The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

I'll be the first to say that Amazon is one of the fastest, best, most convenient, and most lucrative companies in the world. Having said that, though, they aren't without faults, and one of them happens to be customer service. After trying to sign into Amazon last week, I was greeted with a confirmation pop-up, which asked that I type the final four digits of a credit card number. Unfortunately, the card they provided was an old one to which I no longer had access. So I called customer service for assistance. The first gentleman I spoke with was very friendly. I told him about my situation, and while he couldn't personally aid me, he transferred me to a specialist in the area. This specialist certainly was "special," I tell you... I should probably preface this conversation by saying I sparingly use Amazon for shopping. I typically use it to sell books I've written. So the "specialist," after I explained to him the situation I was in, asked me...

It humors me to hear die-hard conservatives bash President Obama, not on his policies, but on his personality and demeanor. Between this and their seeming love of rumors and conspiracy theories, it has led me to strike the facepalm pose on more than 1,319 occasions. The number one sign that a person listens to too much talk radio and/or watches too much cable "news" (especially of the Fox variety) and doesn't have a strong argument of which they're aware is they resort to criticizing a person's personality and demeanor, while hurling rumors and conspiracy theories faster than a meteorologists change their forecasts. I've already gone into great detail about the rumors and conspiracy theories that have been spread about the president in the first book of this series. So what is it about President Obama the person that many on the far right have such a problem with? I think the four such traits and attributes these conservatives cite more than any others are...

Once again, as I predicted with regard to Mitt Romney's "47%" comments, he's found himself at an even steeper uphill climb than prior to the video's release. Two polls came out today to illustrate that - from Gallup and Reuters. In the Gallup poll, by nearly a two to one ratio, respondents stated they were now less likely to vote for Romney in the November election due to the video - 36% saying they were less likely, while 20% said they were more likely to vote for the Republican candidate. The ratio was even closer to two to one when it came to Independents - 29% saying they were less likely to vote for Romney and 15% saying they were more likely to vote for him.  The numbers were even more striking in the Reuters poll, where it showed that 43% of registered voters have a less favorable view of Mitt Romney following the video's release. Another 59% said the Republican candidate was being unfair to the 47% of Americans he made remarks about in the video...

A long-time friend of mine will be hosting a political talk radio show before too long, which I will be doing work for. It's been interesting to observe. His Facebook posts have been attempting to offend, prompt comments and generate attention/traffic. Unfortunately, things have gotten pretty heated at times between he and other commentators. In his mind, he's just trying to be a radio-show personality, get under people's skin, get them talking and hope that word of mouth helps with ratings. As he told me, "It's all a game." To him, he wants people to hate him. He wants to be like that car accident, where people are saddened/angered by what happened, yet can't look away. Unfortunately, it's difficult for many who know this guy to separate the on-air from off-air personalities and when the on-air personality sends a perhaps rather insulting comment in response to one of theirs, they take it personally - like they would from the off-air personality, a ...