Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Leaving AT&T?

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Melissa and I began considering a switch to AT&T Wireless (then Cingular) from Verizon Wireless in late 2005, and then actually went through with the switch in early 2006. At the time, Cingular—as compared to Verizon—had a much better selection of phones, cheaper data plans, and rollover minutes. We knew that it would be a step down in coverage and reliability, but Cingular seemed to be making fast improvements and we had decent signal around Northern Virginia where we tested.

How would I characterize the AT&T network after four years on it? One word: stagnant. There was some slow, steady improvement for the first year or so and then it all just . . . stopped. There has been little-to-no improvement in coverage or reliability since then and, in fact, there even seems to be some quiet degradation over the last six months or so. I’m increasingly finding my data connection to be a bit slow and laggy, even when I have a strong signal indicated, and several people I know (including Melissa) report a recent increase in dropped calls too. Not cool.

If your network is top-notch, you can get away with just maintaining the status quo. If your network, however, is lagging the competition you need to improve it (and if you’re bogged down with millions of iPhones and, soon, iPads you need to improve it fast). AT&T has apparently failed in this respect, so we are seriously considering a return to Verizon (which has remedied their previously-poor selection of phones and lowered data prices since 2005).

Those new Palm phones look really, really cool. With a waive of the activation fee and a discount of the phones, Verizon might even convince us to eat our early termination fee ;-). We’re still under contract until November.

Bernanke Confirmed by 70-30 Senate Vote

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, appointed by President George W. Bush (R) in 2006 and re-appointed by President Barack Obama (D) this year, has been confirmed for a second term by a bipartisan 70-30 Senate vote.

I have a few questions about this.

First off, why did Obama re-appoint a Bush appointee to such a key economic post after going on and on and on during (and after) his election about how bad Bush’s economic policies were? Bernanke has overseen our monetary policy through the 2008/2009 economic collapse and was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the horribly misguided and counterproductive Bush/Obama bailouts[/stimulus/recovery/whatever trendy title they have now]. This is ‘change?’

Second, why did the Senate confirm him? Democrats should be suspicious of Bernanke for the part he played in the economic collapse and Bush economic policies. Republicans should be suspicious of him for spearheading unprecedented government economic interventionism. This guy should have seen incredible bipartisan opposition, not surprising bipartisan support. Nobody should have voted for this guy.

Finally, which Bernanke do we get from here on? There was Bernanke #1, the socialist bailout-monger; and there was Bernanke #2, decrying deficit spending and government expansionism. Maybe he’ll just go back and forth to keep us guessing.

State of the Union Address Tonight

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President Barack Obama (D) is scheduled to give the annual State of the Union address tonight at 9:00 p.m. EST before a joint session of Congress, followed by a Republican Response to be delivered by Governor Bob McDonnell (R-VA). This will be Obama’s first official State of the Union address.

As I do every year, I encourage all of my readers to watch both the State of the Union address and the opposition response. I recommend the unfettered and uninterrupted coverage from C-SPAN, but the addresses will also be available on most broadcast channels and cable news networks.

The Constitution requires that the president report to Congress annually on the state of the union, but does not specify the method or form of this report (Article II, Section 3). The in-person State of the Union address has been a tradition since 1913. Transcripts of all 1945-2009 addresses before joint sessions of Congress, including each State of the Union, are available from C-SPAN.

WHO Defends Handling of Swine Flu ‘Pandemic’

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The World Health Organization (WHO) is trying to defend its handling of last year’s H1N1 swine flu pandemic. As BBC News so aptly puts it:

When a pandemic was declared last June most European countries changed their health priorities to accommodate thousands of expected patients, including spending millions of euros on vaccines for H1N1. . . .But it has since become clear that although 14,000 people worldwide died from swine flu, and millions more were infected, it is a mild flu with a lower mortality than seasonal influenza.

Of course, any of us who were paying attention have known this from the beginning. The H1N1 hysteria never made any sense to a level-headed observer. Now, as the BBC reports, the Council of Europe has raised questions about whether the WHO’s irrational actions relating to H1N1 had something to do with their links to the drug companies that got massive contracts to produce vaccines. Fascinating.

Of course, if the WHO is corrupt, that still doesn’t explain why the governments of the world—including our own under President Barack Obama (D) and his administration—went along with the charade without any independent review. I like to think that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) don’t go nuts over every breathless decree from the WHO without double-checking first, but maybe I’m being naive.

I’m With CoCo

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I haven’t mentioned it before because there are much, much more important things going on in the world, but I am a big fan of Conan O’Brien. As such, I was quite unhappy to see what NBC did to him by effectively forcing him out of The Tonight Show to be replaced by former Tonight host Jay Leno. I had nothing against Leno and watched Tonight fairly regularly during his tenure, but O’Brien was definitely much more funny and entertaining. When I was younger I would sit through Leno pretty much just to watch O’Brien after, until I got too old to stay up that late ;-).

Obviously the villain in this whole fiasco was NBC and the executives there that made this idiotic decision. O’Brien might not have as many ‘fans’ as Leno, but they are much more vocal and passionate. Plus, Leno is now ‘damaged goods’ and will likely never regain much of the audience he had before (and he has to really retire sooner or later anyway). I really don’t understand what NBC’s end-game is here. And yes, Leno does deserve some of the blame for this mess. The honorable thing would have been to refuse to return to Tonight out of respect for his colleague.

It took Leno almost two years to win his time-slot on The Tonight Show after he took over (in another NBC debacle) from Johnny Carson. O’Brien deserved at least the same amount of faith and loyalty from NBC that Leno got. Personally, as a matter of principle, I don’t intend to watch Tonight when it returns with Leno, and I’ll follow O’Brien—’CoCo’—to whichever network he ends up on. Supposedly, Fox is already trying to pick him up.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.