I don’t invest much energy commenting on the abundance of inexcusable national blunders and political power plays designed to benefit one party above the welfare of all Americans.
It isn’t that there aren’t plenty of issues worthy of criticism and commentary. It’s that I’m not well-sourced at the national level, nor do I have interest in pretending to be a political pundit.
However, I couldn’t remain silent after watching President Joe Biden attack members of our nation’s mounted Border Control trying their best to control illegal Haitian immigrants flooding our border. It is, after all, their responsibility.
Biden commented about several Border Control officers on horseback trying to maintain order at the insanity now known as our southern border. In the process of doing their jobs, at least one officer was using ordinary split reins to safely control his horse.
These reins are standard issue when using horses to control crowds. They aren’t “whips,” never have been, and weren’t being used as such. The video of this disputed event clearly shows that to every American despite leftist lies to the contrary.
“It was horrible what you saw,” Biden said at the White House. “To see people treated like they did, horses nearly running people over and people being strapped. It’s outrageous! I promise you those people will pay. … An investigation [is] underway now, and there will be consequences.”
Consequences, eh? What about your own ignorant, ill-informed, knee-jerk public condemnation without bothering to allow the Border Patrol to explain what was actually happening?
Not surprisingly, the always loud-mouthed and ill-informed Rep. Maxine Waters of California chimed in to claim the officers’ behavior and those “whips” reminded her of the slavery and civil rights struggles.
Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard rightly denounced Biden, calling him “judge, jury, and executioner” for such an inaccurate and undeserved attack on federal officers.
Count me among those proud of our overworked mounted Border Patrol officers for what I saw as them trying their best to fulfill an overwhelming mission that Biden himself needlessly created.
Internet scams
I’ve been scammed online more than once, ordering items that never appeared or receiving an inferior item far different than what was advertised. How about you?
A recent study, “State of Internet Scams 2021,” listed 10 individual Internet apps, services and platforms where the most people were being scammed. Facebook led the pack. Imagine that.
No less than a record $4.2 billion was lost to online scams in 2020. Arkansas was the 37th most-defrauded state with victims among us losing $17 million. The top 10 offenders consists of two social media platforms, two messenger services, one popular online game and five dating apps.
SocialCatfish.com conducted the study using data from the FBI, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and the Federal Trade Commission. It included a poll of 726 online scam victims in an effort to to learn where most scams occur.
The apps were led by Facebook with 152 victims; Google Hangouts, 99; Instagram with 80; and WhatsApp and Plenty of Fish with 50 each. Match, OurTime, Zoosk, Words With Friends and Tinder rounded out the top 10.
The five most-scammed apps and their top scams, according to SocialCatfish.com:
• Facebook, account cloning: Fraudsters use photos and information on your public profile to create a replica account, then ask your friends and family for money and send malicious links that, if clicked, can steal their personal and financial information.
• Google Hangouts, romance scam: Scammers meet victims on dating apps but to avoid being kicked off those apps, they move the conversation to Google Hangouts. They “fall in love” quickly, gain your trust and begin asking for money and personal information until nothing remains.
• Instagram, fake brand giveaways: Scammers pretend to be a respected brand offering free product giveaways. You sign up and give personal information but never receive a product, winding up with an empty bank account instead.
• WhatsApp, hijack scam: Beware if you receive an unrequested six-digit verification code. Scammers, who’ve already hijacked a friend’s account, send the code and explain they need it to get back into their account. By sending it to them, you allow them to hijack your account. They’ll then ask your contacts for money and replicate the scam by pretending to be you and asking others for the code.
• Plenty of Fish, romance scam: Scammers lurk on the dating app, using photos of attractive models to lure victims. They claim they can’t meet in person because they work overseas or are in the military. They leave victims with an empty bank account.
Victims can report to IdentityTheft.gov, the FBI, IC3 or the FTC.
And they told us years ago how positive it would be for society to blindly embrace the Internet.
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master’s journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.