I don't know the woman debt collectors think is me but that doesn't stop them calling. Now, thankfully, there is a federal effort to tackle this growing problem.

Her name is Kathryn.

Every few weeks, I'll answer the phone, and someone will want to talk to her. In fact, whoever is on the other end of the line will insist on talking to her. They assume that I am her, even when I inform her that I'm not and that I don't know who she is. They threaten that if I don't bring her to the phone, I'll face "consequences". Sometimes I'll get two phone calls a day, every day of the week.

These debt collectors want Kathryn to repay some student loans, and every time her file is sold to a new agency, my phone number is transferred along with it - and I have to begin convincing a new bunch of folks that this isn't the way to find her.

Halloween may be over, but the world of zombie debt is a year-round horror show. Aggressive collectors buy credit card accounts from original lenders like Chase or Bank of America that have been written off as in default and impossible to collect on. Having paid only pennies for every dollar owed to acquire these accounts, the new collectors have a big financial incentive to collect the maximum they can - it's not about recouping money but about seeing how much they can make. Getting someone to agree to pay $1 for every $10 of debt owed could mean a 100% return.

Small wonder that a number of players in this space resort to abusive practices, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced last week a new nationwide initiative involving not only 47 attorneys general and many state regulatory agencies but also numerous local bodies and even a Canadian provincial regulatory.

Operation Collection Protection will try to halt the industry's worst practices - and it's needed, says Edith Ramirez, chairwoman of the FTC.

"We receive more complaints about this industry than any other," she told a press conference last Thursday, noting that debt collectors make a billion contacts a year with consumers. "The majority [of those] are legal. Many are not."

Social media went wild in wonder and amazement when a large bright comet-shaped object with a blue-green-white tail streaked over Los Angeles and San Diego, sparking speculation as to whether it was a meteor, military test, or, of course, an alien visit.


The US Navy has confirmed that the mysterious "meteor" was a scheduled Trident II ballistic missile test flight. Cmdr. Ryan Perry of the Navy's Third Fleet said in a statement that the rocket was launched from the Kentucky Ohio-class submarine in the Pacific Test Range off the coast of Southern California.

Police in Orange County, California, have arrested a Christian youth pastor after several victims have accused him of sexual assault, KTLA reports.

Sean Patrick Aday, 38, was arrested and charged with rape, sodomy, penetration with a foreign object and sexual assault, Orange County Sheriff's officials told the station. He was arrested Friday and released on $500,000 bond Saturday morning.

Aday was a youth pastor at Grace Community Church. Authorities told reporters a female victim came forward in October to report that he had sexually assaulted her.

KTLA reports other young women also reported Aday had sexually assaulted them while a young pastor at the church. He was fired in October. All of the alleged victims are in their late teens or early twenties and were volunteers or parishioners with the church.

The assaults allegedly occurred on church grounds or during church functions and trips. Authorities believe there are additional victims who have yet to come forward.

"You grew up wanting so bad to be Luke Skywalker, but you realize that you were basically a Stormtrooper, a faceless, nameless rifleman, carrying a spear for empire, and you start to accept the startlingly obvious truth that these are people like you."

When a Reddit user posted an open question to U.S soldiers asking them how they justify their actions against innocent civilians abroad, he probably didn't expect this candid response...

'You kill. Watch friends die. It's usually quick, almost never quiet, but for the rest of your life, when you remember sitting at the bar with them, they're blown open. You picture the nights you spent downtown at Scruffy Murphy's, but instead of the stupid hookah shell necklace, your boy's jaw is blown off, and his left eye is ruined, and he's screaming. You fight, you kill, you watch friends die, and you notice a distinct lack of change. You kick in doors and tell terrified women to sit on the floor while you and your friends ransack their home, tearing the place apart, because they might be hiding weapons. There is no reason to believe this house in particular is enemy, same for the next one, and the one after that, or the seven before; they just happened to be there, and maybe they had weapons. Probably not, they almost never did.'

The moving testimony is just a snippet from the refreshingly honest reply given by U.S soldier Daniel Crimmins when asked how military servicemen can be so "blasé" about drone strikes and other civilian deaths due to the 'War On Terror'.

Someone with the username VisualEffects originally posted:

'9/11. The day Americans feel so strongly about that they say "Never forget". A tragedy for sure. But you've retaliated and killed over 50 fold as many innocent civilians abroad as retribution for this event. How do you as a people walk around head held high, knowing that every few months you are committing a 9/11 event to other people? Imagine if the 9/11 terror attacks were happening in America every few months. Again and again, innocent people dying all around you. And yet you just go around the rest of the world doing it on a weekly basis to other people and don't think twice about it. It brings me to tears knowing how absolutely blasé you guys are about it.'

Crimmins, from U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division, left a surprising reply to the post. He explained to the Redditor that like many others, he had been brainwashed into believing the 'good vs evil narrative', even comparing it to the legacy that Star Wars left him with as a child. Crimmins is clearly full of regret over his decision to sign up, resentment towards the government, grief at having lost his friends, anger at the mainstream media, and compassion for those innocent people he was sent to kill.

Crimmins's response is heartbreaking and powerful, showing us that there are NO winners in War: everyone is a pawn, everyone is a victim, and the only ones who stand to gain from this destruction are the rich old white men who send these young, naive patriots into battle against their fellow human beings.

It was an awesome day for at one woman at Oregon's Lucky Eagle Casino. Veronica Castillo took her mom to the bank of slot machines where she quickly put in $100 and scored the jackpot.... or so she thought.

"I was very excited, happy," she told local KOIN 6 News. "Then I couldn't believe it."

But as the adage goes, the house always wins. While celebrating in excitement Castillo and her mother got a visit from the casino staff who said the machine malfunctioned. Sorry! No $8 million for you!

"They shut off the machine, took it away, printed out a ticket and gave me $80." After she put in $100, remember. So, not only did she not win $8 million she lost $20.

US health institutions have cashed in more than $150 million to sponsor 95 experiments on how recreational drugs affect animals - without any apparent scientific benefits, according to a new report by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance and the Animal Justice Project.

Just a few disturbing examples: a $9.6 million research that involved injecting LSD into the brains of rabbits to check if the drug would trigger more eye-blinking and head-bobbing; a $7.6 million study to look into whether psychedelic drugs cause mice to twitch their heads; or a $1.1 million study to find out if Methamphetamine-addicted monkeys would prefer food to the drug.

Mysterious maneuvers over the Pacific are forcing a change in Los Angeles International Airport landings late at night, meaning noise for thousands of people in the flight path.

Instead of landing from the east over Inglewood, planes begin flying from the west and over the ocean to keep noise levels down, but due to secret military operations, the airspace over the Pacific is closed to incoming flights for the next week.

"We clearly understand that neighbors and communities east of the airport will experience noise and we apologize for that," said Nancy Castles, LAX public relations director.

The military is not saying what exactly is causing the change, and LAX claims it's also in the dark. Castles said all they know is planes can't be flying at low altitudes to our west.

This week, Native Hawaiians initiated an historical election that may grant them sovereignty from the United States and the state of Hawaii, itself, after well over a century of colonial rule. More than 95,000 indigenous people will elect delegates to a constitutional convention, scheduled for this winter, when they will work to create a government that serves and represents Native Hawaiians — the only group of indigenous people in the United States currently restricted from forming their own government.

In the 19th century, European and American missionaries and traders began settling in Hawaii. They quickly formed a political movement and succeeded in transferring power from the king to his cabinet and the legislature. Though they drafted a new constitution limiting the king's control, they also limited the voting rights of Asians and Native Hawaiians while granting that right to wealthy non-citizens.

I haven't covered the American nanny state in a while, but two articles recently caught my eye and I simply have to share.

The first one relates to two parents charged with "reckless endangerment of a child," for letting their two boys play on a Cape Cod beach for an hour unsupervised.

From Reason:

Parents who let their boys, ages 7 and 9, play on their own for an hour at a family beach will be arraigned later this month on charges of reckless endangerment of a child.

Charles Smith and Lindsay Pembleton of Niagara Falls were vacationing with their kids on Cape Cod. The boys wanted to stay at the beach for a little longer rather than walk back to the nearby campground (which is, according to one commenter, accessible via a car-free path). The parents said okay, but told them they couldn't go in the water, according to The Cape Cod Times.

By the time a lifeguard spot the children, they were—gasp—wet from the rain. What's more, they were "standing around a food truck with no adults in charge."

Thankfully, the police were called before any of that wetness and unsupervised food trucking could escalate into something worse.

Even though over 90 percent of sex crimes against kids are committed by people they know, not random beach inhabitants, the cop decided to file reports of suspected abuse or neglect in both Massachusetts and New York. And, for good measure, she also "applied for criminal complaints against them in Orleans District Court."

Moving along, we find ourselves in Florida, a state which always provides a disproportionate amount of "this can't be real" type stories.

Moscow's police department has officially adopted a tiger cub it rescued from the clutches of a gang of poachers in Russia's Far East.

The 4-month-old feline was named Stepa, after Uncle Stepa the Militia Man - a fictional law enforcement officer from a popular children's book. The name was selected by Moscow residents in an online poll.

"Our Stepa is not adapted for living in the wild, so we took him under our patronage," said Moscow Deputy Police Chief Gennady Golikov, according to a statement posted on the Interior Ministry's official website. "We'll be responsible for his well-being and will provide for him."