The Trump-a-paloser

I'm not quite sure what to make of the weird MAGOP pre-Mid-Term gathering in Texas, though I feel comforted by it appearing that the MAGOP don't know either. Many MAGOP candidates and members of Congress aren't showing up. Those that are attending -- rather than staying home campaigning -- are being charged a minimum of $25,000 and up to $100,000. Trump is charging $88,000 to have a selfie taken with him. Rather than creating party unity, it's being divisive -- a MAGOP candidate for Congress in Wisconsin slammed his party's nominee for governor -- whose old seat he's trying to get elected to. It's even being creepy, like when HUD Secretary Scott Turner appeared to give a butt-slap to the female speaker who preceded him. And odd, when Democratic senator John Fetterman introduced his state's MAGOP senator by video.

Ultimately, what the convention mostly seems to be is about fundraising -- candidates meeting those who will give them money, and candidates hoping to play nice with Trump so that he will give them money. Which is why journalist Ayman Mohyeldim refers to it as TrumpCon.

There are two major hurdles for political candidates, whether attendees or not. Well, two hurdles out of many.

The first is coming to the Trump-a-paloser and hitching a ride with a party leader who has a 32% approval and being tarnished by having to campaign on issues two-thirds of the public dislikes -- not limited to starting a war he promised he'd never do and can't get out of, rising gas prices, high consumer prices, tariff taxes, calling "affordability" a hoax, pushing AI data centers, starting a battle with Canada, putting out crazy and megalomaniacal AI memes and more. Or distancing yourself from Trump and avoiding the event, but risking discord in the party by your absence. Alas, that's the challenge you create when you've made the choice to enable a fascist with dementia, which is degenerative and can only get worse.

The second is that fundraising bugaboo, trying to ingratiate yourself with Trump to get some of the $400 million war chest. (He's now saying it's a billion dollars, but then this is Trump where inflation seems not only to be his middle name, but one of the big problems he and his party are facing.) Trump has said that he's going to spend his money on candidates who show the most support for hm. And that's the huge, added problem --

On the one hand, the candidates distancing themselves from Trump and his 32% approval and staying at home campaigning and the ones in close races and most in need for the financing -- and least likely to get it from Trump. On the other hand, the candidates in attendance at the TrumpCon and sucking up to their dear leader are more likely the ones in safe Red districts and least likely to need the financing. And complicating that all the more for these hopefuls -- though in another way simplifies the matter if you're aware of reality -- is that the answer is fairly simple: Trump does not give away money, without it being dragged from him...or court-ordered. All these people thinking they're going to get "money from Trump" are living in a fool's paradise. Yes, he might give out some money, most probably to those who don't need it. And even in those districts he does give money to, he's said that he wants to spend it on ads about himself. But he's not giving away $400 million that he controls. And to think he'll give away a billion dollars is ludicrous. And worse, when candidates think you have a billion dollars (which you don't) and you don't spend a billion, it just creates a bigger wedge than your 32% is creating. Only yesterday, in fact, came the story that Trump was likely going to hold on to as much of his war chest as he can in order to save it for potential lawsuits and legal defenses he expects to face if Democrats take control of one or both houses of Congress. Welcome to the TrumpCon! And of course, to make matters worse, this overlaps on the first day of the NFL season, with a highly-promoted game between the two teams that played each other in the last Super Bowl, followed the next night with a highly-promoted game being played in Australia, all of which reportedly outraged Trump -- whose favorite team sport is football, he once tried to buy an NFL team, and he knows the sport's popularity -- when he discovered it. All of which cuts down on viewership, even of his own base.

And we haven't even got to Trump's Hail Mary Act of Desperation. While saying out of one side of his mouth that "affordability" is fake, from the other side he makes his promise to give every adult in America $5,000 -- as long as the MAGOP retain control of both the House and Senate, and recipients spend it in the U.S. (Yeah, try keeping track of that and the whole concept of the government watching over what you spend.) Putting aside that this will never happen, that Congress would have to approve it, that it would increase the deficit by a trillion dollars, that this is a bribe for votes which is illegal that Trump has already promised $5,000 from "DOGE" cuts and $2,000 from tariff refunds and $1,000 from ACA cuts -- and none of that ever happened, putting all that aside...if this was such a great idea and we actually had the money rather than a $40 trillion deficit, why wait until after the election and if MAGOPs retain full control of Congress, and not give this $5,000 bounty now??!! You could almost see the desperation dripping from every delusional grifting pore.

And that was just a tip of the iceberg that was Day 1 of the Trump-a-paloser. But hey, Trump and his crack team of organizers did so well with the 250th Fourth of July Anniversary gala in Washington, D.C. So, this only follows. So, it's cool to see them taking the show on the road into Texas. Okay, sure, it's pretty much a mess. But look at the bright side, at least there isn't a Reflecting Pool.

Heavenly

A short while back, when writing on Facebook about how the musical Les Miserables overlapped a few classical music themes, I got a reply one of my readers Carolyn Brown about recording she always loved that performed Mozart's Turkish Rondo in different styles. This reminded me of a record album I came across and loved (and admired) long ago.

When I say "long ago," I mean in high school. My school, New Trier East (which has since reverted back to New Trier), had a fairly nice record collection in the library, and you could listen to anything in it when visiting the place. One day I discovered what was even then an old album called "Heavenly Echoes of My Fair Lady," performed by pianist George Feyer. I had no idea who George Feyer was, but there was something about the cover that intrigued me. It turned out that the first half of the album was just him playing songs from My Fair Lady, but the second half was what might the recording different.

The album had been released years earlier, in 1957, the year after My Fair Lady had opened on Broadway and the show became a phenomenon. For the first side of his recording, Feyer played the songs as written, extremely richly, though straightforward. On the second side, however, he concocted a story where the great classical composer masters in heaven -- like Bach, Rachmaninoff, Mozart and quite a few others -- are discussing how much they loved the score of My Fair Lady that they decided to rework the songs in their own, individual styles. And it was wonderful. I went back often to the listening room and played the 15-minute tale over and over -- until I graduated.

What I learned from the album's liner notes is that George Feyer was a classically trained pianist from Hungary and later came to New York City where he eventually got a permanent engagement performing nightly at Park Avenue's famous Delmonico Hotel, which this album was recorded live.

What I subsequently learned is that his music teachers at the Liszt Academy in Budapest included Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály (who wrote one of my favorite classical pieces, the Háry János Suite, from his folk opera). And one of his classmate was Sir Georg Solti, later the renowned conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He was also put into forced labor during WWII and later in the infamous Bergen-Belson concentration camp, where he was rescued by Allied Forces. It was when he came to the United States, that Feyer shifted his music to more light classical and eventually began an extremely successful recording career, many under the "Echoes of..." brand. He released over 40 albums. (The exact number is a bit hard to determine, since some discographies list as many as 80, some of which might have been re-releases in Europe or "extended play" recordings." Or -- who knows?) I was also surprised and pleased to learn that though he was born in 1908, he lived until 2001 and the ripe-old age of 93.

I tracked down the album about 15 years ago, and it was as fun and clever as I remembered it. And when decided to finally write about it, I tracked down a recording on YouTube, and edited it down to the "heavenly" part only. (I think that I posted a couple of the selections quite a few years ago, but this is the whole thing.)

By the way, though this video shows a copy of the album under the name of just "Echoes of My Fair Lady," I know -- from my memory and from the album I found at a used record store -- that it was "Heavenly Echoes of My Fair Lady." And the proof!

And here 'tis --

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/d220c5_94694cbbe2d3432089788dd6ed4cc834/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Oh, Brother: Part One

I mentioned the other day that I was dealing with a numbing computer issue. I'm finally at enough distance to write about it -- needed for decompressing, since it was so galling. On many levels. Much of which was my utter, gut-wrenching stupidity. And much for the scam. And much for the length of time dealing with it all. Just know upfront that the end result isn't "terrible" -- especially considering what it could have been. But it's the totality of it, on all ends, that's so teeth-grinding.

Know, too, that I'm not going to get into all the details. Some because I have a limit on how much of my own stupidity I want to dive into (not that a lot of the stupidity wasn't done for understandable reasons, but it takes much too long to explain those reasons each time), and some because the tale would be much, much too long. Even "in brief," each part is long.

And also because the main reason for writing this is to let others know what to avoid. As a result, most of the minutiae of details are secondary.

I should also mention that what makes my stupidity all the more infuriating is that all along the way I thought something was wrong and even asked about it several times. But because of those "understandable reasons," I accepted things as they were, despite my wariness.

On that Thursday afternoon, I had a problem with my Brother printer. It was printing but I couldn't get the scanning feature to work. Eventually I did a search for the issue I was encountering, saw a Brother Support page result, and clicked on it. First Rule of Stupidity: Don't click on links to big companies without double and triple checking, and probably even then. To be 100% safe, type the address you want in. Links can be spoofed or have slight changes in the spelling that if you're not vigilant, you miss. Most people know this. I know this. I clicked on the link which took me to the Brother Support page. I've been there often and know what it looks like.

So do the scammers. As I was searching the page, a chatbot opened, and after a few questions, asked if I'd like to talk to a human technician. That's odd, I thought, usually I have to ask - but said sure. A few minutes later, the Brother tech rep called. Although, as we all here now know, he wasn't a Brother tech rep at all. But I had no reason to doubt it, I was on the Brother Support website.

This is a part I'll trim, because I spent two hours with the guy and his more advanced tech supervisor. And that made it another reason it was all understandable -- scammers don't spend two hours dealing with a tech issue. It's "take the money and run". As fast as possible.

Early in the process, "Nick" emailed me one of those common software apps for tech support that let them gain access to your computer so they can find the problems and resolve them. I deal with these apps all the time. Yet here, I was wary and even asked how I knew he was from Brother. And his answer was "understandable" -- he came to me through Brother's site. So, I gave my authorization, and he logged in. Second Rule of Stupidity: Never allow someone to take over your computer unless you're 100% certain (100%) that you know who they are -- like who you personally know or that you made the phone call to the company on what you know is the corporate line. He tried several things to get my scanner to work and -- like me -- couldn't. File updates were not installing. So, he did a search to see if anything was blocking this, and for the next hour or so, I saw on my monitor my file system fly by being checked, as I've seen it checked before. It was all very legitimate -- except that it probably wasn't. And we discussed at length things about computer maintenance, which I knew was valid.

Eventually, he and his more experienced tech expert -- who called me back -- said they found the 'asprox botnet" installed on my system, a very dangerous trojan. It showed 107 devices were connected to me. Except they probably weren't. Third Rule of Stupidity: "You have a trojan" is the default claim of scammers. Trojans are real, but just saying you have one doesn't make them real on your system. You can do a scan yourself with anti-virus software -- including some good, free ones online. But "Nick" and the guy said they'd get rid of it, so that was good to know. First, though, he said I had to do several things with my backup computers to help on my end.

And yes, I was actually wary. But I "knew" not only did he come from Brother's support site, but they'd been on the phone with me at this point for almost 90 minutes. And the discussion about computers was pretty accurate. And they hadn't brought up money at all, even after saying they'd gotten rid of the trojan. So, it seemed like all a part of Brother service, since my printer is fairly new and still under warranty. And...and this is the absolutely weirdest part of the story -- they seemed to have fixed the problem with my printer's scanner!! They did a test, and it worked!

So, all that's why I mean that, for as gallingly stupid as I was -- and I'm leaving out many stupid things -- I had very understandable reasons to believe this was real (despite my continually wariness), including that...they seemed to have fixed the problem!

Keep in mind, this was not a case of them calling me that I had a problem. I had a problem. That's why I went looking online for solutions when I couldn't resolve it. Long before I tried to contact Brother. And the scanner problem actually appears fixed. And confirming this, later in the evening I had to scan something -- on my own, the phone calls had long-since ended -- and the scanner now worked! So...what kind of weird scammers are they?? And they were scammers. More on that in a bit.

Eventually after a couple hours, they did bring up money. But it wasn't much, for two hours work, $295. Some new printers are a lot less, mine was more. (Also, as my tech whiz friend Ed Bott later said -- he comes into the tale later at length -- these guys were probably from Pakistan or India, or such, and $295 to them was more like $2,000.) They did also try to upsell me a Brother/Cisco software firewall for security, but when I said I wanted to think about that, he didn't put any pressure on and asked if he could call back on Saturday. Sure.

So, he sent an invoice, and I -- warily -- gave them my credit card information. (Hey, they were from Brother's support and spent two hours with me and seem to have actually fixed my printer, so I'm going to say now that I'm not going to pay??) When "Nick" finished filling in the forms, he listed a different phone number from the one my phone showed he called on -- which I caught and asked him about. "Oh, they changed my number yesterday, and I forgot." Okay, he's from Brother. And I also noticed that on his email address to contact him, he seemed to have mistakenly added an "s", since it said "Brothers." I asked him about that, too. I was good about asking questions that didn't seem quite right. And unfortunately, I was also good about accepting the answers ("Yes, that's how our email address is spelled") because, though weird, he came from Brother's website, spent two hours, and apparently fixed my computer. And the call ended. I was glad my scanner was working, but still had nagging thoughts. There were too many things offbeat. (I've left out several.) So, I began to search online. His company "Gatex Solution" (remember that name, should you ever come across it) didn't seem to exist. Neither did his direct phone number or the company phone number. And when I asked Search if their email address was real, the answer came back -- no.

Jumping ahead in the tale, when I got a voice mail from "Nick" on his promised Saturday follow-up call (which I didn't answer, but blocked the number after the call was completed), the transcribed message showed that he referred to being from "Brothers." And that's when I realized all his verbal mentions weren't of "Brother's," but rather "Brothers" without the apostrophe. And so, I had heard them without the "apostrophe-s", because they blended into all the real mentions of "Brother." So, I felt mortified, utterly idiotic and angry. I'm so diligent about such things. And I even asked questions. And then...this. But -- they did seem to have fixed the scan feature. (And as I said, I also used the scanner later that night, which I wasn't able to before.) But I also put an immediate lock on my credit card and soon after called the card company and cancelled the card. This is the next weird thing about them as scammers. In that intervening hour, there was only that one $295 charge. They didn't instantly start making purchases. And they clearly hadn't immediately sold the card number to others who'd normally quickly make numerous charges. Just that one $295. A charge by guys who seem to have fixed the scanner on my printer. (I keep saying "seem" because I can't swear how it got fixed. But...it absolutely appears that they did fix it, rather than just get lucky. Because it was the fixing it that kept me going ahead. In fact, when you're feeling this foolish and pummeled, all that makes one question if it actually qualified as a "real" scam since what they said is they'd fix the scanner, apparently fixed it, and charged a high but acceptable price for the work and no more. But, of course, they also created a fake website, which is the definition of a fraudulent act,, said they were from "Brother's" which is a fake name, had a company that didn't seem to exist and phone numbers that weren't real. So, yeah, they also checked all the "scam" boxes. Even if they seemingly fixed the printer..

Still, though, I was sickened. Not only for what I just said about my stupidity -- but because I had turned on my two backup laptops and mobile phone, like they said was necessary. And I had this horrible feeling that my main computer, two backups and phone had all been corrupted.

It was late in the evening by the time I got around to writing my tech whiz guru Ed Bott. And that meant it was three hours later for him, so I knew he wouldn't be answering until morning. That's another long part of the tale, which I knew wasn't over yet until we dealt with those other issues. So, I'll hold that continuation for later. This has gone on long enough. I'll just note this one thing --

Everyone should have an Ed Bott in their life. You've heard the expression about someone highly knowledgeable about a subject, "Hey, he wrote the book on..." the topic. Well...Ed really did literally write the book on how to use Windows. He's been hired by Microsoft Press to write their official books on each version of Windows since Windows XP. In fact, he currently is proofing the galleys for the new, major update coming to Windows 11. So, believe me, everyone should have an Ed Bott in their life. I'm just thrilled that I do.

I'll get more into more about Ed in Part Two, since he plays the significant role. But for now, suffice it to say that the next morning, when I couldn't sleep any more after about 4-1/2 hours of rest and went to my computer at 5:55 AM, there was an email from Ed.

"I have a busy morning and not a lot of time to deal with this, sorry. But here's my quick take." And he gave a low-key, honest assessment and then, after a couple of follow-up email exchanges (despite him saying he didn't have much time), he wrote the most comforting thing I could read, especially coming from someone at the level of Ed Bott, responding to my greatest concerns --

"Your other computers are not affected. They can't install software on your phone. Do not worry about your phone.  Your files in the cloud are unaffected.

"This is a very low-level operation. These are not sophisticated criminals."

It's hard to describe the depth of relief washing over me when reading that. And then re-reading it, to reinforce the words.

But that's Part Two of the story, with the starting point being to remember Ed Bott saying, "I have a busy morning and not a lot of time to deal with this, sorry.." Because over the next three days, Ed sent me probably over 100 emails! Because he wanted to resolve issues with my computer. (Issues, to be clear, not related to viruses, but to "start fresh on that computer," which ran into a ton of hurdles. And more computer hell.)

So, this story isn't over yet. All we have right now is the moral of Part One and reason for writing this:

Even if you are vigilant, be even more vigilant. Even if you know what you're doing, don't take that for granted and look only for the worst, while overlooking the basics. If you have yellow caution lights when dealing with others or with websites, follow up on that caution. And know that when you click on a link for a company in the Search results, websites can be spoofed, so type the URL address in manually.

As it happens, only 10 days after all this began, the Washington Post did a terrific article about a new kind of scam that's similar to what I went through. It's not the same, but overlaps in many ways -- and gives great advice. I highly recommend it here. I got incredibly lucky. It's been a mess, but it could have been a meltdown disaster. I could have lost a great-many thousands of dollars and (as I thought at the time) had all my systems and my phone corrupted. But I spent $295, had to clean my system just to be safe...and apparently got my printer problem fixed. But there is much more to the tale, however. And that'll be upcoming soon in Part Two.