June 2025 – Really Right

The LA Riots … Who is Right?

You may have seen the footage from over the weekend and bleeding into the work week about anti-ICE rioting in the Los Angeles area. It’s a sad situation but again the democrats continue to screw up.

Folks, Trump is by no means perfect, and I do have some issues with the deportations he is doing. Mostly how they are doing them. Look, I have no issue deporting the bad guys, I’m talking criminal illegals. Frankly. round those folks up 7 days a week for all I care. The issue I have is caught up in the madness are non-criminal illegal spouses and children having done nothing wrong.

Let us be civil for a minute or two here. There are folks who are here illegally, and that is wrong, but they also do the jobs many an American refuse to do. What is missing from our society is an easy answer. Give illegal, non-criminals a window to become citizens. Not an indefinite window, call it 120 days or something. Then go ahead and round up all the rest. I say this with compassion because the guy pushing a lawnmower, the guy in front of Home Depot looking for an honest day’s labor, work is not the problem. The criminals are. To be honest, neither the GOP nor the democrats have ever laid out any sort of plan to help alleviate this issue. It has led to a very nasty underbelly of society where we have a class of people living in the shadows, avoiding detection. These folks clean our houses, landscape, roof, construction jobs etc.

So do I agree with the riots in Los Angeles? Hell NO!

In America we are a society built on freedom of speech and the right to “peacefully” protest. What is going on in LA is anything but. Sure, it may have started with ok intentions, I understand the idea of ICE agents actively looking to “deport anyone brown” is very stressful even though it isn’t true. The problem is these “protests” tend to attract a lot of bad actors…. Really bad actors.

If you haven’t been paying attention, first good, secondly the scene devolved into chaos quickly. Rather than being peaceful demonstrators, the anarchists smashed cinder blocks and were throwing them at ICE agents and the police. They tossed motorized scooters at the police, threw Molotov cocktails at the police, and burned vehicles, both the public’s and the police’s. The situation quickly turned into where the police were in full riot gear. Trump even used a very obscure law to call up the CA National Guard to quell the violence. Gavin Newsom and Rob Bonta reacted by suing the federal government…. Sheesh.

The protests have shown no sign of slowing down. It’s a full-on left vs right issue like anything else in our country these days.

One thing I do have to ask is this, why do the democrats always seem to defend the most unlaw abiding, whackos? Let’s be honest, pull a permit, organize near the City Hall. Maybe have a march while not impeding traffic. Throw/hurl/set ablaze nothing and your point likely gets across. At last glance, an Apple Store, Adidas store, and a few others were set ablaze and looted. Martin Luther King Jr. Rosa Parks, and a host of other civil rights leaders are turning over in their graves. They didn’t endorse any of this hooligan type of behavior. As for that New York Post writer who was shot with rubber bullets, sorry that happened but when you are actively participating in an angry mob when the guys with badges and guns say disperse, I would follow said orders.

The scene looks like something out of a third world country, not America. Get your point across peacefully, these rioters are not the guys you want to associate with. In addition, we now have a DA in Los Angeles County who is tough on crime…. The days of mostly peaceful protests and “just expressing themselves,” appear to be over.

The Chief

Firsthand Experience With Internet Dating Fraud

Folks, I’ve not only seen “The Beekeeper” with Jason Statham but even bought the DVD of the movie. The only reason that the movie works is that Jason knew where the evil datacenter was so he could burn it down. Sadly, I didn’t have this information.

Before I recap my experience, please note that I am leaving a few “tells” out of my account just so the bad guys don’t know the specifics of everything they did wrong lest they fix their scenario.

On Facebook, I received a friend request from some guy I never met before. His name was Dean. Dean runs a Christian Singles website. A guy in my church knows Dean personally and I have no problems with him. In fact, right after I joined the website, the guy from church gave me the contact information for Dean.

Dean’s website is Sovereign Grace Singles. With a name like that you should expect that it is oriented to folks from the Reformed Baptist tradition. I do not claim to be Baptist, but I do claim to be Reformed. I decided it would have less crap on it and be more likely to be populated by real people than Match or eHarmony.

Anyway, I put my shingle out, so to speak. Low and behold, this babe that was 20 years younger than me strikes up a conversation. So did a gal about my age. (For a guy like me to be contacted by not one but two females on the same day is kind of an ego booster.) I responded to both, but the younger one was really trying to set the hook. She ended up wanting to correspond via email. (Dean’s website doesn’t have a mobile app and its communication abilities are about 20 years behind the times.) Email was an upgrade to chatting compared to what I was trying to use.

Right out the gate, I get two photos of this gal in a sports bra. Going to the gym has never been my thing but I guess some of the younger set is ok with this. This was a little unusual. And yes, her profile photo was modest and staged to look like a selfie.

The conversation was also out of kilter. The profile made it clear that the woman was a second language person but even given that, her speech was not as it should be. Whenever I asked for details, my questions were ignored or deflected. Other times the answers were just weird.

Here’s one example. Her profile stated that she liked live concerts. I asked for some examples of the type of music that she liked and what live concerts she had attended. The question was initially ignored. I asked again and was told that she was going to see the Kingston Trio, but her mom was too sick, and she decided not to go.

The Kingston Trio? Really? Aren’t they all dead and buried? I looked it up on the internet and they are scheduled to play Oakland, California and Reno, Nevada and then they are off to Michigan.

This female claims to live in Bakersfield and she can’t name any music group she has seen but says she wished she could see the Kingston Trio! Think about the logistics to get from where she lived to a city hosting the Trio. Oh, the next day she said she didn’t own a car. In California? After 22 years of living there? That is ridiculous. Most welfare recipients and illegals own a vehicle of some sort or have access to one.

The story she told was full of holes and inconsistencies. It was clear that she never lived in California and was not writing me from the United States.

The second day she sent me photos in her workout outfit.

Both sets of photos were fakes. These were either wholly made via Artificial Intelligence or enhanced by it.

At this point, I called Dean on his personal cell phone. We talked for about half an hour. He could not believe me when I told him what was going on. He was in denial and tried to make it my fault. I gave him a few examples of why I thought this person was a fake. He was reluctant to believe this was happening. After pressing my case, he finally agreed it was possible, at least remotely.

The third and last day, I was sent a video. She claimed she had hurt her foot and was staying home from the gym. A few hours later I got a flawlessly focused 37 second video of her working out. The video was edited and was stripped of audio.

If you look at the video, it was clearly made in a hotel room. Entry door, bathroom door on the left, and small lounge area on the right. The lockset on the door is not standard either.

The lady is beautiful. Heck, I don’t think Jeff Bezos could land this fish without some effort. What would she see in me?

Oh, I look up the brand of socks that she is wearing in the video. $25 a pair biking socks from Turkey.

I sent Dean the workout video. He wanted to know how I got that. Like I requested it or something? Anyway, he suspended her account and asked for verification info on where she worshipped and who her pastor was. Immediately, she went dark. I have not heard from her again. I doubt Dean has either. (Dean late said he had not.)

Folks, the experience was surprisingly emotionally manipulating and hurtful. It was somewhat rewarding to flip the script on them and try forcing them to produce her in the flesh. It did give them pause but they still tried to go forward with the mom is sick and I need money thing. I didn’t continue to respond once she refused to get the plane ticket.

Lastly, if she had flown up to see me, I would have delivered her into the waiting arms of the ladies of my church. I pushed for certain dates to insure that would happen.

I’m trying to calm down and get my head together. Meanwhile, I’m making progress on the house and looking for a few vacation opportunities.

Oh, as to why I posted the photos and video is in case someone does a matching search on the Internet and gets a hit on the photos. If you do, please let me know. I’m sure a good story will accompany the discovery.

Getting Your Deceased Loved One Off the Internet

My initial comment here is that I have actually done this. What I have done will be different than for you but the principles that I express here will be helpful.

First you need to understand what the person was using as their main points of identity. In a world of two-factor identification, this is important to start closing accounts online. Apple or Microsoft or Google and perhaps Facebook are what I would consider the usual suspects. (Leave these accounts for last.) Also, knowing the PIN to get into a person’s cell phone is a must. Typically, this is a four-digit number.

Banking and Money

Start with financial stuff. Freeze the debit or credit cards. Close any accounts tied to a person’s bank. Amazon, PayPal, Venmo, eBay, etc. You don’t want anyone draining the bank account while you are doing other things.

Please note that bank accounts can create terrible experiences for spouses, trustees, and relations. Financial institutions will often freeze accounts, want to see a death certificates, and be made aware of a clearly defined successor to any accounts. My wife and I have a Trust and that removed a lot of obstacles in this area. My former next-door neighbor let her husband handle all the bills and when he died, the banks and credit cards froze all the liquid assets. She went over six weeks just to get control of her checking account. Meanwhile, no bills could be paid, and she couldn’t buy any food.

Subscriptions

Cancel subscription services: Netflix, Disney Plus, Discovery Plus, Max, Kindle, etc. Do this even if you want to keep them. Redo any streaming accounts in the name of a living person.

Photos, Documents, and the like

Once you close the financial accounts, you need to start unwinding the stuff on the cell phone. Archive photos, email, text messages, documents on the phone. Also, check the “cloud storage” from Google, One Drive, Dropbox, Apple, etc. Put what you want to keep on a PC or laptop. To access Android data, you can set up Blue Stacks on your computer. Then you can access copies of photos, text messages, contact lists, etc. It takes patience and computer skills to do this.

Concerning text messages, they can be backed up and copied to a PC; however, they are completely unreadable without restoring them to another cell phone or using third party software. I can see them in Google Messages via Blue Stacks but can’t print them, which is really frustrating. I found third party software that can print them but the text message file from my wife’s phone was over 4 GB, and the software can’t handle such a large file without crashing.

Facebook

The easiest account to close was Facebook; however, it takes some thought and preparation before you act. First you need to decide if you want to delete the account or have Facebook archive it. Either way, the contents of the account can be downloaded. This includes all photos posted, friend lists, and other stuff. Deleting the account is easy but there is another option. You can give control of the account to someone else. In the bowls of Facebook settings, it is possible to designate anyone on the friends list as a beneficiary. (Of course, FB calls this by another name.) The designated person can then go to their Facebook account and report that the person died. Before doing this, you will need a scanned copy of the death certificate. Fill out a simple form, again buried in the bowls of account settings, and be sure to attach the death certificate.

Reporting the death of a Facebook person and subsequent approval will lock the deceased person’s account, archive the account, and affix “In Memory of…” to the top of the FB page. This also givs the beneficiary control of the account. The beneficiary can post on the account, back it up, or delete it.

Root Accounts

There is a good chance that all or some phone data is backed up on Google, Microsoft, and/or Apple servers. Deleting these primary accounts will end any hope of data recovery. Use a tech savvy person to do this and then do a factory reset to the phone.

Final thought, Samsung no longer has their own cloud storage; instead, they piggyback it onto Microsoft’s One Drive. I am not clear if this is a stand-alone backup or part of the disk space allocated to Samsung users. Without a valid email account, you may not be able to access the data anyway. If you are extra paranoid, keep this in mind.

Have fun doing this. It took me a week and I’m not totally done, just at a comfortable place to stop … for now.