Author Archives: eehines

An Extortion Lawsuit

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Lawyer Anthony Russo of the Florida-based Russo Firm, says his client Cynthia Kelly and “not less than 100” and perhaps even “thousands” of others have suffered horrific emotional damage.

It seems that seasonal versions of Hershey’s Reese’s chocolate-covered peanut butter candies variously depicted pumpkin shapes with the candy’s peanut butter filling showing through eyes and a mouth carved into the chocolate or football shapes with laces similarly carved. On unpeeling the wrapper, though, shocker of shockers, the chocolate coverings were intact. The bodice-ripping. The emotional rending, the fall-to-the-floor sobbing paroxisms (I exaggerate, but not by much). Lawyer Russo is suing Hershey over the riptide of emotion the nefarious company has so callously caused.

However.

Omitted in this editorial is that the Reese’s packaging also depicts a bite already taken out of the candy, exposing the peanut butter filling inside the chocolate coating—and that that depiction has been there for years.

Did the “plaintiffs” not expect to unwrap this candy and see a bite actually already taken?

Not only should the plaintiffs be sharply sanctioned for this frivolous suit, the lawyer bringing it and the firm employing him (yes, it’s his firm, but still, the firm) should be especially sharply sanctioned for being a party to this frivolous suit. Lawyers, especially, should know better.

Hershey should refuse to settle and instead crushingly defeat the lawyer and plaintiffs in open court, taking no prisoners. Let it not be over quickly, the plaintiffs and lawyer will not enjoy it, and Hershey is not their patsy. $5 million or more that the plaintiffs want and of which Russo wants his cut? Sounds about right to me. That’s what the plaintiffs, the lawyer, and the law firm should be required to pay Hershey.

Pick One

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Progressive-Democratic Party politicians insist that illegal aliens should be allowed to go anywhere they want as they wait—months to years—for their court dates.

But they want travel documents on those Americans who are transporting them by bus.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy is demanding that nearly two dozen charter bus companies sending New York City-bound migrants to “transit” stops in the Garden State provide advance notice.

And this:

For each migrant bus, Murphy is asking the companies to disclose the number of single adults traveling alone; the number of passengers traveling as part of a family, including the number of families with children under 18; the number of children under 18; and the number of chaperones (other than family members) for otherwise unaccompanied minors.

Notice that. Murphy doesn’t care who these illegal aliens are so they can be tracked until the show up for their court date—or dishonestly don’t show up—he just wants to know how many they are. While demanding to know what bus companies are transporting them.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party demonstrating its utter contempt for us ordinary Americans.

Wrist Slaps and Unequal Justice

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Navy sailor Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao was caught passing classified information concerning an Okinawa radar system, along with plans for a large-scale maritime training exercise in the Pacific theatre, to a spy for the People’s Republic of China. [OPSEC note: the exercise plans would allow, among other things, the PRC to watch the radar system in action during the exercise.] Zhao has been sentenced to 27 months in prison. A whole 27 months. A wrist slap.

Meanwhile, the 6 January rioters—those who have actually had trials three years(!) after the event and whose trials have actually run to completion—have been sentenced to 3-6 years, and some have been sentenced to as many as 20 years.

Meanwhile meanwhile, insurrectionists rioters in Portland and Seattle have, in the main, gone wholly uncharged at all, with a few scapegoats getting a few months.

It’s long past time to clean out the DoJ, from top to bottom, including the FBI. In parallel with that, it’s long past time to clean up our sentencing laws and sentencing guidelines.

If a Navy traitor can get off with a wrist slap, so, too, should the rioters at Capital Hill. That precedent was set prior to Zhao’s case, with those “rioters” who seized Seattle territory, drove out the Seattle government, and held the territory for weeks getting off with wrist slaps or going scot-free, and with those “rioters” in Portland who attacked and tried, for weeks, to burn down a Federal building with Federal government security personnel inside also getting off with wrist slaps or going scot-free.

Alternatively, the Navy traitor should have gotten tens of years in jail, even a life sentence. The 6 January rioters—a truly mostly peaceful affair, just noisy and boisterous (the only true violence was a security officer shooting one of the rioters and a security officer getting bashed over the head by a rioter using a fire extinguisher)—should have gotten off with sentences for the trespass they were committing, and the occasional petty theft they were committing in their souvenir hunting. The insurrectionists in Seattle and Portland should have gotten intermediate sentences in the fives of years in jail range.

It’s long past time to clean out the DoJ, from top to bottom, including the FBI. In parallel with that, it’s long past time to clean up our sentencing laws and sentencing guidelines. Whether or not you, dear reader, agree with my sentencing suggestions for these particular cases, the rules need to be adjusted to produce truly similar sentences for substantially similar actions, and—especially—existing personnel completely replaced with those who actually will apply and enforce the rules.

Racism Strikes Deep

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Chicago’s Progressive-Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson is making his go-to move regarding the influx of illegal aliens Chicago is experiencing (I don’t say “suffering;” that’s what Texas and Arizona border cities and towns are doing): he’s playing his race card in objecting to Texas’ Republican Governor Gregg Abbott helping the illegal aliens flooding across his State’s border to accept Brandon’s open-arms invitation of them with his loud and proud sanctuary city status.

…Johnson condemned Governor Greg Abbott…in a recent MSNBC appearance, arguing he has been “attacking” cities run by Black leaders with waves of migrants.

No, Abbott is transporting illegal aliens, all of whom are volunteers for the trip, to sanctuary cities. Providing sanctuary to illegal aliens is the destination selection criterion. That cities that satisfy that criterion happen to be run by Progressive-Democrats is just that—an irrelevant happenstance. And that those Progressive-Democrats running sanctuary cities happen to be black is just that—an even further remote irrelevant happenstance.

Only a racist manufactures a race beef when there is no beef to be had, and it’s especially pernicious when the race card player knows full well there’s no race beef to be had.

Password Access for Heirs

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Kurt Knutsson has some thoughts on ensuring your heirs, as designated by you, have access to your passwords after you’ve died. Passwords are especially critical for access by your heirs to your financial accounts, brokerage accounts, subscriptions and online purchasing facilities on which you’ve stored credit data for convenient renewal and purchase execution (yeah, I know…), and so on.

Knutsson’s thoughts center on using a password manager to hold the passwords so that only the manager’s password needs to be kept available to an heir.

I have thoughts, too.

In-the-cloud password managers can be hacked, just as can another other cloud facility, because the ongoing arms race between hackers and security developers always has the hackers having the initiative. When anything in the cloud gets hacked everything in the cloud—at the least, your particular assignment in the cloud—gets exposed. There go the passwords.

In-the-cloud managers also depend on access to the Internet, and lots of things can block that access at critical times and for critically long durations. These can range from storm-related power failures taking down ISP servers or power to your own house’s neighborhood, through to auto accidents taking out an electric power distribution point feeding your neighborhood (this has happened to me a couple of times) on up through to hackers’ access denial attacks.

Password managers on your browser? That would eliminate Internet access-related problems, but not the hacking problem. Browsers can be hacked, and yes, even the most carefully set up household LAN can be hacked—see the arms race above.

All of that is remote access by the hacker.

An alternative, preferred by my august self, is to write down on paper your passwords and the accounts to which they allow access. Keep those passwords under lock and physical key (cypher locks can fail from battery failure. Losing memory from loss of battery is rarer with modern locks, but there is neither battery nor memory failure from any cause with a physical key). Let your heirs know where they can find that locked location and its key. A good place to store that knowledge is in the Letter of Instruction you’ve written (and keep updated) and placed with your copy of your Will. Because of course you’ve written both.

Hard copy, written down, passwords can only be hacked by physical entry into your home and entry into your locked storage device. That requires the hacker to be physically on scene. And that’s much rarer than any software hacker breaking into any software password manager from anywhere the hacker finds convenient.

Oh, and the convenience of password managers for accessing your money-related accounts across all of your devices? No, don’t do that. Keep your money access stuff limited to a single device, ideally your PC or laptop, and never your cell phone. The cost of that convenience is just too high.

Keep it real, as the kids say. Keep it physical.