The weather people say a new system is moving in but we are on the southern end and should get rain while people not too far north of us will get, maybe, snow.
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Yesterday started normal with our regular trip to a local dairy but then went down hill. Mom got an e-mail that looked like a legitimate communication from a source we deal with. She called the number to update her program but there seemed to be a snag and they said they had to cancel the process and refund her payment. She was on our banking site to try and complete the refund but suddenly it looked like they had instead put in a massive deposit instead of a simple refund. (A big discrepancy with a 5 digit vs a 3 digit figure.) Fortunately, I was also on my computer in our joint banking accounts and I saw NO deposit while the operator was convincing Mom to reverse the "mistake" and send back the massive deposit. Mom was confused and handed the phone to me and after a couple of minutes (during which we did nothing with the computers) of telling the man about the mismatch I ended the call telling him we were going to the bank as soon as I hung up. I ended the call with him insisting that we had to reverse the transaction NOW. We took both laptops, still on line and on the bank page, to our bank and the teller quickly checked everything. Our accounts were correct and nothing had been edited or deleted. We will change our ids and passwords today. These vultures were slick. We were only a couple of steps away from emptying her checking account. Looking back we can see points which should have clued us in: a mismatch in the address the e-mail was sent from, the excuse that the problem with downloading the updated software was outdated software on our computers when we updated that (directly from vendor) only a couple of weeks ago, and the operator's repeated question about whether Mom's computer was the only one in the house. Can't emphasize enough: be cautious, trust your gut if it tells you something is wrong,
Now on to other matters no less depressing than the on-line vulture: Britain is facing some serious problems well below the chaos on the national political level. NBC has this fairly long story on line this morning.
Kyrsten Sinema has decided that she is not a "perfect fit" with either party and declared she is an Independent who will (mostly) caucus with the Democrats. I won't link because the story, in various iterations, is all over the internet. I do have a few observations. First, is anyone a "perfect fit" for any organization? I doubt it. I am not a good fit for either party either. Hell, I don't fit well in our current highly skewed society. The real trick is to negotiate between what you do fit with and what you don't fit; accentuating the first and mitigating, as much as possible, the last. Looking for a perfect fit is a fool's errand. Second, her "both sidesism" is incredibly self serving. She is looking for an excuse for her action that will absolve her of any blame and demand no effort on her part to resolve the problem. From what I have seen most of the blame for the acidic environment in the legislature rests predominately with the Republicans. Third, she appears to be self serving in another way: declaring as an Independent means she can stand for re-election without going through a primary against a probable Democrat candidate who is far more popular with Democrat voters than she is and which she may lose. She is making a bet she just might lose that in the three way race she will siphon off enough Democrat, Republican, and Independent votes to come out on top.
Gizmodo posted this story on yet another oil spill on the Keystone Pipeline.
Responsible Statecraft discusses the new Defense Authorization Act which the politicians are trying to get passed in the lame duck session. It is utterly ridiculous to hand out over $850 BILLION to a totally unaccountable department. That is more than what we spent at the height of the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and at the height of the Cold War. The increase (year over year) is more that the entire military budgets of most countries in the world including France, Germany, Japan and the U.K. I don't mind defense spending but I really want that spending to be effective and efficient. From what I have read about a number of the new systems they are neither. I will let you look that up. There is plenty out in the ether on it.
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