Sleepless in Midland

That was fast -- Pink Lady Bandit arrested

There was a time when serial bank robbers were folk heroes, of sorts. Think Bonnie, Clyde, and Pretty Boy Floyd. Not any more.

Robbing banks the old fashioned way still gets attention. But these days it's a high risk, low yield game as the perps get popped rather quickly.

No sooner had I read that The FBI is hunting for a ‘Pink Lady Bandit’ who keeps robbing banks along the East Coast, an update showed up. ‘Pink Lady Bandit’ busted with accomplice in North Carolina.

A pink handbag earned her the moniker. Maybe that famous Arizona sheriff Joe who outfitted his prisoners in pink underwear could help pick out some fashionable prison outerwear for her.

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4:00 PM 7/30/2019

New Capitol One ad slogan -- Who's in your wallet

The Capitol One ad campaign in which a celebrity asks, "What's in your wallet?" probably won the ad agency accolades. But it soon began to annoy TV viewers who questioned why some celebrity had the right to ask that.

Now we learn that 100 million Capitol One customers' data may have been purloined. See Everything you need to know about the massive Capital One hack, but were afraid to ask.

So now the question should be, "Who is in my wallet?" And what is Capitol One going to do about it?

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5:41 AM 7/30/2019

Quote of the week from Holman Jenkins -- anybody with Trump's enemies couldn't be all bad

This quote is from Trump: A Brawler for Democracy:

A large part of the electorate so thoroughly defected from the authority of the established media and related elites that it thought anybody with Mr. Trump's enemies couldn't be all bad.

Here's more from Mr. Jenkin's article to provide some context:

As this column judged early and often, nobody needed to instruct Vladimir Putin's trolls to promote the Trump boomlet once it emerged in 2015. It was exactly the kind of democratic unseemliness the Kremlin's troublemakers exist to exploit. Whatever Russia's effect, it was trivial in the end. It did not conjure 63 million votes for Mr. Trump-votes that came to him despite an onslaught of innuendo, vilification and authentically disgraceful material covering every aspect of his life, from his sex habits to his racial attitudes, to his business practices and even his alleged eagerness to commit treason with Russia.

The real lesson is the one many continue to ignore: A large part of the electorate so thoroughly defected from the authority of the established media and related elites that it thought anybody with Mr. Trump's enemies couldn't be all bad.

Yeah. That's sounds about right.

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1:53 PM 7/28/2019

Researchers: Bystanders will more likely than not help an assault victim

This is encouraging. Bystanders will intervene to help victims of aggressive public disputes . Here's an excerpt summarizing the findings:

Bystanders will intervene in nine-out-of-ten public fights to help victims of aggression and violence say researchers, in the largest ever study of real-life conflicts captured by CCTV.

The findings overturn the impression of the "walk on by society" where victims are ignored by bystanders.

Instead, the international research team of social scientists found that at least one bystander -- but typically several -- did something to help. And with increasing numbers of bystanders there is a greater likelihood that at least someone will intervene to help.

A team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen, the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement and Lancaster University examined unique video recordings of 219 arguments and assaults in inner cities of Amsterdam (Netherlands), Lancaster (UK) and Cape Town (South-Africa).

Encouraging, yes. But it is probably best not to count on it. Note the cities in which the studies were done: Amsterdam, Lancaster, and Cape Town. Could Americans in inner cities expect the same?

There are other factors at play in the recent incidents that have hit the news. When NYPD officers were doused with water the other day, the bystanders may have been filling their own buckets to pile on.

And when a dozen teens attack someone, it would take a brave individual to try to stop a mob.

So circumstances make a big difference. Be that as it may, the premise that a passerby is more likely than not to be a good Samaritan is so comforting that it's believable because we want to believe it.

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3:22 PM 7/26/2019

Fox Friday 7-26-19

The foxes have abandoned the bait station -- hopefully for cooler climates and/or a better buffet.

Meanwhile, Lil Gray, the feline freeloader is the most frequent guest, as usual.

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11:07 AM 7/25/2019

Entitlement reform is a mirage in the desert of government discipline

The last U.S. president who attempted entitlement reform was George W. Bush. And Democrats whooped and hollered when he admitted defeat in a state of the union speech.

So what do we do when those tiny cries for fiscal responsibility are barely noticed? One of those voices, found in Invisible no more: Social Security will soon slide into insolvency is trying to bring some attention to the problems ahead. His introduction sums up the problem this way:

Some time next year, as the ranks of retirees swell, the Social Security system in the United States will pass an ominous tipping point and start the slide into insolvency.

For the first time in nearly four decades, the government program that provides retirement checks to older Americans will pay out more in benefits in 2020 than it takes in. That will force the program to dip into a rainy day fund that will be depleted in about 15 years.

The only solutions are tax hikes, reduced payments, raising the retirement age, or a combination of all of them. Will our lawmakers have the ability to solve this problem? The problem has been known about for some time, and lawmakers opted to procrastinate. The longer they wait, the worse the solution will feel to those affected.

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1:21 PM 7/22/2019

Modern politics is like professional wrestling used to be -- good guys vs villains

I started writing a blog post a couple of years ago titled "Dems search for boogie men and scapegoats, but we all do, too," but the post was never completed. It's time to revisit that concept as the parties try to put each other in the villain role.

The old pro wrestling shows were highly choreographed performances by skilled, bulked up, athletes. And most of the time the opponents were portraying either a good guy or a villain. Someone designated the good or bad status of the performers, and each was acting his assigned role. The fans ate it up.

Now we are witnessing the theatrics of Democrats and Republicans angling for votes in the upcoming election. Each side is trying to portray the good guy and pin the villain tag on the other. I was reminded of it today after seeing this: No One Really Wants to ‘Send Her Back’. Here's a excerpt:

All good populist demagoguery needs a villain. President Trump hardly has the market cornered on this. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton studied Alinskyite community organizing. The organizer, a self-styled renegade against The Establishment, is instructed to avoid abstractions when picking an opposition target. You’ve got to make it personal, to polarize the adversary in stark terms. Trump’s persona is to hit back harder than he is hit. No surprise, then, that he is a practitioner of this demagogic art, since he is also the Left’s No. 1 target.

Most Republican villains the Left selects (the Bushes, Mitt Romney . . .) respond by trying to prove they’re not really villains. This is a futile strategy. The demagogues making the accusation already know it’s not true. They do it because it always works. Or at least it used to. It’s different with the president, who is from the Leo Durocher School: “I come to play. I come to beat you. I come to kill you!” Trump vexes the Left because he revels in the mud wrestle. Sure, he craves admiration, but he wants to win more, and he doesn’t in the slightest mind winning ugly. In that the Left must see a lot of itself, but that doesn’t mean it has figured out an effective response.

Donald Trump is trying to put the villain role onto Democrats and making them identify with The Squad. It just might work.

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1:42 PM 7/21/2019

Nuts to you -- uh, for your health

I'm crazy about nuts -- cashews, pecans, almonds, walnuts, peanuts, etc. And nut butter? Yum!

So it's probably confirmation bias that drew me to this article: Study: A Daily Dose Of Nuts Could Be Key To Staying Sharp In Old Age. Key finding:

Conducted at the University of South Australia, the study found that consuming more than 10 grams of nuts per day led to improved mental functioning and thinking, and better memory and reasoning. The study consisted of 4,822 Chinese adults aged 55 or older.

Ten grams isn't much, though, hardly enough for a snack. But who knows? Maybe more is better.

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4:21 PM 7/20/2019

When NYT glorified Soviet diversity vs American Apollo mission they forgot about the Brezhnev Doctrine

The tweet reproduced on the right has circulated the blogosphere in the past few days.

The woke New York Times is glorifying Soviet diversity as a win over the U.S. to take a shot at those of us who might want to celebrate the anniversary of the moon landing. Amazingly it looks so much like what one might expect from Pravda.

A better comparison might have been to address the brutality of the Brezhnev Doctrine during that same time period. Soviet dissenters were declared mentally ill and subject to all sorts of punishments described as cures.

But foremost, let's recall the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 because their citizens were trying to sample freedoms that the Soviet system couldn't allow.

Wikipedia sums up the Brezhnev Doctrine this way:

The vague, broad nature of the Brezhnev Doctrine allowed application to any international situation the USSR saw fit. This is clearly evident not only through the Prague Spring in 1968, and the indirect pressure on Poland from 1980–81, but also in the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan starting in the 1970s. Any instance which caused the USSR to question whether or not a country was becoming a risk to international socialism, the use of military intervention was, in Soviet eyes, not only justified, but necessary.

Oh, but the diversity! In the eyes of the New York Times, freedom must take a back seat to diversity. But there's a bumper sticker idea for Putin: "Russia -- diversity is our strength. Don't like it? Turn yourself in."

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4:14 PM 7/19/2019

Fox Friday 7-19-19

This was the only fox who visited this past week. Hop
efully, the rest of them are alive and well and getting sustenance elsewhere.

Look at that long beautiful tail.

Lil Gray - this kitty is our most frequent visitor these days. He's was barely more than a kitten in the first visits -- probably abandoned. But now he is almost a full grown cat and as wild as a cat can be, assiduously avoiding any human contact whatsoever, except for the free food.

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3:30 PM 7/18/2019

Immigration isn't raising working population in relation to retirees

One of the main reason economists are in favor of increased immigration is because it means more consumers with a resulting boast to the economy. Furthermore, an aging population needs young workers to replace the retirees.

But a recent study produced by the Center for Immigration Studies concluded that immigration over the past almost three decades has not substantially increased the population of working age individuals in relation to the old timers. Here's their article on the topic: Can Immigration Solve the Problem of an Aging Society?:

This large and relatively young population of immigrants is a good test of the argument that immigration can solve the problem of an aging society. Our analysis shows that immigration over a 27-year period did add significantly to the working-age population, but it also increased the size of the dependent population (children and the elderly). As a result, it did not significantly increase the share of the population that is of working-age.

Add this into the mix: Immigrants Are Coming to America at Older Ages.

President Trump's suggestion that chain migration should be eliminated and a merit based immigration should be implemented is sounding very reasonable.

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3:22 PM 7/17/2019

Did Bernie Sanders have a Soviet KGB code name?

I recently read an enthralling book titled "The Spy and The Traitor" by Ben McIntyre which is the amazing story about KGB colonel Oleg Gordievsky who worked at the Soviet Embassy in Britain during the cold war and passed Soviet secrets to MI6.

Gordievsky brought to light information about a big league British Labour Party politician named Michael Foot. Turns out Foot was chummy with the Soviets who even had a code name for him: Agent Boot.

Agent Boot fed information to the Soviets and was paid well for it. But to be fair, he most likely didn't pass on any security secrets -- he didn't have access to British security secrets.

Back to the topic of this post, Bernie Sanders who, as it is well known, took his honeymoon in the Soviet Union. At the time, Sanders was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and any information he may have had for the Soviets probably would not have advanced the Soviet goals very much. He may have been a mere useful idiot, to use Lenin's phrase.

In any event, the KGB was always trying to hook up with western politicians. And they probably had a file on Sanders. One has to wonder whether they gave him his own code name. Agent Beach, perhaps?

Further reading on the subject:
Bernie Sanders’s Soviet Honeymoon;
How Britain’s prize double agent PROVED Michael Foot took cash from the KGB: Cold War 'super spy' Oleg Gordievsky reveals a bombshell disclosure about the ex Labour leader hidden deep in the Moscow archives; and
How A KGB Double Agent Saved Britain And Won The Cold War For The West.

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3:53 PM 7/16/2019

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Ilhan Omar

There's a song about prejudice in the ancient musical, "South Pacific" which contained the line, "You've got to be carefully taught," meaning that prejudice doesn't just happen without influence. That was a point that Ayaan Hirsi Ali made in a recent article titled, Can Ilhan Omar Overcome Her Prejudice?.

Ali told about how her Somali upbringing was filled with antisemitism, and that attitude permeated Somali culture and education. But there was this:

As for me, I eventually unlearned my hatred of Jews, Zionists and Israel. As an asylum seeker turned student turned politician in Holland, I was exposed to a complex set of circumstances that led me to question my own prejudices. Perhaps I didn’t stay in the Islamist fold long enough for the indoctrination to stick. Perhaps my falling out with my parents and extended family after I left home led me to a wider reappraisal of my youthful beliefs. Perhaps it was my loss of religious faith.

In any event, I am living proof that one can be born a Somali, raised as an anti-Semite, indoctrinated as an anti-Zionist—and still overcome all this to appreciate the unique culture of Judaism and the extraordinary achievement of the state of Israel. If I can make that leap, so perhaps can Ms. Omar.

But she readily acknowledges that Ilhan Omar is a very small part of the problem:

Yet that is not really the issue at stake. For she and I are only two individuals. The real question is what, if anything, can be done to check the advance of the mass movement that is Muslim anti-Semitism. Absent a world-wide Muslim reformation, followed by an Islamic enlightenment, I am not sure I know.

You've got to be carefully taught. But you've got to unlearn it on your own. As Ali says, "I was born in Somalia and grew up amid pervasive Muslim anti-Semitism. Hate is hard to unlearn without coming to terms with how you learned it."

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2:39 PM 7/15/2019

Robots -- is there anything they won't be able to do?

Andres Oppenheimer talked on C-Span the other day about his new book, The Robots Are Coming. He contends that much of what humans do these days will in the future be done by robots.

As an example, he told about a hotel he visited in Japan that had robots doing what humans typically did. Sure enough, there's an article online about such a hotel, quite possibly the one he talked about. See 'Strange' hotel, run by robots, opens near Tokyo; more to come. The clerk behind the counter was a robot disguised as a dinosaur -- hey, it's Japan.

In the meantime, here are a few other things new robots can do:

A Robot Leg Learned to Walk by Itself Without Programming, in a Scarily Short Time;
It’s Hard To Win At Poker Against An Opponent With No Tell; and
Study: Robots Capable Of Developing Prejudice On Their Own. (Gasp! Wait til the social justice warriors hear about that one!)

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2:08 PM 7/14/2019

Gun Silencers Tested

I received a very pleasant email from an individual asking that I post a link to this website. It's about firearm sound suppressors, titled Silencer Guide with Decibel Level Testing. There's lots of background information about suppressors as well as testing results.

Here's a flavor: "That’s an average reduction of 34 dB when using a silencer with a 9mm firearm."

Silencers aren't cheap, but on a home defense weapon one would pay for itself with a single indoor shot.

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4:52 PM 7/13/2019

Planning to retire in Texas? Check out this ranking

There are people moving to Texas at a steady rate, and that's not including all those migrants massing at the Southern border just looking for a better economic environment than the one they left, or as it's called now, asylum.

So it's interesting to see this comparison chart. It purports to rank the 50 states for retirement, not necessarily for job prospects. Titled These are the best and worst states for retirement it gives us a full ranking of each state with six categories.

Texas is ranked 17 overall. The other categories are affordability (24), crime (37), culture (50), weather (4), and wellness (13).

The two that jump out at this denizen of West Texas are culture (50) and weather (4). So by their measure, Texas ranks dead last for culture. Boy! Tell that to all those local community theaters and orchestras in the state. Actually, the article says this about culture:

Culture was calculated using the number of arts, entertainment and recreation establishments per capita, restaurants per capita and adults 65 and older per capita from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Well, I've always said that few come to Texas for the food. But they are actually measuring the number for restaurants, not the quality of the food.

What about the weather for which they ranked Texas number 4? At the time of this writing, our little spot in the sun is experiencing a temperature of 94°F which is hot, but it's a little bit cooler than it has been. Once the temp gets over 100 you can really feel it, and bringing the temperature down isn't cheap.

Texas ranked #37 in the crime category. But anyone planning to come to Texas to commit crimes should keep in mind that only 25% of Texas prisons are air conditioned. (Source.)

Anyway, it was an interesting chart. BTW, Nebraska ranked number 1 overall, so there you go.

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3:53 PM 7/12/2019

Fox Friday 7-12-19 -- impersonating a pointer

They came in pairs this night.

Impersonating a "pointer."

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1:53 PM 7/11/2019

Ross Perot's heroic rescue of employees from Iran

Ross Perot died the other day. He was a very accomplished man and a genuine hero. He is being remembered in the MSM today for his independent run for the presidency. But there's another story that should be remembered, and that's how Perot masterminded an escape from Iran of two of his employees following the Iranian revolution.

Here's the short hand version. Perot terminated a contract he had with Iran and removed all but two of his employees. Those two were put into a prison. Perot's escape plan involved his hand picked crew helping instigate a riot which stormed the prison and released all the prisoners. The two employees hooked up with Perot's crew and managed to escape beyond the Iranian border.

To read Perot's own account of the story see An Iran Rescue That Worked in WaPo. Alternate link.

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2:16 PM 7/10/2019

Spy tip of the week -- never ask for confirmation of something you already believe

I've been reading a book titled "The Spy and The Traitor" by Ben McIntyre, and it's a fascinating story about a KGB officer who worked at the Soviet Embassy in Britain in the cold war and passed top secret info to the Brits. A shocking block of information was about *Operation Ryan.

The short hand version of the tip is this: Never ask for confirmation of something you already believe. And it has application in a many areas. However, in this context, here's the entire paragraph and its application to the story told in the book:

In launching Operation RYAN, Andropov broke the first rule of intelligence: never ask for confirmation of something you already believe. Hitler had been certain that the D-day invasion force would land at Calais, so that is what his spies (with help from Allied double agents) told him, ensuring the success of the Normandy landings. Tony Blair and George W. Bush were convinced that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and that is what their intelligence services duly concluded. Yuri Andropov, pedantic and autocratic, was utterly convinced that his KGB minions would find evidence of a looming nuclear assault. So that is what they did.

McIntyre tells readers of the book that Andropov believed it, and his spies sought to prove it.

*Operation RYAN was the code name for raketno-yadernoya napadeniye which represented the erroneous belief by Yuri Andropov that the U.S. intended to launch a preemptive nuclear strike to obliterate the Soviet Union.

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4:04 PM 7/8/2019

honor system in asylum entry -- it depends on honesty

Last year there was news about how 82 out of 100 Medicaid recipients selected at random in Louisiana were found not to have qualified for all the benefits they received. But somehow the system was duped into believing that they did.  The border situation likely suffers from this same phenomenon.

Dishonesty among the new arrivals runs rampant, e.g., DNA tests reveal 30% of suspected fraudulent migrant families were unrelated. The asylum entry program could likely suffer the same fate experienced in Louisiana with the Medicaid recipients if those assigned to administer it aren't diligent.

With a backlog of more than 800,000 asylum claims the system is woefully behind, especially as federal judges rule that the asylum seekers cannot be categorically detained. Compounding the problem is that nearly 90% of those released in the U.S. don't show up for their hearings.

So now we learn that Rep. Veronica Escobar has sent staff into Mexico to coach asylum-seekers on how to game the program.

What is needed is some legislative reform, not legislators plotting to thwart the system. But with many politicians content with a huge overhanging issue ahead of an upcoming contentious election, it's easy to be pessimistic that anything meaningful will be done.

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2:58 PM 7/7/2019

Will China apply its social credit system to the Americans in their database

It's a well known secret that China is snooping on us. Just the other day we learned that Chinese hackers had pilfered metadata from cell phone networks in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Were they not hacking networks serving the U.S., or had those breaches just not yet been discovered or made public?

We go back a few years ago and recall the huge breach of the U.S. OPM data on thousands of current and retired federal workers. What became of that stolen private data?

At some point we need to reconcile the fact that the government of China has access to information on millions of U.S. citizens with China's new social credit system they are setting up for their own citizens. If they haven't done so already, they will surely be tempted to apply such a system to American citizens so they will know who is their friend, who is their foe, and who is persuadable.

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2:47 PM 7/6/2019

PETA says don't hurt chickens' feelings by naming road Chicken Dinner Road

This is one of those feel good stories that convince us that lefty groups like PETA shouldn't be taken seriously. Seems that they want a municipality to rename a rural road. Here's the news item: PETA asks Idaho town to rename Chicken Dinner Road.

Who knew chicken's could get their feelings hurt?

As for how the road got that name, see this one from 2013: The true story of Chicken Dinner Road. Spoiler -- the governor promised to come to a farm house for dinner if they would repair the road. From then on the road became known as "Chicken Dinner Road."

Mmm. chicken! Makes me want to make a run to America's favorite fast food restaurant, Chick-fil-A.

Meanwhile, if this is the worst chicken abuse PETA can find, then their job is done.

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4:33 PM 7/5/2019

Fox Friday 7-5-2019

The cats usually get to the food first and probably leave their scent behind.

And when a fox arrives, he approaches warily.

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Back yard trivia -- a water dish can serve as a volunteer rain gauge.

About an inch of rain fell between the time these two pics were taken. The water pan is behind the food dish.That's Lil Gray on the scene in both.

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2:50 PM 7/4/2019

Dems can do a Fouetté so fast it would make any ballerina envious

An about face. A Fouetté. Actually, a fouetté would be a complete 360, and Democrats sure can do them. Democrats' reaction to all those potential immigrants mobbing the border is a prime example.

Democrats were for it before they were against it. Anyone who watches Fox News Channel has probably seen the reruns of prominent Democrats proclaiming the need for a border barricade some years ago.

Then a 180 -- an about face on the issue, because it was an issue Donald Trump was trying to solve. It was called a "made up crisis." Trump wanted it, so Democrats opposed it. We know why, of course. A loss for Trump would better their chance of defeating him in 2020, or so they hope.

Then came another 180 after the msm exposed the border situation as a real crisis. Then Democrats screamed about the horrid conditions the prospective immigrants faced once they got across the border and into temporary shelters. Now the issue is the cruelty of Republicans. Never mind that Democrats spent so much time denying the issue that it made matters worse. It's as if it's all partisan politics with little compassion for actual human beings.

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2:09 PM 7/3/2019

Obama's fast and furious scheme mimicked KGB trick before Czech invasion in 68

So I started reading "The Spy and the Traitor" by Ben Macintyre about cold war spying, and ran across an interesting parallel near the very beginning.

In 1968 the KGB was planting fake news, posters, and other things to give the false impression that Czechoslovakia was about to erupt in a violent counterrevolution so that the Soviet crackdown that followed might appear justified.

Among the things the KGB did was this:

They distributed inflammatory posters calling for the overthrow of Communism, and planted arms caches, wrapped in packages conveniently marked "Made in the USA," which were then "discovered" and denounced as proof of an imminent insurrection.

Gosh, that sounds familiar. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Eric Holder did something similar in the early days of the Obama administration. It was called "Fast and Furious," and it too dealt with arms. You'll recall the history. Firearms were supposed to have been sold legally in the U.S. but somehow ending up in Mexico. The goal was to influence voters to accept stricter gun control laws. Fortunately, it backfired. But unfortunately, their aggressive illegal efforts ended up killing innocent people. That would have been an acceptable risk to the Soviet Union, and it was probably acceptable to the Obama administration. After all, as the famous dictator once said, "You have to break some eggs to make an omelet.

In any event, "The Spy and the Traitor" is a good book, so far. Hopefully, it will be as interesting as another of Ben Macintyre's books, Rogue Heroes about the start of Britain's SAS.

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2:40 PM 7/1/2019

Fake hate crimes on the rise while chronicler is victimized by real hate crime

This post started out about the rise of fake hate crimes. And by at least one account less than a third of hate crime allegations were genuine.

Of course, that's not to say that here are no hate crimes. And one that appears to have happened just in the past few days was against a chronicler of fake hate crimes. See Antifa Mob Viciously Assaults Journalist Andy Ngo at Portland Rally. Police arrested three. Hopefully they were the right three.

The rise of fake hate crimes is inspired by the potential for sympathetic media coverage. After all, had very many people ever heard of Jussie Smollett before he hit the headlines with his outrageous, but debunked, claim to hate crime victim status?

Meanwhile, those of us out here in flyover country have developed a knee jerk reaction to hate crime allegations which compels us to say, "Slow down, let's wait for the evidence."

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10:53 AM 6/30/2019