This is kind of a Note-To-Self to remind me to do this every so often. Yesterday, I spent a little time "canceling" subscriptions I have to certain online services. I have a lot of these subscriptions and I've found, as most of you probably have, that if you cancel them, you get offered a much lower price to stay.
This is especially true of the subscriptions that won't let you cancel online; where you have to call a toll-free number and talk to an alleged human being. Of course, you have to be prepared to actually cancel. You may also have to turn down one lower offer to get an even lower offer.
I think I saved myself about $400 yesterday. Half of that came from one service that wanted to charge me $300 for another year. I said that was too much so they offered a rate of $200. I said that was too much and we wound up at $105. But I did this with five different services. Four of them gave me a better price not to cancel and I decided to live without the fifth…and dropping that saved me another sixty bucks. It was certainly worth the time I spent.
One tip when you do this: Always ask the question, "What is the total price I will pay including all fees and taxes?" A lot of these "lower offers" come with hidden add-on prices. And you have to be real clear on whether the reduced price also takes away some aspect of the service that you want.
I can't think of anything to say about George Segal, who died the other day at the age of 87 except this: I didn't like every movie the man made but I always liked him. I liked him when he and his banjo showed up on Johnny Carson's show too. And I really liked Where's Poppa?
Sidney Powell, as we all know, is that lady who was on the news 24/7 for a time claiming that she had incontrovertible proof that Trump won the 2020 election big, that voting machines were rigged, that zillions of Trump votes went uncounted and that she would soon "unleash the Kraken" in court and prove all this and sue people who were behind "The Steal" into oblivion.
And like you, I'm amused that now that a company that made the voting machines is trying to sue her into oblivion, the new line is that what she said was all "opinion" and that "no reasonable person would conclude those were truly statements of fact." In other words: "I had no proof and everyone should have known that."
I do not quite grasp why she and her lawyers think this will get her off the hook in that lawsuit. Doesn't this help the lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems make their case that her statements were untrue and she knew they were untrue when she made them? In any case, it's kinda fun to see her say, in effect, that anyone who believed her was an idiot.
More interesting to me is this paragraph in this piece about Ms. Powell's "defense"…
…there's been a change in [Trump's] approach when talking about the election, and one that was apparent in his Fox News appearance. When the former president has tried to make a case that the election was stolen from him in recent weeks, he's no longer made claims about votes being changed. Instead, he's argued that pandemic-related changes to state election laws were unconstitutional — arguments that were rejected in courtroom after courtroom when Trump's lawyers made them, including by judges he appointed.
Trump has always had this way of shifting his position without admitting that the one he's abandoned wasn't true and wasn't working. So why was he trying to get Georgia election officials to "find" more votes for him if the problem was that they'd changed the rules to allow more people to vote?
Dr. Anthony Fauci is cautiously optimistic that performance venues like Broadway theaters will be back to full audiences by Fall.
When I mentioned him before on this blog, I got an e-mail from someone asking me, "Do you think Dr. Fauci has been 100% accurate about this pandemic?" No, I don't think anyone who has made public statements about this pandemic had been 100% accurate. Dr. Fauci, at least, seems to be qualified to say the things he's said and unlike most, when he's optimistic, he has the wisdom to be cautiously optimistic.