Sleepless in Midland

cyber bank robbers succeed in Britain - if the amount is small enough it's a clean steal

Naked Security points to a report the Home Affairs Committee of the U.K. Parliament issued yesterday about the state of cyber crime in Britain. The summary has a gloomy title: UK failing to win the war on e-crime and contains this tantalizing tidbit:

There appears to be a ‘black hole’ where e-crime is committed with impunity. Online criminal activity which defrauds victims of money is often not reported to or investigated by law enforcement. Banks simply reimburse the victims with no pursuit of the perpetrators. Criminals who commit a high volume of low level fraud can still make huge profits. Banks must be required to report all e-crime fraud to law enforcement.

In other words, crimes against banks that net the fraudsters a sum below a certain amount don't get reported, and the banks merely reimburse the victim for the loss to protect the bank's reputation. It doesn't say what that amount is, however the report does say that in 2011 the "Cost of cyber crime to the UK estimated to be £27bn." The number of crimes are growing as the use of social networks grows.

Chapter 4 titled Can web service providers protect our data? is worth a look because it details some of the types of crimes aided by social networks, including identity theft, phishing, theft of personal information, click jacking, advance fee and romance scams, and Twitter direct messages luring victims to an infected website. They throw in cyber bullying and twitter trolling which apparently are crimes in the U.K.

The lesson we should take away from this is that anyone using the net should maintain caution when clicking. At some point banks in the U.K. and the U.S. could try to blame losses on the victims and decline to reimburse them.

In the U.S. the main cyber threat currently, according to an FBI warning, is one whereby the victims somehow allow the Citadel malware platform to load the Reveton ransomware onto their computers which locks the victims' computers and delivers a blackmail message disguised to be from the FBI, DHS or IC3 accusing them of committing a crime and seeking payment for a fine in order to get their computers unlocked.

The FBI's advice: get the computer repaired, report it to IC3, and keep antivirus software updated.

It's a jungle out there.

Six (upside down) flags over Texas

I was driving down the street the other day and spotted these Texas flags flying upside down over a small used car lot. (Sharp eyed observers might quibble about the number of flags on display, but six flags over Texas has a certain familiarity to it, so let's go with that.)

The one on the right is the same photo flipped to show how the flags are supposed to look.

If the flag of the United States is flown upside down it's supposed to be a signal of distress, a cry for help. So what was this salesman trying to say? "Stop me before I sell this Silverado below book!"

The Texas flag gets flown upside down so often by mistake that as a distress signal it would be as ineffectual as those "baby on board" signs were.

To get it right, the white stripe goes on top, but that's too hard to remember. However, the star makes it easy. The point of the star always points upward. If you didn't know that already, it seems obvious now, doesn't it?

Added later:  [Maybe he's warning against riding the roller coaster.  Robo-ed.]

Nomination for funniest commercial currently airing -- Geico hump day camel

At the moment the funniest commercial airing on TV, imho, is the one for Geico featuring the hump day camel with the big mouth. The instant he walks into the office the workers start rolling their eyes. Then he finally gets some hapless worker to admit it's hump day. What a hoot!

My only gripe is that they play it on days other than Wednesdays, but that's OK.  Watch it at this Youtube link.

Who could possibly do such a perfect camel's voice? It's Chris Sullivan. Click the link to see what else he's done. What a versatile actor he must be.

Antibiotic makes men more cautious around attractive but untrustworthy women

The headlines about this were a little bit misleading. For example, DailyCaller.com titled their report Antibiotic makes men immune to womanly wiles. Actually, the study suggested that the antibiotic made men a little bit more rational around an attractive woman, not necessarily immune. And the woman's wiles didn't come into play at all, only her appearance.

Here's how it happened. The experimenters selected around a hundred men and eight women who were each given money to play the game. The graphic on the right shows how it worked. The women were photographed, and only their photos were shown to the men. Each man could choose to keep the money at which point his game would end. Or he could give the money to the woman whose photo was shown to him, and if he did, the sum given to her would triple. She would then have two choices. She could betray and keep all the money or cooperate and split the money with the guy. Unsurprisingly, the men offered the money to the pretty women more often than to the not-so-pretty women. Interestingly, and perhaps this deserved a study of its own, each of the women decided in advance to betray the guy and keep all the money herself.

The men were put on a four day oral treatment of either the antibiotic minocycline or a placebo. And the result of the study -- see thumbnail on the right -- suggests that the men on the antibiotic were a little bit less trusting of the women's generosity, and more of them got to take home some money.

The report describes how the authors think the drug works on the brain. But here's the money quote -- "This study demonstrated that minocycline is the first drug shown to reduce the honey trap effect on young males." Read the whole thing at Minocycline, a microglial inhibitor, reduces ‘honey trap’ risk in human economic exchange.

Post script: You know, if minocycline had been a component in James Bond's travel kit the stories would have been a lot less interesting.

Post post script: Maybe the DNC should slip some in the drinks of Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer, Bill Clinton, et al. [You just couldn't resist rubbing it in, could you? -- Robo-ed.]  [No,  I wouldn't want to touch those guys with a ten foot pole much less rub something into them. -- Sleepless.]

Mike Conaway and the bill to limit NSA snooping

Representative Justin Amash (R-Michigan) co-sponsored a bill described at his website thusly:

H.R. 2399, the Limiting Internet and Blanket Electronic Review of Telecommunications and Email Act (LIBERT-E Act), restricts the federal government’s ability under the Patriot Act to collect information on Americans who are not connected to an ongoing investigation. The bill also requires that secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court opinions be made available to Congress and summaries of the opinions be made available to the public.

Those who argue in favor of the snooping haven't been very convincing. Every profession wants access to tools that make their work easier, and it's no different with the NSA. However, keeping the snoops out of the lives of "Americans who are not connected to an ongoing investigation" seems perfectly reasonable. But a majority of the House members voted against it.

For a short summation of how overly intrusive the NSA's metadata searches are see this article at USAToday.com.

Let's take a glance at the voting record. Looks like our own Texas District 11 Congressman Mike Conaway voted against it.

What makes this particularly significant is the recollection of a discussion heard on the radio a couple of years ago when Mr. Conaway was a guest on a local drive-time show. He was there complaining about the FBI's attempt to serve a legitimately obtained search warrant on a Congressman's office (not Conaway's). Congressional offices, you see, should be exempt, according to Conaway. The FBI backed down.

Rules are for the little people.

Dumb jokes that somehow make us feel smart

Q. Why did Mr Ohm marry Mrs Ohm?
A. Because he couldn't resistor.
Source.

Q: Why do chemists call helium, curium and barium the medical elements?
A: Because if you can't helium or curium, you barium!
Source.

Say "silk" five times. Now spell "silk". What do cows drink?
Answer: Cows drink water. If you said "milk", for the sake of humankind please do not have children.
Source.

So a hydroxide ion asks a potassium ion out. The potassium ion says no, because the hydroxide ion is a bit of a HO.
Source.

Q. How do you know when you're being approached by the Quantum Mafia?
A. They make you an offer you can't understand.
Source.

Q. Why did the lights go out?
A. Because they liked each other!
Source.

Had enough? If not watch Are You Smart Enough To Get These Nerdy Jokes?
Source.

Finally:

Source.

Medieval burglary tools

Modern day burglary tools consist of not much more than a boot and a bag. The boot kicks in the door, and the bag carries the loot away. Things were different in days of old when a burglar's tools might include a candle and a turtle.

An article at Smithsonianmag.com titled Islam’s Medieval Underworld provides a glimpse at the Banu Sasan, the criminal gang which the author, Mike Dash, says, "comprised a hidden counterpoint to the surface glories of Islam’s golden age." Furthermore, Mr. Dash points to a British historian named Clifford Bosworth who provided a description of the tools of a burglar's trade. To wit:

The thieves who work by tunneling into houses and by murderous assaults are much tougher eggs, quite ready to kill or be killed in the course of their criminal activities. They necessarily use quite complex equipment… [The iron spike and an iron hand with claws] are used for the work of breaking through walls, and the crowbar for forcing open doors; then, once a breach is made, the burglar pokes a stick with a cloth on the end into the hole, because if he pokes his own head through the gap, [it] might well be the target for the staff, club or sword of the houseowner lurking on the other side.

The tortoise is employed thus. The burglar has with him a flint-stone and a candle about as big as a little finger. He lights the candle and sticks it on the tortoise’s back. The tortoise is then introduced through the breach into the house, and it crawls slowly around, thereby illuminating the house and its contents. The bag of sand is used by the burglar when he has made his breach in the wall. From this bag, he throws out handfuls of sand at intervals, and if no-one stirs within the house, he then enters it and steals from it; apparently the object of the sand is either to waken anyone within the house when it is thrown down, or else to make a tell-tale crushing noise should any of the occupants stir within it.

Also, the burglar may have with him some crusts of dry bread and beans. If he wishes to conceal his presence, or hide any noise he is making, he gnaws and munches at these crusts and beans, so that the occupants of the house think that it is merely the cat devouring a rat or mouse.

Pretty amazing stuff. And domesticated cats that devoured rats? What a time.

The one thing, the one and only thing lefties do not want to smother with regulations

Regulations are to lefties what sand is to beaches. But there's one activity on which they want no regulation whatsoever. Abortion.

For an amusing putdown of those who've newly discovered the downside of regulations, see The Left in NC Discovers Anew An Ancient Truth:

It's fun to watch when the little kids discover something on their own.  They remember it better that way, that's a rule of teaching.  So, even though all the grown-ups knew this all along, it's better to let the younglings figure it out.

Via Newmarksdoor.com.

American Exceptionalism and the loss thereof

Charles Murray is selling his new book, "American Exceptionalism: An Experiment in History" in which he recounts how the view from here and abroad in the early days of the nation was that it truly was exceptional, not just geographically, but by how the founding fathers sought to protect individuals from the government.. But the U.S. is becoming an ordinary social democracy barely distinguishable from European countries.

DailyCaller.com has an interview with Mr. Murray. And Josh Good provides a fine review of the book which closes with this:

As I step back and reflect on this book, as well as his related writing, I believe Charles Murray is teaching us that the first iteration of America was our founding through the beginning of the 20th century. The second has lasted from 1930 to the present. But today we are quickly becoming more like Europe; and to borrow his recent phrase, our classes are coming apart.

Across the Atlantic, Europe is showing us the end-game, and anyone paying attention must know that an entitlement state that is addicted to unending income transfers and redistributive solutions cannot long survive.

We are quickly nearing the time, this little book intimates, when as Americans we must reinvent ourselves. And while many politicians today talk about “the Founders,” how many of us really remember our early story? This short book brings it to life — and suggests that the best way forward may be to rediscover our early beginnings.

Optimism takes effort. Sometimes you have to bend your mind around the facts and convince yourself that even though the nation is headed in a certain direction, that direction could change someday. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even in our lifetimes, but someday.

Quote of the day -- Ben Stein nails it

Observing the hoopla over the birth of a new British prince in From Ruby Ridge to Cambridge he says:

I don’t know but I do know that one day we’re all hysterical about Trayvon and the next day we’re all ecstatic about the Duchess of Cambridge. This has got to be killing Al Sharpton.

Speaking of Sharpton, he certainly looks a lot skinnier than he used to, or to offer up some undeserved tact, he certainly looks fit these days.

Ubuntu forum hacked

Linux is the free Unix based anti-Microsoft operating system for people who got frustrated with Windows or who just like to tinker around. And Ubuntu is a very popular version that is supposed to be easy enough to bring comfort to non-geeks. (My own experience is that the frustration level is about the same as with Microsoft, but the software is free, so it has that going for it.)

Moving right along, this afternoon I was doing an Ixquick search to try to find out how vulnerable Ubuntu is to hackers. Lo and behold, some of the first results to pop up said that the Ubuntu users forum had been hacked.

Naked Security explains that it was hacked over the weekend and that users saw a picture of a penguin holding an AK-47. At this time UbuntuForums.org shows an announcement explaining that there was a security breach, and the site is down. Also this:

Unfortunately the attackers have gotten every user's local username, password, and email address from the Ubuntu Forums database.

Just what users need to hear. But on the bright side, the breach was on the website, and presumably it doesn't affect any of the individual Ubuntu users' own computers. But who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of hackers?

Free the USPS

The post office is the perennial butt of jokes, but they do a good job. Things don't get lost in the mail. And while there is the occasional bad apple who steals a check, those instances are rare, and the Postal Service seems to make a good effort to crack down on them.

But the USPS keeps losing money, $16 billion in fiscal 2012. And the culprit is the overseer, the U.S. government. There are ways to fix the problem -- end prefunding of health benefits, ending Saturday delivery, raising the price of stamps, union contract reform -- and from time to time, efforts are made to correct these problems. But government keeps getting in the way.

There's hope. Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif) has proposed some changes which could address the problems. If can get a majority in the House to go alone, then they'll have something to send over to the Senate.

Maybe this time.

Post Script. While the postal workers do a good job, the USPS' financial woes provide a good lesson on why government planning committees should never control industries. Whether voters learn the lesson is another matter.

House and land for sale - as is - not responsible for booby traps and land mines

Ed and Elaine Brown didn't believe that the U.S. government had the authority to tax citizens and declined to pay. After they were convicted in 2007 for tax evasion they hunkered down in their New Hampshire compound and held off authorities. They were subsequently convicted  in 2009 of charges related to the stand-off and sentenced to 35 and 37 years, respectively.

ABC News reports it as does Don't Mess with Taxes.

The articles don't say how the Browns were ultimately apprehended, so that story must not have been newsworthy. However, the U.S. Marshal's office is going to attempt to auction off their property in September. But here's the dilemma:

[Chief U.S. Deputy Marshal Brenda] Mikelson said she has contacted numerous federal agencies that have explosive detection equipment and dogs, and none could ensure a clean sweep of the property, which is set back from the road and includes acres of storm-damaged trees and other natural debris.

"With the size of the property, there's no way to search it and have any guarantees," Mikelson said.

However, the hilltop house and the grounds up to the tree line have been searched extensively and are deemed free of improvised explosive devices and other booby traps, Mikelson said.

Flip this house, literally.

The case for drones as weapons

The case for drones as weapons is very ably presented by Adam Yoshida in Drones are 21st Century Superweapons. Not just for drones, however, but for entire robotic armies. He makes a good case:

In general, Western populations in recent wars have been moved to oppose wars on account of friendly, not opposition casualties. ...

In the years since the Second World War there has been one clear strategy for a nation or a non-state group to inflict a defeat upon a Western nation: recognize that the West places an extremely high value upon the lives of its individual citizens and, therefore, that if you can inflict a large number of casualties upon any Western nation you will create intolerable political pressures on the home front and force that nation to come to terms.

The solution is to take our people out of the line of fire.

Instead of risking Western soldiers on the ground during extended counter-insurgency operations, combat robots could be deployed in substantial numbers in order to suppress continued enemy activity. The only soldiers that would need to be risked, at least initially, would be those who would be called upon to maintain these robots near the front and these would be as well-defended as possible.

He notes that the people who oppose drones fall into two categories. One basically opposes any aggression that might result in a death to further a policy they disagree with. The other group, he contends, knows how important such weapons are, but oppose them because,

they understand how heavily they would weigh the odds against any low-technology group fighting a high-technology power and these are people who, whatever their ostensible loyalties, have been friendly towards the cause of every insurgent or terrorist group fighting the West in my own lifetime.

Understandably, he has no sympathy for their point of view.

Obama could have been Trayvon 35 years ago

This is truly astonishing. President Obama is now saying that "Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago."

I believe him. A thuggish looking guy, lurking around wealthy neighborhoods in the dark of night, high on weed, acting suspicious. Scaring the daylights out of people. Easily offended, ready to pound a guy's head into the cement.

Yeah, I believe Obama could have been Trayvon 35 years ago. He still is, he's a grown up Trayvon wearing a suit.

“And there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of car,” the president said. “That happens to me, at least before I was a senator." Uh, Mr. President, that happens to white American men, too, you know. But they don't soap-box for victim-hood status.

ObamaCareNado

You survived Sharknado. But that was just a movie.

Now get ready for a real disaster, ObamaCareNado. Click the hyperlink to watch the trailer. This one is not just a movie.

Via Campaign Spot.

Top ten things Barack Obama and his enablers would have done if he had been president at the time of the O.J. Simpson trial

President Obama, his administration, and his media enablers worked very strategically at politicizing the George Zimmerman trial. And it paid off for them at the ballot box in November 2012. So what if Barack Obama had been president at the time of the O.J. Simpson murder trial?

Let's go back a few years and recall the O.J. Simpson murder trial in the mid 1990s. All the evidence pointed to his guilt, and most white people were stunned at the not-guilty verdict. They were even more stunned at the videos showing black students cheering wildly as the not-guilty verdict was announced.

But that was the trial of the previous century. Let's speculate on what would have happened had the racially divisive Barack Obama been president back then.

-Eric Holder would devote all the resources of the United States Department of Justice to help find the real killer.

-Barack Obama would praise the jury system for rendering the right verdict.

-NAACP would demand that the entire LAPD be fired.

-Piers Morgan would bemoan racist prosecutors and demand they be fired.

-National Organization for Women - "Nicole Brown Simpson was asking for it."

-David Simon would say the verdict "makes me proud to be an American."

-Mark Furhman would be jailed for hate speech.

-Eric Holder: "White people need to have an honest conversation about why they are all a bunch of racists."

-Nancy Grace: "This innocent man should never been brought to trial!"

-Barack Obama: "If I had a son he sure as hell wouldn't look like Ron Goldman."

But, this is mere speculation.

Stop requiring ethanol in gasoline

One of the major differences between Progressives and Conservatives is their notion of what constitutes good government. Progressives believe that the right person or a small group of the right people can make the kinds of decisions and implement the kinds of policies that will not only result in a good economy but also cure any social, environmental, international or any other type problem that might arise. Conservatives are very skeptical of that approach and think that governments make so many mistakes that the best government is a small one that respects the rights of individuals and stays out of the way.

There are lots of examples that prove Conservatives right, and one of them is the law requiring ethanol to make up as much as 10% of the gasoline we use in our automobiles. Not only does that take away from our food supply and create other problems of its own, but it does nothing to solve the problem it was supposed to solve, i.e., save the planet from global warming, which itself may turn out to be a hoax perpetrated by anti-capitalists.

On a local level, we learned last week that there has been an increase in vehicle fires this year over last year. See High temperatures pose a risk for vehicle fires. Does ethanol in gasoline contribute to that problem?

My own automobile was recalled by the dealer to fix some problem that didn't exist at the time the car was manufactured. They discovered that the ethanol in gasoline would eat up the fuel lines over time and might cause fuel leakage. So the manufacturer replaced the old fuel lines with some that shouldn't disintegrate with ethanol exposure. One has to wonder whether some of those vehicle fires addressed in the above mentioned article may have resulted from loose fuel under the hood due to ethanol caused erosion.

But, there's hope. Erika Johnsen at HotAir.com that there's a Senate bill introduced to repeal the ethanol mandate. According to Senator Barrasso:

When Congress enacts bad policy, the right response is to scrap it and start over.

Yes it is.  Both Republicans and Democrats should get behind this one.

Good joke about a criminal trial

This has absolutely nothing to do with any high profile trial, but for some reason with all the trial news coverage lately, this joke sprang to mind. It was posted at Bits and Pieces last year. To wit:

A defendant was on trial for murder. There was strong evidence indicating guilt, but there was no corpse. In the defense’s closing statement, the lawyer, knowing that his client would probably be convicted, resorted to a trick.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have a surprise for you all,” the lawyer said as he looked at his watch.

“Within one minute, the person presumed dead in this case will walk into this courtroom.” He looked toward the courtroom door. The jurors, somewhat stunned, all looked on eagerly.

A minute passed. Nothing happened.

Finally the lawyer said, “Actually, I made up the previous statement. But you all looked on with anticipation. I, therefore, put it to you that you have a reasonable doubt in this case as to whether anyone was killed, and I insist that you return a verdict of not guilty.”

The jury retired to deliberate.

A few minutes later, the jury returned and pronounced a verdict of guilty.

“But how?” inquired the lawyer. “You must have had some doubt; I saw all of you stare at the door.”

The jury foreman replied: ”Yes, we did look, but your client didn’t.”

Fox scat

The other day I posted some photos of one of the foxes that was prowling around out back. See Foxes visit the urban back yard. While this might not be everyone's cup of tea, one of those visitor left something special for urban animal trackers -- fox scat. Maybe someone visiting this blog might be able to use the following photos to help identify a deposit found in a yard somewhere.

As you can see, he/she is getting lots of roughage. While these wild animals live in an urban environment, the consistency is very much different from that of a dog on a commercial pet food diet.

Newsflash! It's NO ONE'S "cup of tea!" It's CRAP, for crying out loud! -- Robo-ed.

Well, sometimes you just have to stop and smell the daisies. -- Sleepless.

Better call Saul -- a Breaking Bad spinoff

One of the funniest TV lawyers to float across the small screen in the past few years is the "Breaking Bad" lawyer, Saul Goodman, played by comedian and former SNL writer, Bob Odenkirk. Goodman's fake TV ads are hilarious:

Face down in the dirt with a cop standing over you because the meter reader got a big surprise? If you've been arrested for having an illegal tiger in your back yard, Better call Saul.

That had to be a narrow client base. The big bucks, at least as it's told in "Breaking Bad," are from the big league Meth business. But here's some good news for Saul. There might be a "Breaking Bad" spinoff featuring Saul Goodman. From thewrap.com:

"Breaking Bad" creator Vince Gilligan says he and writer Peter Gould are moving "full speed ahead" on their potential spinoff of "Breaking Bad."

With the final eight episodes of the AMC series set to begin airing Aug. 11, viewers can take comfort in the possibility of the spinoff, built around Bob Odenkirk's scheming criminal attorney Saul Goodman.

There's certainly a lot of potential there.

Foxes visit the urban back yard

Last winter a fox scavenged my back yard for food, and he/she got caught on camera. See pics at Nocturnal neighborhood scavengers.

Occasionally during the dark morning hours in the spring I caught a glimpse of a furtive fox hiding in the bushes in the area. One morning it scampered across a street carrying something in its mouth. Could it have been a momma taking food to some little ones?

Well, this morning around 7:30 there were two in my back yard. If I had known they were coming I would have put out some food and drink.

They looked like adults, but they weren't nearly as skittish as the winter fox. I suppose they could have been brazen youngsters out on their own. In any event, it's nice to see the urban wildlife thriving in spite of the drought.

They are pretty good climbers. The first one I saw this morning was in a tree, so fences won't separate them from something they want. One has to wonder if they might mate with domestic fertile canines. If so, that might make for some unusual pups.

Bonus! Click fox scat to see pics of something one of them left behind.

Now this is creepy -- positive pregnancy test results for sale on Craigslist

The image you see below came from the humor site thechive.com, and it appears to be a Craigslist ad for a positive pregnancy test results for $25.

I thought surely it must be fake and checked Craigslist for Buffalo to be sure. The ad says it was posted on 5/8/2013, so if it was real, that particular ad is no longer there.

However, the seller was onto something. Apparently, there's a market for positive pregnancy test results, at least if Craigslist postings are any indication. Go to Craigslist.org and pick any large city, search for "pregnancy test" and odds you'll find some.

The one below comes from Central New Jersey and gives credit for the idea to "The lady in Buffalo."

The next one from Dallas/mid cities purports to be from the father who is simply trying to raise "a few extra bucks for the baby."

Baby needs a new pair of shoes!

One thing most of them have in common is that they say they don't care what the buyer plans to do with it and won't ask question.

So why would someone want a positive pregnancy test? This prospective buyer from Dallas admits right up front that she wants to get even with some guy. Just what her plan entails isn't disclosed, but at least she's not seeking a hit man, in this ad, anyway.

Could it be that the buyers of these tests are females hoping to a extract a marriage proposal under false pretenses? Stranger things have happened. Women were once called "the fair sex." They didn't like that very much, so maybe "the unfair sex" might be a better fit.

Related: Prolific blogger Glenn Reynolds has a running theme about the #WARONMEN with some cautionary tales for young men on the dating scene.

Aside: One has to imagine modern boy scouts sitting around the camp fire telling scary stories, not about the ax murderer, but marriage entrapment. OK, maybe throw in a story or two about Lorena Bobbitt and her ilk before the fire goes out.

All our children are below average

Many of us watched as the Midland, Texas, Independent School District Superintendent stumped for a mind boggling $163 million bond for building new schools last year and wondered if voters would allow the local government debt burden -- the legacy to be passed on to those youngsters now in school -- to increase to an even higher level than it already was. Texas Comptroller Susan Combs issued a report to remind Texans about the huge local government debt loads burdening Texans. See Your Money and Local Debt-PDF. But that didn't stop voters. The bond passed, and the press heaped accolades on the superintendent for this increase of the debt burden as if kids can't get a decent education in an old building.

But there's a nagging little problem lurking in the weeds like a truant child hiding from the teachers. The students may not be learning. The headline STAAR scores for Midland ISD below state average drove home to us that all our children are below average.

After the last two presidential elections many of were left wondering what kind of education the kids were getting that caused 60% of voters under 30 to support a president who wants to increase government dependency, discourage individual initiative, and stifle dissent.

They must be picking it up in government schools.

A couple of years ago a state teachers association rep was quoted in the morning paper as opposing legislation that would switch their retirement program into a 401K type program, the kind that most everyone in the free market has. And the rep was attempting to educate teachers about how difficult it would be for them to personally deal with a 401K retirement plan.

Teachers comprise a big voting block, and the reason they wanted to keep it in the government is because they can easily convince legislators to give them a larger share of tax payers' money should their pension fund's investments lose value.

However, the reason given to teachers, at least publicly, was that it would too difficult for the individual teachers to handle their own retirement funds. Though not actually said, the message seemed to be that teachers weren't as smart as their counterparts outside the government when it comes to money. I would like to think that's wrong and that our teachers are the best and brightest, after all, my mom was one. But there is that nagging fact of the underachieving test scores.

Meanwhile, the economy in the Permian Basin cycles between boom and bust, and we're currently still in the boom part of one of those cycles. Builders go crazy during boom times, and they pay the piper during the bust times. And now the school superintendent wants to get into the business of government housing. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Flaming faucets or flaming fakes -- Natural gas opponent resorts to fakery in propaganda movies

There's an environmentalist out there named Josh Fox who has made a couple of movies, Gasland and Gasland II, in which the crowning images in both are flames coming from household water taps. His goal is to thwart natural gas exploration and production in the name of saving the planet, and he counts as a "win" any government restriction on the oil and gas industry whether based on fact or fiction.

There's a theory that for many ardent environmentalists, "environmentalism" is like a religion. And its most ardent proponents are comparable to religious zealots with their presumed moral superiority and their fight against evil. Mr. Fox's tactics reinforce that theory.

Freebeacon.com addressed Mr. Fox's movies today in Gasland Director Presents Anti-Fracking Hoax as Evidence in New Film. Energyindepth.org addressed it as well in From Flaming Faucet to Flaming Hose: The Continuing Fraud of Gasland.

Unfortunately, the news source of the low information voter, The Daily Show, presents Mr. Fox as a voice of reason. See for yourself at segment 1 and segment 2.

But the problem with those flaming water taps depicted in his films is that they are either unrelated to oil and gas production or outright hoaxes. The one in the first film was supposed to be blamed on natural gas drilling, but in fact it was a phenomenon common to the area for years and which the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission had already investigated. They found that the water wells in question, "contained biogenic gas that was not related to oil and gas activity." Link to special report, which concludes with this:

Finally, it should be understood that the COGCC Director, Dave Neslin, offered to speak with Gasland’s producer, Josh Fox, on camera during the filming of the movie. Because the issues are technical and complex and arouse concerns in many people, Director Neslin asked that he be allowed to review any material from the interview that would be included in the final film. Unfortunately, Mr. Fox declined. Such a discussion might have prevented the inaccuracies noted above.

The scene in Gasland Part II of the flaming water hose was fake. A Texas court had already determined that the hose was connected to a gas vent and not a water source. See From Flaming Faucet to Flaming Hose: The Continuing Fraud of Gasland. Furthermore, the Texas Railroad Commission had already investigated the matter and concluded that the gas was naturally occurring and which probably seeped from a shallow formation which was completely unrelated to any oil and gas production in the area. (The targeted oil company posted the RRC report online.)

Mr. Fox has the audacity to ask why haven't government regulators done anything about this. (See The Daily Show segment 1.) His own answer to that question is that, "The natural gas industry has come in and literally taken away the regulatory agencies from the people, has obstructed the science, and has advised even the President of the United States."

Maybe the crusader Mr. Fox believes his opponents are so evil then his deception tactics are relatively minor sins, and the religion of environmentalism absolves him of any guilt. Reminds me of Jack Nicholson's character in "A Few Good Men." In his view his work was so important that a minor crime like murder was an inconvenient byproduct.

Is Hillary a has-been or a never-was?

Politico tells us in an articled  Hillary Clinton’s answer to the has-been charge that Republicans plan to brand Hillary as "a tired relic of the past." And to answer that Democrats plan to hold her as a member of the "1st female" club, i.e., 1st female presidential candidate. Politico:

... Democrats believe that Clinton’s potential to become the country’s first female to win the White House would galvanize voters of all ages.

Isn't it amazing that presidential elections can be won or lost because of simple branding like that? Amazing and disturbing, but candidate Obama did it with nothing more than a few focus group tested slogans. That plus some dirty politics, a compliant media, and a bunch of behavior psychologists with access to a huge database containing every obtainable fact about each voter.

Back to Hillary, her career since her days as a lawyer and commodities trader in Arkansas have been noteworthy for her lack of any real accomplishments. She tried to ram through HillaryCare -- an unworkable healthcare plan -- in the 90s, and it took Barack Obama to finally ram through an unworkable healthcare plan 20 years later. Her term as Senator was uneventful. And as Secretary of State about all she did was burn up jet fuel. So rather than a has-been, she's a never-was.

Maybe Democrats should adopt different tact. Here's the theory: "We've put forth a lot worse candidates than Hillary, and for all her faults, she's better for the country than the last Democrat we foisted on you."

The bumper sticker: "Hillary. Not as bad as Obama."

Louis Freeh on the cyber threat -- U.S. needs to do better job

There's a Global Intelligence Forum set to begin tomorrow in Ireland, and former FBI head Louis Freeh threw out some teasers in an AP interview published at Globalintelligenceforum.com.

The news that the NSA is roping in all of our web searches and email conversations probably caused most internet users to feel very vulnerable to the government and the political operatives therein. But what's also annoying to many citizens is that the program probably wasn't really intended to stop a terrorist attack from happening but to assist in apprehending the perpetrators after the fact, just like surveillance cameras. Freeh seems to see this as a problem, too. From the interview:

But he said, conversely, everyone in the 21st century should assume that every time we click our keyboard, or thumb our smart phone, it's being put blindly into multiple databases ranging from internet aggregators to NSA hard drives.

For law enforcement officials, he said, the challenge was whether this tsunami of information could be mined effectively before an attack. While he described U.S. collection of data as "very robust," its analysis and use in detecting crimes was not.

As one might expect, Freeh sides with the government on the collection of the data, only that too many people have access to it as well as to other sensitive information. His solution?

He suggested that a group's most confidential information might have to be left without an electronic fingerprint at all and be kept, old school, like the Coca-Cola company's recipe for its soft drinks once was under lock and key in a safe.

Boy, that is old school. Meanwhile, our high tech power grid, the most important component of our sources of sustenance, is just sitting there waiting for a Stuxnet type virus to get the signal to do it's thing and put us back into another dark age.

Laser pointer as anti-aircraft weapon in Cairo

There's a fascinating video online which shows a helicopter hovering over protestors in Tahrir Square in Cairo the other night. Presumably it's a military helicopter, but in the US it could easily be a TV chopper.

What's remarkable about it is that protestors are shining their laser pointers at it. Click Youtube video to watch the lasers paint green psychedelic images on the underside of the helicopter. That's a dangerous thing to do as it might cause eye damage. But one has to admit it sure does look like an effective defense weapon, that is if the invading aircraft has a human pilot.

Found at Mashable.com via Cheezburger.com.

Nanny state update -- Coffee mug as drug paraphernalia

From Overlawyered.com we learn that 22 state attorneys general have signed a letter addressed to Urban Outfitters asking them to stop selling a coffee mug that has a fake prescription for coffee on it.

Wow!

Maggie Thurber gives them a good fisking at Watchdog.org. As she notes, that the likelihood that someone might be tempted to abuse prescription drugs because of a joke on a mug is ludicrous.

What about those mugs that say "best dad" and such? Isn't that false advertising without some empirical evidence? Attorneys General, check your kitchen cabinets.

[It was probably the physician on the script that brought the law down on them. Dr. Feelgood? Had to be a druggie. Robo-ed.]

Via Cato.

Thomas Sowell explains the mindset of the left

Thomas Sowell is one of our great thinkers, and we would do well to pay attention to him. Recently he penned a four part series of articles explaining the mindset of the left. Links to the four articles follow below with very short synopses and quotes from each.

In The Mindset of the Left: Part I he explains that the left is always trying to blame bad behavior on external factors:

At least as far back as the 18th century, the left has struggled to avoid facing the plain fact of evil — that some people simply choose to do things that they know to be wrong when they do them. Every kind of excuse, from poverty to an unhappy childhood, is used by the left to explain and excuse evil.

In The Mindset of the Left: Part II he addresses the left's relationship with poverty and implies a sinister goal of ginning up government dependence:

Most Americans with incomes below the official poverty level have air-conditioning, television, own a motor vehicle and, far from being hungry, are more likely than other Americans to be overweight. But an arbitrary definition of words and numbers gives them access to the taxpayers' money.

This kind of "poverty" can easily become a way of life, not only for today's "poor," but for their children and grandchildren.

Even when they have the potential to become productive members of society, the loss of welfare state benefits if they try to do so is an implicit "tax" on what they would earn that often exceeds the explicit tax on a millionaire.

If increasing your income by $10,000 would cause you to lose $15,000 in government benefits, would you do it?

In short, the political left's welfare state makes poverty more comfortable, while penalizing attempts to rise out of poverty. Unless we believe that some people are predestined to be poor, the left's agenda is a disservice to them, as well as to society. The vast amounts of money wasted are by no means the worst of it.

In The Mindset of the Left: Part III he talks about equality and the left's obsession with equal outcomes.

A never-ending source of grievances for the left is the fact that some groups are "over-represented" in desirable occupations, institutions and income brackets, while other groups are "under-represented."

From all the indignation and outrage about this expressed on the left, you might think that it was impossible that different groups are simply better at different things. ...

All this moral melodrama has served as a background for the political agenda of the left, which has claimed to be able to lift the poor out of poverty and in general make the world a better place. This claim has been made for centuries, and in countries around the world. And it has failed for centuries in countries around the world.

In The Mindset of the Left: Part IV he gets to the left's assumption that they know better than everybody else.

At the heart of the left's vision of the world is the implicit assumption that high-minded third parties like themselves can make better decisions for other people than those people can make for themselves.

That arbitrary and unsubstantiated assumption underlies a wide spectrum of laws and policies over the years, ranging from urban renewal to ObamaCare.

He goes on to provide a personal example. After he left home at the age of 17 he worked two jobs totaling 60 hours a week so that he could not only pay for necessities but save money. However, back then unemployment among black youths was a fraction of what it would become later when the economy prospered. That was because the left kept raising the minimum wage which had the effect of eliminating jobs. He goes on:

I don't know what I would have done if such busybody policies had been in effect back in 1949, and prevented me from finding a job before my last dollar ran out.

My personal experience is just one small example of what it is like when your options are very limited. The prosperous busybodies of the left are constantly promoting policies which reduce the existing options of poor people even more.

Saving the best for last, Sowell concludes with this:

Nothing is easier for people with degrees to imagine that they know better than the poor and uneducated. But, as someone once said, "A fool can put on his coat better than a wise man can put it on for him."

A great explainer he is.