Ruining Lives For Fun and Profit
I don’t know why this story depresses me so much, but it does. It makes me sad for a lot of people.
FoxNews.com relays a Times of London story of a company that offers to financially, socially, and otherwise ruin people’s lives for a meager $20 USD. I won’t provide a link to the dreadful site.
A service offering a complete “revenge package” in which people can destroy the financial status and relationships of their enemies at the click of a mouse is being offered over the Internet.
Perhaps the proprietors of the site have never been in extremis. If they are lucky, they’ve never had hushed conversations with a spouse–out of earshot of the kids–to choose, once and for all, between bankruptcy and foreclosure. Maybe they don’t know the pain of telling the kids you’re moving, not to a better house with more room and a new kitchen, but to a much smaller, older, less comfortable house that you can better afford.
Victims’ bank accounts can be shut down remotely and all their essential utilities cut off.
A few victims of the web site’s operators and clients might have something nasty coming to them. My guess is that many of the victims don’t. The odds are pretty good that most of the victims are decent people trying to get through life the best they can–like many of us.
“Create some false payslips [paychecks] and send them back returned to the victim’s employer and watch them lose their job,” it advises.
“Destroy a person’s bank account using our novelty bank statements. Bank accounts are like gold dust now; return[ing] a novelty bank statement with their details back to the bank works for killing someones [sic] credit card account.”
That someone, enterprising and evil, would prey and profit on the vengeful hatred of ruthless people, destroying the lives of perfect strangers, irritates the most callous strands of my heart.
There are sick people in the world. We all knew that. But this is a kind of evil against which society has so few defenses. In classic identity theft, the thief, at least, makes a profit; he doesn’t hand it over to a third party. With this outfit, the person exacting revenge walks away $20 and a soul lighter.
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Sphere: Related ContentMSM Editorials on Rove
I’m not talking about the editorials on the editorial pages, but the remarkably blatant editorializing in the “news” stories covering Karl Rove’s resignation from the White House.
An AP story by Terence Hunt retrieved from news.myway.com begins by describing the whole of the Bush administration as “turbulent.” Perhaps, but the color of the paragraph indicates that the turbulence was Rove’s fault. If blaming Rove was Hunt’s intention, then Hunt must believe Rove ordered the Islamofascist hijackers to fly airplanes into buildings.
The next paragraph is breathtaking in its complete, but subtle, condemnation of the Bush administration:
It was a major loss for Bush as he heads into the twilight of his presidency, battered in the polls, facing a hostile Democratic Congress and waging an unpopular war. A half dozen other senior advisers have left in recent months, forcing the White House to rebuild its staff at the same time the president is running out of influence.
Terence could have saved a lot of syllables by simply writing, “Rove’s retirement further dooms Bush’s failed presidency.”
This blatant Bush-bashing in the news sections is just one of the reasons Americans don’t trust the press. Terence Hunt would do himself, his employer, and his trade a big favor by leaving the hard work of reporting to reports and pursue his life-long dream of being a pundit.
Perhaps the liberal mania against hard work and success drives people like Hunt to vilify ultra-successes like Bush and Rove. The latter two men achieved the very pinnacle in their fields. Liberals like the mediocre, the also-ran. Achievement is to liberals what a banana peel is to a dog: they see people enjoying it, but they can’t get past that smell.
Others on Rove’s resignation:
Ed Morrissey (Comprehensive coverage)
Blogs of War (good round-up of blog reactions)
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Sphere: Related ContentFred Fading?
A new CBS News poll of 302 Republicans shows that Rudy Giuliani has widened his lead over Fred Thompson. Captain’s Quarters breaks down the unreliability of CBS, the problems with the sample, etc, so I won’t repeat that here.
Instead, let’s say the numbers are correct and Fred Thompson is fading fast. Two questions come up: Why? and What of it?
Why: Interest in Thompson as the non-candidate peaked in late June and the first week of July. Supporters and observers, alike, checked the blogs and the news regularly to see if he’d made any official announcements. When word came that his official announcement might come in September, the whole Thompson story lost its news-worthiness. The free pub he’d been getting was gone, and losing that exposure could hurt him.
What of it: If Thompson announces just after Labor Day (no one will notice if he announces during Labor Day weekend), he will pick up some attention. People naturally look around for a fall pastime after the last summer holiday. During election years, Labor Day is when the race starts to take shape. In the preceding year, it’s when the political junkies start getting serious and the casual voters starts eliminating bad choices (though not necessarily selecting positive choices). If he waits much past Labor Day, he won’t run.
For those of us with I’m With Fred logos all over the site, these nail-biting days. While other Republicans might be able to whoop Hillary or Osama or Edwards, Thompson seems the only candidate who would have serious coat-tails.
Ball’s in your court, Fred.
**UPDATE** 8/16: Captain’s Quarters is also following this story and has found that Rasmussen corroborates CBSNews findings . . . and then some . . .
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