We’re told that banks and mortgage companies made a bunch of stupid mistakes which resulted in an economic meltdown.  So to save us from the economic meltdown, we were told we have to give $700 billion to the same banks that put us into this mess to start with.

And now the banks tell us that they are not going to tell us what they did with our money which we gave them to save us from them.

So, seriously, just how stupid are we?

SPRING HILL, Tenn. — Katherine Williams says the yellow ducky sponge she put on sale at a flea market is merely a child’s toy. City officials say the vibrator inside makes it a sex toy.

But officials in this Nashville suburb backed off from citing Williams for violating the city’s sexually oriented business ordinance because she had already taken down her display by the time police responded to complaints Saturday. Nearby vendors also refused to be witnesses in the case.

“We’ve declined to prosecute because of a lack of evidence,” City Administrator Ken York said Tuesday.

Williams, whose Passions & Pleasures business sells lotions and adult novelties at in-home parties, described her product line as “PG-13″ and said she got only two negative comments at the flea market.

“Nothing we do is nasty, unless you have a nasty mind,” she said, turning a knob on the yellow ducky’s tail to make the sponge vibrate. “My 3-year-old son loves to play with this duck in the bath. He puts it on his neck and on his head.”

Williams said she’ll be back at the flea market next year.

“If she does, she’ll be cited into court,” York said. “That duck is a sexual toy, and it was on display. That was a vibrator on display in public view.”

Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/archive/2004/10/14/spongeduck.DTL

Has this moral pendulum finally swung too far to the right?

The most intriguing quote from that news article is this one:

Nothing we do is nasty, unless you have a nasty mind…

So just what kind of person makes a phone call to the local authorities to report a vibrating duck violation? Just how motivated do you have to be to keep your town protected from this sort of threat to make that phone call? I will offer this person the benefit of the doubt and go on the assumption that the duck in question was surrounded by other “novelties” that would not be considered appropriate for three-year-olds. But even with this assumption, why couldn’t this person live by the advice I grew up with in Old New England…

Mind your own business.

There are so many threats out there common to us all. There are threats to our safety, our way of life, our liberties and even the quality of the air we breathe. We’re in the middle of perhaps the most important presidential election of this new century. But the current culture in America seems to be swinging very hard to the right, to the point of establishing a country where everyone “is just like us”. Let’s be clear, I don’t want an adult bookstore built next door to me either but this conservative mindset has given itself permission to police the general population with its own set of laws. America was once proud of the fact that every voice was worth listening to. Now an individual has to be concerned with being branded “UnAmerican” or, worse, “UnBeliever”.

The Republican Party mobilized a vocal and often radical branch of Christianity as a way to help topple Clinton. This branch is fed its Daily Word through its own fair-and-balanced television network and the pulpits of pastors who realize that they can fill the seats by riding this wave. The current administration galvanizes this branch of support by appointing John Ashcroft as Attorney General. And the end result is that a huge block in the foundation of our liberty has been removed: the block that advocated separation of church and state.

Ironic isn’t it? The Pilgrims came to Massachusetts to find religious tolerance. Now, the average person on the street in Spring Hill, Tennessee finds themselves intolerant of a vibrating rubber duck. Even if it was a sex toy, where was the traditional American tolerance that says you have your values and I have mine?

And just to add more irony, let me mention Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Baker and now Bill O’Reilly. Why is it when these men are caught literally with their pants down they are offered forgiveness while the woman in Spring Hill is offered a trip to court?

The answer is that by undermining the separation of church and state, the Republicans have granted tacit approval for this sect to act as moral police in local communities. And should “one of their own” stray from the path, they are offered a second chance. The risk is really only to people who are non-believers in the new order.

And this may be new information for some in the self-appointed morality police:

Matthew 7:
1 Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Everyone must judge for themselves what is right and wrong, what is acceptable and what is not. However, that is an individual right that cannot be taken away by any government, official or unofficial. Issues of local standards and individual integrity are too important to leave the decisions to a vocal sect. Tolerance of differing opinions is not only “American”, its the morally correct thing to do.

I do not fault anyone for their own beliefs when they differ from mine. I do fault an administration for basically creating and supporting a state religion.

And just for fun imagine that there was never a conservative block that was fed a Daily Message through slanted news networks and pulpits. Imagine that there was a block of highly-liberal voters that could be fed a daily message and motivated to vote. Now try to imagine what this block of voters could hand the Republicans the White House. Can you imagine their campaign slogan?

Perhaps “a rubber duck in every tub”?

A Jefferson Parish lawmaker wants to put people in jail for six months (or fine them $500) if they wear pants that are low-slung and expose “too much” skin or “intimate garments” below the waist.

Personally, I think they ought to throw the whole Jefferson Parish into prison — and six months just isn’t long enough — for being too stupid to elect intelligent lawmakers.

Nevertheless, this Citibank scam is important enough that I’ll try to reproduce at least the gist of what I’d written before, perhaps without all the editing and extra URLs (some of which I’d have to look up again).

This article should be of interest not just to Citibank customers, but to anyone who receives email communications which appear to be from their banks.

So…

I received an email tonight which presented itself thusly:

Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 20:59:43 -0500
From: Citibank
Reply-To: Citibank
To: Webmaster
Subject: Citibank E-mail Verification: webmaster@unspun.us

Dear Citibank Member,

This email was sent by the Citibank server to verify your e-mail
address. You must complete this process by clicking on the link
below and entering in the small window your Citibank ATM/Debit
Card number and PIN that you use on ATM.

This is done for your protection — because some of our members
no longer have access to their email addresses and we must
verify it.

There are just a few problems with this, not the least of which is that I’d never use the address of the “webmaster” for this website to communicate with any financial institution online. In fact, when I communicate with others online, I typically create new addresses specific for them. For example, if I were to want to communicate with Frito-Lay, I might use the address “frito” at Unspun.US; Coca-Cola might get “c-soda” at Unspun.US. This way, I can track which companies re-sell my address. If I get spam from someone who wants to help me enlarge certain body parts and it’s been sent to the “c-soda” address, then I start to wonder about the connection between these guys and Coca-Cola. (Disclaimer: Coca-Cola has never offered to enlarge any of my body parts, although rumor has it that enough of the non-diet version can fatten you up.) Periodically — when I no longer need to communicate with the other party or if I find they’ve sold my address — I’ll delete the customized address. I can do these things because I run my own mail servers (in more than one location) and it’s easy to re-direct these addresses to a centralized box. But by looking to see to whom the email was sent, I can track what’s happening with my personal information better.

Three things confused me about the current email purportedly from Citibank.

1. The header information
2. Why they would use a Finnish broadband connection
3. The URL to which the email directed me and the missed opportunity it represents

The Header Information

Email sent on the Internet typically contains more “header” information in the message than most people see. Your email reader (Outlook, Eudora, Netscape or whatever you use) hides these details from you, unless you know how to look for it. If you know what to look for, however, you can see not only where a message started, but each server it may have traversed on the way to your mailbox. The more complete header information on this particular message looks like this (the lines may wrap in your browser):

Return-Path:
Received: from dsl-lprgw4h9b.dial.inet.fi (dsl-lprgw4h9b.dial.inet.fi
[80.222.215.155])
      by DELETED-TO-MAKE-IT-HARDER-FOR-THOSE-WHO-WOULD-ABUSE-MY-SERVERS (THIS,TOO,DELETED) with SMTP id hB51txZV014229
      for <webmaster@unspun.us>; Thu, 4 Dec 2003 17:56:05 -0800
Received: from citi.com (mail2.ssmb.com [192.193.226.98])
      by dsl-lprgw4h9b.dial.inet.fi (Postfix) with ESMTP id 52B0BF075A
      for <webmaster@unspun.us>; Thu, 04 Dec 2003 20:59:43 -0500
Message-ID: <6.0.0.22.1.20031204205943.b3da853c@citi.com>
X-Sender: spooring@mail2.ssmb.com
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.0.22
Reply-To: Citibank
Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 20:59:43 -0500
To: Webmaster
From: Citibank
Subject: Citibank E-mail Verification: webmaster@unspun.us

The server listed here as the originator of the message (mail2.ssmb.com [192.193.226.98]) really does belong to Citibank, according to some nifty tools I use from Eye-Net Consulting to check such things. Both the name (mail2.ssmb.com) and the IP address (192.193.226.98) match up; both belong to a legitimate Citibank email server. Taking everything else into consideration, this has to be a forgery, but it was done by a social engineer with enough thought to try to impress those of us who check headers.

The Finnish Connection

But why, one wonders, would Citibank — which so far as I know is a United States company — have one of its computers connect to a broadband connection from a pool of such connections belonging to TeliaSonera, a telecommunications company in the Nordic and Baltic regions with extensive interests in growth markets of Russia, Turkey and Eurasia? Is there something wrong with the email conduits in the United States? Or is Citibank — which has a reputation for being particular about things — just being Finnishy (er, uh, I mean, “finicky”)?

An Opportunity Missed?    The URL To Which I Was Directed

The last thing which confused me is this: If, as I have to assume, this is truly a scam, then why did the address given for me to paste into my browser actually re-direct me to the main page for the real website of Citibank?

Perhaps Citibank is already onto the scam. There is reason to believe this. After all, they do have a web page for reporting frauds. If you go there, you’ll see links already set up for you to report certain ones they already know about. Maybe they contacted TeliaSonera and said, “Hey, look. Here’s what’s happening. Now set your servers so that when people try to get to these bogus addresses, it will re-direct them to our main website.”

If that’s what they did, it would be a Good Thing™, but why stop there? If Citibank really did do this, they might have had the foresight to re-direct us to a page that said something like this:

Here at Citibank, we care about your financial security. That’s why when we discovered this scam, we worked with TeliaSonera to have you re-directed to this web page when you clicked the bogus link.

The page could then go on to educate users — both existing and potential customers — about financial security on the Internet. It could remind you that when you pick a PIN number, the bank doesn’t (to my knowledge, anyway) know what it is. When you go to the bank, or choose one via telephone or the Internet, you typically enter the number yourself; you don’t tell it to anyone. That’s the point of it being a PIN: It’s a Personal Identification Number and doesn’t perform its function well if someone else knows it.

Citibank could use the page to provide Internet denizens with information about safe banking, both on- and off-line, or they could use their already-existing page about how to detect fraudulent email (Click here, then click the link titled “How do I recognize a Spoof e-mail?” in the upper-right-hand corner of the page). They would be providing a service to every member of the Internet and banking communities. And they could position themselves as a pro-active bank working to protect your assets.

Alas, another opportunity lost. Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe Citibank didn’t have this URL redirected. Maybe it’s not even a scam. Maybe Citibank really has changed all the rules about security — maybe Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) aren’t personal anymore. Maybe they need Finnish-Nordic-Baltic-Russian-Eurasian broadband connections to help collect this information.

Still, there’s one more problem that leads me to believe this is some kind of scam: I don’t have an account with Citibank.

My first response is, “Yes. And annihilation of the planet will end world hunger.”

Here’s a quote:

Smaller, more accurate nuclear weapons could reduce collateral damage and be more persuasive in the complex calculus of nuclear deterrence, Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists say. – “Report: Mini Nukes May Save Lives,” CBSNews.com, November 10, 2003.

Now word yet on how much the Bush Administration is paying for this new(que-lur) PR campaign.

Now, as a law student myself, I’m always excited when lawyers visit my blog. One thing about lawyers is that after approximately four years of a grueling post-graduate education with an emphasis on analyzing and building logical arguments, you can have some truly terrific and inspiring debates that are often quite enlightening to both sides, so long as each party keeps an open mind.

Like this one, for instance…

In an August (the month; I’m not using it adjectivally) post on the question of whether Mel Gibson was an antisemitic jew-baiter, I noted that someone had sent me an article indicating Gibson was (antisemitic). I did a quick review of some materials about “the case” before posting my response to the question on my blog. The end result of my reading was that I felt there was no way to make a determination one way or another on “the evidence” in the articles I’d read.

One of the “sub-areas” of the discussion was about whether Jews were “attacking” the film. I noted that even “‘David’ Treiman,” a Jew writing in The Forward, said that some jewish organizations were questioning Gibson’s motives. For proof of this, he offered quotes that worried about “classical standard stereotypic images of blaming the Jewish people for the crucifixion of Christ.” I indicated that this did not appear to me to be assailing Gibson’s character. It appeared they were raising some questions about the presentation of the film. In fact, from some of my reading at that time, it appeared they had not seen the film and were asking questions rather than making accusations.

I ended the post by essentially indicating that the jury was out on two questions: 1) Whether the film was antisemitic and 2) whether Gibson was antisemitic. The implication is that on the strength of what I’d seen there was not enough evidence to support answers to either question.

And that’s how it was left. Someone brought a question to me; I traced a few interesting sub-points and arguments about them, but as to the larger questions I indicated it didn’t appear there were answers available—at least to me—at that point.

Personally, I’d practically forgotten the article. Then tonight I received a message indicating a new comment had been posted to it. And from a “LadyLawyer”! The excitement was palpable throughout my entire house! An actual attorney! Someone with all that intensive training in analysis, argument building—not to mention the breadth of knowledge she’d probably have, because lawyers encounter so many different things while practicing law!

And then, this:

The article in the Forward is by Daniel Treiman, not David. Click on the link and it is the first thing you see. If you cant get that right, how do we expect you to get any of your information right.

Posted by: LadyLawyer at September 17, 2003 08:30 PM

Well you can imagine my disappointment in myself. I nearly decided to drop out of law school after such a major mistake. HOW could I have been so stupid? There was nothing left to do. I had to own up to it. And so I did.

Well, dang. You got me. My entire argument just collapsed. Not one of the premises will hold up now. Nor can the argument possibly be sound. You have utterly defeated me.

I?ll probably have to stop writing altogether, because anything I?ve ever written before or ever will write is clearly now questionable. Now that you?ve convincingly shown that putting ?David? instead of ?Daniel? for the first name is indicative of a total lack of ability to get anything right, I?ll probably have to get a job flipping burgers.

But wait! You left the apostrophe out of ?can?t? in your post!

If you can?t spell right, how do we expect you to properly critique any of the things I say?

I?m saved! I can continue to build actual arguments full of premises, subpremises, subconclusions, conclusions and (dare I say it!) information! I can still write articles for my blog!

I just hope I don?t ever misspell anything, because I?d hate to have to shut down after all that good money I spent on domain names, servers, software and all that other stuff.

Posted by: Rick at September 17, 2003 09:48 PM

Anyone out there who occasionally enjoys reading this site can thank Lady Luck that LadyLawyer forgot that doggone apostrophe.

Leave the guy and his house alone.

This is the sort of thing that should have us all inundating that homeowners’ association with mail. Someone should find the address. We can all send them messages with nothing else on them except the Merriam-Webster definition of “idiots.”

1. a person affected with idiocy; especially : a feebleminded person having a mental age not exceeding three years and requiring complete custodial care
2. a foolish or stupid person

Near as I can tell, the only defense each individual officer of the homeowners’ association has against this is even worse: Greed.

action="http://www.amazon.com/o/dt/assoc/handle-buy-box=“>

They get them in hundreds of ways.

Partly, they obtain them by starting chain letters, which people then begin to circulate because if they don?t, their entire family line back to Adam will be pre-emptively wiped out (and they apparently really believe this, so they follow the chain letter instructions) or else they?re going to get leprosy (and they apparently really believe this, so they follow the chain letter instructions) or they?ll become millionaires by forwarding the message (and they apparently really believe this, so they follow the chain letter instructions). Once the chain letter instructions are properly followed, the spammer has a long list of new and proven-to-be valid addresses for spamming. Not only that, but they figure anyone who really believed that their entire family line would be pre-emptively wiped out, or that they?d get leprosy for not forwarding the letter, or that they?d become millionaires from doing so would probably also buy swampland in Nevada. Naturally, they end up on mailing lists that provide special benefits that no one else in the world is privileged to receive. So, in the end, the chain letters actually do bring something special to these already-special people.

Another method used is to ?harvest? addresses by requiring people to sign in when they visit web pages before they?ll be allowed to download or view something. Also, if you sell something and the people have to give you their e-mail address well, guess what? That?s a marketable item as well. (This is why many people who buy off the Internet set up ?throw-away? e-mail accounts on hotmail, etc. They use them until they?re getting too much spam and then they just dump them and obtain a new e-mail address.)

Finally, sometimes they just ?guess.? A program automatically generates billions of possible names and attaches those names to domain names, then sends out the message. AOL, for example, blocks approximately 1.7 BILLION messages PER DAY that are sent towards their systems.

System, network and mail administrators are working hard to reduce the amount of spam people receive. Note that I said, ?reduce? and not ?eliminate.? Spam will never be eliminated. Just as with telemarketers and junk mail that is delivered by USPS instead of the Internet, spammers make more money from sending the spam than it ever could cost them to do so. (Spamming is actually much more profitable than the other means, because a billion messages can be sent as cheaply as tens of thousands?and in neither case does it cost much more than sending just two or three messages.)

The Nigerian spam, which is what you referenced, has actually earned some individual Nigerians well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. (It may be into the millions by now; I haven?t read up on it lately.) There really are people dumb/crazy/insane/unthinking/or-whatever enough to go for it and send a few thousand along in hopes of getting part of those millions the Nigerians claim to be offering. The U.S. (and other) governments periodically work with the Nigerian government to try to crack down, but the people running the scam aren?t easy to catch. And they?re rich (now) so they can afford to buy themselves out of harm?s way.

This was the long and, hopefully, semi-entertaining way of telling you ?Stuff happens.?

When it does, just press the delete key. That?s the only permanent solution to spam. – My response to a query regarding how spammers get one’s address.

But O’Reilly over at Fox asks

Should we allow them to get driver’s licenses? How do we know they aren’t mass murderers? You don’t have to have a background check to get a driver’s license! We don’t want mass murderers to have driver’s licenses, do we? Do you want mass murderers to have driver’s licenses? – Bill “I-can-t-build-a-sound-argument-to-save-my-life” O’Reilly, The O’Reilly Factor, Fox News, September 4, 2003 at about 5:40 p.m. PST to one of his guests with whom he obviously disagreed.

Earth to O’Reilly: Ted Bundy had a driver’s license. Paul Bernardo had a driver’s license. At least one of the Beltway Snipers (John Allen Muhammad, if not Lee Malvo) had a driver’s license. Guess what? They are or were all mass murderers!

What we really need is an I.Q. test before granting a driver’s license. But, dammit, then you’d just hire someone to drive you around.