Go Comcast! (Who would think that sentence would EVER be said!!!)

It's Comcastic!

The golden poo is a nasty thing.

It kicked my ass in Blue Dragon.

While both Comcast and Countrywide are evil, I voted for Countrywide for this reason: You can live without cable and/or Internet. You can't, however, live without a roof over your head.

I was voting for Comcast all the way, not having ever dealt with Countrywide. Now that Countrywide is officially a part of the Great Financial Satan, I may have to change my vote.

"Countrywide lent me 7750K"

Just to be straight, that is 7.75 Million dollars. I doubt that is true.

@dallasmay: I believe you missed the point of the quote.

@MFfan310: bingo

"Comcast, since I have no choice but to do business with Comcast, if I want cable."

Yeah, but you don't _need_ cable. Countrywide, on the other hand, has induced a horrible chain of economic consequences that affect nearly everyone in the United States. I still can't believe Comcast whipped Exxon and the arbitration guys, but let's do the right thing here, people.

Lets just be clear that this is Countrywide Home Loans (Bad) and not Countrywide Bank (Amazing).

Tough choice. Could there be, like, a little shit to give to the runner up?

I understand that Countrywide is evil and same with Comcast. I voted for Comcast because there is no choice for consumers and they are still around, ripping people off and treating them horribly. With Countrywide, people should have been conscious about what was happening to not only their money, but what they were doing with their lives. If you are earning $40k a year, should you really be buying a house for $750K? Tell me. Who is forcing you to go with Countrywide or even buy a house? I believe with the financial mess the country is in, it also includes the consumers who should have known what they were getting into.

If it sounds too good to be real, it probably isn't.

I was going to go with the monopoly on this one; you can always go to another bank, but for some people like my parents, their only choice for cable is Comcast.

However, Countrywide has ruined so many peoples' lives with shady lending practices, falsifying information, and outright fraud. I recently closed my account with Countrywide. When I curiously asked the personal banker if their rates were going to change after the merger, she responded "pretty definitely." She then added a large number of their clientele were former Bank of America customers who dumped BoA in favor of Countrywide's better rates. BoA just bought-out Countrywide. What's going to happen to the current CW rates? You do the math.

We should be careful to separate the actions of the board members from the rest of the company.

Bad, current leadership going in the wrong direction - but the company also consists of thousands of ordinary, good people doing their best at their jobs.

Even in the case of a bad few, ordinary workers - there are thousands of others who are don't represent their working styles

Hmm... Monopolistic TV company or a company that could cause a depression.
Tough one.

@MFfan310: Sure you can - it just sucks much worse than no lolcats or Consumerist.

Countrywide all the way.

I don't think COmcast has thrown anyone out of their house yet.

@opsomath: Yeah, but you don't need to use Countrywide. There are dozens of mortgage companies, and they compete with each other everywhere. Those of us with a neighbor's tree in the way of our southern view and lucky enough to live in a Comcastic Monopoly Area can either watch "So You Think You Can Merengue" and such ilk for free or pay too much per month to keep our kids in "Yo Gabba Gabba."

I haven't voted yet, and I'm not immune to a good argument. Someone make one for Countrywide. Remember, they weren't the only subprime lender out there.

Comcast FTW. Is Countrywide a monopoly? Absolutely not. There are other choices in most markets.

Awww... can't they both get the award?

Countrywide. I watched that Bill Moyers PBS show last night, and I must admit they are part of the huger problem, the financial system of the US.

[www.pbs.org]

I have a gut feeling that Comcast is going to win, because people care about cable and internet more than people losing their homes because somebody wanted to earn a boatload of money by committing the sin of usury, which IS legal in our country.

"THANK GOD WE'RE A MONOPOLY!"

@Angryrider: If only Deutsch Bank were up here. They're more evil than Countrywide.

@blackmage439: you can't actually just go to another bank, at least not without paying thousands in re-finance fees.
A lot of people didn't choose to be with CountryWide, Countrywide bought mortgages from other banks or the person went through a brokerage who didn't disclose the final owner of the loan.

The biggest complaint about Comcast is that they have talked about not letting people steal media as fast as they can possibly steal it. Boo freakin' hoo.

I voted comcast, the crap countrywide pulled is helping drop home prices like rocks, right when I'm looking to buy :)

Comcast, definitely. People are forced to deal with Comcast in many areas of this country if they want any type of cable/HD package. And Comcast is notoriously unhelpful, sloppy, negligent, and some would argue, criminal.

Countrywide is one of many, many home loan agencies. It is the biggest, but you have other options to choose from. And even if you did get burned by Countrywide, you're at least partially at fault as well for taking on such large amounts of debt (though I agree that they were extremely deceptive in the process). You cannot blame one company for our current recession. If Countrywide had avoided risky loans, then other banks would have filled the void, and we would still be in the same place today.

Cable operators are a different story. There are several other decent, local companies in this industry, but Comcast does everything in its power to keep them away from us. Comcast is a terrible, horrible company. Comcast for the win.

after seeing that picture, screw the poo. let's send them both 20 kiloton bombs instead & call it a day.

@DrJimmy: Plenty of mortgage companies have thrown people from their homes - Countrywide is simply the largest - thus the dumbest of the bunch. What did all these mortgage companies think would happen when you offered sub-prime loans to people with no verifiable income??? But it's not entirely the mortgage industry's fault - if you as a buyer were stupid enough to take such a loan knowing you couldn't afford the payments when the rate adjusted you deserve what you got.

Comcast on the otherhand simply doesn't play fair. Return a digital box and remote - and get a receipt as proof of the return. Comcast will still say you never returned it - send you to collections and make your life hell. Even after you visit the local franchise authority with said receipt, send copies of said receipt to the collection agency, Comcast's corporate office and the like - they still claim the box cannot be located so it must be my fault. This has been going on for over 8 months now. Comcrap is a joke and should be permanently removed from the face of this earth like offending zit.

Come on people...again, Comcast is a MONOPOLY who invades human rights. Countrywide? You have a CHOICE to go with them or to not go with them. The person above who said/implied that Countrywide would start a depression didn't look at the economic factors that went into play with the mortgage bubble, nor is Countrywide the only company doing those practices...they were simply the largest.

They both suck so don't get me wrong here, but Comcast is more evil due to LACK OF FREEDOM OF CHOICE. Countrywide offered low interest rates, but so did Wells Fargo and every other bank out there and people could choose which bank to use...

@PunditGuy: @blackmage439:

Even people who didn't get a mortgage through Countrywide WERE affected by them when they were rolling out the free cash.

The people qualified to purchase a home had to compete with heavily-financed hourly workers. They could either buy a cheaper house (similarly overvalued), rent (to their benefit as we see now) or make the popularly bad decision to overextend themselves. Countrywide et. al. took away the option to purchase a properly valued house.

And now, even if these people settled for a smaller house they could afford, they won't be able to break even for a decade or more and their neighborhoods are rotting because of abandoned houses and increased crime.

Countrywide for Sure.

I voted for Comcast because, well, they suck, they've always sucked and have no chance of not sucking. Countrywide, for all its faults, no longer exists as a standalone company due to its own stupidity and really should have been disqualified when they were acquired.

Whether you chose to go with Countrywide or not or even whether you have a mortgage with them or not, they're taking you down with them. You can opt out of dealing with Comcast, but you can't opt out of dealing with Countryside's effects on the economy. They screwed you whether you borrowed from them or not.

@godospoons: Except the subprime meltdown, of which Countrywide was a major contributor, threatens to bring down the economy - What do you think is going on with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae - Countrywide's greed and fraud is not self contained to Countrywide/BofA alone. Joe Taxpayer has to bail out those entities because of this subprime mess. Comcast isn't even remotely close to wrecking havoc on our economy or financial/credit systems.

@arniec: "Come on people...again, Comcast is a MONOPOLY who invades human rights."

There's a convincing argument if I ever heard one.

'All your base are belong to us!'

I had Insight Cable Internet for a couple of years - and very happy. Well for about a month, I had bad connection where it would stop working on the weekends, and they always sent people out THE SAME DAY to climbs the polls (even at night) to check the connection & get things fixed.... and once they figured out what the problem was (something bad on a poll down the road), the connection worked great.

Comcast comes in and takes over for my local cable - so now I have Comcast.

Fast forward to 2 days ago, Saturday - connection is down. I call... and they are going to send someone out on WEDNESDAY! 4 days to get someone to come and look. I said something about trying to get someone out today, on Saturday or Sunday... well they start to tell me they can send someone out next Sunday.

UGH - worse thing is that I do some of my work from home over the weekend - so I connect and do some important data backups during the weekend.... so now I got to waste gas Sunday driving to work to do a simple 3 minute thing..... plus probable working late for the next 3 days making sure I get everything done while at work since I can no longer connect from home to do the work.

Grrrrrr.... So Comcast gets my vote since I have no other choice (except for very expensive connections) where I live.

Countrywide.... well I can simply use someone else if they did not make me happy.

Screwing the country's housing market is far worse than screwing people over cable and internet access, so add another vote for Countrywide.

They're both fucking awful companies though.

@arniec: Come on people...again, Comcast is a MONOPOLY who invades human rights.

I didn't know humans had the right to 180 crappy channels. Remind me again where that is written in UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

Comcast was supposed to install my cable on Saturday 7/19 between 11am and 2pm. Let it be known that as of today, 7/21, 9:34am CST, they have not come by or called. Thanks, Comcast!

We seem to be dealing with small picture folk...

I've never done business with either of these companies, but i voted for Countrywide. Comcast might provide sucky cable service, but Countrywide has ruined lives.

Seriously, it's a competition?? Seriously???

@josecmelia: Here's a novel idea... call them!

Countrywide has, quite literally, wrecked havoc across the entire globe. Anyone aspiring to use credit the next several years or trade stocks in the next ten, is affected. Plus, they'll be gone next year. Give them the proper send-off: vote Countrywide.

Countrywide. Bonus Plus, they are now B of A, which I also hate.

Both evil to be sure, but Countrywide has wrought more suffering upon our economy then Comcast could ever even imagine. Having to deal with poor customer service, technicians and bandwidth throttling pales in comparison to destroying the housing market, causing foreclosures on thousands of homes, and the effects on the economy will be felt for years to come. Why are there even VOTES for comcast???

I wish I could get undocumented loan... I'm not greedy, and I would buy a small condo that I'd now I can afford on a 20 year loan.

Now all those greedy f@ckers, that bought McMansions, made getting a loan as a young adult (with a good credit) pretty impossible. Thank you irresponsible asses that did not read terms of your own mortgages.

I'm all for personal responsibility. So Comcast gets my vote.

@blkhwk86: It's like this for me. The banking industry swore up and down that they could self-regulate, and helped elect Republicans in order to make it happen. So all the safeguards and checks that were put in place during the Roosevelt administration to prevent the sort of shenanigans that caused the Great Depression, and what happened? Did the banking industry self-regulate? Did they behave themselves like they promised? Hell no! They went for the quick buck over the stable but smaller profit stream (and damn the consequences) as anyone who understands human nature might have predicted.

The moral here is the same one we should have learned in the 1930s, which is not to pass laws based on trust. You get boned every time you do this. Sure, it would be NICE if we could trust the President of the United States, or the Fed, or the banks, or the individual homeowners, to do the right thing, but that is not the same thing as a guarantee, or an actual enforceable regulation that provides said guarantee. It just isn't. Remember that when you report to the voting booth in November.

The problem is so far beyond personal responsibility. We're talking fraud. Countrywide opened the gates to fraud hell, knowing that they (executives) would be made uber-wealthy and left untouched.
You are a victim of the fraud they allowed/promoted, and yet you still pick your entertainment provider over your finances and housing.@Victo:

Were I to buy a home, I'd have a choice of what mortgage company to use.

Where I live, I am too far from the phone substation to get DSL. I can get a T1 for about $300/month, or I can pay ComCrap cable $100 or less (more toward $100 if I want a 'business plan' [so I can have static IPs]). Period. That's my choice.

While the real guilty party is, of course, the phone company for not putting in more substations as the area grew in people, ComCrap has everyone over a barrel. And they know it. And they take advantage of it.

I'm sure I'm not the only one in this situation.

Countrywide.

Guess what...your Comcast bill will go up due to the horrible loans made by Countrywide.

Bad loans = rate drops from the Fed and Helicopter Ben to prop up prices and increase access to cash

Rate drops like the ones we have seen = inflation

Inflation = dollar is not worth as much.

When you get your $4 gas and your food that costs 20% more than it used to, it can be traced back to companies such as Countrywide.

Just as you have no choice with Comcast if you're in their service area, the citizens of the United States have no choice but to pay for Countrywide's illegal actions.

I don't have a mortgage or Comcast. But I am already paying for what Countrywide has done. This vote's a no-brainer.