spam filter, but so does real spam.

• The From isn't from a magazine I subscribe to but from condenast.com and that's at least a real domain name but the From header is easily forged.
• The linked URL is to CN2014survey.com which is as spammy an URL as I could think up.
• The $50,000 is a link to mkt636.com, another spammy sounding URL and different from the one with the actually survey and different from the From header. The links in the boilerplate stuff are all to mkt636.com so that's at least consistent.
• They provide a link to a privacy policy which is also from mkt636.com but then follow it with this email address, Privacy_administration@advancemags.com, yet another domain name.
• If you visit mkt636.com you get web page that looks circa 1993 with an Anti-Spam and Privacy Statement and saying to send questions to abuse@silverpop.com. Silverpop is apparently "Award winning marketing software trusted by more than 5,000 brands worldwide." Uh huh.
• If you visit the marketing survey the first two questions are your gender and age, certainly stuff that marketing surveys would want, but also stuff spammers or others would want. I was given no indication it wouldn't get worse going on.

So Condé Nast, if this really is "one of the most important surveys we conduct all year", then maybe you should make it not look like spam. Maybe instead of outsourcing it to several layers of marketing companies, you should do it yourself. You should at least set it up at your own website. That's kind of like the 21st century equivalent of signing your name. You should say what the survey is about, more than it's "online" and "important". The survey itsefl should like something from you, not something generic that any high school programmer could whip up in an afternoon. If I have to tell you these things, then I think you need more help than a survey response could give you.

As Seen on Kickstarter

"We understand that as backers, you are donating the hard money you've earned"

I don't know why this set me off so much. In the phrase "hard earned money" it's not the money that's hard, it's the earning. You can't just change it to "hard money you've earned". It makes no sense unless you're asking for coins.

Winter Olympics

I was pretty happy when the Sochi Winter Olympics started. Many of my friends aren't interested but to me, some odd sports every four years (or two depending on how you count) is fun. Every four years I can be interested in curling. Or biathlon, that combination of shooting and cross-country skiing I never could have come up with on my own. I'm not a skier but the old opening of the Wide World of Sports mean I'll always be interested in seeing someone slide down an icy mountain just barely in control. Nostalgia for the miracle on ice is only reason I'm interested in Olympic ice hockey. It's on regularly and I don't really pay attention and now it's even the same competitors as are in the NHL. No hockey doesn't qualify as an "odd sport". Figure skating does but I'm less interested in it than others. There are only so many times I can watch basically the same routine over and over.

And that brings me to my problem with the Winter Olympics. There aren't enough sports. By my count there are basically 9 sports and they have some (perfectly fine) variations. A speed skating sprint is a different thing from a 10k just like Usain Bolt isn't a marathoner. My list is:

• Figure Skating
• Speed Skating, Short Track Speed Skating
• Downhill Skiing
• Cross Country Skiiing
• Ski Jumping
• Snowboard: slopestyle, halfpipe, cross
• Luge, Bobsled, Skeleton
• Curling
• Hockey

I've come to terms with not really understanding the difference between downhill skiing, slalom, giant slalom and Super G (let alone combined). At least it seems to be various different trails that they ski down. Moguls are different too and while I have friends that like skiing them, I find watching the world's best do it really boring. Adding a small jump at the end doesn't help, particularly compared to the other jumping events.

This year I've found the snowboarding the most interesting. It started with Slopestyle, which I had never seen before and was just amazed at. Halfpipe is similarly amazing and sure, why not have some downhill racing on snowboards too. I like that they make it more interesting in snowboard cross and have several people racing at once. So that was fun, but then I see skiers do the slopestyle and even the halfpipe tracks! A. that seems crazy, B. why do skiers have to do the same thing, they have their own sports. Is cross-country snowboarding coming next? Or snowboard biathlon? Though I do wonder what kinds of tricks Shaun White could do in snowboard jumping with that 125m hill. At least they got rid of ski ballet.

Luge is fine, but after watching men's singles and women's singles and then men's doubles and women's doubles and then skeleton and then bobsled in the various combinations, it's more than enough. There was even a luge relay! It's all the same track! I don't know how many times I can hear an announcer talk about turn 5 or 14.

Speed skating is fine but each gender has five different distances and then there's team pursuit for each. Then add short track speed skating which is more exciting because of crashes (it's seems like ice roller derby) but it's also three distances for each gender and then relays for each. It seems like if they have to build a separate venue for it they want two weeks worth of use out of it.

Biathalon has the same problem, there are 11 biathlon events at the olympics, plus 12 cross-country events which is just biathlon without the guns! Then there are three Nordic Combined events which is cross-country with only those competitors that are also crazy enough to also do ski jumping. Maybe someone else will figure out this odd relationship and add guns to ski jumping.

There's also way too much figure skating. They've added the team competition which seems similar to what they do in gymnastics where the teams go first but then each competitors' scores also count for qualifiers in the individual events. But it's not the same because it's not the same athletes in each of the events. It's different people doing the individuals and pairs and dancing and they even seem to be doing the same routines in the team and individual events. Gymnastics does more (different) events and everyone has to do all the disciplines. I think they get it all done in the first week while figure skating drags on for the whole two weeks.

The wikipedia page says there are 98 events over 15 disciplines in 7 sports. I think they need to find more disciplines not events. At this rate they'll be a curling relay or short track hockey. And no, I don't really know what those new events might be.

Two Years? Really?

A few years ago, Massachusetts Rebuilt 14 Bridges in one Summer, on weekends only . Now the MBTA announced it's going to rebuild one subway station, an important one that connects two lines, and it's going to take, wait for it, two years. Coming March 22, 2014: Government Center Station Closure. I appreciate that they're still running trains through the station while work is going on (though they won't stop there) but it still seems like a long time. And their ‎pdf says that this plan provides accessibility 2 years earlier than alternatives! Glad I don't go to Government Center much.

Feed Up With Healthcare.gov Story

Someone needs to teach Obama how to explain things or he needs to get Bill Clinton to do it again. With all this talk about people being thrown off their existing health care plans (I heard 2,000,000 people this morning) I've yet to hear anyone ask how many people were thrown off their plans last year? Or were thrown off once they got sick or made claims? Every year I've had to pick a new plan or seen the cost of my plan go up significantly. I knew at the time that Obama's soundbite claims were too broad. He usually said that if you get coverage via your employer it won't change, and that's still true (unless of course your employer changes or changes their coverage which happened before and after Obamacare).

And the woman who's insurance costs have gone up 10x? She was paying $54 per month before that and was happy with that plan. I want to know what that plan covered and if she ever used it or got any money from the insurance company?

And would someone other than Ezra Klein point out to some GOP Congressman they're interviewing their own complicity in the problems? The GOP’s Obamacare chutzpah. And people should point out to Ted Cruz that the health insurance he gets via his wife's employer has a tax subsidy. Now he might think all taxes are bad and that any discounts on taxes are good, but that doesn't change what it is. If you don't get insurance from your employer the tax deduction you can take varies depending on your situation.

Fix the damn website, fire the people who screwed up, fine the contractors for not meeting their obligations (or fire the lawyers that wrote the crappy contracts) and get in front of the messaging. It's not that hard.

Update: At least WonkBlog is trying hard to explain this stuff. The Health-Care Trilemma: How Obamacare is changing insurance premiums

Heathcare Hearings

These hearings, and in fact most Congressional hearings are just a joke. To show I'm not completely biased, the first person I saw speak was Rep John Lewis (D-GA). He was yelling at the witness about how the Republicans filibuster and closing of the government reminded him of Congress's behavior during the Civil Rights Movement. Then he said he made a chart of the successes of the ACA and had the witness read it aloud. Moronic.

But if you're someone who thinks the government should be run more like a business, I agree that even business meetings (which all corporate people complain about) are run better than these hearings. Each person gets 2-3 mins to ask questions and they alternate from one party to the other. This guarantees that no information comes out in any depth. It's almost exactly the opposite of the way any business meeting is run.

The Pixar Theory

The Pixar Theory. "Every Pixar movie is connected. [Jon Negroni] explain[s] how, and possibly why."

Not infrequently people tell me I have too much free time on my hands, it's nice when I can say it of someone else.

Improving Star Wars Episodes I-II

This guy has thought about Star Wars more than you (or at least me). These were pretty entertaining and would be better movies than I and II were.

Three Fucktards

Lindsey Graham tweeted yesterday "The last thing we may want to do is read Boston suspect Miranda Rights telling him to 'remain silent.'" See the previous post for comments on that thought.

Jennifer Rubin wrote, Sen. Lindsey Graham: Boston bombing “is Exhibit A of why the homeland is the battlefield”

"I spoke with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) by phone just a few minutes ago. He said of the Boston bombers: “They were radicalized somewhere, somehow.” Regardless of whether they are international or “homegrown,” he said, “This is Exhibit A of why the homeland is the battlefield.” Recalling Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster, Graham noted that he took to the Senate floor specifically to object to Rand’s notion that “America is not the battlefield.” Graham said to me, “It’s a battlefield because the terrorists think it is.” Referring to Boston, he observed, “Here is what we’re up against,” and added, “It sure would be nice to have a drone up there [to track the suspect.]” He also slammed the president’s policy of “leading from behind and criminalizing war.” I’ll have more on my interview with Sen. Graham on Sunday."

Sorry Lindsey but a drone strike would have caused more damage than the Marathon bombs did. Spencer Ackerman from December 2011, Rare Photographs Show Ground Zero of the Drone War

Katrina Trinko wrote in the National Review about an interview with Peter King (R-NY) GOP Congressman: ‘Increase Surveillance’ of Muslim Community. "“Police have to be in the community, they have to build up as many sources as they can, and they have to realize that the threat is coming from the Muslim community and increase surveillance there,” the New York Republican congressman tells National Review."

He apparently doesn't see the contradiction in these two statements: “I think we need more police and more surveillance in the communities where the threat is coming from, whether it’s the Irish community with the Westies [an Irish-American gang in New York City], or the Italian community with the mafia, or the Muslim community with the Islamic terrorists.” and “There’s never been any history of any threats emanating in this country from the Chechen community, so in a way this opens up a new front in the war.”

Then there's Nate Bell (R-AK) who tweeted "I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine? #2A" I'd link to it but he took it down and then posted an almost apology:

"I would like to apologize to the people of Boston & Massachusetts for the poor timing of my tweet earlier this morning. As a staunch and unwavering supporter of the individual right to self defense, I expressed my point of view without thinking of its effect on those still in time of crisis. In hindsight, given the ongoing tragedy that is still unfolding, I regret the poor choice of timing. Please know that my thoughts and prayers were with the people of Boston overnight and will continue as they recover from this tragedy."

We weren't cowering, civilians didn't need assault weapons, we weren't scared, and our police force got the suspects. The terrorists did some damage with pressure cookers, nails, and stolen cars, I'm glad they didn't have assault weapons too. Maybe Arkansasians cower if they don't have their guns, but that's not what we do. We host a world class sporting event, invite everyone, cheer as people run 26 miles, run towards the danger, treat the wounded so that none of them die, find the suspects and send the police to capture them, alive.

What the fuck has Arkansas done? You're ranked 45th in per capita income and 49th in median household income and that's with Walmart headquarters in your state. Want to compare education rankings? Health care? GDP? Crime rates? Accidental death rates? You don't have a major league sports team in any sport. STFU.

Fucking Microsoft

I was working on my spreadsheet for my Oscar pool using Microsoft Office for Mac 2011. I clicked on an URL in the cell and it said I need to upgrade Office to use this feature. That's odd. I bought Office 2011 for Mac in November of 2010 and have used it (occasionally) since. I've used this spreadsheet the last two Oscars. I found the license key in a note I keep and entered it, nope, said it was invalid.

I checked for updates and installed a couple, I'm now on the latest 14.3.1. Even that was an annoying experience. I had to install an update to the updater then it had to grow three updates and for each, download them, show me the first few lines of an endless license agreement, make me click continue and then accept. For one of the updates it took 30 seconds to scan other drives, of which none are attached. I made me choose the drive to install the updates and told me each would take over 300MB (apparently they can't subtract what's already installed). In contrast, Apple manages to update you to current levels all at once and with much less clicking.

So I'm all caught up. I had Googled and saw something about 14.3.1 updated six days ago that fixed a licensing issue in 14.3. Ok, that must be it. So I open my spreadsheet, click the URL and get a new Activation window:



I have no idea what Office 365 is and never bought such a thing. I enter my license code and it says it's invalid. I dig up the box Office came in and check that it's right. It is.

The activation window had a link to a local ReadMe file. It had three links. I followed the support link and followed link after link but nothing help. A few told me to activate by phone but provide no phone number. I looked for 5 minutes finding page after page that said the same thing and didn't actually help, as well as a few dead links.

Searching twitter led me to this article, Microsoft updates Office for Mac 2011 to include Office 365 activation. "Microsoft made available this week an update to its Office for Mac 2011 product which includes some fixes, plus activation support so that it can be installed as part of Microsoft's newest Office 365 subscription offerings."

At this point I'm done. Either an update of Office decided that after two years I have to pay more to be able to click on links, or it's a bug that will be fixed in some update. I like Pages and Keynote much better than Word or PowerPoint. I'm using Numbers a bit and it's good (I like its model of sheets, charts and graphs much better) but Excel is still much more full-featured and I'm more likely to have to share spreadsheets with people, so there are a couple of uses. But honestly, there aren't new features that I can conceive of that they could add to Excel that would make want to upgrade. The only reason is compatibility.

But if it turns out this isn't a bug, and Microsoft has decided that clicking on an URL in a local spreadsheet to have it open in a browser now requires a monthly subscription (in a product I bought TWO YEARS AGO), I'm never giving them another cent.

Update: Even better, it's not all URLs, just some. That does suggest it's a bug to be fixed.

Room for Improvement

I had preordered several books from Amazon. Three were released this week and all arrived on Thursday. Each shipped separately and was delivered via a different carrier. Since I have Amazon Prime, I didn't really pay for this shipping. I think there's some room for Amazon to optimize its operations.

The Sports Tax That Everyone Pays

Kevin Drum on The Sports Tax That Everyone Pays "The average household already spends about $90 a month for cable or satellite TV, and nearly half of that amount pays for the sports channels packaged into most services."

"Consumers should always assume that they're being ripped off if prices are hidden in some way. In the same way that hidden bank fees are generally good for banks but not so good for the rest of us, the current cable TV system is great for sports providers because it dulls the edge of market discipline, but not so good for the rest of us. The end result of a la carte programming would be more competition between sports providers, which would force them to offer better products, and it would also (probably) result in less money flowing into pro and college sports, which would be an almost unalloyed good. And people like my mother wouldn't be forced to pay $400 per year for programming they have no interest in, merely as the entry fee for having cable TV at all. It's time for a revolt, people."

Readability Font Size

Readability is a web service that reformats text on a web page to make it more readable (it was the basis of Safari's Reader feature). It's expanded to do more things but I tend to use Instapaper for those features. Still Reader pops up in several apps that have embedded web browsers and it's very handy on mobile devices.

When Echofon stopped supporting their iOS devices I switched to Tweetbot. It's not cheap but it is well done and has a lot of features, most importantly sync between clients (which I use between my Mac, iPad and iPhone). It has an embedded browser which I use often because people (like me) tweet links to articles. There's a nice switch on the bottom of Tweetbot's built in browser that lets you switch between a web page view and a Readability view and in Readability at the top of the page you set the theme, color and font size. But here's my issue, I really wish there was a font size between these two:

An Open Letter to Ann Coulter

Special Olympian John Franklin Stephens is far nicer than I am. In An Open Letter to Ann Coulter I think he gives her far more credit than she deserves.

Unfortunately Coulter has made a living from being crass and sensational, you need look no further than the titles of her books to see that. I don't know if she believes the bile she spews but I don't care. I don't need to read or watch it.

I'm always very sorry when she appears on shows that I otherwise watch. Now in the twitter era, I tweet to the shows saying explicitly I won't be watching because they have Coulter on. It at least feels like I'm doing something to prevent her from having a broader audience.

Obama Needs to Get a Message

I heard today how it wasn't a great week for Obama. The economy isn't doing well, Scott Walker won his recall election in Wisconsin, Romney raised more money than he did in May, Bill Clinton and Ed Rendell went off message and needed to apologize.

Whatever.

I think the problem is that so far, Obama has no message for this campaign. Now maybe it's not easy to come up with one, but that's the job. I know what the Republicans are for and to me it's crazy. They want to lower taxes, destroy all government programs except for the military, and revert progress on social issue 50 years. And they think this will help the economy but I'm sure it won't.

What's Obama's plan? Is he for more stimulus? I haven't heard that. He wants to extend the Bush tax cuts on those making under $250,000 or under $1 million, I'm not sure which, while letting them expire for those making more. That's fine, but it won't do much. I still can't figure out if Dodd-Frank actually regulates wall street or allows derivates to be regulated at all. I know that Obamacare will kick in any year now if the Supreme Court doesn't pull it at the end of the month. I also know he spends time in meetings figuring out which individuals on the side of the planet to kill, even if they're American citizens. And he's not mentioned the climate at all.

He needs to take a stand. He needs to say what's he for and explain how the Republicans are blocking things using unprecedented power grabs. I think he believes the problems with the economy are on the demand side and we need the government to be the spender of last resort, at least I hope so. And I wish he would be pursuing legislation to make that happen and pointing out when Republicans block that and not just spending time compromising all his positions and then taking the blame for the failures. Sure, compromise to get stuff passed, but ensure that what gets passed is what you want to take responsibility for.

Without that we get crap like this:

Obama Backs Away From ‘Fine’ Comment. He got pounced on for saying the private sector is fine. Well that's mostly true as most unemployment is from the public sector because we keep laying off teachers and police. Maybe we should stop that.

Bill Clinton apologizes for Bush tax cuts comments. Clinton said the Bush tax cuts should be extended and apparently Obama opposes that. I think we're now arguing about only on the wealthy, but why isn't this clear? We've only been debating this for a couple of years now.

Ed Rendell: Obama ‘hurt by being a legislator only’ before presidency. Rendell said when Obama started he was a weak executive and regarding significant legislation “too much of it was left up to the Congress”. Now I'm sure no one is prepared when they first become president and I'm also sure that leaving things, particularly healthcare, up to the Congress was deliberate because they didn't want to repeat Hilary's mistake in the 90s. But fine, claim it already. Say he tried to work with Congress but they aren't cooperating, here's exactly what he wants to see happen and let them describe something different if they want.

Now we're seeing crap like this in the New York Times, Lobby E-Mails Show Depth of Obama Ties to Drug Industry. As if it's news that Obama conceded reimportation to get big pharma's support. But now Republican's are jumping on it and at least the times quote Robert Reich having to say: " “Republicans trumpeting these e-mails is like a fox complaining someone else raided the chicken coop,” said Robert Reich, the former labor secretary under President Bill Clinton. “Sad to say, it’s called politics in an era when big corporations have an effective veto over major legislation affecting them and when the G.O.P. is usually the beneficiary. In this instance, the G.O.P. was outfoxed. Who are they to complain?”"

Now I get emails from the Obama campaign that say, Romney raised more money than us, "If you just want to cut to the chase, you can donate to Barack Obama now." Seriously? You're not even going to pretend to stand for something?

Both Obama and the Democratic National Committee avoided the recall election. There had to be a petition to get the DNC to spend money on the recall. Obama apparently wanted to stay above the fray. And what a surprise big money won.

Robert Scheer wrote Democrats Failed in Wisconsin Because They Failed Wisconsin.

"Of course [the GOP] argument is a red herring. The budget crises of state and municipal governments were not brought on by excessive pay to firemen, cops and other civil servants, but rather by a banking meltdown that has enriched those who engineered it. Housing values, and the local taxes dependent on them, are down because of financial shenanigans that wrapped mortgages into collateralized debt obligations, and that is the root cause of government red ink. But the job security and pensions of government employees make terribly convenient scapegoats at a time when so many Americans are lining up at food banks.

The electorate in Wisconsin, and San Diego and San Jose, Calif., that voted Tuesday against public employee unions were not expressing a rational response to the crisis, but rather a tantrum stoked by the lavishly financed demagogues of the right. The voters bought their story because the opportunism of the Democratic Party leadership has left progressives without a believable alternative to the tea party’s narrative. Indeed, job creation became a bigger issue than collective bargaining in the Wisconsin race, and the dismal national unemployment figures that came out just days before the election didn’t hurt the Republicans’ cause."

Now I know that June polls are pretty worthless, but Nate Silver has released his first model forecast on the election and Obama is winning by hair. "The first look at the 2012 FiveThirtyEight presidential forecast has Barack Obama as a very slight favorite to win re-election. But his advantage equates to only a two-point lead in the national popular vote, and the edge could easily swing to Mitt Romney on the basis of further bad economic news."

Seriously, it's easy to expect bad economic news in the next four months. Obama needs a clear message both he and his supporters can stick to and that voters can understand and decide on. It shouldn't be too hard and it's clear it shouldn't be about a new kind of politics in Washington. It should be about doing the right thing to fix a lot of different problems we have.

More on that later.

Jenny McCarthy Body Count

"In June 2007 Jenny McCarthy began promoting anti-vaccination rhetoric. Because of her celebrity status she has appeared on several television shows and has published multiple books advising parents not to vaccinate their children. This has led to an increase in the number of vaccine preventable illnesses as well as an increase in the number of vaccine preventable deaths.

Jenny McCarthy has a body count attached to her name. This website will publish the total number of vaccine preventable illnesses and vaccine preventable deaths that have happened in the United States since June 2007 when she began publicly speaking out against vaccines." - Jenny McCarthy Body Count

NBC Messing with Community

I've been really enjoying Community on NBC. They do the most amazing spoofs of genres. One week they describe a "war" on the community college campus between the blanket and pillow forts in the style of Ken Burn's Civil War. Another week they cover a paintball battle by spoofing every action movie. Yet another they spoofed My Dinner With Andre and delivered actual character development. Last Thursday one of the episodes had all the characters in an 8 bit video game that was 30 years in development and had more depth than you could imagine. It was hilarious. This show regularly produces episodes that become my favorite sitcom episodes of all time.

Community's ratings weren't strong. Media Decoder wrote, "The show itself barely survived cancellation this season, finishing with an average of only about 3.3 million viewers, and limping to the finish last week, with a three-episode marathon Thursday night, which hit the lowest ratings ever for the comedy." They also document some of Harmon's less than perfect working relationships. I note that 30 Rock's ratings were worse this week.

I thank NBC for renewing it for a fourth season, though moving it to Friday night means they probably expect just one more season from it, if that. But if you do that, why do you fire the creator, Dan Harmon? That's what they did. The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "The NBC series, which was recently renewed for a fourth 13-episode season, has tapped TV scribes David Guarascio and Moses Port as co-showrunners and executive producers, sources confirm to The Hollywood Reporter." Their previous credits are Happy Endings, Aliens in America and Just Shoot Me.

Harmon isn't happy about it, he wrote, HEY, DID I MISS ANYTHING?.

"Why’d Sony want me gone? I can’t answer that because I’ve been in as much contact with them as you have. They literally haven’t called me since the season four pickup, so their reasons for replacing me are clearly none of my business. Community is their property, I only own ten percent of it, and I kind of don’t want to hear what their complaints are because I’m sure it would hurt my feelings even more now that I’d be listening for free."

"The important one is this quote from Bob Greenblatt in which he says he’s sure I’m going to be involved somehow, something like that. That’s a misquote. I think he meant to say he’s sure cookies are yummy, because he’s never called me once in the entire duration of his employment at NBC. He didn’t call me to say he was starting to work there, he didn’t call me to say I was no longer working there and he definitely didn’t call to ask if I was going to be involved. I’m not saying it’s wrong for him to have bigger fish to fry, I’m just saying, NBC is not a credible source of All News Dan Harmon."

"So do not believe anyone that tells you on Monday that I quit or diminished my role so I could spend more time with my loved ones, or that I negotiated and we couldn’t come to an agreement, etc. It couldn’t be less true because, just to make this clear, literally nobody called me."

Regardless of if you want to make a change, that's a crappy way to fire or demote someone.

Hulu to Require Cable TV Subscription

jwz wrote about how Hulu to require Cable TV subscription. "It's like they're trying to chase their customers away!" He pointed to this Oatmeal comic and this classic about how annoying DVDs are to watch. I have to agree.

I'm planning on seeing The Avengers this weekend. I'm already checking mediastinger to find out if there's an "extra scene" after what I'm sure is about 10 minutes of credits. Maybe one of the reason I love old movies from the 30s, 40s and 50s is that the credits were short. Short enough to be at the start of the film. A couple of title cards with actors and the writer and director and a big vanity plate for the producer. Then a couple of cards with the major crew. Oh and the title. I noticed this year at IFFBoston that a lot of films didn't even put the title at the beginning, they saved it for the end. Maybe they wanted to trick someone who walked into the wrong theater into staying through the film.

One thing they didn't leave out is several studio logos at the beginning. Films are expensive enough now that they are financed by several sources and each one wants to be recognized with a several second video intro that's usually some rendered video-game like cut scene. Then after you sit through those (which have nothing to do with the film you came to see), these same funders get their names at the beginning of the credits. Maybe in the fifties people cared about the new MGM release because MGM owned a set of actors and cinemas so if you said you were going to the new MGM movie that kinda included who was in it, the kind of film and where it was playing. But those days are long gone. No cares if Fox made the film or Universal. Maybe Pixar, but they don't need to be reminded that Pixar made it by having a bouncing lamp at the beginning of the film, they already knew it coming in.

It's amazing to me how difficult it seems to be for companies to want to delight their customers. It's like managers don't even try to use the finished product before releasing it to customers. Do studio execs go to theaters and sit through the whole experience of a film starting 15 minutes after the scheduled time? I suspect they watch it in cushy private screening rooms with no ads or trailers or via a screener disc with no FBI warning given to them to watch at home. Here's what made Steve Jobs great, he used the product his company shipped before you did, and he demanded the experience, the whole experience, even opening the box, be a good one.

It's perfectly reasonable for someone putting millions of dollars into something to want some recognition and it's reasonable to think that that's worth 5 seconds of screen time. But someone has to be in charge of understanding how all those parts fit together to make sure they don't kill the whole product.