Month: January 2009

RANT! Be careful buying iPod Touch from BestBuy

RANT! Be careful buying iPod Touch from BestBuy

My 3 teenagers have all purchased the iPod Touch from BestBuy.  Actually, the youngest one just received his as a birthday gift and that is what is prompting this rant.

There are a variety of gadget sites that talk about the deals available at BestBuy (see here and here). The forums are split as to buying the warranty (here and here) but Apple doesn’t have a great track record on iPods and the BestBuy warranty has replaced 3 separate iPods for my family over the years so we think it is a good deal.

So when my youngest son wanted a new iPod Touch to replace his nano, it was natural for us to go to BestBuy. He was ecstatic when he opened the gift and it was plugged into the family computer within minutes.  Imagine his disappointment when his brand new Touch had pre-2.0 software on it and iTunes wanted him to upgrade for only $9.95!  This OS upgrade was announced almost a year ago.

I wouldn’t have been too upset except for four issues:

  1. this same thing happened when my daughter bought her iPod Touch 9 months ago and we had to fight BestBuy for a resolution
  2. if we had bought the unit from Apple, it would have had the latest software (according to the Apple customer support person when we dealt with this issue on my daughter’s iPod)
  3. because of the experience with my daughter’s iPod, we had asked the BestBuy sales person upon purchase if it had the latest OS and was assured that it did (I am not sure why I trust a young man that still is suffering from teenage acne though)
  4. the rude treatment that I received on the BestBuy support call

I have already written to BestBuy complaining about their support call as well as their shady service.  But they don’t get off that easy.  I am also going to complain here.

I have no quibbles about the software not being up to date for a product that is shrinkwrapped and unopened.  I fully understand that BestBuy is buying their Apple products by the truckload (or container load) and that some of these may sit on the shelf past an upgrade.  However, they should be clearly marked as having the old OS and there should be an automatic coupon printed at the time of purchase to allow the consumer to upgrade the unit. The unsuspecting consumer should not be penalized for BestBuy getting a great deal from Apple because they bought a million iPods at once.

I almost wonder if this is a plan by Apple and BestBuy to lure some unsuspecting consumers to pay for the upgrade to the new OS even though they are legally entitled to that upgrade for free.

So what was the resolution?  The same as it was for my daughter’s iPod.  I called BestBuy, complained, and told them we would be returning the unit if they didn’t make this right.  After a bit of grief that was inexcusable for customer service rep, they promised to send me a $10 BestBuy card to cover the out of pocket cost for the upgrade.

BESTBUY SHOULD AUTOMATICALLY GIVE OUT COUPONS TO COVER THE COST OF UPGRADING TO THE CURRENT VERSION OF OPERATING SYSTEM!

Lesson learned for any readers out there: check the OS on your iPod Touch that was recently purchased from BestBuy. If you need to upgrade to a current OS then call BestBuy for a gift card to cover the cost.  Don’t pay for the upgrade yourself!

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The 100 accomplishments of the George W. Bush administration

The 100 accomplishments of the George W. Bush administration

As I write this, George W. Bush is only a few days away from the end of his 8 year Presidency.  Earlier, I had graded Mr. Bush on a variety of major factors but I felt that I left off a huge number of things that he and his administration did or did not do.  This list is the result of trying to be more inclusive.  Many items on this list are actions by the Mr. Bush and his administration and some of them are inactions.


Economy
1 Increased defense R&D spending
2 Accelerated the cleanup of brownfields
3 Prescription drug benefits in Medicare
4 Ordered renovation of military housing
5 Signed Medicare Reform
6 Allowed disabled people to use up to a year’s worth of vouchers to finance down payments on homes
7 9.7% increase in government-wide homeland security funding
8 Increased budget deficit to Eisenhower levels (% of GDP)
9 New Health Savings Accounts
10 Increased the limit of Education IRA from $500 to $2,000
11 Didn’t fix economy hurt by housing crisis
12 Allowed mortgage crisis
13 Initiated 3 separate raises for US military personnel
14 Increased the Defense Department’s base budget more than 70 percent since 2001
15 Pushed through 2 separate income tax custs
16 Reduced the number of homeless veterans by 40%
17 Fixed economy inherited in 2000 and hurt in 2001 attacks

International

18 Killed the old US/USSR ABM Treaty
19 Paid off US debt to UN
20 Signed the largest nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia
21 10 ABM silos in Alaska
22 Prematurely declares “Mission Accomplished” regarding Iraq
23 Doubled foreign assistance
24 Forced Syra to leave Lebanon
25 Condemned the Russian attack on Georgia
26 Allows Secretary of State to go to UN with false evidence regarding Iraq
27 Won support for three U.N. Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran
28 Increased the number of free trade agreements from 3 to 14
29 Designated Iraq, Iran and North Korea as “Axis of Evil”
30 Implemented President’s Malaria Initiative in Africa
31 Increased money for medicine for AIDS suffering in Africa
32 Setup the Afghanistan government
33 Halved the nuclear weapon stockpile
34 Secured a commitment from N. Korea to end its nuclear weapon program
35 Watched as Israel attacked Lebanon
36 Iraq invasion
37 Massively increased aid to Africa
38 Got Libya to give up nukes
39 Tried to get Europe to deal with Iran
40 Watched as Israel attacked Gaza
41 Set up new government in Iraq
42 Forced N. Korea to work with multi-national panel
43 Dealt with China and the US spy plane
44 Remove Saddam Hussein
45 Afghanistan occupation
46 Afghanistan invasion
47 Gave Pakistan billions of dollars

Policy

48 Watched passively as Katrina hit New Orleans
49 Denied knowing Ken Lay from Enron
50 Created Project Safe Neighborhood
51 Lifted the Executive Ban on drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf
52 Kept reading children’s books on 9/11
53 Was elected in 2000
54 Made changes to allow necessary clean up of national forests to reduce fire damage
55 Reduced H1B visas from 195K per year to 66K per year
56 Substantially Increased Funding for the Great Lakes
57 Federal Energy and Carbon Sequestration Programs
58 Mandated a Cut in Mercury Emissions
59 Nuclear Power 2010 program
60 Exempt food from unilateral trade sanctions and embargoes
61 Established Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
62 Put polar bear on endangered species list
63 Eased field-testing controls of genetically engineered crops
64 Tried to privatize Social Security
65 Reduced drug use among teens by 25%
66 Killed Kyoto Global Warming Treaty
67 issued an executive order that limits access to Presidential papers
68 Ethanol production has quadrupled from 1.6 billion gallons in 2000 to an estimated 6.5 billion gallons in 2007
69 Created the Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors
70 National Space Policy
71 Was re-elected in 2004
72 Created USA Freedom Corps
73 Appointed Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito
74 Appointed Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts
75 Stopped funding of new stem cells for research purposes
76 Reversed the requirement of parental consent for abortions
77 Issued an executive order regarding union dues being used for political campaigns against individual’s wishes
78 Challenged UN to not be the League of Nations
79 Stopped US involvement in International Criminal Court
80 Issued an EO implementing the Supreme Court’s Olmstead ruling
81 Established the The White House Office and the Centers for the Faith-Based and Community Initiative
82 Started the USA Freedom Corps
83 Supported the Law of the Sea treaty
84 Strengthen the National Health Service Corps
85 Ordered a 5 year plan to restructure each agency
86 Reorganized the intelligence agencies into the Department of Homeland Security
87 Put hundreds of thousands of government jobs up for bid
88 Banned partial birth abortions
89 Double the research budget of the National Institutes of Health
90 Enacted the Do Not Call list
91 No child left behind
92 Signed Teacher Protection Act
93 Interstate Air Quality Rule
94 Clear Skies Initiative to reduce air pollution
95 Prohibited federal fund for groups providing abortions

Terrorism

96 Detained foreign citizens in prison without due process
97 Increased border security and interior enforcement funding more than 110 percent
98 Attacked Al Qaida
99 Implemented a wire-tapping scheme to detect conversations with terrorists
100 Allowed torture of suspect terrorists
101 Told American’s to shop after 9/11
102 Dealt with anthrax scare
103 Signed the Patriot Act
104 Created Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) to monitor foreign students
105 Split the Immigration and Naturalization Service into two agencies
106 Signed the workplace verification bill to prevent hiring of illegal aliens.
107 Established a six-month deadline for processing immigration applications.
108 Told Americans that Islam was a religion of peace
109 Created the TSA
110 Created a new air monitoring system to detect harmful airborne agents
111 Signed 2 bills that arm pilots with handguns in the cockpit






And of course the one accomplishment that many people feel is the most important:


A couple of comments on the above list.

  • Yes, I know that there are more than 100 items on the list.  However, I didn’t want someone to say that two items were actually duplicate of each other.  For this reason, I felt that it was prudent to overshoot my goal of 100 in case a reader felt that some should have been excluded.
  • The links to many of the items are not meant to be the definitive source on that topic.  Rather, I wanted to remind the reader of the topic in case you didn’t remember that effort.  My hope was the link would lead you to the discovery of the issue and the action of the Bush Administration.  In the cases where I didn’t include a link, I felt that nearly everyone reading this list would understand those issues or could easily find more information by do a quick web search.
  • I titled this list as the 100 accomplishments.  I fully understand that many will feel that some of these items were failures.  That really isn’t the point.  My goal in creating the list was to try and identify the top 100 or so things that the administration did (or by inaction didn’t do). This is not a scorecard.
  • The list is not ordered by time or importance.  Do not take any inference in the numbering scheme.

Did I miss anything?

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 5 of 5

Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 5 of 5

For the last 4 posts we have been exploring the claim that George W. Bush is the worst President of the United States ever.  I am tired of this conversation now.  I may add more topics to grade George W. Bush but I think this is a good list for now.  So, how did he do?  Lets give the short report card.  See the earlier posts if you want to understand the reason behind each grade.

9/11 – A – 4.0
Anthrax – A – 4.0
Afghanistan invasion – A – 4.0
Afghanistan occupation – D – 1.0
Al Qaida – C – 2.0
Preventing terrorism – C  – 2.0
We are wimps – A – 4.0
Libya – A – 4.0
Africa – B – 3.0
Economy –  C – 2.0
Corporate governance –  B – 3.0
Iraq solution – C – 2.0
Iraq invasion – A – 4.0
Iraq occupation – D – 1.0
Israel – B – 3.0
Palestine – D – 1.0
Iran – not sure – no GPA
North Korea – C – 2.0
World opinion – no grade matters – no GPA

One could argue that not all of these factors should be weighted evenly but that would be a huge argument.  Depending on your political bent you would rank Wimps differently than the next guy compared to Africa or Libya or Palestine.  I don’t want to engage in that argument (at least today) so I will factor each category evenly since every one of these is the MOST important to someone.

Average GPA is a 2.71 – a solid C+.  This hardly seems like the grade of the worst President ever.  So based on this, we must assume that he isn’t the worst President and future historians will appropriately place him somewhere in the middle compared to his peers.

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 4 of 5

Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 4 of 5

For the last three posts we have been exploring the claim that George W. Bush is the worst President of the United States ever.  Some say that he is the worst, some say he is in the middle of the pack but just about everyone agrees he is not the best ever.  This post continues the job of grading W on the various issues that he faced in his two terms of office.  See the previous posts to get the background for where we are now.

Iraq occupation – D – same as Afghanistan.  A lot of good but the job is not done so W can’t get better grade until the job is done.  He can’t get better than a C ever since he messed up so bad by putting Bremer in place – Bremer’s decisions really messed up the nation for several years.  I think that history will eventually say that the US did better in Iraq than just about any other takeover of a foreign nation (Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Georgia, Poland, etc) although that is a terrible standard to compare us to.

Israel – B – he deserves better than a C because somehow he prevented Israel from pounding Lebanon and Syria to a pulp.  He made them take a huge loss in their skirmish with Lebanon when they could have simply finished the problem.  There was a lot of desire on the part of Israel to do that after the suicide bombings and missile attacks.  Unfortunately, that may have been a mistake because it is only going to get worse when Iran gets the bomb and the lessons that Israel learned they are now taking out on Gaza (as I write this).

Palestine – D – what a blown opportunity.  The fanatic, Arafat, dies, which was a great chance to make progress.  Instead the militants get stronger but then they blow it which was another fantastic opportunity to fix the problem.  W should have forced a multi-prong diplomacy at the time of the Lebanon skirmishes to make Israel make peace with Palestine but Iran was screwing it up at the same time.  The Palestinians are probably slightly better than they were 8 years ago but that is another reason to give a D since they need to get a lot better in order to prevent it from getting a lot worse.  Typically, status quo would be a C but the lack of progress and the ramifications of that lack of progress forces the D.  This problem has been around my entire life and I think it will still be making headlines when they bury me.

Iran – not sure – I really don’t know how to grade this one.  The problem is so fluid and so complex that I don’t know what should have been done.  No question that we scared the bejeesus out of Iran when we took over Iraq in about a month or two.  If I was them, I would have stepped up nuclear efforts also.  The Europeans aren’t helping much either and they are more at threat than the US.  The only thing we (meaning everyone) have done right is to restrain Israel from taking them out proactively.  If this time bomb doesn’t go off in the next 8 years, I will be amazed (and I will probably give Obama credit for at least not screwing it up).

North Korea – C – Putting NK on the evil axis list was stupid.  There was no “axis”.  Are they an evil nation, yes.  But they are not aligned with the others on the list except opportunistically.  If Iran and Korea were neighbors, they would likely be at war (Iran would probably win).  This is a status quo situation – it got a little better than under W but not a great deal and in some ways got worse (especially for the poor Koreans who have had to live and die there for another 8 years).  Bush just took them off the axis list but he should have gone farther and declared an end to the cease fire that has been in place for 50+ years and an end to the hostilities with that nation.

World opinion – no grade matters – this is BS. First, there is no consensus on this that is at all objective.  If you read foreign papers, then you know that most of those foreign countries have far bigger problems that the US in most areas.  Also, the scale is different and they judge us with only the bad things in mind not the good.  In addition, it is the opinion of people and not the countries and the people are not usually fully informed.  A few thoughts:

  • we are the only superpower so we will never get an amazing grade.  When things go bad, it is easy to blame us but we don’t get credit for the good things.  The Germans get mad at us all the time for stirring things up but if we would remove our military bases from their soil, their economy would plummet and unemployment would likely hit 20%.
  • France gets upset with us but they are more upset that American tourism has dropped since they started offending us.  They want our money but they don’t want us to be upset when they do things that upset our sensibilities.
  • There are two other semi-superpowers (China and Russia) and if we get graded on their scale are we that much worse?  Russia threatens Ukraine, Russia does military action in Georgia, Russia withholds gas from Germany, Russia nationalizes its largest energy company and imprisons its CEO, Russia poisons one of their citizens with nuclear radiation, China allows a neighbor to develop nukes, China allows a neighbor to have mass killings of monks, China imprisons political dissidents, China doesn’t really help a neighbor after one of the worst natural disasters of all time, China builds more coal plants than every nation combined, it is not healthy to drink the water in the majority of Chinese cities.
  • The US leads in assistance to Africa. We almost double number 2 (UK).  The other 2 pseudo-super powers?  Not worth mentioning and they don’t make the ODA (Official Developmental Assistance) chart.
  • The US gives over twice as much per GDP as any other nation!  The closest 2nd and 3rd are Great Britain and Canada but they don’t even add to our PERCENTAGE OF GDP!  China and Russia don’t even make the list
  • And it isn’t like we are military hawks either – even though we easily have the strongest military.  While this data is a bit old and may be influenced by military expenditures in Iraq, we spend less of our GDP on the military budget than the other two pseudo powers – approximately 3.3% for US and 4.1% for China and 4.8% for Russia.  That’s okay though because we have a military treaty with all members of NATO that says that if they are attacked, we will defend them to the same extent as if we are attacked.  Our umbrella of protection is why we have a budget of 500+B and the combined budget of the rest of NATO is only about 300B.  It is also why when something has to be done with Iraq 8 years ago, it was the US that foot the bill.  If it has to be done, the world expects us to do it but they are more than willing to criticize us as well.  If we would stop defending NATO, Japan and S. Korea, we would be able to easily cut our military budget in half as we have 90,000 troops in Europe, 26,000 in SK, and almost 50,000 in Japan.  While I don’t condone isolationism, we don’t get any credit for the huge number of dollars that these bases put into those local economies.

So I really don’t buy the “world opinion” argument.  We are in a class by ourselves in what we deliver to the rest of the world and we are far better than the other two semi-super powers on the planet.  If the world hates us so much and is fair and objective than why does it not hate Russia and China more?  It is because everyone hates the top dog that is pre-eminently the top dog.  People will cheer for the winner of a close contest but they don’t like a contest where the winner is always the same and is never up for dispute.  They are more than willing to accept our aid, accept our military defense, accept our financial support for their economy, accept our cultural leadership but then whine about us for the same.  There is no moral opinion of the US that makes sense and it is not possible nor preferable for the POTUS to worry about it.

More on this topic later!

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Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 3 of 5

Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 3 of 5

For the last two posts we have been exploring the claim that George W. Bush is the worst President of the United States ever.  This post continues the job of grading W on the various issues that he faced in his two terms of office.  See the previous posts to get the background for where we are now.

We are wimps – A – Osama Bin Laden and Sadam Hussein counted on the fact that the US doesn’t like to stay in the fight when the going gets tough (Vietnam and Somalia are great examples).  He stood his ground and got destroyed politically to prove this wrong.  Much of the animosity most Americans feel about W stems from his unwillingness to allow the cut and run mentality to take over. But now our enemies don’t just assume that we will run home to mommy when the bullets start flying.

Libya – A – no question about it.  He got them to give up their nuclear program.

Africa – B – compared to other Presidents he actually should get an A since no other President has done as much for this continent as W.  AIDS help, malaria help, better trade, etc.  Unfortunately there was a lot more to do and the amount of suffering on this continent belittles the suffering on all other continents.  He has done the best here.

Economy – tough to grade as he did great for awhile and then it fell apart – in general he gets a C only because it could have gotten a lot worse a lot earlier.  The fact that the economy didn’t tube after 9/11 and Katrina is a testament to his skill.  Unfortunately, the things that he needed to do to fix the problems of the Clinton era were not possible (politically or pragmatically) due to 9/11 and Katrina.  I am not giving him a walk on this, I am just trying to be realistic about the outcomes of other actions.  If he would have tightened credit earlier on during the thralls of pain from 9/11 and Katrina then the economy would have gone south for sure.  I am not convinced that anyone could have prevented this current banking crisis without causing the crisis to occur several years ago.  I would have given him a higher grade if he would have been making speeches warning of the problem though so that some small changes could have been been in place before it went over the cliff.  He could have provided more intellectual leadership in talking about the problem without actually proposing a solution that would have caused the economy to tank – thin line to walk though.

Enron crisis – corporate governance –  B – this was not just about Enron but the several issues that surrounded Enron.  This was really a mess by Clinton that reared its ugly head during Bush’s term.  Clinton would get an F in corporate governance!  I originally gave W an A here except he did two things that were less than great

  1. he tried to hide that he knew Lay which was stupid. 
  2. He also allowed Sarbanes-Oxley to go too far and is driving companies to go private and offshore.  SOX is a perfect example of overshooting the mark to get on track, we can’t govern like a pendulum but need to drive to the right answer and not cause more problems as we overshoot the mark. 

Iraq solution – C – something had to be done here.  We had about 4 options (with variations on the themes) and all of them really sucked.  All options that Bush took were going to give a C or D (the only option that would give an A was that SH would have taken exile and W at least tried that option although it is questionable that he tried hard enough or with enough convincing).  He gets a C because he took one of the options that resulted in less global calamity and fewer casualties than any of the others. 

Iraq invasion – A – faster and more successful and with less casualties on our side or among civilians than anyone thought realistic.  Was at the easy end of the scale compared to what we were worried about.  One of the things that the talking heads of the Democratic party lied about during the campaign was that we weren’t welcomed as liberators when we were.  The people of Iraq did welcome us at first – do you remember the Saddam Hussein statue party?  The big concern at the time was that we were going to cut and run (which we didn’t).  If W was President during Vietnam and Korea the world would be a decidedly different place today (not necessarily better since Vietnam and Korea were actually hot proxies for the cold war).

More on this topic later!

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Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 2 of 5

Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 2 of 5

It is probably too early to truly grade W and rank him among his peers.  Time will tell if his policies were somewhat effective or total garbage.  If you are going to grade a President, you need to take a more inclusive look and not just talk about his various failings.  Also the “what if” discussion in that grading is incredibly important such as, “What if President Bush had not gone after Saddam Hussein – what would the world be like?”

It is also difficult to grade individual events because they are so intertwined (Libya, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Al Qaida, Palestine, Syria are all different variations of the same problem).  That said – here are my thoughts on the 19 things that GW did (or didn’t do):

9/11 – Bush got an A for this. Massive aid to NYC (that the Dem Senators asked for but he said yes immediately), spoke to nation well and told them not to overreact.  Was calm and reassuring in a time of near panic.  Reorganized airport security quite quickly.  Reorganized CIA/FBI, et. al. to get them to work together (probably give him a B/C on that since he could have done more).  Told Americans to do EXACTLY what was needed – go shop and get on with your lives.  By the way, Mr. Clinton gets an F for this since it was under his watch that these guys were recruited, the plan was established, the people were brought in, individuals were trained to operate planes.  The intelligence network was messed up and Clinton took steps to make it WORSE.  Check out how bad things were that GW inherited before condemning him on this issue. .  Many of our current problems with terrorism are because Clinton did such a lousy job!  According to that article, Clinton passed on going after Osama Bin Laden (OBL) 16 times and yet some cite that Bush hasn’t been able to find OBL as him doing a bad job.  We were handed OBL by the Sudanese and we turned them down and were happy they sent him to Afghanistan!

Anthrax – W gets an A for the reaction to the various attacks.  The fact that they didn’t catch the guy and execute him before he died was more of an issue of our legal system and burden of proof (something we don’t apply to foreign terrorists thankfully).

Afghanistan invasion – A – decisive and complete.  Called on the leaders to hand over OBL and when they didn’t he overran the country in a matter of days.  Tremendous statement to the world on our ability to extend our power.

Afghanistan occupation – D – some would say he gets an F here but that isn’t fair.  A lot of good things have happened along with a lot of bad.  In general women have more rights and religious persecution isn’t quite so bad.  The President that we selected is still in power (and alive) but the insurgents are stronger now (I have seen rumors that this is because Russia doing to us what we did to them in the 80s) and political calm is not in place.  There is no reason to believe that the current President could step down and there would be a smooth and orderly transition to a new President.  W can’t get better than a D here because it hasn’t gone better but giving him less is not a fair assessment of what has gone well.

Al Qaida – C – he got most of the leaders save for 2.  The problem is that in order to prevent the regrowing of terrorist organizations it takes more than capturing people but re-educating people and giving them a reason not to hate.  He pretty much has these guys neutralized as a world player in about 6 months until the Iraqi resistance aligned with them. Which leads to the next one.

Preventing terrorism – C – no attacks at home which he gets an A for but the reason there are no attacks at home is that the terrorists are much more likely to have little skirmishes in Iraq and Israel so he really just transfered the problem over there and he probably has created more reasons to be a terrorist in his term than even Clinton did.  So he effectively protected America but the world at large is worse off by his actions.  Also, he gave terrorist sponsors a real wake up call in his actions with Afghanistan – don’t mess with the US.

More on this topic later!

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