THE ARROGANCE OF YAHOO

I have long had an impression of Yahoo as an arrogant organization and I am now sure of it. I have had an account with them for some years which I made use of in a minor way. Now they have suddenly deleted it without explanation and for no apparent cause. I sent them an enquiry to find out why but such grand pooh-bahs as Yahoo don't talk to little people like me, of course. I think it should be a warning to others not to rely on their services. I had both an email address with them and a website there -- and both suddenly vanished without even a puff of smoke. It could happen to you too.

As it happens, only a very few people had the email address concerned and I was using the website mainly as a backup. The only thing I had in their webspace that was not available elsewhere was some humorous content. And I must say that their arrogance is rivalled only by their childishness. There are heaps of webhosts that offer "free" (advertiser supported) webspace and many of them are more generous in what they offer than Yahoo is. So what they gain from sending me elsewhere for no apparent reason would seem to be nil. People reading my stuff will now see other people's advertisers rather than Yahoo's advertisers. Clever! I of course always have everything backed up to disk before I post it and you can now see here what used to be on Yahoo. For more of the humorous content see also here. It will be interesting to see how the new host works out. But there are plenty of other hosts if that lot does not work out in some way.

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ELSEWHERE

Leftist ex-Congressman complains of bureaucracy: "During the time I served in Congress, constituents would often say that members of Congress should try to live under the laws they pass. I'm no longer a Congressman, and I have a typical horror story about trying to live under one of the laws passed by the current Congress. Congress this past spring added something called the "Real ID" bill to another piece of legislation... The "Real ID" bill set new national standards for obtaining a driver's license, something previously governed exclusively by state law. Thus, the Republican Congress created a vast new bureaucratic system... This summer, my wife and I applied for diver's licenses in Virginia. My application was granted but my wife's application was rejected even though she served 31 years in the U.S. Army, retiring with the rank of Major General in April. My wife, Kathy, had obtained driver's licenses in numerous states during her various assignments for the military and had never been rejected. The Virginia DMV contacted the Social Security Administration to verify her social security number. Kathy and I were married seven years ago but she did not notify the Social Security Administration of her name change, so they could not verify her Social Security number under her married name. Thus, she was rejected for a driver's license even though the U.S. Army had issued her an ID card with both her married name and her social security number".

Don't forget the Gipper: ""Twenty-five years ago...Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States promising less intrusive government, lower tax rates and victory over communism... [O]ver this 25-year period prosperity has been the rule, not the exception, for America-in stark contrast to the stagflationary 1970s. Perhaps the greatest tribute to the success of Reaganomics is that, over the course of the past 276 months, the U.S. economy has been in recession for only 15. That is to say, 94% of the time the U.S. economy has been creating jobs (43 million in all) and wealth ($30 trillion). More wealth has been created in the U.S. in the last quarter-century than in the previous 200 years. The policy lessons of this supply-side prosperity need to be constantly relearned, lest we return to the errors that produced the 1970s... Where Republicans have most strayed from the Reagan vision has been on controlling federal spending. But most still adhere to his tax-cutting lessons, with a few prominent exceptions (notably Senator John McCain). They should all recall the Gipper's words in his inauguration speech 25 years ago: 'It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government'."

The Enron trial begins this week and "Enron" appears in any case to have become a perennial Leftist swear-word so this 2002 post is worth keeping in mind as a roundup of what that debacle actually shows. Excerpt: "Like other anti-free-market commentators, Krugman also spreads the false tale that Enron's chairman, Ken Lay, was a free-market disciple. This too is, well, baloney. Lay was a member of the group of extreme anti-capitalist ideologues known as the Union of Concerned Scientists. He was also a strong supporter of the Kyoto global-warming treaty. He supported this treaty (which the Bush administration refused to sign on to), because he wanted his company to profit from another Byzantine regulatory scheme concocted by the government"

Inequality in NYC: "New York still has its economic problems, to be sure. But "income inequality" isn't one of them. The liberal groups complain that, in the Big Apple, the richest 20 percent of residents have average incomes that are nine times those of the poorest families. If that ratio is the problem, one quick "solution" would be to drive out all those millionaires - that would cut the average income of the top 20 percent. Of course, it would also deprive the city and state of billions of tax dollars that pay for schools, hospitals, subways and other services. In other words, we're lucky to have all those wealthy people here. Let's try to keep them. Beyond having lots of very rich folks, New York's population is unusual in another way: Every year, 100,000 or so poor immigrants move here. They choose the tough challenge of a new life, knowing it's likely to be a better one. We could reduce the number of poor New Yorkers in these statistics by shutting our doors to these new Americans. But that would mean turning our backs on a proud history as a beacon for hopeful people all over the world"

Bring back segregation! "District 10 supervisor candidate Charlie Walker yesterday called for creation of a separate San Francisco school system for African Americans. Separating blacks from whites is necessary because current education of African Americans is not working, Walker told the Sentinel. "I am hoping seriously that we consider separating blacks from whites because it's not working," Walker reflected. "What good did it do us to demonstrate to get our freedom when we didn't get nothing out of it. "The women, the gays, the Asians, the Latinos - they got it and we're still sitting around here. In San Francisco alone, 42% of our people are unemployed."

For my Burns Night celebrations last month we had our clootie dumpling (clootie dumpling is a sort of plum pudding) in a slightly decadent way. To my knowledge most Scots just sprinkle sugar on it but I decided that a rum sauce would go nicely with it. And the sauce was such a great success that I doubt that anybody tasted the actual clootie dumpling! I have therefore put the recipe for the sauce up on my recipe blog. (Mirror site here).

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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