The chances your identity will be stolen via online hacking are disturbingly high. There are things you can do about it. FromMark Nestmann at internationalman.com:
The state of online security is so dismal that it’s not a matter of if your identity will be stolen. The only uncertainty is when it will happen – and how often.
Welcome to what I call Hacker World, where malicious web-savvy thieves can steal virtually any asset, file false tax refund claims, and even steal your Social Security benefits.
Recently, I learned that I almost certainly had my identity stolen, for at least the second time. The first time that I know about was in the massive Equifax data breach in 2017.
This time around, it was stolen from Marriot International. Last December, Marriot disclosed that hackers penetrated the company’s Starwood guest reservation database and stole the personal data of as many as 500 million people.
Marriot says hackers accessed customer names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, passport numbers, and dates of birth – all information that can easily be exploited to impersonate someone. About 8.6 million encrypted payment card numbers and expiration dates were also exposed.
You might be surprised to learn that I’m not especially concerned about this latest breach. One big reason is that when I learned my data had been stolen from Equifax 18 months ago, I put a security freeze on my credit files.
A security freeze limits access to your credit report to only companies that already have you as a customer. If you have a security freeze in effect and a hacker penetrates a database to retrieve your personal information and succeeds in impersonating you, they’ll find it almost impossible to benefit financially from having your information.
If an economy “grows” by $1 trillion but takes on $1.3 trillion in new debt, has it grown? From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:
Where would GDP growth be without federal borrow-and-spend?
So the dreams of 3%-plus economic growth in 2018 were fulfilled, after tax cuts and ballooning federal deficit spending, which acted as a huge stimulus: In the fourth quarter, the economy as measured by inflation-adjusted GDP grew by 0.55% from the third quarter, not annualized (we’ll get to the “annualized rate” in a moment).
This brought GDP growth for the entire year 2018 to 3.1%, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis this morning. This places the year ahead of the top years since the Financial Crisis:
The BEA also reports – this is what you see in all the headlines though it’s the most convoluted and somewhat misleading way of presenting GDP growth – the current quarter’s growth rate but extrapolated out over an entire year; so what this Q4 growth rate of 0.55%, mentioned above, would mean for the whole year if the economy had grown for an entire year at the same rate. For Q4 this seasonally adjusted, inflation-adjusted “annualized rate” of growth was 2.6%.
What could go wrong? From Barry Brownstein at fee.org:
Harvard’s Gernot Wagner wants to save the world from global warming. His method? Develop a new type of plane that will fly more than 4,000 missions a year dumping particulates into the stratosphere.
Wagner and his colleague Wake Smith call the proposed plane “SAI Lofter (SAIL).” Anonymous individuals at “Airbus, Atlas Air, Boeing, Bombardier, GE Engines, Gulfstream, Lockheed Martin, NASA, Near Space Corporation, Northrup Grumman, Rolls Royce Engines, Scaled Composites, The Spaceship Company, and Virgin Orbit” provided input.
Estimates for SAIL’s design and operation seem sophisticated but are fabricated. Wagner and Smith admit, “No existing aircraft design—even with extensive modifications—can reasonably fulfill [their] mission.”
Wagner and others believe that scientists can calculate how many particulates will be needed to cool the Earth to a desired temperature.
Wagner and Smith are not alone in their geoengineering dreams. As early as 2006, Paul J. Crutzen, Nobel laureate in chemistry, called for “stratospheric geoengineering research.” Harvard professors David Keith and Frank Keutsch hope to experiment via balloons spraying “a fine mist of materials such as sulfur dioxide, alumina, or calcium carbonate into the stratosphere.” Wagner, Keith, and Keutsch are all part of the Solar Geoengineering Research Program at Harvard.
Raúl Ilargi Meijer reviews the circus that was Michael Cohen’s House of Representatives testimony. From Miejer at theautomaticearth.com:
Perhaps against better judgment, I just can’t keep silent about the Michael Cohen’s in da House show performed on February 27. I was watching it and increasingly fearing for the future of America. We had all been able to read his prepared statement before he opened the party with it, and therefore we all knew there was nothing there. So why did this thing take place, and why were all the cameras and reporters there? Do we live in split realities these days?
Both before and after the gruelling -for the viewer- session, words like ‘explosive’ and bombshell’ were all over, so I thought I’d watch, since I might have missed something, but no, there was nothing, there wasn’t even a there there. Apparently, US House members are by now immune to being revealed as nutcases frantically phishing for evidence of accusations they formerly made but could never prove.
A phishing expedition with a willing whale in the center who sort of volunteered to be harpooned, and still came up with absolutely nothing but blubber. And then like 4 hours of that. There’s never been a more convincing picture of what US politics and media have become. But they’re all entirely impervious to it. They’re discussing nothing for hours on end with millions watching, and they see it as normal.
Now, I’ve been following the decay of the American press ever since Trump entered politics stage right, and I’ve written a hundred thousand words about it, but it really hit home during the Cohen session. Tellingly, the Republican House members were exclusively focusing on Cohen credibility, since he had been caught lying to Congress before, and the Supreme Court just days ago disbarred him.
The US government can be very fickle when it’s playing its regime change games. From Finian Cunningham at rt.com:
The much-hyped “aid weekend” involving a US Trojan Horse fell at the first hurdle. Venezuelan government forces averted the provocation intended by US aid convoys from Colombia and Brazil.
However, increasing frustration in Washington beckons more false flags.
Something shocking is “needed” in order to jolt world opinion into acquiescing to Washington’s criminal agenda of “all options.” In the fiendish mind of American imperialism, it is also prudent to consider “all options” as meaning more than military aggression. The foulest moves.
The torching of trucks purportedly ferrying US food and medicines across the border from Colombia was patently a planned provocation. Credible video footage and witnesses attested to the arson being carried out by supporters of the US-backed opposition figure Juan Guaido.
Daisy Luther explodes some popular fantasies held by people who haven’t prepped but think they can survive in a SHTF situation. From Luther at theorganicprepper:
When it hits the fan…I mean REALLY hits the fan in a permanent kind of way, the most likely outcome is death.
That’s not pretty, and I’m well aware of it. I always try to be positive and optimistic, because for me, preparedness is the ultimate act of optimism, but sometimes we have to look at the numbers and face some things that are pretty terrifying. The first reality check is that some research says that only 3 million Americans are preppers. That means that 315 million Americans are not preppers. Some experts predict that within 30 days of the power going out, 50% of Americans will be dead. Within a year, an astounding 90% of the population will be dead.
Do you want to survive such a scenario? Do you want your children to survive? When you read this information, you have to realize that it’s very unlikely that you and your family would live through a grid failure of a year or more unless you are proactive and develop a preparedness plan that takes all of these causes of death into consideration.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy that deals with the proper use of force in a society, by government and everyone else. It can’t be criticized for not dealing with issues outside that essential but not all encompassing question. From Jeff Deist at mises.org:
Daniel McCarthy, editor of Modern Age and editor at large for The American Conservative, recently published an essay on the Spectator USA site titled “Why Libertarians are Wrong.” It merits a response because Mr. McCarthy is friendly and sympathetic toward libertarianism, and despite the infirmities of his article ought to be seen as a fellow traveler.
The title misleads us a bit from the beginning, because McCarthy is sound on the single most important libertarian political issue: war and peace. He objected to George W. Bush’s foray into Iraq, he attacks the permanent-war complex and its funding, and he consistently advocates a reasonably non-interventionist US foreign policy far closer to Ron Paul than John Bolton. He also has read Mises and Hayek, and unlike many intellectual conservatives (a dwindling group) McCarthy is not mired in Burke or Buckley or Reagan. He even blogged for the 2008 Paul presidential campaign and has spoken at the Mises Institute on foreign policy. So unlike a Bill Kristol or Sean Hannity, his conservative critique comes without ignorance or malice.
They get us into wars and never get us out. They get us into debt and never get us out. They want to run your life, but couldn’t run a lemonade stand.
And they laugh at us?
They’re the establishment, the powers that be–call them what you will. Guided by the unshakeable belief that they’re entitled to rule, they’ve made a holy mess of America…and the world. Their Ivy League credentials only confirm that degrees are often bestowed on idiots.
In the Kingdom of Lies, ruled by the Arrogant and the Absurd, truth is an enemy. So are satire and humor. If the pompous proclamations and inevitable ineptitude of these bozos leave you unsure whether to laugh, cry, or emigrate, why not laugh?
What if the Fountain of Youth fell into the wrong hands?
If there were a way to reverse aging, the establishment’s decrepit fossils would want it. Brilliant researcher Ted Wirth and his team of scientists discover a hormone that extends the lives of lab mice. The government comes a calling…the powers that be have a plan.
In war-torn Syria, among the many nations keeping the fate of Syria out of the hands of Syrians, a battle rages. Or does it? A suicide mission destroys a vital American industrial asset. It’s terrorism. Or is it? The world’s grand masters are moving the pieces in a game only they understand. Or do they?
An author that can generate the phrase “Blow it out your ass, Mr. President. Send in Vice President Winslow.” and make it believable gains my immediate applause and appreciation. To do so within a novel that so explicitly describes the pure evil wielded by the power brokers and administrators of our world and the degradations heaped on the rest of mankind with no thought of their own moral depravity, is genius.
Teddy H. Jones, Amazon reader review
Are you looking for…
A satire that will make you laugh, think, shake your head, wince, and howl with rage…sometimes at the same time?
Characters you’d like to know? And characters you’d like to banish from the planet?
A story with something to say about good and evil…without preaching or screeching?
Answers to all your questions about geopolitics, with plenty of pages left over for intrigue, action, romance, sex and satire?
You’ve just found all of the above…and much more!
Read Prime Deceit in an afternoon…it will stay with you for years.
Take it from readers’ enthusiastic comments on Amazon.
I could easily see this book as a big budget Hollywood production with an A list cast. It would need almost no alterations. It is tightly crafted, compelling, current, dramatic, and thrilling. Apart from its style, this book perfectly reflects the skepticism of the public in regards to the most powerful institutions of our day.
Robert Gore is a find, and a gifted writer. Titus Flavius
Finally a book that is well written fiction based on plausible characters, not caricatures, without the blatant preaching of a thinly-veiled conspiracy theory; a book to actually enjoy reading. John
Full disclosure, I also had received a pre-publication ebook from the author for review. Just as another poster did, I also purchased the book because I like it so much. Yes, I got it free and then went and bought it anyway!
I would classify this book as a real page turner and like all of Robert’s books, once you start it, you simply do not want to put it down. Jean Dunne
This novel grabbed me from the first page and didn’t let go till the last. In fact, I’m not sure it has let go yet . The plot is chilling because it is so plausible. The rejuvenation technology is not so far from actual current research, and the depth of corruption of the elites seems right in line with current reality as well. Long after finishing it, my mind keeps coming back to it like a tongue testing a sore tooth. This or something much like it could really be happening. David or Judy Wood
Strike a revolutionary blow against the powers that be!
The government has been obsessed with automobile safety for decades, except when it comes to electric cars. From Eric Peters at theburningplatform.com:
The owner of another Tesla has died – horribly – in Davie, Florida after his car struck a tree and burst into flames.
It then burst into flames again – post mortem – while the carcass was being hauled away to the wrecking yard.
And then once more, at the wrecking yard. News story here.
Unlike other cars, Teslas remain dangerous even after they wreck.
And not just Teslas.
The danger applies to electric cars in general, because the lithium-ion battery packs which power many of them are susceptible to spontaneous combustion if the structure of the battery – its case – is physically damaged as the result of impact forces in a crash and thermal runaway occurs.
Short circuits within the battery release tremendous energy – violently.
And repeatedly.
Think Whack-a-Mole, except with a fire hose.
Electric cars are the only cars – other than Christine, the fictitious ’57 Plymouth with the body by Plymouth and soul by Satan – which can kill multiple times.
With no one behind the wheel.
Or at least, no one still alive.
EVs can kill in other ways, too.
Lithium-ion battery fires are unusually toxic. They release poisonous gasses, including hydrogen fluoride. When this stuff comes into contact with moisture – such as is present on the surface of the human eyeball, for instance – it converts into hydrofluoric acid and that can cause rapid destruction of corneas, resulting in permanent blindness.
Breathing the stuff can cause death from cardiac arrhythmia and fluid build-up in the lungs.
The government seems remarkably indifferent. This is interesting, given the usual (supposed) obsession with our saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety.
Why not now?
This is the same government which sics armed goons on people for not wearing seatbelts.
It is the same government which practically crucified VW over a theoretical risk to “public health” – a vague conception based on assertions about the effect of tenths of a percent differences in exhaust emissions from “cheating” diesel-powered cars – which haven’t been shown to have caused actual harm to any actual person.
As opposed to electric cars that have actually killed people – and will kill again.
EVs double-down on the danger of roasting their owners to death – or blinding/choking them to death.
They are inherently more vulnerable to auto-immolation and not just because of chemistry but because they are literally more vulnerable.
Physically vulnerable.
The EV’s battery pack is very big – and very heavy – and for that reason, is spread out over the length of the EV’s floorpan. Otherwise, the EV would have a very small trunk – or a very cramped passenger compartment – and also be tipsy.
So the pack is laid flat and low – and comparatively thin (vs. a gas tank).
But now you’ve got a battery pack that’s susceptible to being damaged – and auto-immolating – from almost any impact, whether from the side or from behind or from crashing into something, as in the Florida incident.
Gas-powered cars are inherently less vulnerable to going up in smoke because the gas tank isn’t spread out all the length of the car’s floorpan. Even pile-driving into a tree – as the Florida Tesla driver apparently did – usually won’t damage the gas tank, because it’s located in the rear part of the car.
And even if the tank is damaged in a crash – and gas leaks – it won’t necessarily cause a fire. Because gasoline doesn’t spontaneously combust.
There’s also the happy fact that once a gas fire is put out, the danger is over.
There is also much less danger over time.
Because of wear and tear.
An old car’s gas tank may develop a leak; it isn’t necessarily dangerous. But an old EV’s aging battery pack could develop a crack – and that isvery dangerous. Hit a bad pothole in your 12-year-old Tesla and… what’s that smell?
Better hope the doors unlock once the power shorts out.
How many will have to die before the government begins to show some . . . concern?
Right now, it is showing the same degree of concern about auto-immolating EVs as it has shown about known defective air bags – several hundred thousand of which remain in circulation because the government hasn’t issued a fatwa ordering them to be sidelined until they can be fixed.
Think about this.
All those pour souls who have to drive to work every day sitting inches away from a known defective air bag that could kill them aren’t even allowed to have the known defective bags temporarily turned off until they can be fixed.
And government goons will Taser you if you refuse to “buckle up” or wear a helmet on your motorcycle.
That’s how much the government cares about our saaaaaaafety.
The truth is that our saaaaaaaaaaaaafety is of much less concern to the government than getting us to accept EVs. Or rather, tricking us into accepting them.
It is analogous to a pet owner hiding an unpleasant-tasting pill in a meatball, to get the animal to eat it. With the difference being that the pet owner actually does have the best interests of Fido at heart.
The government’s true interests are murkier.
Clearly, saaaaaaaaaaafety is just a cover for whatever else it has in mind; whatever serves its interests.
One of those interests may be the fact that EVs will limit our mobility. They can’t go as far – and they take far longer to get going again. They are severely gimped by extreme cold – and high heat.
And they are very expensive – which serves the interests of the banking cartel, which wants us all in perpetual debt as much as the government wants us under control – both amounting to the same things, really.
Neither of them having anything to do with our saaaaaaaaafety.
The newest Hail Mary by the get-Trump crowd looks like it will be as successful as all the previous ones. From Sara Carter at saracarter.com:
Michael Cohen’s testimony isn’t exactly the bombshell Democrats professed it to be.
It is filled with speculation. The testimony he is providing the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday reads like a jilted lover whose been damaged by a past relationship and one in which the other party, that being President Donald Trump, never fully respected or considered as important.
For Cohen, who was hired by Trump in 2007, this appears to be too much to take. His working relationship with Trump dragged him into the bowels of Washington D.C.’s most brutal investigations into a President and his campaign that Americans have ever witnessed.
Senior officials within the Obama Administration launched an investigation that targeted Trump and everyone around him nearly three years ago. And for the past two years with the appointment of a Special Counsel it has consumed U.S. politics and national media.
Cohen became one of Mueller’s targets. Why? Because he is a flawed man. He had a past history of lying and took shortcuts in his business dealings that may have never been discovered if he didn’t work for Trump.
The Special Counsel’s office knew this and took advantage of this situation.
This is what Robert Mueller wanted. It was a strategy. Mueller and his team, like all government prosecutors, want to shake the vines all around Trump. They want to make Trump’s life and those around him as uncomfortable as possible. That means anyone who worked on the Trump campaign was a target and Mueller picked the best targets.
The Special Counsel did this hoping to find the smoking gun. They did this to prove that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia during the 2016 election. And it is an allegation that has yet to be supported by one shred of evidence.
Virginia Federal Judge T.S. Ellis III’s said it perfectly last May with regard to the trial on former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was indicted on tax evasion and fraud:
“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud,” said Ellis to prosecutors. “You really care about getting information Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump and lead to his prosecution or impeachment.”
Ellis added, that they wanted Manafort “to sing.” He also said Mueller’s team wanted to “turn the screws and get the information you really want.”
A Prosecution in Search of A Crime
It is a prosecution in search of a crime. It is a Special Counsel that is desperate to validate its own existence. There is no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia or conspired in the 2016 election but Mueller’s team is desperate and have dragged in those close to Trump hoping to find the smoking gun and isolating the president.
Cohen is an extremely flawed witness. He is desperately trying to find the smoking gun that he knows does not exist. In fact, Republican lawmakers discovered that Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis, a long time friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, ‘pushed’ him to testify before the committee.
He believes his “speculation” about his former boss will be enough to save him.
Under Mueller’s investigation Cohen has become a broken man. The Special Counsel’s office shook Cohen’s weak vines with a vengeance. What dropped from those branches did not reveal a conspiracy with Russia during the campaign but Cohen’s own personal criminal misconduct.
Cohen’s Past Haunts Him
Cohen couldn’t hide his past and Mueller went through everything.
What did Mueller discover? He discovered Cohen had lied to financial institutions to receive large loans and is convicted of five counts of tax evasion.
So Cohen has been desperately fishing. He is one of Mueller’s fishermen. However, he has only caught small fish of speculation. He is not a victim but a cunning businessman who broke the law and has been caught. He has found himself in the mess of a lifetime and desperation has sunk in.
He blames Trump, like a child blaming other children around them for their own transgressions.
Can we believe a man who has been known to lie to save himself from his own criminal misconduct with the hope of reducing his sentence?
In his testimony Cohen admits he has no smoking gun but “suspicions.”
“Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia,” Cohen says in his written testimony. “I do not. I want to be clear. But, I have my suspicions.”
Suspicions? That’s not enough.
Cohen is jilted. Why? Because it appears — based on his 20 page testimony — that he blames Trump for everything Mueller has done to him.
Cohen says in his testimony regarding the infamous Trump Tower meeting that “sometime in the summer of 2017…Something clicked in my mind. I remember being in the room with Mr. Trump, probably in early June 2016, when something peculiar happened. Don Jr. came into the room and walked behind his father’s desk – which in itself was unusual. People didn’t just walk behind Mr. Trump’s desk to talk to him. I recalled Don Jr. leaning over to his father and speaking in a low voice, which I could clearly hear, and saying: ‘The meeting is all set.’ I remember Mr. Trump saying, ‘Ok good…let me know.’
Cohen’s Speculation
This is Cohen’s speculation that Trump was talking to Don Jr. about the Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia V. Veselnitskaya. She is also tied to the embattled research firm Fusion GPS, which was paid for by a the Hillary Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee to investigate Trump during the campaign. Veselnitskaya had met with the research firm’s founder Glen Simpson before and after the meeting.
Simpson said he and the Russian lawyer never discussed the Don Jr. meeting but anyone with common sense knows that this is highly questionable.
Further Cohen then speculates and spreads rumors about Trump’s relationship with his son Don Jr. Again, why? This testimony is not based on facts. It sounds like the rantings of broken man caught in his own misdeeds and deflecting.
“What struck me as I looked back and thought about that exchange between Don Jr. and his father was, first, that Mr. Trump had frequently told me and others that his son Don Jr. had the worst judgment of anyone in the world,” said Cohen. “And also, that Don Jr. would never set up any meeting of any significance alone – and certainly not without checking with his father.”
“I also knew that nothing went on in Trump world, especially the campaign, without Mr. Trump’s knowledge and approval,” added Cohen.
This is all speculation and bad mouthing a family that he worked for in confidence for decades. Cohen says himself that it is speculation. His testimony is based on hypotheticals, information already known and his own feelings about Trump.
No New Bombshell
There is no new bombshell in Cohen’s testimony. He calls Trump a cheat, a racist and a conman.
Cohen is throwing a temper tantrum. He is hoping to damage the man he worked for with the hope that the Mueller team will throw him a lifeline.
But the hearings won’t save Cohen. He made his own bad business decisions throughout his life and it appears he doesn’t stop making them.
His testimony against Trump is one of them.
Cohen is a proven conman and a liar.
There is nothing he can say to Congress that will change who he is or was.
