Monday, December 28, 2015

Year In Review, Part Two


More Or Less Catch All Tutorial (3DS)

By Sgt. Lulz 

Since the 3DS scene is on red alert because of the keynote from a couple days ago, I decided to write a catch-all guide to installing Menuhax and Ironhax through Browserhax in anticipation of the upcoming exploits.

First and foremost:

STOP UPDATING. STAY ON 10.3, THIS IS THE LATEST EXPLOITABLE FIRMWARE. Don't update anymore.

If a system firmware update has been released, STOP READING THIS GUIDE. You need to set the blocker DNS before proceeding. You can read about this in the 'WHAT'S THIS ABOUT DNS?' section of this guide.

1. Download the Homebrew Starter Kit from https://smealum.github.io/ninjhax2/starter.zip
2. Place the contents in the root of your SD card

3. Proceed according to your System Version (Found on the top screen, bottom right corner in System Settings). You will need this system version to install Ironhax as well, so write it down if you need it.
4a. Old 3DS, System Ver. <= 10.1.0-27:
Visit http://yls8.mtheall.com/sliderhax.php on your 3DS browser and follow the instructions.
4b. Old 3DS, System Ver. = 10.3.0-28:
Visit http://yls8.mtheall.com/spider28hax.php on your 3DS browser and follow the instructions.
4c. New 3DS, System Ver. <= 10.1.0-27:
Visit http://yls8.mtheall.com/browserhax_fright.php on your 3DS browser and follow the instructions.
4d. New 3DS, System Ver. = 10.3.0-28:
Visit http://yls8.mtheall.com/browserhax_fright_tx3g.php on your 3DS browsr and follow the instructions.​

You should now see the Homebrew Menu. If you don't, restart the console and try again. Clearing the cookies and cache in your browser helps.

The next step is installing a new entrypoint, as Browserhax becomes unavailable every time a new system update comes out, potentially even leading to it being patched.

You have two entrypoints available for install from here: Menuhax and Ironhax.

You'll definitely want to get Menuhax, but Ironhax is also an option if you're a complete klutz (In your own opinion anyway, I don't mean to insult anybody) and are afraid of system updates or changing Home Menu themes.

MENUHAX:

1. Open the Menuhax_Manager app.
2. Hit 'Install'.
3. You're done.

OPTIONAL: Hit 'Setup a built-in Home Menu 'Basic' color theme' to use a different theme with Menuhax.​
To activate: Hold L while starting up your 3DS to open the Homebrew Menu.

CAUTION: Don't change your Home Menu theme after installing this, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Doing so will uninstall Menuhax and render it unusable. There are ways to use any themes if you REALLY want to do so, which I will further explain in the future.

IRONHAX (REQUIRES AN NNID):

1. Open the eShop - Old Version Downloader app.
2. Download Ironfall Invasion
3. Restart and open the Homebrew Menu (Using either Menuhax or Browserhax)
4. Open the Ironhax Installer app.
5. Follow the onscreen instructions. Your Ironfall version will most definitely be 1.0. System Version will be whatever you wrote down during the first guide, and the save slot doesn't matter.
6. You're done.
To activate: Open Ironfall Invasion and open the save slot you installed the exploit to.

CAUTION: Don't update Ironfall Invasion after installing this, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. The game will update to an unexploitable version.

WHAT NOW?:


You wait for the CFW and other-such >9.2.0-20 kernel stuff to show up.
I'll update this guide when it DOES happen.

WHAT'S THIS ABOUT DNS?:

System Versions 9.9 and above force you to update to use the Browser, as it checks with Nintendo's servers if the console is on the latest firmware to prevent exploitation. The current System Firmware as of this guide, 10.3, is exploitable as well as not needing the DNS. Things will change at 10.4 and beyond.

DON'T OPEN THE 3DS INTERNET BROWSER IF THIS IS THE CASE, YOU'LL RENDER IT COMPLETELY UNUSABLE. FOLLOW THE STEPS BELOW BEFORE YOU EVEN TRY TO DO SO.

To change your DNS settings to bypass this:

1. Open System Settings.
2. Go to Internet Settings > Connection Settings. Edit your main connection settings.
3. Set Auto-Obtain DNS to 'No' and enter 107.211.140.065 under the DNS: Both primary and secondary.
4. Do this for all your other connections, if any.

Remember: Don't update. Ever.

To the smart people:
 
If I've missed anything in this guide or there are any mistakes, let me know.
Thanks for reading, and stay safe out there.

Sunday, December 27, 2015

Sanders Campaign Hints 'Hacker' Who Accessed Clinton Data May Have Been a DNC Plant

By Tom Boggioni, Raw Story

In an interview with Yahoo Politics, an adviser to the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders hinted that the data breach that resulted in the campaign losing access to the DNC servers may have been the result of a employee planted in the campaign by the DNC.

Following the controversy that saw Sanders staffers blocked from accessing some of their own voter data after it was revealed that proprietary information belonging to the Clinton campaign was being viewed, the Sanders campaign apologized and fired the “hacker,” national data director, Josh Uretsky.

However, an unnamed adviser to the Vermont independent’s campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination is suggesting that Uretsky maybe have been a plant by both the DNC and the technology company that hosts the data.

“It’s not as if we conjured this guy Josh from thin air. This is an individual … who was recommended to us by the DNC and NGP VAN,” the adviser said.

According to the adviser, Uretsky provided references to the Sanders campaign from the DNC’s National Data Director Andrew Brown, who works closely with the shared voter file program.

“Andrew Brown spoke to us and gave him a positive review, as did this guy Bryan Whitaker,” the adviser said, identifying Whitaker as the COO of technology group NGP VAN. Whitaker is no longer with the company, having taken a similar position with another group.

Supporters of Sanders have complained that the DNC favors Clinton — the establishment favorite — noting that the Democratic debates have been scheduled on weekend evenings when viewership would be down, limiting exposure for the populist message of Sanders.

The campaign had called for a “a full investigation from top to bottom” of the data breach and how it was allowed to happen.

Saturday, December 26, 2015

Ted Cruz Is Just Like His Clothes: Carefully Thought Out, Ill-Fitting And Generally Unlikable

He’s not ‘one of the guys’ on the trail, but he also doesn’t seem to belong in the Ivy League — or even among politicos.

Photo Credit: Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock.com
The weather has finally cooled a bit, and that can only mean one thing: time for Ted Cruz to dump his ill-fitting suits and ties for his even iller-fitting collection of flannel shirts and leather jackets. The #Cruz Country Christmas Tour (in a private jet) is under way and headed to a town near you.

Why does the Texas senator lumberjack around America when the temperature drops? Is he trying to create synergy with the cover of his latest book?

That’s possible, but the real reason Ted Cruz wears flannel shirts and leather jackets in the winter is because he wants nothing more than to be perceived as one of the guys. Not just because it could win him the White House, but because he’s always been that kid in school that had no friends. The one whose parents made him insufferable by constantly telling him how much better he is than everyone else.

Cruz’s father, Rafael, has been brainwashing his son since he was about four years old to believe he’s “gifted above any man he knows” and “destined by God for greatness”, the kinds of delusions that were guaranteed to get him stuffed in a locker by junior high.

Unfortunately, training to become Daddy’s little messiah didn’t leave Cruz time to develop even the slightest sense of style, and GQ has some stern fashion advice for him.

“In general, we’re not exactly sure why presidential hopefuls think that oversized, awkward leather jackets will make them seem more, ‘relatable to voters’,” the website said on Tuesday.
First, the jacket just doesn’t fit. If you’re looking for one, make sure the shoulder seams hit at your actual shoulders and there’s not so much fabric pooling around your elbows (a slimmer cut would fix that). Second, it’s also a bizarrely vague style, neither a bomber nor a cafe-type racer. Cruz opted for a nondescript zip-front jacket that we think calling basic might be too complimentary.
Even that weird, animatronic twang Cruz speaks with, despite having grown up in urban Houston attending private schools, raised by his Canadian mom and Cuban-accented dad, is a sad attempt to make you think he’s a regular working stiff. Nothing could be further from the truth.

So he pretends to fit in with blue-collar types, but he was also pretending when in the company of his supposed milieu. Ever since Cruz came on the national, political stage in 2013, his freshman roommate at Princeton has been tweeting college memories of the junior senator, and not in a good way.

“I begged them for a different room or roommate. Begged. They didn’t understand then. They do now,” Craig Mazin tweeted about Cruz in 2013. Mazin is a professional screenwriter and avowed anti-Cruzite. “I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States. Anyone,” he told The Daily Beast. “I would rather pick somebody from the phone book.”

Of course, not everyone at Princeton hated Cruz. The other dorks on the debate team thought he was a master debater and a “sort of stud” with girls on the debate circuit. (Hoo boy.) Cruz’s debate style meant he didn’t respond to arguments, but reframed them so he could control the conversation. Erik Leitch, who lived in the same building as Cruz, saw that style bleed over into his personal interactions. “The only point of Ted talking to you was to convince you of the rightness of his views,” Leitch said in the same Daily Beast piece.

So, Cruz was a weird kid saddled with a messiah complex who didn’t fit in with the liberal, Ivy League intellectuals in college. Surely he finally found his peer group when he got to Washington, right?

Political strategist Matthew Dowd, who worked with Cruz on the George W Bush campaign, tweeted that “if truth serum was given to the staff of the 2000 Bush campaign”, an enormous percentage of them “would vote for Trump over Cruz”.

“I just don’t like the guy,” George W Bush himself said of Cruz at a political fundraiser for his baby brother Jeb. Well, sure, but he’s just saying that because of his brother, surely.

“The tenor of what he said about the other candidates was really pretty pleasant,” one donor at the party said of Bush. “Until he got to Cruz.”

And Bush is certainly not the only Republican willing to go on the record with his hatred for Cruz.

“The list of GOP politicians and operatives willing to take open shots at Cruz has grown long,” says the Washington Post, listing Senators John McCain, Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn and John Thune, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, former House speaker John Boehner and former senator Tom Coburn, for starters.

It looks like a flannel shirt and a leather jacket aren’t going to be enough to overhaul Ted Cruz’s image. He’d need some idea of who he really is instead of who he’s trying to be to win over voters.

Cindy Casares is a columnist for the Texas Observer and the founding editor of Guanabee Media, an English-language, pop culture blog network about Latinos established in 2007. Her work has also appeared in The Guardian, The American Prospect and Cosmo Latina. Follower her on Twitter @La_Cindy.

Friday, December 25, 2015

Why Children Get Gifts On Christmas: A History

By Paul Ringel

An 1881 illustration by Thomas Nast, published in Harper's. Nast created the image of Santa Claus that endures today. Wikimedia Commons
During a week when so many Americans have experienced some combination of joy, rage, and frustration in seeking the perfect holiday gifts for their children, it seems appropriate to pause and ask: Where did the practice of giving Christmas gifts to children come from?

There does not appear to be an easy answer. Gifts do not primarily serve as rewards: Commentators on the political left and right have in recent years asked parents to abandon the “naughty and nice” paradigm that suggests such presents are prizes for good behavior, and indeed historical evidence suggests that proper conduct has not been a widespread prerequisite for young Americans to receive Christmas gifts.

Nor do presents seem to have a clear connection to Christian faith. Some American families have established a “three-gift” Christmas in an effort to link the practice to the generosity of the three wise men in the story of Jesus’s birth, but again no broad historical precedent exists for this link. In fact, religious leaders have long been more likely to decry the commercialization of Christmas as detracting from the true spirit of the holiday than to celebrate the delivery of purchased goods to middle-class or wealthy children. (Donating gifts to poor children is a different matter, of course, but that practice became common in the United States only after gift-giving at home became a well-established ritual.)

Critics of the commercialization of Christmas tend to attribute the growth of holiday gift-giving to corporate marketing efforts. While such efforts did contribute to the magnitude of the ritual, the practice of buying Christmas presents for children predates the spread of corporate capitalism in the United States: It began during the first half of the 1800's, particularly in New York City, and was part of a broader transformation of Christmas from a time of public revelry into a home and child centered holiday.

This reinvention was driven partly by commercial interests, but more powerfully by the converging anxieties of social elites and middle-class parents in rapidly urbanizing communities who sought to exert control over the bewildering changes occurring in their cities. By establishing a new type of midwinter celebration that integrated home, family, and shopping, these Americans strengthened an emerging bond between Protestantism and consumer capitalism.

In his book The Battle for Christmas, the historian Stephen Nissenbaum presents the 19th-century reinvention of the holiday as a triumph of New York’s elites over the city’s emerging working classes. 

New York’s population grew nearly tenfold between 1800 and 1850, and during that time elites became increasingly frightened of traditional December rituals of “social inversion,” in which poorer people could demand food and drink from the wealthy and celebrate in the streets, abandoning established social constraints much like on Halloween night or New Year’s Eve. 

These rituals, which occurred any time between St. Nicholas Day (a Catholic feast day observed in Europe on December 6th) and New Year’s Day, had for centuries been a means of relieving European peasants’ (or American slaves’) discontent during the traditional downtime of the agricultural cycle. 

In a newly congested urban environment, though, aristocrats worried that such celebrations might become vehicles for protest when employers refused to give workers time off during the holidays or when a long winter of unemployment loomed for seasonal laborers.

In response to these concerns, a group of wealthy men who called themselves the Knickerbockers invented a new series of traditions for this time of year that gradually moved Christmas celebrations out of the city’s streets and into its homes. They presented these traditions as a reinvigoration of Dutch customs practiced in New Amsterdam and New York during the colonial period, although Nissenbaum and other scholars have established that these supposed antecedents largely did not exist in North America. 

Drawing from two story collections by Washington Irving, their most well-known member, these New Yorkers experimented with domestic festivities on St. Nicholas Day and New Year’s Day until another member of the group, Clement Clark Moore, solidified the tradition of celebrating on Christmas with his enormously popular poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (better known as “The Night Before Christmas”) in 1822.

The St. Nicholas that Moore presented in his famous poem was not a wholesale invention, but like the other traditions the Knickerbockers borrowed and transformed, he was not a well-established part of New York’s winter holiday rituals. Similarly, his delivery of presents to children aligned with a newly emerging practice in 1820's New York, although the giving of homemade gifts during the winter holidays appears to have begun by the late 1700's. Moore’s poem does not explain why children are receiving presents on Christmas, although they clearly have the expectation of receiving special treats (“visions of sugar plums danced in their heads”). 

Understanding why giving gifts to children (and by gradual extension, to adults) became part of this new Christmas tradition requires an expansion of Nissenbaum’s story. The Battle for Christmas focuses on the tensions between New York’s elites and its working classes, but during this same period, a middle class began to emerge in New York and other northern cities, and the reinvention of Christmas served their purposes as well. 

Like their wealthier contemporaries, middle-class families worried about what rapid population growth and expanding market capitalism would do to their children—particularly because an expansion of goods and services on offer was reducing young people’s household responsibilities at a time when alternative pathways to adulthood, such as public education, had yet to emerge.

In response to the increasing uncertainty surrounding this stage of life, urban families that aspired to prepare their children for life in the middle and upper ranks of American society widely adopted new strategies for child-rearing. As work and home became increasingly separated for these families, parents kept children within the home (or at church or in school) as long as possible in order to avoid what many of them perceived as the corrupting influences of commerce on kids’ inchoate moral character. Elites’ efforts to domesticate Christmas aligned neatly with these parents’ interests, for they encouraged young Americans to associate the joys of the holiday with the morally and physically protective space of home.

Meanwhile, even if parents were concerned about commercial influences outside the home, they were not bothered by the idea of letting children’s commodities into it, in limited doses. In the 1820's, an American toy industry began to emerge, and American publishers started producing books and magazines for children. (The first three self-sustaining children’s magazines in U.S. history debuted between 1823 and 1827.) Much of the initial demand for these items reflected parents’ recognition of the instructional power of consumer goods. As an 1824 review of the evangelical children’s magazine The Youth’s Friend noted,
Let the Youth’s Magazine be called his own paper, and how will the juvenile reader clasp it to his bosom in ecstacy [sic] as he takes it from the Post-Office. And if instruction from any source will deeply affect his heart, it will when communicated through the medium of this little pamphlet.
If early 19th-century newspaper ads promoting bibles as children’s Christmas gifts are any indication, parents during this era seem to have retained a similar focus on delivering spiritual value to their children. After the Civil War, the spread of consumer products in American cities made it increasingly difficult to control children’s access to toys, books, and magazines, so in order to keep young people at home, parents gradually acquiesced to purchasing products intended to amuse as well as instruct their offspring.

Postbellum Christmas traditions followed this broader trend by becoming more child-focused, particularly through the reconstructed image of St. Nicholas. Clement Clark Moore’s St. Nick was an elf who was jolly but also a bit scary (as indicated by the narrator’s repeated reminder that he had “nothing to dread”). 

During the 1860's, the cartoonist Thomas Nast created a new image of Santa Claus that replaced this ambiguous figure with a warm, grandfatherly character who often appeared with his arms full of dolls, games, and other secular toys. One of the earliest publications in which Nast’s Santa figure appeared was the December 1868 issue of the magazine Hearth and Home.

Christmas gift-giving, then, is the product of overlapping interests between elites who wanted to move raucous celebrations out of the streets and into homes, and families who simultaneously wanted to keep their children safe at home and expose them, in limited amounts, to commercial entertainment. Retailers certainly supported and benefited from this implicit alliance, but not until the turn of the 20th century did they assume a proactive role of marketing directly to children in the hopes that they might entice (or annoy) their parents into spending more money on what was already a well-established practice of Christmas gift-giving.

In the nearly two centuries since New Yorkers instigated the invention of today’s Christmas rituals, American families have invested gift-giving and other widely practiced holiday traditions with their own unique meanings. Identifying the origins of these rituals as historical rather than eternal reinforces their power to do so.

South Dakota Man Plots to Bomb Veterans Hospitals — But Ends Up in One After Blowing Himself Up

Martin Rezac, 59, was indicted on felony charges of possession of explosives with criminal intent.
Making bomb with phone. A close up
Photo Credit: Perutskyi Petro

South Dakota man planning to blow up Veterans Affairs hospitals was arrested after he accidentally detonated his home-made bombs on himself, the Grand Forks Herald reports.

Martin Rezac, 59, was indicted Friday on felony charges of possession of explosives with criminal intent, relating to the explosion at his home, which sent him to the hospital on Thanksgiving with multiple cuts and abrasions, and possibly some missing fingers, according to court documents reviewed by the Herald.

That day, authorities question Rezac’s friend, Allen Kayl, who was incarcerated. Kayl told them Rezac was planning an attack on the hospitals because VA staffers were “pissing him off.” Kayl also told investigators”there was a possibility he would in fact do it.”

Investigators found extensive bomb-making materials, including a bomb made from a peanut butter jar and a PVC pipe bomb. There were also numerous explosive chemicals, including sodium nitrate, hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, isopropyl alcohol and sea salt.

Other items found included “modified colander, scales, an epoxy kit, a digital thermometer, a glass bottle labeled “flash” and a legal notepad with handwritten notes and directions to make a homemade explosive called hexamethylene triperoxide diamine,” according to the paper.

If convicted, Rezac faces prison time and tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

Bethania Palma Markus is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist.

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Fail0verflow to announce a PS4 Jailbreak next week?

Some hints at a potential PS4 hack form popular group Fail0verflow just came to my attention. This is just at the rumor level at this point and could turn out to be something entirely different, but the evidence is quite compelling.

I was just contacted with a link to the CCC Wiki, indicating that Marcan, one of the main members of Team Fail0verflow (known for having hacked the Wii U, and, before that, the PS3), will be having a talk at the CCC event this year. The talk is entitled: “Console Hacking 2015: Penguins on Aeolia

So how does this point to a PS4 hack? Well, let’s rewind a bit.

What is the CCC?

Wikipedia tells us: The Chaos Communication Congress is an annual conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club. The congress features a variety of lectures and workshops on technical and political issues related to Security, Cryptography, Privacy and online Freedom of Speech.

Every year a bunch of hackers meet at the CCC and talk about hacking and security. Console hacking, every year, is a big part of the conference. This year, Smealum will be there to talk about his work on the 3DS, and apparently fail0verflow will be here too.

CCC is big, back in the days, Tyranid also explained the PSP Prometheus project at the CCC. The Prometheus project resulted in what is known today as the Pandora batteries for PSP, a way to mod the PSP batteries so that the PSP will enter “maintenance mode” and make it possible to install custom firmwares and downgrades.

Who are Fail0verflow?

Fail0verflow are the group who hacked the PS3. You might remember the screenshot below:

sony_random

That screenshot is from their presentation at the CCC in 2010, when they explained how they had hacked the PS3.

Defeating the PS3 encryption was definitely not Fail0verflow’s only successful hack. They were also the first ones to run unsigned code on the Wii in 2007, and hacked the Wii U two years ago.

So in general, when these guys have a presentation at the CCC, you know something heavy is going to happen.

Penguins on Aeolia == Linux on PS4?

Aeolia, the Floating Island
Aeolia, the Floating Island

Fail0verflow had announced earlier on the CCC wiki that they would be hosting an event to talk about console hacking in general, hinting more at some Wii U follow up and existing hacks than anything else.

This new entry in the Wiki however indicates a full presentation from Marcan. And it strongly hints at a PS4 hack, specifically, installing Linux on the PS4.

Looking at the content of the talk again, we see: Console Hacking 2015: Penguins on Aeolia – To boldly go where no penguin has gone before.

What do we make of this? Well, it’s going to be a presentation about console hacking (duh), and it’s probably going to be about installing Linux (penguins). Because the presentation states “where no penguin has gone before”, it is safe to assume we’re talking of one of the new generation consoles (Wii U, XBO, or PS4).

The last, and probably most crucial part of the title, is “Aeolia”.

WTH is Aeolia? Well, digging into the PS4 Dev Wiki (thanks John!), we find lots of references to Aeolia in the PS4 Boot process log. At this point, it is now very likely that Marcan’s talk is going to be about installing Linux on the PS4.

aeolia_ps4_jailbreak

Now, the talk is short (5 minutes), so Fail0verflow will probably only showcase that they have Linux running on the console, without going into details of the hack. That part might, or might not, happen next year.

It’s unclear at this point if this PS4 Jailbreak will be running on the latest firmware, or 1.76 and below just like the most recent announced PS4 Kernel exploit. So, do you think this will be a huge reveal, or just some kind of troll?

Many thanks to John who sent me the wiki link!

Linux on PS4: More confirmation bubbling up from the scene

Anonymous Gives 10 Reasons For Backing Bernie Sanders - Speaks Against Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton

By Danny Cox

Anonymous Bernie Sanders Donald Trump
Photo by Joshua Lott/Getty Images
The different candidates in the 2016 presidential election all have backing from different people, different groups, and different supporters. When it comes time for the final vote tallies to be made, the bigger the group of supporters, the more votes that can come in. Well, Bernie Sanders may have just gotten the biggest boost when the the backing collective known as Anonymous backed the Democratic candidate and gave 10 reasons for it.

Meanwhile, they spoke out against other candidates, most notably Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Anonymous took to their website to list the ten reasons that will convince voters that they should cast their ballot for Bernie Sanders. Not only is Anonymous looking to get people to vote for Sanders, but they feel he deserves much more mainstream media coverage as well.

Each of their reasons are explicitly detailed get people to see what Sanders and his campaign are all about. Some of the reasons that are easier to put forth are that he wants to break up big banks and that he opposes both the TPP and NAFTA.

Anonymous has been known for numerous things over the past years; some have been considered good and some have been considered bad. They’ve also been blamed for a lot of things that never ended up being their fault whatsoever.

Still, they may have some incredibly detailed points about backing and voting for Bernie Sanders. At the same time, they are making sure to point out that the other two leading candidates to capture the presidency are doing some things in the exactly opposite fashion.

Not always, though.

Anonymous gives the reasoning of “decriminalizing the use of marijuana” as a reason for backing Sanders. They also let it be known that Clinton is against decriminalizing it while Trump is more in favor of legalizing marijuana for medical uses.

donald trump bernie sanders anonymous
Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
One thing that is really bothering Anonymous is the lack of mainstream coverage that Bernie Sanders is getting while Donald Trump gets much more even though they are polling similarly. Anonymous believes the mainstream media hates Sanders and actually censors him so it looks like he endorses Clinton.

According to the Hill, a recent poll from Quinnipiac University shows that Bernie Sanders actually demolishes Donald Trump in a general election, and it wasn’t even close. Sanders actually had a 13 percentage point victory over Trump in that poll by way of 51 percent to 38 percent.

When detailing their 10 reasons for backing Bernie Sanders, Anonymous focuses a lot on how much he doesn’t discriminate.
“Sanders doesn’t degrade racial and religious minorities, nor does he inflame the majority- he comes right out and tells us that the elite are to blame. He said this at a rally: ‘they’re always playing one group against another. Rich got richer — everybody else was fighting each other. Our job is to build a nation in which we all stand together’. Hillary has an “abysmal” racial justice record and Trump… well, he’s said enough about that topic to fill a phone book.”
As a bonus, Anonymous says that for every list that comes out telling people not to vote for Sanders, it actually brings him more attention and supporters.

Bernie Sanders has seen his support grow in the 2016 presidential polls over the past few months, and Hillary Clinton has seen hers drop some. Donald Trump has kept a consistently big lead in the GOP race, but many say he would get destroyed by the Democratic candidate. The backing of Anonymous for Sanders may have simply pushed his support even higher.

[Image by PYMCA and Getty Images]

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Ted Cruz Busted On Secret Tape Admitting That His Core Positions Are Fake

By Jason Easley

cruz-pout

In a secret recording, Ted Cruz admitted that he doesn’t really believe what he is trying to sell to Republican voters and that if elected president, a Cruz administration would not fight same-sex marriage. He also backed off of his positions on issues like abortion and common core.

Politico released more of the secret tape of Ted Cruz talking to donors at a New York fundraiser, and it confirmed what many have long suspected. Sen. Cruz is faking it to get elected.



According to Politico:

During the question period, one of the donors told Cruz that gay marriage was one of the few issues on which the two disagreed. Then the donor asked: “So would you say it’s like a top-three priority for you — fighting gay marriage?”

“No,” Cruz replied. “I would say defending the Constitution is a top priority. And that cuts across the whole spectrum — whether it’s defending [the] First Amendment, defending religious liberty.”

Soothing the attendee without contradicting what he has said elsewhere, Cruz added: “People of New York may well resolve the marriage question differently than the people of Florida or Texas or Ohio. … That’s why we have 50 states — to allow a diversity of views. And so that is a core commitment.”
….
A well-known Republican operative not affiliated with a 2016 campaign said by email when sent Cruz’s quote: “Wow. Does this not undermine all of his positions? Abortion, Common Core — all to the states? … Worse, he sounds like a slick D.C. politician — says one thing on the campaign trail and trims his sails with NYC elites. Not supposed to be like that.”

Ted Cruz’s top priority has always been advancing his own career, so it isn’t much of a surprise that the positions that he is selling Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina aren’t the same as what he is telling people behind closed doors.

Hold on to your hats, because it turns out that Ted Cruz plays fast and loose with the truth.

Anyone who has followed Cruz’s rise already is well aware that the senator from Texas has treated facts like an unnecessary detail; the secret tape is devastating for his presidential campaign because it undermines Ted Cruz’s trustworthiness with his own voters.

What may work in Cruz’s favor is that he can attack the messenger and claim that the Politico story is more media bias and proof that the press is out to get him, but a tape of his own voice denying the same positions that he is selling to conservative voters across the country is devastating.

Ted Cruz is a fake. He is exactly what he has been telling socially conservative Republican primary voters that he isn’t. Sen. Cruz is nothing more than another ambitious DC insider who say whatever he needs to say to get elected.

The Return Of The Screen Savers

By

If you were lucky enough to have cable TV back in 1998, you may remember a fledgling channel called “TechTV.” The crown jewel of the network was a show called “The Screen Savers.”

Well, recently the TWiT Network has relaunched the show (without the partnership or permission from the old producers) as “The New Screen Savers” – and it’s almost exactly as we remembered it. The show features tech news, tip and tricks – starring Leo Laporte as the main host.

We’ll assume that most readers are at a level of knowledge above what’s generally presented in the show, but we have to admit that we almost always find some little tech tip or software review that we didn’t know about. And if you know someone who is starting to take an interest in all things tech, this might be a great way for them to start learning quickly – and to gain exposure to a wide variety of topics.

If you’re looking for a bit of nostalgia, many of the co-hosts of the old show return regularly. People like Kevin Rose, Patrick Norton and Sarah Lane. You can watch the show on the TWiT site or on YouTube.  

Monday, December 21, 2015

Colombians Are Not Very Happy With Steve Harvey Right Now


On Sunday night, the host of the Miss Universe pageant, Steve Harvey, made the biggest mistake the host of the Miss Universe pageant can possibly make: He crowned Miss Colombia,  Ariadna Gutierrez, as the winner, before coming back on stage, apologizing, dethroning Gutierrez, and crowning the real winner, Miss Philippines, Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach, in what was the most awkward two minutes of live television since Kanye’s infamous “Imma let you finish.”


Sunday, December 20, 2015

Carly Fiorna and Jeb Bush brutally mocked in SNL GOP debate as all 9 candidates get skewered

By Tom Boggioni

On the evening of the last Democratic presidential debate of 2015, Saturday Night Live instead looked back at the last GOP debate with all nine candidates represented — but with ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former-HP CEO Carly Fiorina on the receiving end of the most brutal mockery.

Taron Killiam’s Ted Cruz was suitably smarmy, admitting that everybody –Democrats and Republicans alike — hates him because he has a “punchable face.”

Darrell Hammond’s Donald Trump was very Trump-esque, continually insulting Beck Bennett’s jittery and frantic Jeb Bush.

After a sniveling Bush complains that Trump is a bully trying to “insult his way into the White House,” Trump returns fire.

“Oh realy, jughead?’ Trump replies. “Cuz I’m at 43 and you’re at three — Jeb, you’re a nice guy, but you’re a lightweight, and I know for a fact that you pee sitting down.”

Cast member Cecily Strong turned in a brutal take down of Fiorina, as she explained that she knows Russian strongman Valimir Putin because she once sold him an HP printer.

“I know Valdimir Putin personally,” she claimed. “I sold him an HP printer and now he hates my guts. It doesn’t work, it never worked. And when Putin calls me to complain, I just smile that classic Carly Fiorina smile,” she continued while grimacing painfully.

Watch the video below from Saturday Night Live:

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Highlights Of Third Democratic Debate

Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley had heated exchanges on issues such as foreign policy on Saturday in Manchester, N.H., during the third Democratic presidential debate.

How To Hack Your 360

So you want to hack your XBox 360.

Have no idea where to start?

This thread should give you a general idea on what you can do with your 360.

Fire Debbie Wasserman Schultz

By




2015-12-18-1450475625-2594400-DebbieWassermanSchultzHillaryClinton.jpg
It's increasingly clear that Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Chair of the Democratic National Committee, isn't acting as a neutral party Chair, trying to insure a fair and democratic primary and building the Democratic Party in the states.

Rather, she's acting as a shill for Hillary Clinton, doing everything in her power to ensure that no one will effectively challenge Hillary's coronation as the nominee.

Wasserman Schultz is committing political malpractice and should be removed.

Remember that Wasserman Schultz was National Co-Chair of Hillary's 2008 Presidential campaign against Barack Obama and has been a loyal Clinonista. Her actions throughout the campaign have made it clear that she's misusing her position as party chair to serve as a campaign operative for Clinton and not a representative of the entire party.

Her latest travesty is being prosecutor, judge and jury, imposing the death penalty on Bernie Sanders' campaign for, at worst, a minor misdemeanor which hasn't even been proven.

On Thursday, Bernie Sanders had the best day of his campaign, receiving the endorsement of the 700,000 member Communications Workers of America, the grassroots Democracy for America, and surpassing 2,000,000 individual contributions.

On Friday, Wasserman Schultz suspended the Sanders campaign's access to its own data in the DNC database, making it impossible for the Sanders campaign to contact potential voters only weeks before the crucial Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire primary. As I write, the Sanders campaign has been forced to go into Federal Court to get back its data, creating a fight that can only hurt the Democratic Party.

Sanders' offense? A breach in the DNC's voter database managed by a private contractor hired by Wasserman Schultz, which allowed a handful of Sanders campaign staff to get a peak at Clinton voter data for two hours. There's no evidence that they did anything untoward with the data and the breach was quickly closed.

No matter. Wasserman Schultz crippled the Sanders campaign and virtually invited the press to question Sanders' honesty and integrity at Saturday's Democratic debate. Few doubt that Sanders is one of the most honest politicians in the nation. But Wasserman Schultz managed to pour dirt over him.

And speaking of the debate, why did Wasserman Schultz schedule it for the Saturday night before Christmas, at one of the least-watched times on television, virtually guaranteeing low ratings?

As I previously wrote, the DNC under Wasserman Schultz wants to guarantee that as few people as possible actually watch the Democrats' own debates!

Hillary's campaign wanted as few debates as possible to prevent her lesser-known opponents from getting free television exposure. DNC limited debates to six, compared to 26 in the 2008 campaign that nominated Barack Obama, and 12 Republican debates this campaign season.

So far, more than 68 million viewers have watched the Republican debates while less than 24 million people have watched the Democratic debates.

Wasserman Schultz may think she's protecting Hillary by denying her Democratic opponents the chance to be seen by more voters. But whomever the Democratic nominee is, she's guaranteeing that during this primary season, far more people get to hear the Republican message than the Democratic message. The Republicans have used the debates to ramp up the fear factor in the American public, which is likely to help them in the general election, even as the Democrats have largely remained on the sidelines and Obama's approval ratings have plummeted.

And if Hillary wins the nomination but Bernie's millions of supporters feel he's been treated unfairly, many will stay home on election day, making it more like the Republicans will win.

If Hillary is the nominee and loses to the Republican candidate, Wasserman Schultz's "hide the Hillary strategy" will have contributed to the Republican victory.

Wasserman Shultz's strategy of putting her heavy thumb on the scales to help Hillary is almost as bad as the Republican strategy of suppressing the vote.

In any case, it's political malpractice. Wasserman Schultz must go.
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UPDATE: Move On has a petition to remove Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Click here to sign.
 

UPDATE 2: Robert Reich has a petition up on Democracy for America demanding that Debbie Wasserman Shultz restore the Sanders campaign's access to it own voter data. Click here to sign.

Friday, December 18, 2015

DNC Suspends Bernie Sanders Staffer, Crippling His Campaign – This Is Some Jerry Springer Shit

Written by Rika Christensen on December 18, 2015

The Democratic National Committee has dealt a major blow to Bernie Sanders’ campaign after a data glitch allowed the campaign to access some of Hillary Clinton’s campaign data. One of Bernie’s staffers did so, and was immediately fired for it. It was Sanders’ campaign itself that alerted the DNC to the security problem, and they suspended his access to their master voter file in response.

This really looks like an ambush. Suspending him from the master voter file prevents his campaign from being able to reach out to voters in ways like knocking on doors and making phone calls, which is stuff all campaigns do. Seeing as how Sanders’ campaign has already performed the necessary actions, there was really no reason to do this.

It could appear to be sabotage. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC’s chair, has long been under fire for attempting to rig things in Hillary’s favor. Hillary is the presumptive nominee without any machinations like that, and yet, things like limiting the number of officially sanctioned debates to six, barring candidates that appear in unofficial debates from participating, and scheduling debates to coincide with major events like NCAA football games, paint a grim picture.

The vendor who runs the DNC’s voter file program keeps screwing up. Michael Briggs, a communications aide for Bernie’s campaign, said in a statement:
“On more than one occasion, the vendor has dropped the firewall between the data of different Democratic campaigns. Our campaign months ago alerted the DNC to the fact that campaign data was being made available to other campaigns. At that time our campaign did not run to the media, relying instead on assurances from the vendor.”
So others have had access, and nothing’s been done. It’s not known if others made use of that access, but it appears it has happened before (the vendor actually claims that this is an isolated incident).

However, Sanders’ campaign accidentally gets access, one staffer misuses it, gets fired, the campaign reports the problem, and gets suspended indefinitely. Why? There is no reason for this, unless the DNC is really that scared that Bernie will win the primary.

The Republican National Committee is terrified of a Trump or Cruz nomination, and for good reason. Neither of those two has the experience—or really, the wherewithal—to be president. They’re both nuts. They’ll run the country into the ground in their first 100 days. The only possible reason the DNC would ever have to be scared of a Sanders nomination is how he polls against any of the GOP candidates. He polls pretty well.

Politico says that Wasserman Schultz is one of the last Hillary allies sticking to her from 2008. The Huffington Post published an article that drew an unsavory connection between the DNC and Hillary; the underlying rationale behind limiting debates may have to do with trying to shield Hillary from having to answer really uncomfortable questions too many times. That could give Democratic voters even less reason to trust her. This strategy would help Hillary…and hurt Bernie.

That could be heavily influencing what the DNC is doing to Bernie now. Since the Sanders campaign acted appropriately when it discovered both the glitch and the fact that one of its own staffers had wrongfully accessed Hillary’s campaign data, it looks like the DNC was looking for an excuse to cripple Sanders’ campaign.

And crippled it will be if they don’t lift this suspension as soon as possible. Bernie needs the master voter file for his campaign to even be able to function. The DNC knows that. This is just plain low.

Could Trump cost GOP Congress?

There's growing worry among Main Street Republicans that Donald Trump could tank their chances of keeping control of Congress. Republican Senators in key swing states are bracing themselves for what's being called "Trump Shrapnel". MSNBC’s Robert Costa and Washington Examiner’s David Drucker discuss.



Federal charges for 'Pharma Bro'

Alex Wagner looks at the downfall of Martin Shkreli, the fool who jacked up the price of a life-saving AIDS drug by 5,000%.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

700,000 Member Union Endorses Bernie Sanders

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is set to pick up one of his biggest endorsements yet Thursday from the powerful Communications Workers of America union, sources told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell.

The group represents some 700,000 workers nationally, making it by far the largest union to back Sanders yet. CWA’s endorsement, which will be announced at a press conference at 11:00 a.m. Thursday at the union’s headquarters in Washington, comes as Sanders has lost out on a string of major union endorsements to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, whose campaign now claims the support of unions representing 12 million workers. 

Larry Cohen, CWA’s former president, joined Sanders’ campaign as a top labor adviser shortly after stepping down in June. The union has been hinting a possible Sanders endorsement for months, saying the decision would come only after members voted in an online poll. The national union did not issue an endorsement in the 2008 Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

With only two members of Congress in his corner, this is one of Sanders’ most important endorsements yet. CWA boasts it has more than 300,000 active and retired members in the states that hold primaries and caucuses between now and April 1, whom could be mobilized to support Sanders.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Random Observations On Last Night's GOP Hate Fucking Of America

Posted By Rude One

1. At the outset of the Republican debate on CNN last night, moderator Wolf "Rejoice in My White Stubble of Journalistic Integrity" Blitzer informed the candidates, "You all have different approaches to keeping the country safe. And that will be the focus of tonight's debate." Yet for a debate on "the security of this nation," the threats discussed were few and, frankly, exceedingly rare. Chances are pretty damn good that you're never going to be attacked by a radical Muslim extremist terrorist super-villain flying Godzilla or whatever the fuck we're supposed to be afraid of.

In fact, most of the things that are actual threats to the vast majority of Americans were either ignored or barely mentioned last night. Here's a short list of Things That Are Way More Likely to Kill You Than Muslim Terrorists or Hispanic Immigrants. These are the real threats to national security:

a. Christian white men with guns. Hell, you could probably just say, "All the fucking guns," and leave it at that. Not once did domestic terrorism from white people get mentioned, and that's probably because we still have a bizarre inability to label shit like Sandy Hook or the Planned Parenthood shooting "terrorism." And gun deaths in general are the security threat that Republicans dare not speak of.

b. Climate change is going to murder the fuck out of millions of people, barring drastic action. And it is going to propel the citizens of poor nations to ever-increasing acts of desperation, which will lead to more terrorism, which we'll probably deal with by bombing the famine-fucked or drowning nations.

c. Infrastructure collapsing around us. The Department of Transportation estimates that 14,000 people are killed annually due to shitty roads and bridges. By the Rude Pundit's mystical mathematical abilities, that adds up to...carry the three...a fuckload more people dying from the failure to invest in infrastructure than from every terrorist attack on the U.S. in the last, hell, let's say 100 years.

To his credit (yes, to his fucking credit), Donald Trump actually said, referring to trillions of dollars wasted on the Iraq war, "I wish it were spent right here in the United States, on our schools, hospitals, roads, airports, and everything else that are all falling apart." And Carly Fiorina immediately hiked up her skirt and took a piss all over the sentiment: "That is exactly what President Obama said. I'm amazed to hear that from a Republican presidential candidate." Yeah, fuck our aging electrical grid and water systems. There are Muslims overseas who need to taste American missile justice.

d. And, to his credit (yes, to his fucking credit), John "Shakey Buckeye" Kasich said, "The first thing we better get going is strengthening our economy, because if we don't have a strong economy, we can't pay for all of this," which was one of the only times anyone acknowledged that economic insecurity is an actual threat. Not a one of the others even indicated that all the shit they wanna do would cost barrels of cash that you're not gonna get from tax cuts.

So, really, you could say that the entire debate was theater. It was like a bunch of high schoolers telling each other their favorite creepypastas while sharing some cheap wine they stole from their moms. Ooh, who's gonna scare us worse? Even though, at the end of the night, Slender Man is fuckin' fake and drunk driving is real, but guess which one they're afraid of?

2. The creepiest moment last night wasn't Chris Christie's giant, scarred melon head staring directly at the camera. No, it was Ben Carson comparing killing children in war to operating on children with tumors. Asked by lipless, dead-eyed ghoul Hugh Hewitt if he could order air strikes that "would kill innocent children by not the scores, but the hundreds and the thousands," Carson said, as terrifyingly calmly as if he were ordering a sandwich at Subway, "Well, interestingly enough, you should see the eyes of some of those children when I say to them we're going to have to open your head up and take out this tumor. They're not happy about it, believe me. And they don't like me very much at that point. But later on, they love me."

This led to applause from the barbaric crowd. Carson continued, "You know, later on, you know, they really realize what's going on. And by the same token, you have to be able to look at the big picture and understand that it's actually merciful if you go ahead and finish the job, rather than death by 1,000 pricks." In other words, Carson will dispassionately bomb the fuck out of any country with no care about the civilian casualties.

That's almost as scary as Ted Cruz's whole "Fuck everyone, I'm nukin' shit" approach to war. And, between them, they're like 10,000 pricks combined.

3. Poor Jeb Bush stands there looking like a fading porn star who keeps getting cast in flicks even though he can't get a hard-on anymore. Oh, sure, they use Cialis or fluffers to try to suck him into an erection, but, in the end, he can only manage to slap his dick around a pussy for a little while before he's too exhausted to continue. Everyone wonders why the fuck he's still doing this, but he has nowhere else to go.

4. There's a level at which these candidates have gone beyond parody. Christie tried to make Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton into some kind of America-wrecking Decepticon, saying at the beginning, "America has been betrayed. We've been betrayed by the leadership that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have provided to this country over the last number of years," and never really making another point besides that for the rest of the debate. Someone ought to remind him that Obama was elected twice by a pretty decent margin.

In particular, Christie was a fucking joke, preening and prancing for the voters. In his opening remarks, he said, "The second largest school district in America in Los Angeles closed based on a threat. Think about the effect that, that's going to have on those children when they go back to school tomorrow wondering filled with anxiety to whether they're really going to be safe. Think about the mothers who will take those children tomorrow morning to the bus stop wondering whether their children will arrive back on that bus safe and sound. Think about the fathers of Los Angeles, who tomorrow will head off to work and wonder about the safety of their wives and their children."

First of all, you can bet the people of New Jersey thought, "Could you spend a little fucking time thinking about us?" And, of course, there's the fact that the whole thing was a hoax and that New York City got the same fucking threat and decided it was pretty clearly bullshit, so it wasn't actually a "threat." It was, more accurately, a "prank." And the kids? Dude, those kids weren't traumatized by anyone but the desperate politicians fanning a spark of anxiety into a full-fledged fear freakout inferno.

And then there was Christie's pledge that he'd shoot down Russian planes that crossed into any no-fly zone he established over Syria as president. Rand Paul, once again playing the role of bullshit-detector, pretty much destroyed Christie with a single line, "Well, I think if you're in favor of World War III, you have your candidate."

5. In the end, the debate was not just a pathetic contest to see who could make more Americans shit themselves in terror, but it was a night of craven chest-thumping, trying to prove who would be the superhero to stand firm and prevent the hordes of terrorists and immigrants and Hottentots from overrunning the country.

They repeated the same shit over and over. Trump was the most over the top with the tautology of his rhetoric, saying he wants to make America great again so he can make America great again or something. Who knows what the fuck that crazy motherfucker would really do other than lie to us about how shit's out of control? He looked like he wanted to face fuck Jeb, which was awesome.

Fiorina tried to show she's the cruelest motherfucker of the bunch. Rubio tried to make up for his slightly less-savage view of immigration (which Paul called "amnesty," even though it isn't close) by saying he'd fuckin' kill everyone, he's a madman, you can't stop him. Kasich was present.

Man, ISIS members must have been laughing their asses off.

6. The most telling thing of the night is how none of the candidates, beyond Lindsey Graham at the junion debate, would say that something is genuinely beyond the pale. Oh, sure, they'll dis Trump for his bugfuckery on Muslim immigration. But not one of them would say that anything is too much. None of them would dare say, "You know what? If Donald Trump is the nominee, fuck it. I'll stay home on election day." They don't have to say they'd vote for Hillary or Bernie. But have the fucking balls to say that some things are so appalling that you can't condone them.

For all the bluster last night, courage was sorely lacking.

7. Somewhere, there might be a country of cowards and murderers that the GOP candidates can lead. Unfortunately, they're stuck with the United States, which is nothing like that other country. And last night, the Republicans could only smirk as they hate-fucked the nation to show them who's boss.

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas: The Republican Debate

By Robert Borosage

It was showtime in the Republican debate last night in Las Vegas. Hysteria was the coin of the table. 

Carpet-bomb ISIS. Take out Assad. Destroy Iran. Shoot down Russian planes. Launch cyberwar against China. Expand the Army, Navy, Air Force; modernize nuclear weapons on land, sea and air. Spy on everyone. Build walls, close the doors on refugees. The only thing we have to fear is insufficient fear itself.

CNN marketed hysteria to promote last night’s debate. And, in the wake of Paris and San Bernardino, it isn’t surprising the Republican candidates rose to the bait.

Stuff and nonsense abounded. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton “betrayed America.” (Chris Christie). America’s military has been “destroyed.” (Marco Rubio) Ted Cruz seems to think that “radical Islamic terrorism” would be dramatically impacted if only the president would “utter its name.” Marco Rubio argues that there were “no alternative groups to be reinforced” in Syria because the “president led from behind.” [Rubio is the master of uttering utter nonsense with glib authority.] 

Carly Fiorina argues we’d have caught the Tsarnaev brothers who attacked the Boston Marathon except we were using the “wrong algorithms.” Chris Christie suggests that the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey is somehow like McArthur on the bridge. Kasich wants a “massive” invasion of Syria, while “punching Russia in the nose.” Christie promises to shoot down Russian airplanes. Fiorina promises not to talk with Vladimir Putin until she rebuilds the Sixth Fleet, among many other preconditions.

Rand Paul, who remarkably was a voice of relative reason most of the night, got it right. He skewered Christie’s inanity about shooting down Russian planes with “I think if you’re in favor of World War III, you have your candidate.”

Jeb Bush, who was the only candidate willing to take on Donald Trump directly, delivered a prepared but good line: Calling Trump the “chaos candidate,” he quipped, “Donald, you’re not going to be able to insult your way to the presidency. That’s not going to happen.”

Only that could easily apply to the whole gaggle.

The Trump Effect

Trump was better than normal at first, but faded over time as he often does. Bush challenged him directly, but the other candidates largely directed their fire at one another rather than the front-runner. 

Jeb’s gibe that Trump gets his briefings “from the shows” hit home as Trump clearly had no clue about what the nuclear triad was when he was asked which arm (bombers, submarines or land missiles) he would “modernize” first. Preening like the teacher’s favorite at the front of the class, Rubio then explained what the triad was and, characteristically, argued that all of it had to be modernized, as if the U.S. didn’t already have more nuclear weapons than needed to blow up the world.

Trump is an ignorant bigot. But there is no question that he sets the tone, and his rivals scramble to catch up. He pledges to build a wall, and now all of them dutifully call for strengthening the “fence.” 

He wants to halt admission of any non-American Muslims temporarily. And now more and more call for a “pause” or shutting off refugees from anywhere ISIS or al Qaeda operate. He promises to “bomb the shit” out of ISIS. And now they all strain to be tougher than thou. Trump leads the race to the bottom in the Republican campaign, but his rivals are intent on keeping pace.

Regime Change

In the midst of the hyperbole, a serious debate managed to break out. Rand Paul argued forcefully that the bipartisan excitement about toppling dictators – in Iraq, in Libya and now in Syria – has had calamitous results, leading to failed states, violence and chaos in which terrorist groups like ISIS can thrive. “Out of regime change you get chaos,” Paul argued, “from the chaos you have seen repeatedly the rise of radical Islam.” Paul was backed by Trump, and Cruz. They argue, in Trump’s sensible words, “that we should do one thing at a time.” Take on ISIS first, and not push to dislodge Assad. 

Implicitly, although none would say it, form a partnership with Russia, Syria, Iran and our Sunni and European allies to destroy ISIS, rather than fighting against both sides of a complex civil war.

Against this, Rubio, Christie, Kasich and Fiorina offered bluster. America could take on ISIS, Assad, Iran, Russia and China if only it had a president who would not “lead from behind,” who believed in America. “All of our wounds can be healed,” Fiorina promised, “by a tested leader who is willing to fight for the character of our nation,” whatever the hell that means.

Prudence generally does not fare well against bluster and muscle flexing. But last night, the hearty viewers who survived the first hour got a dose of common sense amid the posturing. The media reviews suggest that Rubio got the best of Cruz in their exchanges. But I suspect Cruz will fare well among conservatives – and may have, alas, greater reach among independents – with his arguments about “focusing on the bad guys” both at home rather than trampling the privacy of “innocent Americans, and abroad rather than “getting distracted” by thinking we can spread democracy by dropping a few bombs.

Who Won and Who Lost

Rand Paul was forceful and clear for much of the night, but is going nowhere. Fiorina and Kasich, as Trump would say, “don’t matter.” Carson continues to appear lost on the stage.

Bush had a relatively strong night, willing to go after and stand up to Trump, but it is likely too late for him. Christie was the most bellicose and the most disingenuous. He might get another look in New Hampshire.

Of the leaders, Trump’s ignorance was exposed once more, but then it always is and hasn’t mattered. Rubio was glib as always, silver-tongued despite his five o’clock shadow and his dry mouth. But he comes off as callow and thin, confidently saying things that simply aren’t true out of ignorance or dishonesty. Cruz’s filibusters were irritating, and his face is a cartoonist’s dream. He is almost universally hated by his colleagues, but he emerges from this debate stronger than ever.

As always, the first casualty of the debate was the truth. The fact is that America has the most powerful military in the world. Our domestic security capacities are greater than ever. Our intelligence agencies suffer from collecting too much data not too little. Our allies get a free ride. We lack not weaponry but wisdom. We suffer from the bipartisan presumption that we are the indispensable nation able to police the world. We will control the Persian Gulf, press NATO to the borders of Russia, surround China with troops and fleets, intervene constantly in far corners of the world and then be constantly surprised at the blowback.

Republicans scorn the real and present threat of catastrophic climate change, even as its cost in lives and resources soars. We have a debate on national security without even mention of the global stagnation that now threatens a return to global recession or worse. These candidates bray about spending more on a military that is the most powerful in the world while—other than Donald Trump –ignoring the reality that we aren’t making the investments at home vital to our economy and society.
It remains to be seen which candidate, if any, benefits from the dustup. But we already know that the Republic fared poorly.

10 Biggest Lies And Distortions From The GOP Debate

Terror panic always brings out the biggest bullshitters.

By Adam Johnson

Another GOP debate, another steaming pile of half-truths, lies and pseudo-facts. The Republican Party seems to be almost entirely post-truth at this point, and if you call them out, you're the liberal media! It's a brilliant racket and one that led us to the current state of affairs where facts aren't just dispensable, but a political liability. Without further ado, here are the top lies and distortions from last night's debate.

1. Ben Carson and Ted Cruz: "We cannot vet refugees."
A popular refrain in the wake of the Paris and San Bernadino attacks is that the U.S. government (or more specifically President Obama) cannot properly vet Syrian refugees. This has been repeatedly debunked as hysterical posturing, yet remains a popular trope among the far right. In addition to a rather thorough takedown by John Oliver two weeks ago, PoliticoFact rated this claim, "Mostly False" in its detailed analysis this evening.

2. Marco Rubio claims Assad created ISIS.
This is an old canard, and one that even nominally lefty outlets like Vox like to push, but it has little to do with reality. In an effort to shore up his neocon credentials, Rubio has doubled down on regime change in Syria while other GOP candidates like Paul and Cruz - as well as Bernie Sanders - have run away from this position. To do this Rubio has pushed the conspiracy theory that the reason ISIS grew in Syria is because the U.S. didn't back the rebels opposed to Assad when in fact the CIA, according to documents revealed by Edward Snowden, spent $1 billion a year arming, funding and assisting the opposition.

3. Donald Trump cites bogus poll that 25% of Muslims condone acts of violence.
A popular trope among the nativist wing of the Republican Party (aka the Republican Party), the bogus stat that 25% of Muslins support violence is thrown around quite often. But it originates from noted Islamophobic "think tank" Center for Security Policy. As the New York Times notes:
Mr. Trump vouched for the group at a rally on Monday night. But the poll — conducted by the Polling Company, a Republican firm — is in no way truly representative of all Muslim Americans because of its methodology. The poll was not based on a random sample, but included only people who chose to participate, and therefore is not representative of the population being studied. In addition, some of the questions were leading and biased.
4. Chris Christie insists he was appointed U.S. Attorney on Sept 10, 2001.
Why does Christie keep repeating this lie? It's been debunked several times and it's a matter of public record. It's a great soundbite to be sure, and if true, would put Christie in the heart of the most significant foreign policy crisis of the past 20 years. But the reality is that George W. Bush nominated Christie on Dec. 7, 2001, as one can clearly see from a White House press release.

5. Ted Cruz claims George W. Bush deported 10 million people.
Geroge W. Bush deported 1.8 million people. Obama deported 2 million. It's unclear where Cruz is getting this number from.

6. Donald Trump keeps saying he self-funds, but we know that's demonstrably false.
This is another assertion that's completely disproven and easily searchable online (which raises the question of why CNN hasn't bothered doing this). Trump has received, according to the last available FEC filings, upward of $3.9 million from individual donors compared to using only $101,000 of his own money. How does this fit with his "self-funded" narrative? It's unclear, but perhaps a more urgent question is why would any sane person donate money to someone who claims to have over $10 billion?

7. Moderator lie: CNN's Wolf Blitzer claimed terrorism fears are higher than they've been since 9/11.
That's not true. A recent Gallup poll shows terrorism fears have spiked recently, but are the same as in 2005 and nowhere near as high as after 9/11.

8. Lie by omission: Why was the attack on Planned Parenthood not mentioned in a debate about terrorism?
As Sean McElwee of Demos noted, in a debate that was nominally about "terrorism," non-Muslim terrorism was completely absent. The recent Planned Parenthood terrorist attack carried out by a man who claims to be a "warrior for babies" wasn't discussed in the broader context of terrorism. Why this is so remains unclear.

9. Lie by cliche: What the hell is Fiorina talking about?
Fiorina keeps referencing "building up the sixth fleet" because presumably it sounds like some important walk-and-talk dialogue in the West Wing, but it actually makes no sense. Several experts have chimed in on this strange refrain and pointed out that it's basically nonsense. As military magazine Stars and Stripes noted:
Her meaning wasn’t immediately clear — the U.S. 6th Fleet is less a collection of ships than a command structure for operating American warships in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Moreover, the fleet is one of the few growing military commands in Europe. It is building land-based missile interceptor sites in Romania and Poland, and in the coming days it will welcome the last of four guided-missile destroyers to arrive for permanent stationing in Rota, Spain.
10. Several candidates keep claiming the Iran deal "gives $150 billion to Iran."
As the LA Times notes, it's not "giving" $150 billion to Iran, it's relieving sanctions that will ultimately unfreeze more than $150 billion in assets to Iran, but the funds were already Iran's to begin with. No one is "giving" Iran anything.

Adam Johnson is an associate editor at AlterNet. Follow him on Twitter at @adamjohnsonnyc.