The Brown Brown Grass of Home

We're arriving at the five year anniversary of the launching of the Iraq War,

and President Bush is already celebrating.

He's even singing.

I kid you not.

"As I step down from the plane
and there to meet me
is my mama and my papa,
down the lane I look
and here comes Barney,
heart of gold
and breath like honey;
Yes, you're gonna miss me,
the way you used to quiz me,
It's good to touch
the brown brown grass of home."


Reaping Free Market Fun

The 'free market' deregulation of anything in the US that anyone can possibly gouge money out of that's not nailed down has arrived at some variation on the following email arriving in many email 'in' boxes:
________

From: "service@irs.gov" Add Mobile Alert
Subject: Fiscal Activity - Tax Return
Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2008 17:16:27 -0600
Internal Revenue Service
United States Department of the Treasury

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have
determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $129.72.
Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 2-6 days in order to
process it.

A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons.
For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.

To access your tax refund, please click here


Best Regards,
Tax Refund Deparment
Internal Revenue Service
© Copyright 2008, Internal Revenue Service U.S.A. All rights reserved.
_______________

That's cut and past verbatim from my own email this AM, spelling errors intact.

Now, we just this morning -- 23 minutes ago -- finished our taxes. We're delivering it to our accountant tomorrow. But even if we had filed, we wouldn't be falling for this phishing expedition from some scumbag motherfucker parasitic suckass out there.

What I'm equally disgusted by, though, is the insidious intrusion of such scams sans any effective response. Shouldn't the IRS be on this lamprey's ass like ugly on an ape? Shouldn't there be a widely-publicized attack on this scam, with at least the option PayPal provides me for reporting immediately such a fraudulent attempt to dilly with us via falsely representing some shady entity as the IRS?

It's just another permutation of the 'free market' tolerance for such scams, from legal loan-sharking (credit card applications to youths) and fleecing (reverse mortgage scams, which is ravaging our elderly population) to pharmaceutical commercials (the new snake oil salesmen) and unregulated predatory bank and credit card interest and penalty fees.

The brown, brown grass of home...