Failure – Page 2 – The Burning Platform

OBAMA’S AFGHAN WAR – WHERE IS THE MSM?

To End Wars — Trump vs. Sanders

Barack Obama sought as his legacy to bring an end to the two longest wars in U.S. history. On Oct. 15, he, again, admitted failure.

The 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan will remain another year. And, on Inauguration Day 2017, 5,500 U.S. troops will still be there.

Why cannot we leave? Because, if we do, we risk the re-seizure of power by the Taliban we drove out 14 years ago, and a wipeout of all we have accomplished in America’s longest war.

When can we come home? Never, if we hope to secure that for which we have already paid with 2,500 U.S. dead.

For not only have the Taliban shown they can capture cities like Kunduz in the north, ISIS has arrived to begin its trademark atrocities. One can only imagine what will happen to the men, women and girls we liberated when we leave, and Kabul falls. Think Saigon, 1975.

In reluctantly deciding not to depart, Obama seems to have learned the lesson of Iraq. There, we have gone back in with 3,000 U.S. troops, after the president had pulled out the last 10,000.

And what is the balance sheet now on Operation Iraqi Freedom, the bloodiest and most costly American war since Vietnam?

Continue reading “To End Wars — Trump vs. Sanders”

Obama Defends The Failure Of His Syria Policy Before A Belligerent 60 Minutes

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/11/2015 23:53 -0400

Yesterday, in a comprehensive takedown of Obama’s handling of the second Syrian proxy war in three years (which is not over yet), we summarized events as follows: “The Tragic Ending To Obama’s Bay Of Pigs: CIA Hands Over Syria To Russia.”

The facts, which are largely undisputed, confirm this: having achieved no progress “against ISIS”, the stated goal of US intervention in Syria, and no progress in kicking Assad out of office and starting the Qatar has pipeline to Europe, the real goal of US intervention in Syria, the top democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, said that Obama “is debating the merits of taking further action or whether they are better off letting Putin hang himself.”

By “hanging himself”, the democrat meant handing Syria over to the Kremlin on a silver platter aafter just a few short weeks of Russian military intervention in Syria which has crushed US supply routes to ISIS and other CIA-sponsored rebel groups, and once again – just like in 2013 – put a premature end to US attempts to overthrow yet another head of state.

Fast forward to today when in what may have been the most awkward 60 Minutes interview for Obama before the US nation, Steve Kroft asked Obama about Trump, about Hillary, but it was Obama’s take on the US loss in (and of) Syria and the Russian gains there, and everywhere else, that demonstrated two things.

The first is just how marginalized the US has suddenly become in the global arena, with an impotent and insolvent Europe behind its back for moral if no other support, opposing a suddenly ascendant Russian axis in the middle-east, one which has China’s backing, especially in the aftermath of the quite demonstrative US implementation of the TPP which is meant first and foremost to offset China’s rising trade influence in the region.

The second is the extent of Obama’s delusion, or perhaps it was merely his spin relying on the naivete of the US public when it comes to foreign affairs, about the abovementioned snubbing of a superpower that until recently nobody dared to challenge unilaterally in the global arena.

The full exchange is presented below. We still can’t decide if Kroft’s at times near-aggressive belligerence toward the president was actually genuine, or as revealed previously especially in the case of the 2011 60 Minutes interview of Julian Assange, the host was directly instructed by the administration on how to approach the topics at hand, and to make Obama squirm on purpose, so as to make the loss more palatable to the people of America.

Continue reading “Obama Defends The Failure Of His Syria Policy Before A Belligerent 60 Minutes”

Record 46.7 Million Americans Live In Poverty; Household Income Back To 1989 Levels

If the unemployment rate is really 5.1%, where it was in 2007, why is the numbers of Americans living in poverty 25% higher than it was in 2007 and is higher than it was during the depths of the recession in 2009/2010? I thought Obamacare was going to pull 20 million people out of poverty. I thought stimulus programs, saving Wall Street banks, subprime auto loans, educating our youth with unlimited student loans, QE, and ZIRP were supposed to help the poor. Why isn’t Obama tweeting about the poverty rate and number of people on food stamps?

Obama has been an epic failure in helping the very people who vote for him at 95% levels. Luckily for him, they are too stupid to realize how badly he has fucked them over.

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/16/2015 11:45 -0400

At this moment, president Obama is taking to the Business Roundtable where as noted previously he will discuss “the turnarounds in the stock market, housing iprices [sic?] and job growth.”

In other words: helping wealth inequality hit record levels, permitting Chinese and other offshore “investors” to push high-end US real estate prices to never before seen levels, while everyone else “benefits” from record jobs for bartenders and waiters.

As for the stock market, other socialist leaders will laugh at Obama’s puny returns.

Tim Backshall @credittrader

Obama: Stocks have doubled since 2009

Maduro: Stocks are up 44,584% since 2009

That said, here are some things Obama will not discuss.

According to the just released Census Bureau annual report on Income and Poverty, in 2014 the official poverty rate was 14.8% as a result of a record 46.7 million Americans living in poverty. This is the fifth consecutive year since the end of the recession that the number of impoverished Americans has barely not budged. What recovery?

Worse, while there was no material change for the percentage of Americans in poverty, there was a statistical increase in the number of people in poverty who had at least a bachelor’s degree (rising from 3 million to 3.4 million in one year) and married-couple families. Because through higher education and debt, to poverty.

Continue reading “Record 46.7 Million Americans Live In Poverty; Household Income Back To 1989 Levels”

How I was personally affected by Chavez-Maduro socialism in Venezuela

Via Vineyard of the Saker

First, let me clarify that I am an average citizen – working class, born in the 70s when my country Venezuela was called “Little Arabia”, for the flow of money at that time came through oil. Unfortunately this has changed in the last 15 years.

My family are people who work for a living and sacrifice what little they have to achieve home ownership (acquired in those years before the socialists came to power) and even though today we are employed professionals, there is no possibility of getting credit to purchase property.

I was 23 when Chavez arrived in power and already had an independent life and a degree in marketing. I worked, was independent in almost all my needs, had credit cards and I was able to buy vehicle – a 1998 Opel Corsa. In those days if you had a good job you could go to a credit agency and would have credit or cash in 72 hours maximum. After choosing the model, colour, equipment and going through a short administrative formality you could enjoy your vehicle.

To remember that a guy like me with a salary as an editor at a TV channel (I’m a publicist) could have the “luxury” to have new car is now ridiculous. In 1998 the cost of the car was about the same as my yearly salary, with bonuses in December. I cannot dream of buying a car now, because the prices are exorbitant and the currency devaluations of recent years have ended our purchasing power.

There is no market for new vehicles except trucks and a couple of brands that still survive the onslaught of socialism (Toyota which has plant in Venezuela and make lucrative contracts with the government and Ford also has a plant which has crippled its operations on several occasions due to the crisis). Other brands only exist to sell spare parts (what few are available).

Equally, it is almost impossible to travel abroad, one because of the price, two because the Venezuelan government owes foreign airlines at least US$4 billion (here I leave a link to a Venezuelan newspaper to understand this situation regarding air tickets in Venezuela. Sorry if you don’t read Spanish)

Continue reading “How I was personally affected by Chavez-Maduro socialism in Venezuela”

Education — All Bubble and No Champagne

Guest Post by Monty Pelerin

Education in the United States is a disgrace. Education is all bubble and no champagne. It should be viewed as one of the biggest tragedies ever imposed by government, perhaps even including the violence of war.

For aspiring entrepreneurs, there is an opportunity in this post. Make yourself a lot of money while making most of the country very happy.

Government runs education like it runs everything else — terribly. Whatever government “fixes” it makes worse! It mucks things up at all levels. Education is an easily demonstrated government example of ineptness that need not be.

The tragedy of the education system is that it destroys lives. Generations of poor are condemned to stay poor without proper education. Schools in poor neighborhoods are sub-standard, guaranteeing no escape. This outcome is considered political collateral damage. Politicians, especially Democrats, find it politically expedient to write off lives to placate constituents. Some say creating more ignorant people is good for the political class.

A Long Time Ago

I recall having a discussion with a school-board member over forty years ago in Upstate New York. Yes, the education problem was apparent then and has only gotten much worse. She was excited about the reforms that the local school board was adopting.

After listening to her enthusiastic litany of changes, I explained that similar changes had been heralded for the prior twenty years with the intent of “fixing” things. Similar reforms had produced no results except a continuing downtrend in educational metrics. I opined that the simple mission of education was to educate and that this mission was compromised by all the tertiary functions that schools and teachers were burdened with. She agreed that education/learning was the primary and overriding objective.

Then we discussed some of the non-educational functions included in the laundry list of what schools were supposed to provide — indoctrination, homogenization, driver-ed., self-image enhancement, etc. etc. Agreement between us on these issues was more common than disagreement, although I was stubborn in my belief that elements in the new program addressed none of these.

Somewhat frustrated, she asked what it would take to convince me that schools were improving. I answered simply: “Sixteen year-olds in the fifth grade.”

Continue reading “Education — All Bubble and No Champagne”

OBAMACARE ADDS $1.1 TRILLION TO THE NATIONAL DEBT & INCREASES TAXES BY $800 BILLION

The CBO, whose estimates are as accurate as a Tim Tebow pass, shows that Obamacare increases deficits by a total of $1,156 billion over its first 10-year period. This is supposedly offset by cost savings of $879 billion (predominately $802 billion saved in Medicare) and unrelated tax increases of $631 billion (predominately $346 billion in investment income surcharges). These government accountant weenies always underestimate the costs and overestimate the savings. The cost of Obamacare will soar past $2 billion. The States are already being overwhelmed by the increase in Medicaid enrollees, far above the estimates made by the Obamanistas. This bloated abortion of a healthcare plan will accelerate the destruction of our economy.

Everyone of these taxes will be passed along to you in the form of higher prices. I thought Obamacare was supposed to save every family $2,500 per year. I’m still waiting. How about you?

Continue reading “OBAMACARE ADDS $1.1 TRILLION TO THE NATIONAL DEBT & INCREASES TAXES BY $800 BILLION”

THE UNAFFORDABLE CARE ACT IS AN UNQUALIFIED DISASTER

Obama declared that Obamacare would not add one dime to the national debt. Obama declared that every family in America would see their annual premiums go down by $2,500. Obama declared that 30 million uninsured Americans would now be covered.

Does anyone ever get held accountable for their promises in this country?

My annual healthcare costs have risen by an average of 10% per year since Obamacare was implemented, and I work for a large institution. Millions have lost coverage or have seen their costs double or triple.

The assumptions put forth by the government were bogus, so premiums for the actual Obamacare plans are going up 20% to 50% per year.

No liberal ever mentions the fact that deductibles for the cheapest Obamacare plans run from $5,000 to $10,000. How many middle class people can pay those deductibles?

And the coup de grace. Only 10 million people are signed up for Obamacare, and most of them had coverage before it came along.

Obamacare is a disaster and will only get worse as time goes on. The Medicaid system is being swamped and the bankrupt states will become more bankrupt.

Government destroying our lives, a day at a time. So it goes.

Guest Post by Michael Tanner

As we await the Supreme Court’s decision on subsidies, an interim report. We haven’t heard much about Obamacare from the media lately (with the exception of Paul Krugman, who slips a paragraph into every other column — regardless of topic — to tell us how well it’s working). It’s as if both supporters and opponents of the health-care law are holding their collective breaths as they wait for the Supreme Court, which is expected to decide any day now whether the law will be able to survive in its current form.

Obamacare’s opponents have mostly been caucusing behind closed doors trying to decide whether and when to offer an alternative — and how much to offer — should the Court require the law to be implemented as written — that is, without subsidies on federally run exchanges.

The law’s advocates, meanwhile, may have been left speechless by the news that Obamacare has tied an all-time low for public support, according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll. Just 39 percent of registered voters back the law, tying an all-time low last reached in April 2012. Fifty-four percent oppose it, and while that’s not a record, it represents a six-point increase in opposition over the past year.

Or maybe the law’s supporters simply have little response to the ongoing spate of news suggesting that, Krugman notwithstanding, the law is still not working very well. For example, insurance companies have begun submitting their requests for rate increases for 2016, and those requests suggest that premiums could skyrocket next year.

Already we’ve seen requests for increases for individual plans as high as 64.8 percent in Texas, 61 percent in Pennsylvania, 51.6 percent in New Mexico, 36.3 percent in Tennessee, 30.4 percent in Maryland, 25 percent in Oregon, and 19.9 percent in Washington.

Those increases would come on top of premium increases last year that were 24.4 percent above what they would have been without Obamacare, according to a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research. At the same time, deductibles for the cheapest Obamacare plans now average about $5,180 for individuals and $10,500 for families.

Continue reading “THE UNAFFORDABLE CARE ACT IS AN UNQUALIFIED DISASTER”

IF WE JUST GIVE THE NWS ANOTHER BILLION, THEY WON’T BE INCOMPETENT

Don’t mess with the National Weather Service.

It only took a few hours before the mainstream media faux journalists began to peddle the statist excuses for the National Weather Service epic failure. In a shocking development, the government loving Keynesian control freaks blame lack of funding for the complete and utter failure of a government agency to correctly predict the weather three hours in advance. Marketwatch printed this drivel by Tuesday afternoon:

The search is on for scapegoats after a missed weather forecast turned the City That Never Sleeps into a ghost town on Monday night. One prime suspect: budget woes at the National Weather Service.

The weather agency’s budget has hardly risen over the past five years, topping slightly over $1 billion for the current fiscal year. In the past decade, its budget has increased much slower than overall federal spending. The NWS was also was hurt by the so-called budget sequester in 2013 that required most federal agencies to cut spending and impose a hiring freeze.

The article blamed the awful austerity imposed on the NWS as the reason their computer models weren’t able to predict what would happen in the next six hours. Of course, their own words undercut their argument. The NWS uses multiple computer models to verify their forecast. They use the European model, along with their own models. Of course, all the models were wrong.

Continue reading “IF WE JUST GIVE THE NWS ANOTHER BILLION, THEY WON’T BE INCOMPETENT”

WHERE’S THE OBAMA PRESS CONFERENCE TO ANNOUNCE THIS LATEST MILITARY FAILURE?

We droned some folks.

We got some hostage folks killed.

We are the USA.

Did we bury the body of Sommers at sea?

US Hostage Held By al Qaeda Killed In Botched Special Ops Rescue Attempt

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/06/2014 09:48 -0500

Overnight, two hostages including an American photojournalist, 33-year-old Luke Sommers, who was held for more than a year by al Qaeda’s Yemen branch, as well as a South African teacher, Pierre Korkie, were killed in a botched rescue attempt by US special operations forces. This was the second rescue attempt in as many weeks. According to the WSJ, Luke Somers, 33 years old, was killed by militants, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Saturday. Several members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, were also killed in the raid.

South African teacher Pierre Korkie was also killed in the raid, according to a charity that had been trying to help negotiate his release.

The ill-advised raid had been ordered by President Barack Obama because “there were compelling reasons to believe Mr. Somers’ life was in imminent danger” according to outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel who will be all the more eager to leave the Pentagon after this latest failure which will conclude an administrative career of one debacle after another.

“Both Mr. Somers and a second non-U.S. citizen hostage were murdered by the AQAP terrorists during the course of the operation,” Mr. Hagel said in a statement.

A U.S. official said Mr. Somers was shot by militants as the raid unfolded and wasn’t killed in crossfire. It wasn’t immediately clear where Mr. Somers’s remains were.

The raid took place after AQAP had warned that they would kill Mr. Somers if U.S. forces attempted another “foolish” rescue attempt, in a video statement released Thursday. In the video, an AQAP commander threatened to kill Mr. Somers by the end of the week if their unspecified demands weren’t met.

AQAP was true to its word: Somers was indeed killed after US forces attempted another “foolish” rescue attempt. At least al Qaeda gives out fair warnings.

According to CBS News, the raid was carried out by U.S. Navy SEALs who flew into Yemen on a V-22 Osprey aircraft and hiked to the location where Somers was being held.

CBS News correspondent Charlie D’Agata reports that a Defense Department official said Somers was apparently shot by his captors during the raid. Something must have alerted Somers’ captors of the raid, giving them enough time to shoot Somers and Korkie, D’Agata reports.

When the SEALs reached Somers he was alive but had been badly wounded and died of his wounds by the time he reached a U.S. Navy ship, D’Agata reports. There were no U.S. military casualties, D’Agata reports.

Some background on the killed hostage:

Somers was kidnapped in September 2013 as he left a supermarket in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, said Fakhri al-Arashi, chief editor of the National Yemen, where Somers worked as a copy editor and a freelance photographer during the 2011 uprising in Yemen.

Somers, who was born in Britain, earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing while attending Beloit College in Wisconsin from 2004 through 2007. “He really wanted to understand the world,” said Shawn Gillen, an English professor and chairman of Beloit College’s journalism program who had Gillen as a student.

Fuad Al Kadas, who called Somers one of his best friends, said Somers spent time in Egypt before finding work in Yemen. Somers started teaching English at a Yemen school but quickly established himself as a one of the few foreign photographers in the country, he said.

“He is a great man with a kind heart who really loves the Yemeni people and the country,” Al Kadas wrote in an email from Yemen. He said he last saw Somers the day before he was kidnapped.

“He was so dedicated in trying to help change Yemen’s future, to do good things for the people that he didn’t leave the country his entire time here,” Al Kadas wrote.

This was the second attempt to rescue Somers: In a statement Thursday, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby acknowledged for the first time that a mysterious U.S. raid last month had sought to rescue Somers but that he turned out not to be at the site. The U.S. considers Yemen’s al Qaeda branch to be the world’s most dangerous arm of the group as it has been linked to several failed attacks on the U.S. homeland.

Kirby did not elaborate on the joint U.S-Yemeni operation to free Somers, saying details remained classified. However, officials have said the raid targeted a remote al Qaeda safe haven in a desert region near the Saudi border. Eight captives – including Yemenis, a Saudi and an Ethiopian – were freed. Somers, a Briton and four others had been moved days earlier.

Lucy Somers, the photojournalist’s sister, told The Associated Press that she and her father learned of her 33-year-old brother’s death from FBI agents at 12 a.m. EST Saturday.

“We ask that all of Luke’s family members be allowed to mourn in peace,” Lucy Somers said from London.

Yemen’s national security chief, Maj. Gen. Ali al-Ahmadi, said the militants planned to kill Luke Somers on Saturday.

“Al Qaeda promised to conduct the execution (of Somers) today so there was an attempt to save them but unfortunately they shot the hostage before or during the attack,” al-Ahmadi said at a conference in Manama, Bahrain. “He was freed but unfortunately he was dead.”

The news of the failed rescue comes after a suspected U.S. drone strike in Yemen killed nine alleged al Qaeda militants early Saturday, a Yemeni security official told the AP before news of Somers’ death. The drone struck at dawn in Yemen’s southern Shabwa province, hitting a suspected militant hideout, the official said. The official did not elaborate and spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorized to brief journalists.

Needless to say, the strikes are despised by many in Yemen due to civilian casualties, legitimizing for many the attacks on American interests.

It was not clear as of this writing how many innocent Yemeni people were killed in the latest US strike in Yemen, but what is clear is that in a world in which operators of remote-control fighter jets kill thousands of innocent people half way around the globe with absolute impunity, tragic incidents such as this one will certainly continue.

THE WAR ON POVERTY: 50 Consecutive Years of Failure

Guest Post by Doug Ross

Robert Rector, writing in The Washington Times, writes the epitaph of the catastrophic disaster — for all involved — known as “The War on Poverty.”

This year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty. In January 1964, Johnson declared “unconditional war on poverty in America.” Since then, the taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson’s war. Adjusted for inflation, that’s three times the cost of all military wars since the American Revolution.

Last year, government spent $943 billion providing cash, food, housing and medical care to poor and low-income Americans. (That figure doesn’t include Social Security or Medicare.) More than 100 million people, or one third of Americans, received some type of welfare aid, at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient. If converted into cash, this spending was five times what was needed to eliminate all poverty in the United States.

By the government’s own measures, the drop in the percentage of individuals qualifying as poor ended once the “War” truly got underway.

In fact, begin “poor” ain’t what it used to be during, say, the Great Depression.

The actual living conditions of households labeled as poor by Census are surprising to most people. According to the government’s own surveys, 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning; nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television; half have a personal computer; 40 percent have a wide-screen HDTV. Three-quarters own a car or truck; nearly a third has two or more vehicles.

Ninety-six percent of poor parents state that their children were never hungry at any time during the year because they could not afford food. Some 82 percent of poor adults reported that they were never hungry at any time in the prior year…

…The average poor American lives in a house or apartment that is in good repair and not overcrowded. In fact, the average poor American has more living space than the typical nonpoor individual living in Sweden, France, Germany or the United Kingdom.

In order to justify the massive transfers of wealth engendered by the “War”, President Lyndon Johnson predicted that the programs would reduce the number of Americans on welfare and transform many “tax-eaters” into “taxpayers”. In fact, the opposite happened, as it does so often when the federal government exceeds its Constitutional authority.

For a decade-and-a-half before the War on Poverty began, self-sufficiency in America improved dramatically. For the past 45 years, though, there has been no improvement at all. Many groups are less capable of self-support today than when Johnson’s war started.

The culprit is, in part, the welfare system itself, which discourages work and penalizes marriage. When the War on Poverty began, 7 percent of American children were born outside marriage. Today, the number is 41 percent. The collapse of marriage is the main cause of child poverty today.

The folly of Obama and the Democrats’ incessant push for more wealth redistribution — after five decades of unbroken failures — is obvious to any thinking American.

The welfare state is self-perpetuating. By undermining the social norms necessary for self-reliance, welfare creates a need for even greater assistance in the future. President Obama plans to spend $13 trillion over the next decade on welfare programs that will discourage work, penalize marriage and undermine self-sufficiency.

Which, some might say, was the plan all along.

The effects of subsidizing poverty are remarkably clear: these programs destroy two-parent families, sentence children to lives of poverty, and frequently lead to violence and imprisonment.

Any rational human being would look at the facts and reconsider the entire “War on Poverty”.

It remains to be seen whether any Democrat qualifies.

EVERY HOME DEPOT STORE IN THE COUNTRY HAS BEEN HACKED

Sounds of silence from the mainstream media and the scumbags at the mega-retailer. The Target breach was over 40 million credit cards. This breach looks much larger.

Via Brian Krebs

Data: Nearly All U.S. Home Depot Stores Hit

New data gathered from the cybercrime underground suggests that the apparent credit and debit card breach at Home Depot involves nearly all of the company’s stores across the nation.

Evidence that a major U.S. retailer had been hacked and was leaking card data first surfaced Monday on the cybercrime store rescator[dot]cc, the shop that was principally responsible for selling cards stolen in the Target, Sally Beauty, P.F. Chang’s and Harbor Freight credit card breaches.

As with cards put up for sale in the wake of those breaches, Rescator’s shop lists each card according to the city, state and ZIP code of the store from which each card was stolen. See this story for examples of this dynamic in the case of Sally Beauty, and this piece that features the same analysis on the stolen card data from the Target breach.

The ZIP code data allows crooks who buy these cards to create counterfeit copies of the credit and debit cards, and use them to buy gift cards and high-priced merchandise from big box retail stores. This information is extremely valuable to the crooks who are purchasing the stolen cards, for one simple reason: Banks will often block in-store card transactions on purchases that occur outside of the legitimate cardholder’s geographic region (particularly in the wake of a major breach).

Thus, experienced crooks prefer to purchase cards that were stolen from stores near them, because they know that using the cards for fraudulent purchases in the same geographic area as the legitimate cardholder is less likely to trigger alerts about suspicious transactions — alerts that could render the stolen card data worthless for the thieves.

This morning, KrebsOnSecurity pulled down all of the unique ZIP codes in the card data currently for sale from the two batches of cards that at least four banks have now mapped back to previous transactions at Home Depot. KrebsOnSecurity also obtained a commercial marketing list showing the location and ZIP code of every Home Depot store across the country.

Here’s the kicker:

A comparison of the ZIP code data between the unique ZIPs represented on Rescator’s site, and those of the Home Depot stores shows a staggering 99.4 percent overlap.

A comparison of the ZIP code data between the unique ZIPs represented on Rescator’s site, and those of the Home Depot stores shows a staggering 99.4 percent overlap.

Home Depot has not yet said for certain whether it has in fact experienced a store-wide card breach; rather, the most that the company is saying so far is that it is investigating “unusual activity” and that it is working with law enforcement on an investigation. Here is the page that Home Depot has set up for further notices about this investigation.

I double checked the data with several sources, including with Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) and at the University California, Berkeley. Weaver said the data suggests a very strong correlation.

“A a 99+ percent overlap in ZIP codes strongly suggests that this source is from Home Depot,” Weaver said.

Here is a list of all unique ZIP codes represented in more than 3,000 debit and credit cards currently for sale on Rescator’s site (Rescator limits the number of cards one can view to the first 33 pages of results, 50 cards per page). Here is a list of all unique Home Depot ZIP codes, in case anyone wants to double check my work.

In all, there were 1,822 ZIP codes represented in the card data for sale on Rescator’s site, and 1,939 unique ZIPs corresponding to Home Depot store locations (while Home Depot says it has ~2,200 stores, it is safe to assume that some ZIP codes have more than one Home Depot store). Between those two lists of ZIP codes, there are 10 ZIP codes in Rescator’s card data that do not correspond to actual Home Depot stores.

Finally, there were 127 ZIP codes for Home Depot stores that were not in the list of ZIPs represented in Rescator’s card data. However, it’s important to note that the data pulled from Rescator’s site is almost certainly a tiny fraction of the cards that his shop will put up for sale in the coming days and weeks.

What does all this mean? Well, assuming Home Depot does confirm a breach, it could give us one way to determine the likely size of this breach. The banks I spoke with in reporting this story say the data they’re looking at suggests that the breach probably started in late April or early May. To put that in perspective, the Target breach impacted just shy of 1,800 stores, lasted for approximately three weeks, and resulted in the theft of roughly 40 million debit and credit card numbers. If a breach at Home Depot is confirmed, and if this analysis is correct, this breach could be much, much bigger than Target.

How does this affect you, dear reader? It’s important for Americans to remember that you have zero fraud liability on your credit card. If the card is compromised in a data breach and fraud occurs, any fraudulent charges will be reversed. BUT, not all fraudulent charges may be detected by the bank that issued your card, so it’s important to monitor your account for any unauthorized transactions and report those bogus charges immediately.

CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS “OUR” DOING GREAT

Now this is some really funny shit. This is what Obama, Rahm, teacher’s unions, and decades of Democrat run urban welfare kill zones have wrought. Nothing like a Chicago public school named after a famous black person, where the kids can’t read, write, add or subtract. At least they spelled Robeson correctly. I bet they have some really cool murals in this neighborhood showing black people doing great things.

Here are some more amusing facts about Paul Robeson high and the Chicago public school system:

The percent of freshmen who graduate from Paul Robeson high school within five years is 39.9%.
The ACT test is the best measure of how ready students are for college. A score of 21.3 or higher is “college ready.” “College ready” means that a student has about a 50 percent chance of getting a “B” or better in his or her college courses.The average score of the students that take the exam at Paul Robeson high is 13.4. These are the brightest and best at good old Robeson high.
Now for the real kicker. Thank Obama for those student loans doled out to anyone with the ability to breath. 53% of the graduates from Robeson high are “enrolled” in college. That is simply hysterical. No data on how many graduate. Do you think the American taxpayer will be getting paid back on those loans?
91% have to take remediation courses in college because of their basic math and school-work shortcomings.
If you think the City of Chicago school system is bad, check out Robeson’s scores versus everyone else. Then remember that 53% of the graduates enroll in college:

The 50% level of meeting minimum standards for Illinois is pitiful to begin with. 30% for the city of Chicago schools is pathetic. 5% for Paul Robeson high is about the most atrocious result possible. You could probably guess on every question and achieve that result.
So doing some basic math, we know that 40% of their students graduate and 53% of them enroll in college. That means that 21% of graduates go onto college. How can this be if only 5% of them can meet minimum standards for math, reading, and science? Could Obama’s student loan program be the cause of rising tuition? If students who should not be in college enroll with taxpayer funded loans, the demand stays high. Price is a function of supply and demand. Creating artificial demand through debt causes prices to rise. I’m sure Al Sharpton will be doing a story about this on MSNBC tonight.
The student diversity is 99% black.
The school district spends over $13,000 per student per year and achieves this result. But, the libs and the unions contend that if you hire more worthless teachers and spend $16,000 per student, all will be well. The student to teacher ratio is 15 to 1. Does that sound overwhelming? The ratio in my Catholic high school was at least 25 to 1.
The average Chicago Public School teacher salary is $76,000. That is the average. They work 9 months per year, produce this kind of result, and get paid 150% more than the average worker in America. And this doesn’t include their gold plated pension and health benefits.

This is the end result of LBJ’s Great Society. In the Englewood neighborhood, where Robeson is located, the average per capita income is a paltry $12,255 and the unemployment rate is running at almost 24%. You can bet the majority of these kids have never met their daddy. The welfare mentality breeds this type of person and leads to this result.

THIS IS ARE STORY should be the title of Obama’s autobiography.