Hear hear!

I for one would be delighted to get those calls back to being handled in the United States, by native English-speaking and Spanish-speaking reps. I don’t even call tech support anymore unless I need an RMA because I rarely can understand the person on the other end of the phone. Even calls to American Express and other companies with other large customer-service organizations are being handled overseas, and not just by India anymore: Romania is a top call-center magnet in, and Sirius/XM has their call center in balmy Jamaica (ask me how I know).

In a complete fit of incredulity, in this article, TollFreeForwarding.com states:

“It will cost jobs while aiding the continued destruction of American wealth and influence. As an employer, it is prohibitively expensive to do business in this country, primarily because the talent pool is tiny due to our poor educational system. Even in a down economy, American technology companies have difficulty finding well-trained individuals who are prepared to work at the pace of international business.”

File that one under Oh Puh-LEEAZE!

Are you kidding me!? It’s America’s shitty talent pool? Really? Bullshit. You left out an important bit from that statement: …because the talent pool [who is willing to work for minimum wage and no benefits] is tiny due to our poor educational system. Yeah. Our educational system teaches kids to demand a living wage and health insurance, I guess that’s what makes it so poor. As a product of the American educational system–and as one who started their career in a BlueBehemoth call center, supporting OS/2–I find that quote highly offensive, and completely unfounded.

I realize that over in India it takes a Master’s degree from Bangalore U. to ensure one is qualified enough to ask someone if they’ve rebooted their computer (because that’s the next step on the script), but why don’t we give our American men and women a crack at it, ‘kay? I’m pretty sure they can handle it…

President Obama calls Kanye West a jackass

Of course, I thought West was a fucking asshole long before Obama did.

It’s 3am. I just got back from my Thursday-night show, enjoying a bowl of Apple-Cinnamon Cheerios in front of the kitchen PC, sobering up more and more by the second (but waiting until I was sure I was sober enough before driving home, thank you very much!). And POTUS, the XM channel I listen to most these days, was all ablaze about Obama’s speech last night.

But not about his speech, per sé.

No, what has the media’s panties in a virtual wad is that Senator Joe Wilson shouted “You Lie!” during Obama’s schpiel about the health care issue facing our nation.

To be fair, I was hoping to watch C-SPAN’s replay of the speech on Friday, hiding in my office trying to recover from my inevitable hangover. But it seems that the kitty is out of the burlap: the most exciting part of the speech is scarcely a a quarter of a second long and is plastered all over the national (and perhaps international) media: I must’ve heard a dozen times, by now, Senator Joe Wilson shout “You Lie!” across the Senate floor at President Obama.

And here’s where I have the big problem.

If you’re a loyal reader of The Corsair Journal, then you know two things about me already: One, I’m a lifelong Democratic Liberal, as is most of my family. Second, I’m all for a national health care system that solves the huge injustices and denials of basic health care services that only American citizens (when seen from the perspective of industrialized nations) seem to suffer, at the hands of the large insurance companies.

What you might not know is the fact that I’m pretty selective as to where I get my news nowadays. I had, until recently, subscribed to only one news outlet–CNN–but decided, rather, that C-SPAN and POTUS on XM Satellite Radio were far more balanced places to obtain my news about this topic than the mainstream news media outlets.

But even POTUS and C-SPAN couldn’t help but over-cover Senator Joe Wilson’s microsceond, off-mic outburst.

You idiots.

To say I’m incredibly disappointed is an understatement. I wasn’t feeling well on Wednesday night and went to bed before Barack Obama’s address; I was hoping to hear all about his talking points on my lengthy commute into work on Thursday. But no: all I got to hear about is that blithering asshole Wilson and his disruption fo the President’s speech and his disrespect for the Presidential office. Even my good buddy Greenacres, himself a lifelong Republican, agrees with me, at least on this one point–and it is from him I learned, many years ago: “You may not respect them man, but you must respect the office.”

I sincerely hope that Wilson is completely ostracized by whatever political circles he once traveled in in Washington, suffering the political equivalent of discomendation from the Klingon Empire, afraid to even be photographed next to a building inside The Beltway lest it crumble to the ground from residual entropic resonance–and not because he is a Republican opposed to heathecare reform (and doubtless firmly in the pocket of some insurance provider), but, rather, with his one microsecond outburst, has managed to draw the national focus away–albeit temporarily (and hopefully briefly)–from what is perhaps the most important political issue of the fledgling century and certainly the defining issue of Obama’s young presidency.

I have yet to hear anything about what Obama had to say Wednesday night.

I still plan to watch Obama’s speech on C-SPAN Friday and struggle to stay awake through it whilst simultaneously trying to keep down my bowl of Apple-Cinnamon Cheerios.

The latest controversy to swirl around our Commander-in-Chief’s head is the one where all the conservative folks are up-in-arms about Obama delivering a pep talk to kick off the school year

“‘Thinking about my kids in school having to listen to that just really upsets me,’ suburban Colorado mother Shanneen Barron told CNN Denver affiliate KMGH. ‘I’m an American. They are Americans, and I don’t feel that’s OK. I feel very scared to be in this country with our leadership right now.’”

God forbid our leader should exercise his First-Amendment rights, or schoolchildren should hear a message from their president.

“Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer released a statement this week accusing Obama of using taxpayer money to “indoctrinate” children.

‘As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology,’ Greer said.”

Say–wasn’t Bush reading “My Pet Goat” to a classroom full of kids in Sarasota, Florida, when the attacks of September 11th took place? I suppose he was trying to indoctrinate them into the seedy underworld of animal husbandry.

“In November 1988, President Ronald Reagan delivered more politically charged remarks that were made available to students nationwide. Among other things, Reagan called taxes ’such a penalty on people that there’s no incentive for them to prosper … because they have to give so much to the government.’

Once again, I guess if you’re a Republican, it’s okay to make political statements to our nation’s schoolchildren? Is that the message I’m getting here?

“‘As far as I’m concerned this is not civics education — it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality,”‘ said Oklahoma state Sen. Steve Russell, a Republican.

Well. You really gotta work hard to make a Republican so mad he’ll quote a song by Living Colour. You mean to tell me that Dubyah didn’t have his own “cult of personality,” as Senator Russell so indelicately puts it? Well than how did a complete and utter moron manage to get elected to the highest offiice in the land, not once, but twice!?

In washington, of couse, it’s all about spin; I reckon if you’re party’s leader is in power, he has a “strong following.” If the other guy’s party’s leader is in power, it’s because they have a “cult of personality.”

Really, when you boil it down, this is just a bunch of political grandstanding by embarrassed conservatives grasping at any straw, no matter how ridiculous or absurd, to distract people from the fact that their party had complete and total carte blanche for eight years and in that time have managed to drive this country to the brink of complete ruin.