GOP: Destroying its candidates?

Click here for related article;  [http://sultanknish.blogspot.com]

The Media, in its consummate wisdom, has designated the field of Republican candidates as clowns. Count them; 23 highly qualified Conservatives who believe in the Free Market, and each of whom has built his or her reputation on accomplishments which no current Democrat can match.  

We even include Christie, who has managed to effectively govern New Jersey, perhaps the most corrupt state in the Union - other than Illinois.

Colbert interviews "Ham [Karl] Rove" [Salon]

Of these 23, we hope the GOP won't destroy them all in its zeal to put Zeb Bush into the Oval Office. 

In past elections, it appears the GOP Chairman, Reince Priebus, along with his rabid pit bull, Karl Rove, managed to destroy any number of electable Conservative candidates for the House, the Senate, and the White House by generating adverse propaganda, withholding campaign funds and Media support, or joining forces with the Democrats to defeat candidates who indicated they would not toe the GOP Party Line - or worship at the feet of Priebus or Rove.

Rove appeared to be the guiding force in in re-electing Democrat Harry Reid in 2010 by smearing Sharron Angle, who was backed by the Tea Party and Veterans in Politics; she had won the Republican primary with 40% of the vote.  

After the primaries, Angle had a 50% to 39% lead over Reid, indicating that Angle was a shoe-in to win.  

Oddly, after behind-the-scenes lobbying by Rove, the widow of the late Republican Governor Guinn, Republican State Senator Raggio, and finally, Republican Senator Ensign all [we repeat ALL!] endorsed Democrat Senator Harry Reid -- the obvious objective of which was to undercut Tea Party influence in the GOP, and to preserve the purity of the corrupt GOP leadership!

Additionally, four strong incumbent Republican senators - who were resistant to GOP leadership -- were persuaded to "retire", including George Voinovich of Ohio, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Chris Bond of Missouri, and Mel Martinez of Florida, all abruptly decided to 

"retire and spend more time with our families."

Amazingly enough, the voters overturned most of the negative operations of Priebus and Rove, delivering 63 new seats to the Republicans in the House, and six new Senate seats; in local elections, the Republicans swept the elections with voters bringing in 680 new Republican seats -- leaving Republicans in control of 26 state legislatures and 29 State Governorships.

By 2014, Priebus and Rove were unable to keep the Democrats in power as voters gave the Republicans a clear majority in both the Senate and the House, with 54 Senate seats and the largest majority in the House since 1928.  

Amazingly, the voters recoiled against Maryland Democrat Governor O'Malley's failed governorship and elected Republican Larry Hogan with a margin of 51% to 47% -- which Chris Christie labeled "... the biggest upset in the entire country!"

But, enough of our vitriol against the GOP leadership -- which we believe is firmly in the pocket of the Democrats and Mr 0bama.

Let's talk about the Democrat candidates.

It appears the Democrats have only one viable candidate, perhaps the least qualified and most reviled Presidential candidate in US history, Hillary Clinton, who is "generating financial scandals faster than her husband generated his inevitable sex scandals".  

Of course, who can forget her description of her success as Secretary of State, in which she spent several minutes saying the words: success and progress and resolving existing problems, but at no point could she give an example of any of those terms.

To be fair, we can cite some examples of her accomplishments:
1)  She logged more mileage than any other Secretary of State
2)  She used her cell phone and personal email to transmit to unauthorized persons more Top Secret Compartmented intelligence information than any other politician in US history -- after which she claimed to accidentally have deleted all that data.
3)  She attempted a unilateral covert operation to cut a deal with the President of Iran via an unauthorized flight into Iran -- which crashed [shot down by the Israelis?], killing her SEAL escort [he allegedly committed suicide in Afghanistan], and sending her to an Israeli hospital from which she was surreptitiously shipped to a NY hospital where she was diagnosed with a flu-induced "head injury".
4)  She successfully killed one ambassador, his bodyguard, and two former SEALs in Benghazi.
5)  She installed a member of the Muslim Sisterhood, with close ties to  the Muslim Brotherhood, as her principal advisor at the State Department; and now there are reports of her being linked to supplies and money being provided to ISIS [a unit of which was captured by Iraqi forces, revealing the unit commander to be an Israeli colonel [corrected by the IDF to say he was an Israeli general!]

Now, to balance the scale of candidates in the Democrats' Presidential Clown Car, we have:

1)  Bernie Sanders who is upset there are 23 types of under-arm deodorants while children are hungry, advocates a 90% tax rate, and, he openly fantasizes about women "...being raped by three men simultaneously."

Granted, it's an old quote, taken out of specific context, but, since the Democrats fantasize about Ted Cruz's parking tickets over the last 20 years, Sanders' fantasies seem oh, so much more salacious.  He is expected to carry Vermont's Electoral Votes.

O'Malley: "What Scandal!"

2)  Then again, we have Martin O'Malley, 

former governor of Maryland against whom voters rebelled to smash his hand-picked successor at the polls with a massive vote against O'Malley's policies which destroyed Maryland's economy by taxing businesses to such an extent that many fled the state leaving tens of thousands of unemployed workers -- and depleted tax coffers.

He advocated taxing rainfall! 

We feel certain that if he were on the ticket, 

Maryland's Electoral Votes would be all Red.

Chaffee
former GOP/DEM/?

3)  Desperately seeking an alternative, the Democrats now have Lincoln Chaffee, a former Republican, then an Independent, and currently a Democrat who seeks "internationalism" via the Metric System, and he seeks to atone for the Iraqi war[s]. 

He may carry Washington, DC, which has no Electoral Votes, but the Rhode Island voters are delighted he's leaving.

We return to the original question:

Will the GOP leadership manage to destroy all the 

qualified Conservative candidates before the election to snatch defeat 

from the jaws of pure victory -- as they did in 2012?

#Wassenaar: New World Order?

"Wassenaar will make resistance via the Internet impossible!"

This is another in our series of guest posts by subject matter experts.  This post relates to a new threat to internet security and freedom of expression.

Open Letter Regarding Wassenaar to the Department of Commerce and to Legislators,

Posted on May 26, 2015

[Background: 

The Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technology is a multilateral export control regime [MECR] with 41 participating states, to include the USA.  Wassenaar replaces COCOM [Coordinating Committee for  Multilateral Export Controls], and is ostensibly less strict than COCOM and focuses primarily on the transparency of national export controls and not granting veto power to individual members over organizational decisions.

Wassenaar has come under fire from the IT community since, in its current form, it will have “extensive harmful effects on computer security research and defensive software”, potentially imposing criminal penalties on software and security developers.  The very credible author of this article:  Jonathan Adziarski, provides a stirring case against Wassenaar.]

To Whom it May Concern,

I am a published and respected forensics expert who pioneered the very first forensic techniques to extract data from the iPhone as early as 2008.  Since then, I have spent several years, and much of my time, assisting numerous law enforcement and military agencies around the world, including our own. I’ve trained government agencies in the US, Canada, and the UK, and I've trained law enforcement organizations from dozens of our allies here at home in the US.

My work has been validated by the NIJ/NIST. I have invested my time in providing free assistance to many US-based federal and state agencies who have flown personnel into my small town for help in the middle of the night.

Because of my research and hard work, I’ve provided the necessary information to the rest of the industry to be able to perform iOS forensics, and a vast majority of today’s forensics solutions are founded upon my techniques.

I did all of this on my own personal time, and in many cases on my own dime. The tools and techniques I developed are by no means “intrusion” tools; however, due to the excessively broad nature of the Wassenaar proposal, my services would fall under its regulations as they bypass security mechanisms of devices and collect information from them. As all of my research is done personally, I have no large company with lawyers to address the impossible spider web of export regulations that would be introduced by Wassenaar.

The current proposal, as is, would harm far more than simply the information security industry, but would also greatly damage the forensics industry and ultimately limit the quality of tools available to law enforcement agencies for conducting lawful forensics. My tools, as well as many commercial solutions, employ the use of exploits to collect information from devices for purposes that serve law enforcement and the greater good.

I sometimes only privately release the source code to my own tools, as many commercial forensics manufacturers have stolen it in the past, yet I continue to help the law enforcement community. Wassenaar will do little to accomplish the goals it set out to, and instead make it impossible for security researchers like myself to further expand the base of knowledge by contributing openly to the community – which goes far beyond this country’s borders.

Had Wassenaar (as it is proposed today) been in place in 2008, I would not have felt as though I could openly share my research publicly without risk of prosecution, which would have deprived the community as a whole – including the United States – of valuable information that has led to the greater good.

I understand there are certain nation states misusing intrusion tools to commit crimes. There are also many law enforcement agencies within the United States who have misused or abused my own tools and techniques to conduct questionable and potentially illegal intrusions. We cannot simply un-invent technologies to prevent their misuse, and unlike nuclear weapons, digital goods cannot be effectively regulated; yet this is the tradeoff we make, to create these tools for the greater good, knowing they may be abused.

This proposal stands to only damage those looking to contribute to a better and more secure community. Wassenaar has a deterrent component, and at the heart of security research are many independent researchers like myself who will simply stop contributing if there is a fear of prosecution simply for sharing knowledge in the form of code.

Sharing knowledge is not only a basic human right, but the only means by which we can become a civilized society. Without knowledge and education, the greater good suffers.

Security researchers share knowledge in the form of code, which serves as an illustration – a description – of a problem that exists in a system. Even many published papers will contain code as it is our language by which we can most effectively communicate an idea. In addition to code, we create binaries of it to help test our own systems for vulnerabilities and ensure the security of our user base.  Wassenaar, at its very core, attempts to regulate the ideas and knowledge we communicate through code.

Dept of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security

History has consistently demonstrated that regulating knowledge on any level has proven detrimental to societies. 

In Wassenaar’s attempt to prevent the dissemination of intrusion software, it is, at the very core, creating too much of a fear of prosecution to any security researcher to even consider developing or sharing their research with those who would most benefit from it.

There are alternatives to dealing with malicious nation states that do not involve creating regulations and the fear of prosecution on honest, law abiding researchers whose focus should be on their work, and not on being imprisoned by their own country. 

The day that I am prevented from sharing my knowledge freely with the world is also the day I stop sharing with all; it is the day the US declares they own the rights to my knowledge and what I do with it. That kind of power is far more dangerous than any intrusion tool.

[Posted in Politics, Security by Jonathan Zdziarski]

10 Major Events Overshadowed by Caitlin Jenner

Guest Post from theantimedia.org

1.  The Expiration of the Patriot Act and the passing of the USA Freedom Act which is essentially the Patriot Act in hyperdrive.

2.  The breaking story that the FBI has been conducting warrantless surveillance from planes disguised as commercial aircraft.

3.  NBC caught manipulating footage of the shooting of an unarmed college student.

4.  Congress passed a measure that would require police departments to report all killings of prisoners and uses of excess force by police resulting in injury to detainees or prisoners.

5.  A DHS investigation that found that the TSA failed to find 95% of the weapons and mock explosives smuggled through airports.

NSA has been expanding its reach through its alliance with police departments and the DOJ.

TSA has 55,000 employees, with 47,000 screeners, and a budget of $7 Billion.

Passengers are screened but, food and cleaning contractors, and mechanics and baggage handlers are not.

6.  A Guantanamo detainee alleged that he was tortured by the CIA using methods worse than previously thought, such as sexual abuse, forced rectal feedings, and being hung nude from overhead beams.  The CIA employs private contractors and untrained young soldiers whose interrogation techniques derived from watching "24" or playing X-Box Call of Duty and other war games.  Highly trained US Military Intelligence interrogators have been studiously ignored, perhaps because they maintain a level of integrity in their interrogations -- which do not include torture.

7.  Three more banking executives died mysteriously.  Here's the list of dead bankers in 2015. Notably, all were linked to highly questionable Chinese financial movements -- which some reported as Money Laundering.  Some speculate linkage to Timothy Geithner, former US Secretary of the Treasury and former President of the New York Federal Reserve bank [2009-13], graduate of Chinese universities, and now a consultant with the Chinese government as Managing Director and President of Warburg Pincus.

Most of these deceased bankers reportedly committed suicide, to the wonderment of their friends and relatives.

8.  It was revealed that a Palm Beach Sheriff's Department party, on a private golf course, included at least one minor, a hooker, and delivery and consumption of of cocaine by deputies.

This revelation came via disgusted cops posting anonymously on the forum pbsotalk.com].  This forum receives both commentary as well as captured videos from police dash-cams; one such video show police almost running over a black kid, who gets off his bike and is running away, only to be shot in the back four times by the "arresting officer" who likely defended his actions by using the catch phrase:  "I feared for my life", even though there was another officer near the unarmed kid.

9.  An archeologist in Russia discovered a 2,400 year old artifact containing marijuana and opium. Interesting that the bong was made from gold - but not Colombian Gold.

10.  A declassified Pentagon report revealed that ISIS was created by Western governments.

ISIS is now becoming the most sophisticated and well-armed military in the Middle East, with direct support from our "allies".

Mr 0bama is serving the Saudi King well.