Today You Can Make A Better Tomorrow

Beau Willimon declared:

1. When in the course of American history it becomes necessary for the people to save our Nation from a Tyrant,

2. To safeguard equality for all and their inalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness from bigotry and corruption,

3. To ensure that our Government continues derive its power from the consent of the governed rather than by autocracy,

4. That whenever any President becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to make such demands upon their Congress:

5. Immediate impeachment of the President for crimes committed, or removal from office by way of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.

6. Donald J. Trump has conducted injuries and usurpations, pursuing the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

7. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world–

8. He has obstructed the Laws for Naturalization of Immigrants, and illegally banned refugees in need of safe haven.

9. He has continued to violate federal court orders which require the temporary cessation of this ban, thereby violating his executive oath.

10. He has dismissed an Attorney General for fulfilling her oath to defend the Constitution, defying the autonomy of the Dept. of Justice.

11. He has purged the State Dept. of its highest level officials without any regard for a responsible continuity of State Affairs.

12. He has enlisted amateur ideologues – such as the white supremacist Stephen L. Bannon – to make national security decisions.

13. He has vowed to enact policy and legislation which clearly tread on the separation of church and state.

14. He has refused to remove or address conflicts of interest regarding both his own business and that of his cabinet and family.

15. He has hastily signed multiple Executive Orders without the advisement of Congress, policy experts, his cabinet or staff.

16. He has signed an Executive Order which knowingly deprives the sick of desperately needed healthcare with no concern for their lives.

17. He has signed an Executive Order permitting a pipeline that tramples on Native American Rights and endangers safe water supply.

18. He has illegally threatened to cut off funding to Sanctuary Cities which have determined their values through self-governance.

19. He has knowingly, repeatedly and egregiously misled the public, and directed his staff to do the same.

20. He has strongly advocated for the silencing and suppression of a Free Press.

21. He has repeatedly and consistently shown contempt for people based race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity and religion.

22. He has shown disdain and disregard for the judiciary, and the fundamental human rights that are the foundation of Justice.

23. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

24. We shall Resist until our Congress uses the mechanisms afforded to by the Constitution to remove this Tyrant from Power.

25. And for the support of this Declaration we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Honor. Signed. The Resistance

Only YOU can help avoid save us from a fate worse than death…
If you don’t vote, then you don’t count.

Please share this far and wide, in the hope that somewhere, it helps save us from the madman.
“Peace on Earth is God’s Will to all Men.” – John Rosengarten

I am astonished that no one in the information security field has taken time to analyze the issues of e-mail security for public officials who, like Hillary Clinton, are squeezed between obsolete rules and modern reality.

The problem goes back at least to Madeline Albright.  Condoleezza Rice and General Colin Powell also dealt with this technical problem.  Hillary Clinton did not choose to use a private email server because she wanted one, but because it was the most secure system she could trust with America’s secrets.  The diplomats of the world are faced with challenges from spies from every nation in the world, and even domestic enemies, like rival political parties.

The problem is that when government channels are used, there are literally thousands of points of contact from which the system can be hacked and cracked.  Wholesale theft of diplomatic and military files is an ongoing problem, both from insiders and external players.  Securing diplomatic instructions means trusting a chain of servers and undersea phone links.  America’s enemies are constantly trying to gain access to the communications between the Secretary of State and the rest of the diplomatic corps.

So, using the government servers practically means a copy of all top-level diplomatic correspondence will be on the desk at dozens of foreign intelligence organizations just by putting those mails into the government system.  For this reason, the Secretaries of State have been using non-government accounts to manage off the grid communications.  We know for a fact that General Powell used an AOL account.

Adding complexity to this whole issue are the ethics laws that forbid political communications from government accounts.  By forcing diplomats to use a personal account for personal, political correspondence, the line between official communications and partisan communications will become blurred.  This is obviously what happened here.  By using her own server, Secretary Clinton achieved additional level of security that would not have been possible using the well-infiltrated state department servers.

There is no evidence that suggests her personal servers were ever compromised.  Given the high value of gaining such access, we can be sure that any agency that did infiltrate her personal server would have long ago taken credit and take shots at embarrassing the American Secretary of State.  The files released by Manning and Snowden are freely available on the internet, yet not one email stolen from the Clinton private server was every divulged (except for copies retrieved from external mail systems.)

The obvious conclusion is that the technical staff managing Clinton’s servers were actively monitoring the system and would have noticed any attempts.  The relative obscurity of the Clinton server also gave them a boost to keeping America’s secrets under wraps.
Whoever they were, the did a great job.  Wiping the drives and destroying obsolete backups is the best practices of email security and Hillary’s IT team achieved that success by properly configuring the system, monitoring the usage and managing patches and security certificates.

None of this has any bearing on what may have been said following the Benghazi attack, which is the original concern of Mrs. Clinton’s detractors.  But to conflate her sterling security practices with somehow being disingenuous or deceitful misses the best practices for managing secrets and keeping Americans safe.

Thank you  / images courtesy Shepard Faiery/Obey Giant 

https://obeygiant.com/contact/image-release-permission/

What if we just accept that neither Donald nor Hillary is the Devil. 

We may disagree with their party positions or their health or their temperaments, but deep down I believe they both love America and they both want what is best for every citizen on America.

However, we worry that the most complex job in the world should not be an on-the-job learning experience. We also have to consider that all of the decades of government experience has taught some bad habits.

America is perched on the doorway of history this coming decade.  Things that divide America weaken America.  America needs to be strong if we are to lead the world.  Leadership, on the world stage, is about moral authority AND military might.  We need both.

I encourage all you partisan muckrakers (yes, YOU) to begin to reduce the destructive rhetoric that has been building since 1992.  Neither party is perfect, and both parties are composed of humans, who are weak and silly.  Getting the BEST government means selecting the best people, not bickering about secrecy of taxes or emails, or who grabbed whom by the hoo-hah. 

Its about protecting our children, and strengthening America for the future. Let’s act like adults. Stop pouring the gasoline of fear politics onto the fires of prejudice and ignorance.

It used to be a core American value that journalists reported on facts. Editorial analysis was not to be slanted to the benefit of any one party or candidate. There was a code of honor, that even if a reporter was in favor of a political issue, they would honestly refrain from letting that sway their reporting.

Despite the screams of so many right-wingers, the “mainstream media” is still playing by the rules. However, MSNBC and Fusion are definitely pro-liberal and One America News and ABC are pro conservative. Fox news is so far to the right they had to redefine the whole system, to the point that Republican partisans run the network and it has been a mouthpiece of the right wing for over twenty years.

So who can you believe? With the demise of newspapers, they can no longer afford to cover everything, and analysis is sorely lacking. Besides, most well-respected newspapers have been bought up by corporate interests who follow the money. That’s why family newspapers have died as newsrooms across America go dark.

I have found CBS and foreign providers, such as the BBC, or DW, to provide insight lacking in American outlets. Good analysis is important, and boring background info needs to be understood if you do not want the wool pulled over your eyes.

The “new media” is less a media and more a mob or prejudiced opinions. When people choose the news they want to hear, they are selecting news sources that have an interest in keeping the consumer ignorant. It becomes an echo chamber of self-congratulations and insults against those with opposing views.

A wise person follows the news, and know years later when lies are told about the actions of the past. You have to observe what people DO, not what they say.

Be wise, America. Keep your eyes and mind open.

In the Eighteenth Century,  the First Founders decided that regulation of firearms is the responsibility of the states. The Second Amendment cedes to the States all power to regulate gun ownership and manage the State militias.

In the Nineteenth Century, the Supreme Court agreed with them.  In 1875, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment does not bar state regulation of firearms.

In United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 553 (1875), the Court stated that the Second Amendment “has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government”.

Later, in Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 265 (1886), the Court reiterated that the Second Amendment “is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the National government, and not upon that of the States.”

Stop this madness!

Thus, by law, states can permit, regulate or deny gun ownership as they see fit.

The problem is blacks, latinos and youth are so busy struggling to pay their bills its hard for them to follow politics.  If minorities do not vote, they will not win and the next Republican president will have no resistance.

If you don’t vote, you don’t count.

If blacks don’t vote, they will have more militarism in the police departments, less money for health care and education.

If latinos don’t vote, they will have their families torn apart by the expulsion plans of the Republican Congress.

If youth doesn’t vote, they will be burdened with debt and poor working opportunities for the rest of their lives.

Register to vote.  Then VOTE at EVERY election.  This is the secret to running America.

If you don’t vote, you don’t count.