Day: January 30, 2007

Looks like people are still falling for the scams

Every once in a while, you’ll hear about someone doing something that YOU know far too much to fall for. This is such a tale. A tale of someone falling for one of the oldest online scams known (and the obligatory shorter link in case the original is broken).

The longtime treasurer of Alcona County in northeast lower Michigan has been removed from his job and charged with nine felonies for allegedly stealing county money to invest in the notorious online Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud Scheme, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox announced today.

Thomas Katona, 56, was arraigned in Harrisville today after an investigation that began in December when county officials learned he had directed eight unauthorized wire transfers totaling $186,500 to beneficiaries linked to the Nigerian Advance scheme, Cox said in a statement. Investigators also found that Katona had wired $72,500 of his own money to the same accounts.

An audit of county books in December indicates a shortfall of $1.25 million, more than a quarter of the county’s annual $4-million budget, the Cox statement said.

So sorry to hear that. It seems once again the most gullible are penalized heavily for that. On the other hand, if this had been the one time the scam paid out, think what he could have done for the county treasury.

[tags]Another victim of the Nigerian bank scam, The uninformed pay greatly for not knowing[/tags]

John Kerry, revisionist historian

Since I know it seems I only bash on President Bush (OK, I almost exclusively bash President Bush – I think he’s a horrible President), I wanted to be sure to share this wonderful display of, ummm, I don’t know what, by John Kerry that a friend sent me recently.

In a recent talk Kerry gave, he spent time covering a lot of the shortcomings we Americans suffer from in regards to our possibly failing to engage in sufficient diplomatic talks with Iran prior to Iran’s current president getting elected. With all the things we’ve done wrong, Kerry makes sure to point out:

“When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don’t advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy,” Kerry said.

But there is a little, teensy weensy problem with griping about President Bush bailing on the Kyoto treaty:

On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95-0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States”. On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations. The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification. . . .

Yeah, you read that right. Clinton was the one who walked away from the Kyoto treaty (based in part on a resolution which Kerry voted for). President Bush just never went back to it, what with the lack of timetables and targets for waste producers like China. And I agree with President Bush. Signing the Kyoto treaty as it was presented penalizes us while leaving other large pollutors off the hook.

And one other thing in the linked post I have to agree with:

Why should we believe anything that comes out of this guy’s mouth? It’s bad enough that he’s sitting next to one of America’s enemies bad mouthing his own country, but he’s flat-out lying in what he’s saying as well.

So yes, why listen to him? If you want to see me bashing more politicians besides President Bush, Mr. Kerry is a good target to direct me toward. And my dislike of him grows often.

[tags]John Kerry creates fictional American history, Kerry lies and tells the bad guys (um – Iran) what bad guys we are[/tags]