From Anguish Languish to English Language: Trains-lading debt Furry Tail avowed Beers into a Fairy Tale about Bears

 It's been decades since I first posted Furry Tails to this blog, and since most of my readers are from countries other than the one in which Anguish Languish was first published, I thought I'd do them the favour of translating this one into Standard English. Here, then, is Goldy Locks and the Three Bears:

Wants pawn term dare worsted ladle gull hoe hat search putty yowler coils debt pimple colder Guilty Looks. Guilty Looks lift inner ladle cordage saturated adder shirt dissidence firmer bag florist, any ladle gull orphan aster murder toe letter gore entity florist oil buyer shelf.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who had such pretty yellow curls that people called her Goldy Locks. Goldy Locks lived in a little cottage situated at a short distance from a big forest, and a little girl often asked her mother to let her go into the forest all by herself. 

“Guilty Looks!” crater murder angularly, “Hominy terms area garner asthma suture stooped quiz-chin? Goiter door florist? Sordidly NUT!”

“Wire nut, murder?” wined Guilty Looks, hoe dint peony tension tore murder’s scaldings.

“Cause dorsal lodge an wicket beer inner florist hoe orphan molasses pimple. Ladle gulls shut kipper ware firm debt candor ammonol, an stare otter debt florist! Debt florist’s mush toe dentures furry ladle gull!”

Wail, pimple oil-wares wander doe wart udder pimple dum wampum toe doe. Debt’s jest hormone nurture. Wan moaning, Guilty Looks dissipater murder, an win entity florist.

"Goldy Locks!" cried her mother angrily, "How many times are you going to ask me such a stupid question? Go to the forest? Certainly NOT!"

"Why not, mother?" whined Goldy Locks, who didn't pay any attention to her mother's scoldings.

"'Cause there's a large and wicked bear in the forest who often molests people. Little girls should keep away from that kind of animal, and stay out of that forest! That forest's much too dangerous for a little girl!"

Well, people always want to do what other people don't want them to do. That's just human nature. One morning, Goldy Locks disobeyed her mother and went into the forest. 

Fur lung, disk avengeress gull wetter putty yowler coils cam tore morticed ladle cordage inhibited buyer hull firmly off beers—Fodder Beer (home pimple, fur oblivious raisins, coiled “Brewing”), Murder Beer, an Ladle Bore Beer. Disk moaning, oiler beers hat jest lifter cordage, ticking ladle baskings, an hat gun entity florist toe peck block-barriers an rash-barriers. Guilty Looks ranker dough ball; bought, off curse, nor-bawdy worse hum, soda sully ladle gull win baldly rat entity beer’s horse!

'Fore long, this adventurous girl with her pretty yellow curls came to a modest little cottage inhabited by a whole family of bears--Father Bear (whom people, for obvious reasons, called Bruin), Mother Bear, and Little Boy Bear. This morning, all the bears had just left a cottage, taking little baskets, and had gone into the forest to pick blackberries and raspberries. Goldy Locks rang a door bell, but, of course, nobody was home, so the silly little girl went boldly right into the bear's house!

Honor tipple inner darning rum, stud tree boils fuller sop—wan grade bag boiler sop, wan muddle-sash boil, an wan tawny ladle boil. Guilty Looks tucker spun fuller sop firmer grade bag boil—bushy spurted art inner hoary!

“Arch!” crater gull, “Debt sop’s toe hart—barns mar mouse!”

Dingy traitor sop inner muddle-sash boil, witch worse toe coiled. Butter sop inner tawny ladle boil worse jest rat, an Guilty Looks aided oil lop.

Dingy nudist tree cheers—wan anomalous cheer, wan muddle-sash cheer, an wan tawny ladle cheer. Guilty Looks set darn inner ladle cheer, bushy worse toe bag ferret, ant soddenly bustard.

On a table in the dining room stood three bowls full of soup--one great big bowl of soup, one middle-sized bow, and one tiny little bow. Goldy Locks took her spoon full of soup from a great big bowl, but she spit it out in a hurry!

"Ouch!" cried the girl, "That soup's too hot--burns my mouth!"

Then she tried the soup in a middle-sized bowl, which was too cold. But the soup in a tiny little bowl was just right, and Goldy Locks ate it all up. 
Then she noticed three chairs--one enormous chair, one middle-sized chair, and one tiny little chair. Goldy Locks sat down in a little chair, but she was too big for it, and it suddenly busted. 

Clamming upper stars tutor beer’s bet-rum, Guilty Looks dish-cupboard tree bets—wan grade bag bet, wan muddle-sash bet, an wan tawny ladle bet. Failing torrid, shay flunker shelf honor ladle bet, an, jester cobbler menace letter, worse sunder slip an snorting.

Climbing up a stairs to the bear's bedroom, Goldy Locks discovered three beds--one great big bed, one middle-sized bed, and one tiny little bed. Feeling tired, she flung herself on a little bed, and, just a couple minutes later, was sound asleep and snoring. 

Inner ladle wile, donors offer cordage cam beck firmer barrier-pecking extradition, currying baskings fuller rash-barriers. Whinny entity darning rum, Fodder Beer stuttered snuffing an gruelling tomb shelf.

“Warts ban goring earn hair?” crumpled dole beer, “Conjure small psalm-sing deferent a boarder horse?”

“Crashes!” crater murder beer, ashy castor quack glands adder tipple, “Hose ban muddling wet debt sop?”

Ladle Bore Beer stuttered crayon.

“Jest locket mar ladle boiler sop—oil garbled dope! An locket mar itchy pitchy cheer—oil bustard!”

In a little while, the owners of the cottage came back from their berry-picking expedition, carrying baskets full of raspberries. When he entered the dining room, Father Bear started sniffing and growling to himself. 
"What's been going on here?" grumbled the old bear, "Can't you smell something different about the house?" 
"Gracious!" cried mother bear, as she cast a quick glance at the table, "Who's been meddling with that soup?"
Little Bear started crying. "Just look at my little bowl of soup--all gobbled up! And look at my itty-bitty chair--all busted!"

Locking adder bustard cheer, Murder Beer bay-gander gat historical, an stuttered hurling tore horsebarn:

“Brewing! Brewing! Way gut BURGHERS inner horse. HORSE BURGHERS! Quack! Coiler place! Wail, dun stun dare lacking end-bustle during nosing! Coiler Place Deportment, quack!”

“Harmer garner coiler Place Deportment wen way dun heifer toiler-fun?” resplendent Brewing, inner trampling verse. “Set darn, worming, an cape quoit! Yore oil-wares thanking dare burghers inner horse!”

Oiler shame, Brewing worse jesters scarred aster udders; infect, haze niece war shagging.

Finely, Fodder Beer gutter grade bag short-gum, Murder Beer gutter muddle-sash haunting raffle, an Ladle Bore Beer gutter tawny ladle pestle, an oiler beers crypt upper stars, ware Guilty Looks worse line honor bet, sunder slip an snorting. Herring door beers, shay weakened, lipped otter door windrow, an dished aware harm jesters fascist shagged scrabble.

Looking at a busted chair, Mother Bair began to get hysterical, and started howling to her husband:
"Bruin! Bruin! We got BURGLARS in the house, HOUSE BURGLARS! Quick! Call a police! Well, don't stand there like an imbecile doing nothing! Call a Police Department, quick!"
"How am I gonna call a Police Department when we don't have a telephone?" responded Bruin, in a trembling voice. "Sit down, woman, and keep quiet! You're always thinking there are burglars in the house! 
All a same, Bruin was just as scared as the others; in fact, his knees were shaking. 
Finally, Father Bear got a great big shotgun, Mother Bear got a middle-sized hunting rifle, and Little Boy Bear got a tiny little pistol, and all a bears crept up a stairs, where Goldy Locks was lying on a bed, sound asleep and storing. Hearing the bears, she wakened, leaped out of the window, and dashed away home just as fast as she could scramble. 

Oiler beers tar darner stars, an ntoe locker doers an windrows.

“Fodder,” aster ladle bore beer, finely, “Wart worse debt discussing crasher honor bet? Wart worse debt ogling ammonol wet oil debt yowler far honor had, an hoe dint half nor far atoll honor beck? Wart worse debt hobble lurking crasher, Fodder?”

Fodder Beer shuttered.

“Comb hair, mar bore. Heresy gut lessen furrier! Debt discussing crasher worsen HORMONE BANG! Kipper ware firm debt candor ammonol! Dare nor gut! Warts mar, are dun wander catcher goring entity florist oil bar yore shelf. Debt florist’s mush toe dentures furry ladle beer!”

All a bears tore down a stairs, and started to lock a doors and windows. 
"Father," asked a little boy bear, finally, "What was that disgusting creature on a bed? What was that ugly animal with all that yellow fur on her head, and who didn't have no fur at all on her back? What was that horrible looking creature, Father?"
Father Bear shuddered. 
"Come here, my boy. Here's a good lesson for your! That disgusting creature was an HUMAN BEING!
Keep away from that kind of animal! They're no good! What's more, I don't want to catch you going into the forest all by your self. That forest's much too dangerous for a little bear!"

I translated this as literally as I could, exposing the weakness of the author's use of articles: he failed to distinguish between the definite and indefinite articles, sometime even confusing them with possessive pronouns. I gave him as much latitude as I could in a strict translation (probably even more, by translating 'sop' as 'soup'); using dynamic equivalence-- along the lines of the NIV--would make such inconsistencies disappear entirely. And there could be some dialect of English out there in which they wouldn't be phonemically distinct anyway.

The Economic Inevitability of War

My heading reads, "People come to this blog seeking information on Albinism, the Miller kidnapping saga, the Duggar adultery scandal, Tom White's suicide, Donn Ketcham's philandering, Arthur and Sherry Blessitt's divorce, Michael Pearl's hypocrisy, Barack Obama's birth, or Pat and Jill Williams."
These are the main topics that have driven viewers to my blog for the last couple of decades, and I note that The Iran War is not listed as such a topic, even though I wrote on it prolifically back in 2012. It's ironic that what I expended so much effort on researching and predicting, when it finally happened, was such a non-event in the grand scheme of things that it's already been almost forgotten, less than a year later.
But such is the nature of war: every new war is fought because people forgot the lessons learned from the last one.
I grew up studying World War Two. The leaders of my day had all come up through that war, and one of the lessons they learned was that one typical cause of war is treating an enemy like a major trading partner, or a major trading partner like an enemy--especially when one swiches from one approach to the other.
Case in point, Japan. The US government disapproved of Japan invading China, all the while serving as a major trading partner, allowing Japan to build up a huge navy with steel purchased from America. But no problem, that navy wasn't being used to invade China, and the US wasn't at war with Japan. Right?
When the US finally decided that enough was enough and cut off Japan's supply of oil and steel, Pearl Harbor became inevitable.
But alas, the generation that learned that lesson is long gone from power, and the current generation are having to learn it anew for themselves. The West has spent the last three decades enriching Russia by buying their oil and gas--money which Putin stashed in Russia's war chest to get them through the inevitable sanctions that would follow his invasion of Ukraine--kind of like Japan frantically building the ships that would destroy Pearl Harbor in advance of the sanctions that would follow their invasion of China.
Ukraine, for their part, have largely removed the Russian threat--at least the conventional one. But what about China? Over the past three decades, the West moved most of its industrial facilities to this communist nation to save money, which means that now, should they decide to sanction us, we would be as outmatched economically as the American South was when they launched the War Between the States.
This is why wars are inevitable. The love of money drives free people to enable the leaders of enslaved countries, and greed for land drives the leaders of enslaved countries to invade their neighbors.
Free people could, should they so choose, live without supporting dictatorial regimes. But they can always live a little better when they do. But alas, dictatorial regimes are never content to enslave their own poeople; they are also driven to conquer their neighbors. So the cycle of: 1) Build up the enemy's resources while pretending they are not an enemy; 2)Finally admit they are an enemy and cut off supplies to their war chest right about the time it's full anyway; 3) Suffer attack and loss from the very enemy you enabled to infict it; runs its course at least once in every mortal lifetime.
I've lived long enough to see Russia go from a mortal enemy, to a major trading partner, and back to a mortal enemy again, with American-made missles soon to rain down destruction on Russia for the first time in their mutal history. Such is the inevitability of war.

What is Privilege? Does The White Man have it?

The short answer is that the White Man doesn't have privilege, but homeless illegals and Jussie Smollett do. The long answer follows a definition.

Privilege is defined as "a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group." But the modern use of that term implies something more: privilege implies being a member of a group that gets special treatment because of who they are, not because of what they have accomplished.

For an example, we begin with the special immunity granted to homeless illegal immigrants by the Sanctuary City movement, exemplified by Denver's odd move to decriminalize public defecation.  The problem was not so much that homeless aliens without official permission to reside in the US were relieving themselves on public sidewalks, but that when they were arrested and convicted of such behaviour, they risked automatic repatriation under the US federal government's new policy of expelling criminal aliens. By reducing the offence from a misdemeanour to an infraction, the Democrats who control Denver's city government were able to make an end-run around this policy, and keep their Sanctuary City status at the expense of clean streets and sidewalks. In Denver, homeless illegals have privilege.

How about Jussie Smollett? In the early morning hours of January 29, 2019, Chicago Police received a report from Jussie that he had been assaulted on the sidewalk of his upscale Chicago neighborhood. Now, here is were Jussie's privilege kicked in. Chicago police receive hundreds of reports of assault every day, the vast majority of them far more serious than what Jussie reported. But Jussie was a celebrity, even claiming that he was identified by, and targeted for, his celebrity. So instead of sending him off to have his superficial wounds checked out at the hospital and filing his report in the bottom drawer, the Chicago Police force went into high gear. They notified the FBI. They began the exhaustive process of viewing footage from every surveillance camera that may have caught the alleged incident on tape. They began a publicity campaign to keep the public appraised of any progress in the case. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were invested in tracking down the attackers and bringing them to justice. In the end, Jussie turned out to have fabricated the whole thing, paying a couple of his buddies to act out the attack. Again, privilege kicked in. For weeks into the investigation, Jussie continued to keep up his story and demand justice. Democrats around the country, including several Presidential candidates, circled the wagons to defend him and share in his outrage. It was only when the Chicago Chief of Police read a scathing statement accusing Jussie of choreographing a hateful fraud that was a discredit to everything he should have stood for that the house of cards finally began to wobble and sway. Jussie was protected at every stage by his privilege, and that privilege means that although he's committed any number of crimes, up to and including federal Mail Fraud in the process of mailing himself white powder, he may well never end up seeing the inside of a prison cell for it. At far greater levels and to a far greater extent than your average Joe Homeless in Denver caught with his pants down, Jussie Smollett has privilege.

But privilege extends much farther than even that. Look at Ted Kennedy, whose father started out with a small degree of privilege as the son of a rising Boston politician, forced his way into Harvard despite failing grades in high school, and leveraged his way into a political dynasty so powerful that not even Ted's obvious culpability in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne could cost him his Senate seat. Joseph Kennedy himself was not above murder to consolidate his political power; an underage prostitute whom he hired to accuse a competitor of rape died under mysterious circumstances just as she was about to come clean with her story. As a result, the competitor was ruined, and Joe got an even bigger corner on the movie industry. Through an endless succession of such dirty deals, Joe was able to enlarge his empire to the point that he could coerce an editor to put his son Jack on the cover of Time Magazine, helping to ensure his success in the upcoming election. The Kennedy brothers had privilege.

But the White Man does not have privilege. I was turned down by the elite university to which I applied, even though I was far more qualified academically then either Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. or Thomas Watson Jr.--the least-qualified-ever president of IBM--neither of whom could have even gotten into college without privilege. I don't have a father who gets invited to the White House. I can't call upon the vast resources of a metropolitan police force to investigate a minor complaint, or expect to escape prison if my complaint turns out to be a hoax. I can't even expect to get away with relieving myself against one of the signs at the St. Louis Transit Station stating for all to see that public urination is a crime. Unlike homeless illegals, sons of politically powerful people, and self-important TV stars, I don't have privilege.

Can a mathematical formula improve my chances of winning the lottery? and other relevant questions

I've written before under the labels of greed and deception, but my topic today is specifically on Jared Wilson the lottery winner. Run a search on that character string, and you are likely to find that the first few hits--even those claiming to review the program--are nothing more than links back to the infomercial that first introduced me to Jared. In other words, this is a highly sophisticated scam; even searching on 'Lotto Destroyer Scam' takes you back to the exact same site. Someone has gone to a tremendous amount of work to part you and your $147.

So the question: Does it Work? still needs to be addressed. Which I will now do, as a public service and without any requests for remuneration.

First of all, you need to know that there is no such person as Jared Wilson who won the lottery six times. That's just a hook to get you to the website, where you go on to read that 'Jared' actually wins the lotto at least once a month.

Stop right there. If he's pulling in so many thousands of dollars in lotto winnings, why would he share his secret with you, even if you pay him $147? If his system is guaranteed to turn you into a winner (as he says it is), then why isn't he charging at least $50,000 for it, to forestall his future loss in winnings as the pot is further diluted every time someone else starts claiming a regular share of it?

One thing we know, 'Jared' isn't the mathematician that he claims to be, or he would have realized this.  Instead, 'Jared' is a shrewd psychologist, one who well understands The Gamblers Fallacy and knows 'he' can make way more more money by selling a scam than by playing the numbers.

We also know that 'Jared' has a lot of legal insight, as 'he' is running a scam that won't work for the majority of people that use it. Were his product actually refundable, you can bet he wouldn't stay in business for long. Obviously the process of getting one's money back is about as easy as winning the lottery without using the system. They know way more about keeping your money than you do about getting it back.

One more thing. 'Jared' obviously worked hard to sound like an American, but there's just a enough broken English in his copy to reveal an overseas connection. Not to mention the total disconnect in logic that a Pakistani gas station owner would be mad at him for winning the lottery five times! I guess 'Jared' expects you not to know that whoever sells a winning ticket gets paid right along with the purchaser.

So, yes, you read it here. Jared Wilson (or whatever he's calling himself this week) and the entire Lottery Destroyer is nothing more than a scheme to part you and your money. Lotteries don't hate him, they love him--he's bringing in a lot more business as people throw good money after bad before finally realizing that they were duped.

Oh, and those people who do win back-to-back lotteries? There's a reason for their success, and it's a simple mathematical formula: use your million in winnings to buy another million tickets, and you're statistically guaranteed to win again. Sadly, most lotto winners use their winnings to keep right on playing--such is the nature of an addiction.

Want to get rich, and stay rich? Then don't buy lottery tickets or lotto winning schemes; sell them instead.

The same could be said for membership in multi-level marketing schemes, as they work pretty much the same way. But at least you get a hopefully useful product for your pains.

UPDATE MARCH 2018:
It turns out that Lottery Works do know how to win multiple times, and have done so, especially in Iowa. But they don't sell their secret numbers--they give them to friends. Usually.

Indiana Revival Report: Day 46

Baptisms are being held every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. Kyle took the day off to celebrate his oldest daughter's tenth birthday in Dallas, so he didn't do any of them. He encourages whoever is discipling the believer to be the one to baptize him, so there were a lot of females baptizing females. He'd also encouraged people to reach out to their own family, so there was an elderly Puerto Rican candidate whose relative had led him to Jesus. Due to his frail physical condition, he was provided effusion in the place of baptism.

As I had predicted, a local government official was brought in to speak--the mayor, having been invited by his ex-next-door neighbor. His response to the request to share prayer requests for his city was a 20-minute prepared speech that hit on every single one of the Democrat talking points. What would Jesus think about a family losing their house because one of its members didn't have a health insurance, etc. But the striking thing was that, after basically apologizing for being a politician in a room full of Christians, he admitted that he considers himself to be a Christian, then reeled off a long list of offices he has held in his church; some of which he had to give up to serve as mayor, but--not to worry, said his pastor, Phyllis--he was serving God and the church through the government.

I note that this is a pretty solid chord struck whenever a Democrat speaks to a crowd of Christians. Republicans, on the other hand, tend to harp on the need to bring America back to its Christian roots. Democrats would respond that in their opinion, America is never more reflective of true Christianity than when it is being led by--let's face it--unbelievers.

What this revival really needs is for the local sheriff to stand up and say that due to their efforts, his deputies have a lot less to do. That hasn't happened yet, but when it does, I hope that even the mayor would be grateful. He didn't mention that none of the deputies in this county earn what any liberal would consider a living wage--something the sheriff is trying to change, but hasn't been able to push past the Republican-controlled county government.

Tom White and the Unanswered Questions

I've been aware of the Voice of the Martyrs since before it even went by that name. I read Richard Wurmbrand's autobiography back in the 1970's. It wasn't until the late 90's, though, that I got on their mailing list, and found out that Wurmbrand--founder of Jesus to the Communist World-- had retired, and VOM was being headed by Tom White. During the first decade of this century (following the deaths of both Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand), VOM experienced astounding fourfold growth--doubling just in the first year. That kind of success can go to someone's head--and a few years ago I noticed with dismay that Tom White was pulling in an income well into the six figures. That couldn't be right, I thought. But I said nothing.

I remember the day, less than a year ago, when I received an email stating that Tom White had died.
Odd, I thought. It doesn't say when he died, or where, or what of. Those details, when they did begin to come, were very painful.

Walter Thomas White, the executive director of The Voice of The Martyrs, killed himself in a VOM warehouse, overdosing on alcohol and sleeping pills in order to avoid prosecution for molesting a 10-year-old girl.

Now, it took more than four months for even this much information to be released by the Oklahoma Medical Examiner. And by then, the case had long since been closed by the Bartlesville Police Department, who had overseen the investigation.

Who is the Bartlesville Chief of Police? Tom Holland--the Board Secretary for the Voice of the Martyrs. That alone should raise some major questions--such as:

-Who warned Tom White that he was the subject of a police investigation? According to all published reports, he took his life upon hearing that he was being investigated--before so much as a warrant had been requested. This is a huge question that no one is even asking, much less answering.

-What was Tom Holland's role in the investigation? From what I've read, there's very little that goes on in his department that he's not involved in. He was voted one of the Worst Bosses in America for the year prior to this investigation.

-What sort of inside connections did Tom White have with other local government agencies?

-Were Tom White's office and personal computers searched for child pornography? It's inconceivable that a 64 year old man with a fondness for 10 year old girls wouldn't also have a pornography addiction.

Some other questions also need to be asked: Why did VOM loan $35,000 to Vice President for Domestic Operations Stephen John Lindquist, convicted embezzler? Besides "to restructure a burden that could impact his duties and service to VOM?"

Embezzlement By Clerk Or Servant 10.01 Y Int. Probation 04/14/2004 04/14/2014 48172-E TXJR

Why it's not generally considered a good idea for a corporation to loan money to one of its officers:

The Church Universal and Triumphant, founded by Mark Prophet and carried forward after his death by his wife, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, has also suffered from such tactics. Gregory Mull, a San Francisco building designer, became a member of the Church in 1974 at the age of 57. He moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to work for the Church, which loaned him $37,000 during his relocation. He signed promissory notes for the loans. He resigned after only eight months on Church staff. In an attempt to get the money repaid, the Church filed suit against Mull in 1981. Mull countersued for fraud, duress, undue influence, involuntary servitude, assault, extortion and intentional infliction of emotional distress — asking damages of $253 million. The case came to trial in 1986. During the trial, Mull was allowed to present numerous emotionally charged assertions to the court. While the Church was allotted one day in the four-week trial to present evidence of the promissory notes, the remainder of the testimony was devoted to putting the practices and beliefs of the Church on trial.

Inflamed by Mull’s statements, the jury found against the Church and Elizabeth Clare Prophet and, unbelievably, awarded $1.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages to Mull. The injured party — the Church — was not only put on trial, but found guilty, and denied the recourse for which it had turned to the justice system.

Something is definitely rotten in Bartlesville, OK. And it's going to keep getting stinkier until someone gets to the bottom of it.

UPDATE MARCH 2013

Two things have happened recently to bring hope to this mess: I've received word from someone who is working to get to the bottom of the garbage in Bartlesville, and I've come across the website of someone who never knew, until it was also too late, that her own son was under the same deadly bondage that killed Tom White. She's working tirelessly to educate the public against this menace, before it takes even one more life:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130713032126/http://icouldhaveneverguessed.info/

UPDATE JULY 2014
Although this information was available on the web at the time I posted, I've only now discovered the identity of the victim. I'm not 100% sure, since the child in question didn't actually turn 10 until Tom White's obituary was posted, so I'll not reveal her name here--only comment that identifying her answered at least one question, and gave some clues as to a few others.

UPDATE AUGUST 2014
VOM took about a 20% hit in donations in 2012. I expect the same to follow in 2013, once reports are out.

UPDATE MAY 2015
Not so; reported income went up almost $2 million in 2013--enough to cover their advertising budget.

UPDATE NOVEMBER 2017
A lot of comments came in recently, on of which was a retraction of the previous one--so I didn't approve either one. But this would be a good time to give the name of an organisation I highly recommend in lieu of Voice of the Martyrs: Asia Harvest. They have no multi-million dollar headquarters--the founder runs it out of his home office. They have no highly paid felons on staff--their staff are all volunteers. And yet they have distributed over ten million Bibles to China's underground church--and supported thousands of native missionaries. 100% of each gift goes directly to the work.

Crash alert!

 
From what my sources are telling me, it appears that Congress' inability to pass a budget means that the bond market is headed for a freefall.

Stand by for some wild gyrations in the price of everything subject to such.

Crooked Lawyers in the White House

So far, America has had two husband-wife teams of lawyers make it to the White House as President and First Lady (and, very nearly, as President and First Philanderer). But while they may have studied law--and even, in some cases, taught it--neither Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, or Michelle Obama are licensed lawyers today. Why not? Well, because they were crooks and had to turn in their licenses or face prosecution. What was Michelle Obama's crime? Insurance fraud. And her husband is  the one bringing us universal health insurance coverage--the only way he could think of to end the patient-dumping practice his wife was engaging in when she lost her law license.

UPDATE October 2014
Snopes claims there's nothing odd about both Obamas voluntarily giving up their rights to legal practice. The defense would have been a bit more credible had they been able to show a single other example of a millionaire couple voluntarily putting their law licenses into inactive status.

Murdoch the Octopus: The money trail behind the media smears of vaccine truthers

It's been over a year since I posted an article on vaccines, and new information continues to come out, both from the US government and vaccine pushers on the one hand, and media investigators on the other. This article in the Vaccine Truth Newsletter reveals that there was corporate pressure directly behind the smearing in The London Times of Dr. Andrew Wakefield's research into effects from the MMR triple vaccine. It also reveals that vaccines now incorporate DNA in a way that suggests genetic modification of an entire populace through the mandatory vaccination of their children.

The medical side of the argument is highly controversial, but no one can deny what happens when you "follow the money." Summing up the article is this excerpt from near the bottom of the piece:

Now here’s where all the above ties up into a huge red bow: Rupert Murdoch has hefty financial interests and ties to the pharmaceutical industry, international banking connections, and stock market power brokers who hold the world’s financial interests in their ‘covetous’ hands. Newton says that Members of this group, along with George Soros-directed assets, virtually monopolized the genetics industry during the 1990s, culminating in the corporate privatization of the Human Genome Project. Of course, everyone knows that George Soros is a backer of U.S. President Barack Obama’s agenda.

Topping off all this is the fact that Rupert Murdoch’s son, James—heir apparent, according to Newton, oversees GlaxoSmithKline, another major H1N1 vaccine maker. Many more of Rupert Murdoch’s business associates sit as members of the boards of directors of Merck & Company; Kolberg, Kravitz, Robertz & Company (KKR); and even one of KKR’s top echelon personnel was one of the founders of the Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform (CAHR) now known as “ObamaCare.”

It sounds like Rupert Murdoch is akin to an octopus with tentacles far reaching and some very deeply, especially in pharmaceuticals and the global media, i.e., radio, television, newspapers, and other print media. Let’s see how far the inquiry goes into the British cell hacking fiasco and if it will cross the pond into the United States. If what we are hearing about what went on at his newspapers multiplies, we can only imagine what has been going on behind closed doors in the world of pharmaceuticals.

And, I suppose that it is neither here nor there that Rupert Murdoch's publishing empire is also behind the latest edition of the NIV.

Playing Monopoly with William: a lesson on The Federal Debt Limit

As a boy, I had a friend named William whom I did a lot with. It wasn't always fun for me, though, because William--being over a year older than me and much more forceful in personality--seemed to always get his way. And it wasn't just that we always did what he wanted to do: he seemed to come out on top in whatever game we played.

Take Risk, for instance. No matter how I rolled the dice, I never won a game. I'd put 26 armies on the border of my continent, only to have him mass 56 armies against me. Then there was Monopoly. How he always ended up with 2 hotels on both Broadway and Park Place I could never figure out--nor could I avoid the inevitable landing on one or the other.

Since our Monopoly games tended to end as soon as this happened, William came up with an ingenious way to keep going: A Credit Line from the Bank. All I had to do was scribble "IOU $1200" on a piece of paper and put it in the bank (which didn't usually have enough cash on hand to handle the transaction otherwise). William would then add the credit slip to his pile of cash and the game would go on. This was great! But those two hotels were still on each of the dark blue properties, and it was only a matter of time before I landed on them again. Around about the time I hit $18,000 in debt, I realized that I was only postponing the inevitable. I could continue to borrow imaginary money forever, but I could never win against William. I finally conceded the game--relieved that my debt, huge as it was, didn't really exist.

This is exactly the situation that the US Congress faces this week. Seventy-eight times in the past fifty-one years, they have signed off on yet another IOU and slipped it in the bank, only to forestall the inevitable default that comes from continuing to live beyond their means. Yet they keep coming around to land on Park Place after the next election, necessitating another round of funny money to keep the whole system afloat. They can keep on raising the debt ceiling for a while, but unlike my friend William, America's creditors aren't going to let the game go on forever. Sooner or later, they're going to call the game--and request payment in specie.

America's Day of Reckoning is coming--and the longer Congress puts off dealing with it, the more it's going to hurt when they finally do. UPDATE JUNE 2012 Well, it's just about time for another IOU, and we are even further away from achieving fiscal responsibility. Unlike my Monopoly games, however, this cannot continue forever: sooner or later will come a day of reckoning, as it has come to every other fiat money system the world has ever created. But there's another application to be made from my Monopoly madness. Were I an ardent evolutionist, I could have continued the game indefinitely, setting the board carefully aside each night and picking it back up the next morning--at least until summer vacation was over (it rained a lot that year and there wasn't much to do outside). Every time I rolled the dice, I could have devoutly repeated the mantra, "Given enough time, anything can happen," but the only change would be the depth of the hole into which I would have continued to sink.

The myth of respectability

About one hundred years ago, Bible Institutes began to crop up in the United States of America. The impetus for starting them was to provide pastors with a biblical foundation for ministry, now that the mainline universities had more or less all switched to teaching modernism in their seminaries. There was no thought of accrediting the institutes, their founders having seen all to well what happened when religion became respectable.

Fifty or more years passed, and the federal government began getting involved in education. As more and more federal money flowed into the coffers of Bible Institutes, they came under more and more pressure to obtain certification as bona fide institutions of higher learning. Bigger schools had already long since started on the route of Bible Institute -> Denominational Bible College -> Nondenominational Liberal Arts College -> University. The smaller schools had all folded or been forced to forgo federal funding by 1995.

So here were are, with ministry students once again being forced to choose between a formerly Christian University that teaches evolution and social Darwinism, or a small struggling unaccredited institute run out of a local church. So short has been the turnaround, that most students at the Universities are unaware that their own school may have fit the latter description during the very lifetime of some of their professors.

But there is a lesson to be learned in all of this, and we need look no further than Sweden, where the government has been involved in education as long as there has been a State Church. The Örebro Theological Seminary never aspired to be a University, but did seek accreditation as soon as it became available. So respectable was their curriculum that the public schools sought for teachers of religion from among their graduates.

But all that started to change in 2009.

According to Christianity Today, “The Swedish National Agency for Higher Education reported in June that state-supported schools must favor religious studies over theological education.” The government agency is in charge of inspecting and promoting higher education in the Scandinavian country, evaluates universities and colleges, conducts quality assessments, and takes initiatives in updating teaching methods.

Higher education in Sweden is free of charge as the school system is largely financed by taxes. A result of the policy change is that “students could ultimately lose government allowances, a necessity in the Swedish system of higher education,” according to Christianity Today.

So, the power of the purse always comes in to play. The National Board of Higher Education in Sweden decided that the course of education at the Seminary was--of all things--too religious. No matter how we cut it, true religion just doesn't get respect. In order to keep the kroner coming, the Seminary had to bring in more classes on religious criticism and de-certify practical courses like Homiletics. So we are back full circle: the aspiring preacher must now take an unaccredited class in order to learn his trade. He may as well go to school in a Log Cabin. But he'd better hope it doesn't become the next Princeton University and Theological Seminary.

Kids--ever tempted to run away from home? Don't do it--just sue for an increase in allowance.

Spanish courts recently have awarded several 20-something sloths hundreds of euros a month in child support--from their married parents.

Yes, that's right. You have a constitutional right to be supported financially by your parents as an adult, provided they're suckers enough to let you keep living with them.

What can I say.

Monowi, Nebraska: Requiem for the small town

Monowi had always been a small town. But it contained, within living memory, a school, a church, and a general store. And a tavern, of course--the only business still operating. Elsie Eiler, the proprietor, is also the town's mayor. This gives her the unique privilege of renewing her own liquor licence every year.

You see, in addition to being Monowi's mayor, she's also the town treasurer and tax collector. As well as being the only resident taxpayer. She is, in short, the sole resident of Monowi, and has been ever since her husband died several years ago.

What happened to the thriving town of Monowi to shutter its store, its church, and its school? Why are all its streets overgrown with grass? Why have all of its houses been left to collapse, many of them still containing the possessions of their last inhabitants? And why is the only business still standing a tavern?

We can trace the demise of this town back to the excessive regulations that have gradually made everything in town unprofitable, except getting people drunk. And oh--by the way--state regulations make it so unprofitable to transfer Elsie's liquor licence that she's stuck with running the tavern herself until the day she dies. So when she dies, so dies the town. The irony is that her tavern has no lack of customers; they just, for one reason or another, don't happen to live in Monowi.

Nebraska can be a hard place to make a living--especially for farmers. The Amish who followed Yost Yoder from Juniata County, Pennsylvania out to Gosper County, Nebraska 130 years ago found that out. The dry plains just didn't yield the kind of harvests they were used to, and within 25 years they had all packed up and moved back to Pennsylvania, where even to this day their hard-working and simple-living descendants are known as "Nebraska Amish."

They were the first Amish to leave Nebraska, but they weren't the last.

More farmers moved into Nebraska in the years leading up to World War One. Railroads crisscrossed the state, making it possible for farmers to sell their harvests to consumers thousands of miles away. Those who could hang in there through the lean years would make it all back, and more, when they harvested a bumper crop with the latest machinery. But the War brought many changes to Nebraska, including the first in a series of regulations that drove hard-working farmers and merchants from the rural areas, and from the state as a whole.

It started with the decree from the Nebraska State Council of Defense that banned teaching foreign languages in all schools in the state. This draconian measure, unthinkable today, was intended to inspire patriotism in the populace. A year later, they even banned the use of foreign languages in churches.

The Amish had the unfortunate distinction of not only using German in their church services, but also teaching it in their schools (so that their children would know how to read their German Bibles). Despite the fact that they had come to America for the very reason of escaping service in the Kaiser's armies, they were now labeled--for purely linguistic reasons--as enemy sympathisers. When the government moved in to shut down their parochial schools, the peace-loving Amish had had enough. To a man, they left the state--and have never returned, except to visit the graves of their ancestors. No one noticed it at the time, but the depopulation of rural Nebraska had already begun.

The War was now over; the State Council of Defense disbanded--but the regulations, as they always do, continued to mount. With the Amish gone, tractors began moving in. Mechanization now made it possible for one man to do the work of dozens. Children were no longer indispensable farm hands, but liabilities. The country schools that the Amish had left the state to avoid attending withered and died for lack of students to fill them. And as the schools closed, it was no longer feasible for families to live in the rural areas. Commutes to school stretched out to fifty, sixty, even seventy miles.

Back in Washington, D.C., legislators were reaching deeper and deeper into the pockets of Americans across the country, but spending that money disproportionately in urban districts. At the same time, legislators in Lincoln continued, year after year, to add to the ever-burdening list of regulations that everyone in the state, urban or rural, had to follow. It just wasn't cost-effective anymore to operate small stores and groceries. Selling raw milk became illegal, putting small dairies and the farms that supplied them out of business. Before long there was hardly anything that could be done profitably in the sparsely settled rural areas, except for getting people drunk. The demand for that never went away--not even in the cities, where the growing populations depended more and more on the largesse of the population at large. Driven from downtown by the rising crime rate, business and employed citizens moved to the suburbs.

Such is the foreseeable end of the overregulated populace: abandoned, decaying small towns and city centers, inhabited by hopeless drunks. EDIT SEPT 2024: Here is a rare YouTube video featuring Elsie, still the only resident of Monowi.

The Pirates of Penance--or not

Department of Justice Press Release November 24, 2010
United States Attorney's Office Eastern District of Virginia
Five Somalis Convicted of Piracy Against USS Nicholas
NORFOLK, VA—A federal jury in Norfolk, Va., has convicted five men from Somalia of engaging in piracy and related offenses in their attack on the USS Nicholas, marking what is believed to be the first piracy trial conviction in the United States since 1820.
Neil H. MacBride, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Janice K. Fedarcyk, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's New York Field Office; Alex J. Turner, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Norfolk Field Office; and Mark Russ, Special Agent in Charge of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) in Norfolk, made the announcement after the verdict was accepted by United States District Judge Mark S. Davis.
"Today marks the first jury conviction of piracy in more than 190 years," said U.S. Attorney MacBride. "These five Somali pirates were convicted of an armed assault on the high seas against what they thought was a merchant vessel, but turned out to be a U.S. Navy frigate engaged in counter-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa. Modern-day pirates not only threaten human lives but also disrupt international commerce by extorting hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom payments. Today's conviction demonstrates that armed attacks on U.S.-flagged vessels are crimes against the international community and that pirates will face severe consequences in U.S. courts."
"Ensuring maritime security on the world's seas continues to be a high priority for NCIS as part of the international law enforcement community," said NCIS Special Agent in Charge Russ. "NCIS is forward deployed with U.S. naval forces and is able to deliver a unique blend of capabilities to help deter and prosecute pirates."
After nine days of trial, the jury convicted the five men—Mohammed Modin Hasan, Gabul Abdullahi Ali, Abdi Wali Dire, Abdi Mohammed Gurewardher, and Abdi Mohammed Umar, all from Somalia—of piracy, attack to plunder a vessel, act of violence against persons on a vessel, assault with a dangerous weapon, assault with a dangerous weapon on federal officers and employees, conspiracy to use firearms during a crime of violence, and multiple firearm counts, including the use of a rocket propelled grenade (RPG). They face a mandatory penalty of life in prison when they are sentenced on March 14, 2011.
The Somalis were indicted on April 21, 2010, and were later charged with additional crimes in a 14-count superseding indictment on July 7, 2010. According to evidence and trial testimony, the five men left Somalia in search of a merchant ship to pirate. They used a larger ship full of supplies, along with two smaller vessels loaded with assault weapons and a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) that served as attack boats. On April 1, 2010, Hasan, Ali, and Dire boarded one of these smaller vessels and set out to pirate what they believed to be a merchant ship, while Gurewardher and Umar remained onboard the large ship to maintain that ship during the attack.
Ali and Dire each carried an assault weapon, and Hasan carried an RPG. They opened fire on a ship, which they later discovered was the USS Nicholas, an Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate homeported in Norfolk, Va.
The piracy conviction and the conviction for the use of a destructive device (an RPG) in relation to a crime of violence both carry a mandatory penalty of life in prison. In addition, they are facing a maximum of 10 years in prison for attack to plunder a vessel; a maximum of 20 years in prison for conspiracy and an act of violence against persons on a vessel; a maximum of 10 years in prison for assault with a dangerous weapon in the special maritime jurisdiction; a maximum of 20 years in prison for assault with a dangerous weapon on federal officers and employees; a maximum of 20 years in prison for conspiracy to use firearms during a crime of violence; a maximum of 10 years in prison for one count of use of a firearm during a crime of violence, a second firearm count carries an additional 25 years—to equal 35 years—in prison.
The investigation was conducted by the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph DePadilla, John Davis, and Benjamin L. Hatch from the Eastern District of Virginia and Trial Attorney Jerome Teresinski from the Department of Justice's National Security Division prosecuted the case on behalf of the United States.
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/vae.  http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov  http://pacer.uspci.uscourts.gov.

Here it is the end of November, and my longsufferring readers have gone three weeks without a post from The White Man. I shall try to organise my thoughts to respond to this supposedly historic event.

Notice, as in all cases of violent crime, the battery of charges pressed against the suspects. It is quite ridiculous that in addition to serving life in prison for the act of piracy itself, they will serve an additional (?!) 115 years for 'related charges'. It appears that 'life in prison' is essentially a meaningless sentence.

The money spent to prosecute these men has by now no doubt exceeded several million dollars. Housing them for the duration of their sentence will cost several million more. We taxpayers would have been better off if the naval officers of the USS Nicholas had invited them on board, escorted them to a stateroom, and given them an all expense paid cruise back to America, where they could have been put up in a first-class motel and privately tutored in English 16 hours a day until such time as they could understand it well enough to join the Navy as deck seamen. Eight weeks of Boot Camp would be plenty enough punishment for their crimes, with the understanding that if they washed out they would get a ride back to Somalia in the brig of the next warship headed that way. Should they graduate, they could then earn their keep chipping rust, slapping on paint, and standing watch for the next four years. With the money they would earn, they could pay cash for a house in the Somali section of a US city and settle down to a life of plenty.

Instead, they get to spend the rest of their lives recruiting new terrorists from the vast federal prison system, eating--and probably sleeping--better than they ever did in Somalia. And need I mention that being sent to prison for life will substantially raise their life expectancy?

No, there's nothing to get excited about here--unless you're a lawyer.

Persio-American War: the Contractors

One angle of this upcoming war I haven't mentioned is the role that so-called Defense Contractors play. As far back as 1961, President Eisenhower warned against the "Military-Industrial Complex." The Revolving Door practice, by which Defense Department jobs are filled with ex-Contractor employees, and ex-Defense Department workers pick up lush jobs at a Contractor, is well known. Thus it is inevitable that the Military-Industrial Complex will have a say in every war. And indeed, if it has any say it all, it will say that War is Good for Business.

I remember back in the late 1980's, when the veterans of America's last big war were starting to die off, and the veterans of America's last military conflict were starting to retire. There seemed to be no more role for the Army--all military engagements were being carried out by special forces, Marines, or the Navy. Pundits mused that the age of the large-scale battlefield was over. Then along came the invasion of Iraq, and once again the armies took to the field. Officers who had cut their teeth in Vietnam, serving under generals who had WWII experience, were now the generals. New Officers were earning the Combat Badges they would need to compete for promotion. The cycle of war, which ensures that everyone will have the chance to see combat at least once in a military career, came back around despite the Pundits' musings.

That was 20 years ago. For two decades, American forces have been facing hostile fire in one theater or another. Although downsized after the Cold War, the Standing Army has not gone away altogether. But since the conquest of Iraq in 2003, there has been no all-out war to put a large army to use. Worse yet, there has been no all-out war to put to use the hugely expensive armaments put out by the Military-Industrial Complex.

What America needs, it seems, is a war that will make full use of its Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. There hasn't been one now for 65 years--nearly a mortal lifetime. With the Cold War over, it's hard to justify the submarines, the supersonic fighters, the nuclear bombers--the ballistic missiles. But the Military-Industrial Complex is quite eager to justify them, because even if they aren't its bread and butter, they come very close to its bottom line.

A war with Iran would mean lots of business for the Military-Industrial Complex. As opposed as President Obama is to war, Contractors will eventually pressure him to change his mind. But I don't see this happening real soon. America is not likely to initiate a war against Iran without proof that it has already developed an atomic weapon. Since this is likely to happen within a year, even by the US Government's admission, that provides a terminus ad quem for the start of the war: somewhere between the 21st anniversary of Operation Desert Shield and the 10th anniversary of Operation Enduring Freedom.

America's first Muslim President

Someone has put together a ten-minute video (you can skip the last 3 minutes) of actual footage of Barack Hussein Obama talking about Islam, speaking to Muslims, quoting from the "Holy Qur'an," paying homage to the Protector of the Two Holy Sites, and visiting a cathedral that had been confiscated and turned into a mosque (that's most of the last 3 minutes).

It suffers from the typical out-of-context truncation of sound bites, but it's very clear that President Obama considers Islam to have at least an equal claim on America as Christianity does. Actually more of a claim, because he just appointed a federal judge who ruled that praying in the name of Allah is okay, but not in the name of Jesus.

President Obama also says that Islam has been a part of America since its founding. Unfortunately, this is true, because the very first war of aggression that the fledgling nation of America was forced to defend itself against was waged by Islamic pirates who took over American ships on the high seas and held them for ransom in Islamic-controlled ports. Alas, little has changed in 200 years. Even then, debate raged in the halls of government whether the US should give in to the pirates' demands, or fight back. Even then, there were those who asserted that since the US was "not a Christian Nation," the pirates shouldn't feel such a need for animosity against us. But then as now, when carefully applied force met greedy cowardice, the pirates were easily thwarted.

As if 'being a Christian nation' has anything to do with it. Did the emir of Kuwait rush to assure Saddam Hussein that "they weren't a Christian nation" before his forces crossed their mutual border? When Muslim nations stop attacking each other, only then will it be time to suspect that their imperialistic tendencies might be checked by claiming not to be a Christian nation. Muslims don't have a special animosity towards Christian nations; they hate all infidels more or less equally, with a special hatred for infidel Jews and those who try to protect them from Islamic genocide. It's the poor nations they leave alone, other than to plunder their populations for the slave trade.

This was the response of the Islamic ambassador to the American envoys sent by Congress in 1785 in an attempt to pay off the pirates:

"It was written in [ou]r Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every Muslim who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise."

After Congress had spent all its money in dane-geld (a whopping 20 per cent of the federal budget for 15 years) and still not gotten rid of the dane, after envoy after envoy had returned with empty assurances, Congress finally dropped the diplomatic approach and sent in the Marines. Their landing on "the shores of Tripoli" should have decided the matter, but those hell-bent on appeasement had the last word: Sixty Thousand Dollars were handed over to the losers to induce them to give up their prisoners.

And guess what. Less than ten years later, having spent their loot and greedy for more, the pirates went back to their old habits. This time Europe stepped in and saved America from having to play the victim again.

President Obama, by his continued reassurances of good will toward America's enemies, is only serving to prolong the war on America that has been waged by Islam on and off since America's very beginning as a nation-state. In seeking to appease the enemy, he has only guaranteed their continued animosity. Unless some other nation steps in to rescue us from ourselves, America is doomed to perpetual victimhood as long as men like John Jay, John Adams, and Barack Obama are calling the shots--or calling them off, as the case may be.

Ingalls and Wilder on women voting

I don't have the book with me today, but near the beginning of Little Town on the Prairie there's a dialog at the Ingalls home on the scandal of alcohol and the negative influence of DeSmet's two saloons. Catherine remarks that if women just had the vote, they'd outlaw such things. Interestingly enough, by the time she penned these words, Laura had already seen women get the vote, and--in at least one case--vote to make their city even wetter than before. Even without women voting, though, Dakota Territory was able to outlaw the retail sale of alcohol--and it was one of the first laws passed in South Dakota, the new state of which DeSmet, with its two holders of $400 retail liquor licenses, formed a part.

In her Little-House takeoff Free Land, Rose Wilder Lane gives us the following conversation involving Eliza Wilder, Almanzo's bossy big sister, as they travel an inconveniently long distance to file their respective claims for free land:

"Well, I must say!" said Eliza. "It comes with a pretty grace from you men, finding fault with what you do yourselves." If women had the vote, she stated, things would be done differently.
"That shows how much you know," David retorted. Somebody in Washington decided where to put the land offices. [sic] "If you think voting has anything to do with it, you've got a bee in your bonnet."

Finally, another opinion along these lines was put in the mouth of Mrs. McKee in These Happy Golden Years:

"I don't know why the law makes us do this," she said. "What earthly good it does, to make a woman stay on a claim all summer."
"It's a bet, Pa says," Laura answered. "The government bets a man a quarter-section of land, that he can't stay on if for five years without starving to death.
"Nobody could," said Mrs. McKee. "Whoever makes these laws ought to know that a man that's got enough money to farm, has got enough to buy a farm. . . . All it means is, his wife and family have got to sit idle on it, seven months of the year. I could be earning something, dressmaking, to help buy tools and seeds, if somebody didn't have to sit on this claim. I declare to goodness, I don't know but sometimes I believe in women's rights. If women were voting and making laws, I believe they'd have better sense."

Alas, good sense is not the prerogative of either sex, and whatever sense people have tends to leave them once they get behind the reins of power. The problem here was one of the government giving away something that wasn't theirs to take, and yet the recipients of the government's largesse must grumble and complain about how much work it is to grab it before somebody else does, and then to hang on to it long enough to keep anyone else from being able to take it away.

Vice Kills

The above title came to mind as I perused a copy of The New York Spectator printed in June 1836. Along with reports of shipwrecks and Texan victory in their war of independence from Mexico, the following three items caught my attention:

DUEL IN HIGH LIFE.--Our London correspondent states that a duel had taken place between Lord Melbourne and the husband of the Hon. Mrs. Norton, author of "The Undying One." The premier received a pistol wound, though not of a dangerous character. The probable cause of the duel is no secret, either here or in London. Rumors of a rather too great intimacy between lord[sic] Melbourne and Mrs. Norton, who is one of the most beautiful women in England, have been rife for the last two or three years. Mr. Norton, however, has always been represented, hitherto, as conveniently blind to the existing state of affairs; and it has been said, even, that his appointment as police magistrate was obtained through the influence of Lord Melbourne, as the reward for his discreet lack of observation.

Cause of the injury: Gun ownership? Hardly. Adultery to begin with, along with an insane law that allows a man to kill another over a perceived slight. The latter has been successfully extinguished from our national culture; the former is as rampant as ever, now close to enjoying the cultural acceptance previously held only by the latter.

FATAL RECONTRE.--An unfortunate affair took place at the race ground near this place on Wednesday last, the first day of the races. Mr. Beverly Pryor, a young man from Huntsville, Alabama, suspecting there had been foul play in the race, attacked and knocked down one of the trainers. Mr. Eli Abbott, of this town, remonstrated with him on such conduct, and told him that the race ground was not a proper place for such disturbances. Upon this Pryor drew a pistol, pushed the muzzle into the face of Abbott so violently as to take off the skin, telling him at the same time to draw and defend himself. Abbott declared that he had no pistol. Just at this time, Pryor's friend snapped a pistol at Abbott, which momentarily drew off the attention of Pryor. Abbott taking advantage of this occasion, instantly drew a large knife, plunged it into the breast of Pryor, turned and severely wounded the friend in the arm, who made off, and Abbott followed him. Pryor, though mortally wounded, pursued Abbott some fifteen or twenty paces, snapped his pistol repeatedly at him and then fell, and expired without a groan.
Comment upon this melancholy recontre is not we presume called for from us. One remark, however, we cannot refrain from making. The practice which is becoming so common, of carrying pistols and knives, cannot be too much condemned. If public sentiment does not restrain it, the strong arm of the law ought to be brought in to put it down.
The affair produced considerable sensation in town. The unanimous impression seems to be that Abbott was perfectly justifiable. He immediately delivered himself up to the officers of the law, by whom he was discharges, upon the ground, that it was a case of justifiable homicide. --Mississippi Free Press

We see here that it was not the habit of carrying such weapons that produced such a danger, but the readiness with which they were used to settle a quarrel. It was only a technicality upon which Mr. Abbott's innocence was based; he had not yet agreed to the duel at the time he was attacked. But we also see here that the real root of the problem was the greed behind the anger at a losing bet--and once again we see that vice was at the root of the crime.

SUICIDE OF THE HON. BERKELY CRAVEN.--A considerable sensation has been produced in the fashionable sporting world by the suicide of the Hon. Berkely Craven, so well known on the turf, who put a period to his existence by shooting himself through the head with a pistol, at his residence. The particulars of the melancholy affair, are as follow :--The deceased, it appeared, was a loser by the Derby Stakes to an enormous extent, some say as much as £30,000.
As soon as the result of the race became known, he was observed by his friends to be excessively agitated, and in this state he left Epson, and arrived at his residence. He flung himself on the sofa in the parlour[sic] in a state of mental distraction, and all attempts to solace him being in vain, the domestics were forced reluctantly to leave him, and he retire to bed at a late hour.
About six o'clock on the following morning, one of the female servants came down stars, and on entering the parlor a most appalling spectacle was presented to her view ; the body of her master was found extended on the floor, deluged in blood, which had flowed from a frightful wound in the head, and near him lay a large duelling pistol, with which it was evident that the deed had been perpetrated.

What more can we say? The greed expressed through the vice of racing having been allowed to destroy the inner man, it remained only for the duelling pistol, that weapon of legalized murder, to do its work on the owner rather than on his opponent. In all three of these sad stories we see that vice kills; it needs only the tool and the opportunity, and death will follow sin as sure as night follows day.

Hold on to your gold!

Well, I'm back with another scam that will probably replace all the hits I'm missing from corey.
A few months ago, when the price of gold reached an all-time high--in nominal terms, but certainly not in material terms--I sent away for an offer from Cash4gold.com. I received back an envelope in which I could send unwanted gold jewelry to be appraised. Before I parted with my 14k wedding ring, though, I wondered how much it would really be worth. I went to all the trouble to weigh it and it came out to about 5 grams, or one and a third troy ounces; at $1000 an ounce, that came to $133. Since my ring was 58% gold, I figured $70 would be a reasonable melt value. But gold4cash had its expenses, too, so I figured they'd probably only offer me about half that; maybe only a third.

But I wanted to be sure. So I decided to call them and ask what they were paying per ounce of gold, before I went and sent in my ring. It turns out that they won't answer such questions, "unless we can see it." Ha! The truth is, I would have been lucky to have gotten more than a dollar for my ring, but they didn't want me to know that until they had it in their possession. Because, as in the case of all such scams, their 'free return policy' has enough fine print to make it virtually worthless. Here is a first-hand account of how the scam is perpetrated.

Well, the good news is, cash4gold won't be able to put endless charges on your credit card. But once they have your gold, it's gone. So send for the free envelope if you must. Send it back if you must. But please, don't put anything in it that you think is worth more than the postage you're saving by using their envelope.

A new twist to an old scam

If you go to http://coreyhasmoney.com, you will see a photo of a bright young man in a tux, informing you that he is originally from your home town, but now he's a millionaire making his money by posting links on Google.

Don't you believe a word of it. Corey Peters is one big urban myth, and the swindler behind this website has figured out how to tap into your computer and identify the location of your web server in order to make you think that Corey's your homeboy. What he wants is your credit card number, and you're going to give it to him because you just can't believe that a nice guy from your home town is lying to you through his pearly white teeth. So what we need to establish right away is that he's not your homeboy, and he is a colossal liar. Here's how we'll do it:

This blog gets hits from every continent but Antarctica (and probably only because there's no ISP HQ'd there--but this post did incite one from north of the 72nd parallel), including a lot of viewers that do an excellent job of concealing their ISP; some are no more specific than the continent, and a rare few are even less so. I'd love to hear back from you as to where 'Corey' claimed to you that he's originally from. Just leave your comments below; and also please tell me whether or not you ran across Corey on Facebook.

Edited five hours later with the following revision: Come on, people. I'm getting hits on this post from several countries--probably at least one of them from Corey himself. Just to make it easy I've removed comment moderation to make it real easy to post comments (anyone who isn't a robot can participate). Please, tell me where Corey Peters told you he's from. And while you're at it, let me know what he's changed his name to this time. "Corey Peters" is less than a week into its run.

Added 2-26: Okay, folks, we can consider this project a success. A commenter alerted me to the following announcement posted to Facebook:

**Alert to Facebook Users**

You may have seen ads appearing on your FB profile in which a young man named Corey Peters or Mike Miller, and who claims to be from or near your home town, explains how he makes thousands of dollars posting links to websites. He claims that Google pays him to do this.

Some websites associated with this are:
coreyhasmoney.com
alexgetsgreen.com
mikemintsit.com

An American blogger asked people to send him a note to tell him where Corey was telling them he was "from" in his ad.
The answers he got back... Bedford, MA... Montreal, Quebec... and New Delhi, India.
Either Corey is quite the globe-hopping guy, or he has great software which detects your ISP address and then adjusts the ad to reflect a better "connection" to you.

When you go to these sites, they will ask you for your credit card information to sign up for a "Google Cash Kit".

Here are some comments from ComplaintsBoard, an online site dedicated to exposing web scams:
"ppl sign up for a google money system kit and have a couple $100 charged on their credit account. emails to contact them bounce back, the kit doesn't come and by the sound of it, neither does the promised cheque
13 days ago by T.Khan
I also did the same, no confirmation or e-mails, no such log in website. I found the ad on facebook and thought it was reliable. I am just waiting to see what i can do if they end up attacking my credit card. Such scammers..."

Other commentators on the ComplaintBoard explain how difficult it was to get the Google Cash Kit subscription cancelled... and many, many cases of people having to cancel their credit cards in order to stop the monthly payments.


RECENT NEWS

Official response from Google to an enquiry regarding CoreyHasMoney.com

"Ads like these appear to be the latest iteration of a trend we have observed for some time. Our Legal team reviews them and takes appropriate action if necessary. As Google is not affiliated with these sites, though, we can't comment on individual claims. We recommend that users exercise the same amount of caution they would when evaluating other types of get rich quick claims."

Update March 21, 2009

Well, this post continues to get dozens of hits a day--including one recently from Google Inc., so let's hope they do something about it. In any case, today I did something I'm not ever supposed to do--I actually read one of the ads that I've allowed Google to post on this blog. Boy, was I ever surprized to read a corey-peters type scam from cathysteeth.com being advertized right on my blog! Supposedly Google will cancel my Adsense account for doing this, but I'm going to cancel it anyway, maugre the money I'll be out for doing so. I refuse to participate in these sort of scams. Just look at the fine print for this "free trial offer:"

You have 14-days from the date that your order ships to use the product and evaluate the results. If you enjoy the system, simply do nothing. You will be billed the low price of $78.93 at the end of your 14-day trial period. Additionally, you will be automatically enrolled in the AlwaysBright™ Membership Program and every 30 days from your trial signup, you will receive a new 30-day supply of Bright Teeth™ Whitening Gel (10cc) and Remineralization Gel (3cc) at the low price of $80.93, plus $4.99 shipping and handling, totalling $85.92. . .

It goes on to say as much as that unless you cancel your credit or debit card, these charges will go on indefinitely. Because of course, you'll never be able to get through on their toll-free line, with thousands of other people from Pond Inlet to New Delhi all trying to cancel too.

Well, thanks to corey peters, I've gotten more hits in less than a month than I typically got in a year. But in the end, by participating in such scams, Google Inc. lost my Adsense business. And, I expect, unless they face the music soon, that of a lot of other bloggers as well.

There are ways to make money, and there are ways to take money. This is clearly one of the latter, and I will have none of it.

Update 3/23/09
To the kind folks at Google, Inc., who frequently check this post for new comments:
1) Thanks for deleting my Adsense account. You can keep the change.
2) I'm sorry I'm not able to keep up on approving comments as fast as they come in. I trust, however, that you've seen enough by now to get the picture. So I think I'll be taking this post down again; I could use a break from this issue for a while. Unless you take decisive action, it's not going to go away.

Update 3/26/09 I'm taking this offline again. Way too many hits to handle!

Update:  2013: This post has finally fallen out of my 'top ten' so I'm bringing it back up.