Sunday, November 1, 2015

Fall Of The House Of Bush




Jeb Bush spoke to potential supporters in Portsmouth, N.H., on Thursday. Credit Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — JEB, dragging his wilted exclamation point around, is so boring that it’s hard to focus on the epic nature of his battle.

Not the battle against Donald Trump, although his beat-down by Trump is garishly entertaining. I’m talking about the Brooks Brothers “Game of Thrones” family tangle.

As much as Poppy Bush scoffs at “the D-word,” as he calls any reference to dynasty, the Bushes do consider themselves an American royal family. They have always pretty much divided the world into Bushes and the help. The patriarch once sent me a funny satire referring to himself and Barbara as the Old King and Queen, W. as King George of Crawford and Jeb as the Earl of Tallahassee.

At 91, 41 is living to see Jebbie become president. He is mystified by a world in which Trump, whom he considers a clown, could dethrone the crown prince.


Jeb said in New Hampshire that Poppy is prone to throw his shoe at the TV when Trump comes on. Fortunately, the former president always has very stylish socks.

Some of Jeb’s disillusioned donors are hanging on just because they can’t bear to shatter the old man’s illusions. How can America be rewarding the wrong dynasty — Little Rock over Kennebunkport?

As Jonathan Martin and Matt Flegenheimer recently wrote in The Times, Poppy and Bush retainers like John Sununu are bewildered by a conservative electorate that rejects Republican primogeniture, prefers snark to substance and embraces an extremely weird brain surgeon and an extravagantly wild reality show star.

When the Bushes had to stick a shiv in the ribs of their foes, they behaved like gentlemen and outsourced it to henchmen. They can’t fathom a world where that vulgarian Trump is doing his own dirty work.

Trump has gotten into Jeb’s head, making Jeb so petulant he declared he had “a lot of really cool things” he could be doing instead, when we all know he doesn’t.

For Bushworld, this was the election where the Cain and Abel drama of W. and Jeb would finally have a happy ending.

I covered the Jeb and Junior sibling smashdown from the start. In 1993, I went on the road to watch Jeb run for governor in Florida and W. run for governor in Texas.

Barbara had blurted out to W. that he shouldn’t run because he couldn’t win. And when I talked to Jeb, he seemed annoyed that his older brother had jumped into the race in Texas because it turned it into “a People magazine story.”

But W. had spent his rowdy 20's and 30's living with the unpleasant fact that even though he was the oldest, his parents assumed Jeb had the bright political future. At 47, with his drinking days behind him and Laura beside him, he was ready to cash in on the family name and money and make his move.

It was soon clear to me that the Good Son was not as scintillating a campaigner as the Prodigal Son. W. didn’t know the issues and he had a spiteful side, but he was the one with the crackle.

When Jeb came up with a line on the trail in Florida that worked, W. just swiped it. When Jeb said, “I am running for governor not because I am George and Barbara Bush’s son; I am running because I am George P. and Noelle and Jeb’s father,” W. began saying: “I am not running for governor because I am George Bush’s son. I am running because I am Jenna and Barbara’s father.” Karl Rove laughed about the shoplifting.

Jeb was the image of his mother, especially when he smiled, but his pragmatic political temperament was more like his father’s, even though he never had his dad’s manic “ants on a hot pan” energy. W. looked like his father but got his acerbic streak from his mother.

On election night, W. was steamed that his father seemed more upset by Jeb’s loss than excited by his oldest son’s win. Not only did W. shock his family by making it to the Oval Office before Jeb. In the tie election, Jeb had to be prodded into helping his brother snatch Florida away from Al Gore.

This was going to be the year that settled sibling scores. Jeb would get what his parents considered his birthright.

Even though the brothers are not particularly close, and W.’s tragic over-involvement in the Middle East and tragic under-involvement in Katrina did not make him a campaign asset, somehow Jeb kept wrapping himself around W.’s axle — and his Axis of Evil.

When Jeb was first asked if it had been a good idea to invade Iraq, he gave four different answers. Then he said he wouldn’t rule out torture and thought getting rid of Saddam was “a pretty good deal.” And he couldn’t stop bragging about how his brother kept America safe, even though Trump correctly noted that W. was not on the ball leading up to 9/11. And, of course, W.’s two misbegotten wars have been recruiting boons for terrorist fiends.

Jeb explained away his shambling, shrinking campaign by saying he was a doer, not a performer. But the main thing he was doing was helping to rehabilitate his brother’s pockmarked reputation.

W. headlined a fund-raiser at a Georgetown home Thursday night. When he came out, a TMZ camera captured him jovially signing autographs for people waiting on the street and calling out as he drove away, “Don’t put that on eBay.”


On Friday morning, the chatterers were comparing the stiff Jeb to the loosey-goosey W., gushing with the mistaken cliché that W. is comfortable in his own skin. It was the ultimate vindication for W. His parents had been wrong all along. Jeb wasn’t the Natural on the trail. He was.

Some Jeb! campaign officials think he should “kiss off Iowa,” as one put it, where he’s flatlining, and put the emphasis on New Hampshire, setting the stage for South Carolina. “That’s what 41 did when Bob Dole was winning Iowa,” said one family friend. The Bushworld veterans think that someone gave Jeb bad advice about trying to put his protégé Marco Rubio in his place at the debate.

“It looked out of character for him,” one said. “He looked like he was a little lost when Marco came back at him.”

Jeb’s loyalists are urging reporters to point out, as one asserted, that Trump would be “a catastrophe for the country.”

They also think Jeb has to be more self-deprecating, because he has no choice, and stress his Latino support.

Before the debate debacle, the joyless candidate had been doubling down on his promise to be joyful, proclaiming on NewsmaxTV, “I’m having a blast” and “I’m in phenomenal shape for an old 62 year old guy. In fact, I think we ought to have five-hour debates.”

But this campaign has been defined by Trump parachuting in, like an Elvis impersonator in Vegas, and disrupting the royal coronation. Jeb had been out of politics for eight years and he strolled back, mistakenly assuming that the vassals were waiting eagerly to hail him.

With Trump belittling him for being low energy and running to Mommy and Daddy for help, Jeb realized he was in a new world.

His brother’s muscle-bound presidency led to Barack Obama and the diffident Obama led to a new brand of furious, Tea Party-infused Republicans.

While Jeb was offstage, the whole party and political environment had passed him by. He came back looking very ’90's. He’s talking about pragmatic government at a time when the drivers in his party are talking about tearing it down.

Jeb is trapped in a nightmarish déjà vu. Once he was cast as the wonky one while his brother, the sparky one, slipped ahead. Now Jeb is cast as the wonky one while Marco, the sparky one, slips ahead.

Jeb got confused. He thought he was still in an era when people had to pay their dues.

Follow Maureen Dowd on Twitter.

Friday, October 30, 2015

ARK-3 Source Code released

By Acid_Snake

A while ago Coldbird and I decided to finish the ARK project for good and add all the missing features that need to be added. So we began working on its next iteration, ARK-3.
However things got cold and little to no information has been released so far about the project. This is mainly because Coldbird and I don’t go out publicly too often and because we have problems finding time for the project.
ARK-3 is a Custom Firmware (eCFW) for the emulated PSP on the Vita (ePSP). It is essentially a reworked version of PROVita/ARK-1, a port of the Pro CFW for the PSP.
It’s features include:
– Full compatibility with PSP home brews and games.
– ISO and CSO support through the Inferno ISO Driver as well as compatibility with the M33, ME and NP9660 drivers.
– Compatibility with PSX games under PSP exploits with partial sound through PEOPS.
– Partial compatibility with PSX exploits.
– Compatible with up to firmware 3.52
– Built in menu with advanced features like PMF playback, FTP, CFW settings and more. It is also compatible with other popular menus such as ONEmenu and 138Menu.


There’s still a lot of things to do here, most importantly:
– Finish porting ARK-3 to PSX exploits.
– Finish the PEOPS port by improving compatibility and adding game-specific configurations to the built-in database.
– Port 3.5X kernel exploits.
Hopefully releasing the source code calls the attention of other developers that might want to contribute to the project. Anyone is now free to do so.
The project is hosted in the following bitbucket repository: https://bitbucket.org/Coldbird/ark3

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Random Impressions of Last Night's GOP Media Murderfest

 
Just a few thoughts on the Republican debate from Boulder, Colorado (the major league one, not the farm team):

1. You can pinpoint the moment that Jeb Bush swallowed his own balls. The former governor of Florida had decided to lob his obviously scripted attack at Sen. Marco Rubio, saying that Rubio's missed votes in the Senate disappointed him as a constituent. Rubio was ready with a comeback about all the past presidential candidates who had missed votes, including John McCain. You could see that Bush realized he had brought a lace doily to a razor fight when he said about McCain, weakly, as if he wanted to vomit, "Well, he wasn't my senator." Then Rubio cut off Bush's balls and you could watch Bush swallow them when he attempted to interrupt the grandstanding Rubio with "Well, I've been--." The problem, at the end of the day, is that Jeb Bush isn't the vicious motherfucker his brother was. George W. would have come back with some remark about Rubio being new on the job...just like Barack Obama. But you got the sense, as his balls were descending his throat and into his stomach, that Jeb just wanted to say, "Fuck this." And no one would have blamed him. At this point, Jeb is a hilariously pitiable figure, a vaudeville clown, a sad sack. It's time for someone to walk him into a field and tell him to look at the rabbits.

2. Whoever advised Chris Christie to look directly at the camera and "answer questions" was a fucking idiot who should be fired immediately. Each time he decided to address the TV audience, it looked like a giant pumpkin head was angry at us. It was disconcerting and just goddamn rude. Motherfucker, someone asked you a question. You could at least look like you give a shit that you're in the same room as the questioner. And "answer questions" is in quotation marks because, more often than not, Christie just decided, "Hey, Chico, Blondie, and Pinhead, fuck what you're asking. I got shit I practiced saying directly to myself in the mirror." So he'd go off about Hillary Clinton or how the country sucks beyond sucking under the Negro president who wants cops killed. And, by the way, of all the lies spit out by the candidates, Christie saying that FBI Director James Comey "has said this week that because of a lack of support from politicians like the president of the United States" cops fear for their lives was the closest to actual slander. Comey never mentioned Obama. Christie came across like a desperate buffoon, the faded high school football star who has become a sad, bloated vestige of the time when he was beautiful.

3. None of the candidates give a fuck about your facts. Rubio got pissed when John Harwood quoted a conservative group, the Tax Foundation, on the math behind the senator's tax plan. Ben Carson waved off the illogical math of his tax plan when it was presented to him. And Donald Trump? Your piddling truth matters not next to his undulating neck flap of fiction. Did he call Rubio "Mark Zuckerberg's personal senator"? Of course he did, but who the hell cares? Who remembers things that are your own campaign website? He loves Mark Zuckerberg. And bankruptcy? Your stupid laws let Trump businesses declare bankruptcy and get out of paying debts. Is it his fault that he dicked over so many people? Get outta here. And guns? Trump might be carrying one right now. He might have to kill someone on the wild streets of Boulder. And, sure, sure, it's a great idea to let his employees carry guns into, let's see, yeah. casinos. That's all just incredible. Amazing. Best there is. Somebody should be there to shit on Trump's face every day of his worthless life.

4. John Kasich looked like he had a case of coke jaw. Not only was he as jittery of someone who is jonesing for something, crank, liquor, smack, something, but he kept clenching and unclenching his jaw and grinding his teeth. It really took something away from his whole "I'm the rational one" persona he was attempting. More upsetting was Kasich's belief in the need for universities to privatize their assets: "[T]hey shouldn't be in the parking lot business. They shouldn't be in the dining business, they shouldn't be in the dorm business." A college shouldn't be in the dorm business? So you want to toss 18 year-olds to the dogs of whatever corrupt bunch of slumlords bid on dorm rights. Well, Kasich isn't exactly known for giving two shits about education unless there's a profit incentive for the people providing it.

5. Creepy Ted Cruz, who looks like every peeping Tom, said the creepiest thing of the night: "If you want someone to grab a beer with, I may not be that guy. But if you want someone to drive you home, I will get the job done and I will get you home." He might have continued, "I might take a detour to my backwoods sodomy pit with you, but your corpse will be dropped off at your home."

6. Presumptive debate victor Marco Rubio actually tried to plead poverty after getting a million dollar book advance. If he had a million dollars in student loans that needed paying off, he must have borrowed the money from the Cuban mafia.

7. Carly Fiorina's most disgraceful moment in a generally disgraceful evening when she said of Hillary Clinton, "Every single policy she espouses, and every single policy of President Obama has been demonstrably bad for women." What would that be? The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act? Keeping funding for Planned Parenthood? Appointing two women to the Supreme Court? Working for women's rights around the world? The one number she offered, that 92% of job losses in Obama's first term were women, was utterly, embarassingly wrong, so she'll probably repeat it endlessly.

8. The Rude Pundit's been told that Rand Paul was there, but there is scant evidence.

9. Mike Huckabee must have jacked off in glee when he realized he could make a blimp reference. He's so in the moment.

10. And, yeah, the moderators sucked early in the debate. Harwood's "Is this a comic book version of a presidential campaign?" to Donald Trump really was a bullshit blogger question. But at other times, they asked direct questions about shit like tax policies, with citations of studies that absolutely have a place in a debate. But someone needs to punch Jim Cramer and Rick Santelli in the nuts before their hysterical ranting is allowed on air. (By the way, fuck you, CNBC, for not freely streaming the event online.)

11. And, yeah, the candidates were total twat crumbs about the media. If the trio of moderators had been the ones at the Democratic debate, then, sure, you can accuse them of having gone easy on the Democrats. But most of the time, they were bitching because they hated being challenged. Whining about media unfairness is great for applause from the slavering hordes of cretins in the audience. Maybe that's all that matters to this slate of losers and human hemorrhoids. But Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sander or, hell, even Martin O'Malley would beat them stupider.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Labor department: Snack food company cheated workers

PENNSAUKEN, N.J. (AP) — Federal regulators say two investigations have found that the snack foods company that makes SuperPretzels and ICEE drinks cheated temporary production line workers out of wages.

The U.S. Department of Labor says Tuesday that J&J Snack Foods Corp. paid more than $2.1 million in back wages and damages to nearly 700 temporary workers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The labor department found that the company and the temporary staffing firms it used denied minimum wage and overtime pay to 677 workers.

A spokesman for J&J didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

The workers made products including frozen Minute Maid juice bars and Country Home Bakers goods at facilities in Swedesboro, New Jersey, and Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

The Pennsauken-based company makes and distributes snack foods to food service and supermarket industries.

Monday, October 26, 2015

Campaign season of the damned


Bernie Sanders smacks down Martin Shkreli: Rejects meeting and donation from hated drug CEO

martin shkreli

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Russell Simmons Slapped With Class Action Lawsuit For Fraud After RushCard Accounts Locked

By Meaghan Ellis

[Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images]

Russell Simmons is the latest face of controversy following a fiasco involving a RushCard glitch that prohibited thousands of customers from accessing their accounts. According to The Grio, it all started when a number of RushCard customers did not receive their scheduled direct deposits, consisting of paychecks, government benefit checks, and electronic funds transfers.

Many customers reported that their accounts reflected zero balances as if their deposits were never received, but the employers who sent deposits made it clear that the problem wasn’t on their end. As expected, Russell Simmons and the RushCard company – which markets to low-income Americans unable to obtain accounts with regular banking institutions – have received a flood of complaints via Facebook, and quickly attempted to resolve the staggering number of complaints.

Many frustrated cardholders have taken to social media to voice their concerns. Some news outlets have even slammed Russell Simmons and RushCard for exploiting the poor. The card debacle has placed emphasis on the number fees required to get and obtain a RushCard.
The situation is so catastrophic, Russell is personally responding to frustrated customers hoping to resolve these issues.
According to the Daily Mail, thousands of RushCard cardholders were unable to access their funds for more than a week. One couple even insists they were “forced to choose between feeding their children or paying their electric bill.” Although funds are now available to most customers, some of the calculations are reportedly still inaccurate.

According to The Root, the prepaid card company recently released a public statement addressing the issue, detailing its efforts to rectify the financial problems customers are facing. In the statement, RushCard CEO Rick Savard stated that the problem began when the company transitioned from an older processor to a new one. The transition led to the glitch that has prompted numerous problems for cardholders.
The hip-hop mogul has also took to Twitter with a brief statement and a number of updates about the card fiasco. “We have a handful of people left who are still not able to access correct information about their accounts,” the statement reads, according to Rolling Stone. “Their funds are there but their information is still inaccurate. We are working to contact them individually to assist them with their needs.”
According to Rolling Stone, the credit card debacle has led to an investigative probe of Russell Simmons’ company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has stepped in to conduct the investigation. On Friday, October 23, CFPB director Richard Cordray stated that he has been in contact with Savard and the federal agency “will make sure that action is being taken to address harm that has occurred, the harm that may still be occurring, and the cascading financial effects of consumers not having access to their funds for more than a week,” reports Yahoo News.
However, the RushCard announcements haven’t been enough to please those who are still suffering drawbacks from the card confusion. Due to the financial hardships, limited answers, and partial resolutions, impatient customers have already moved forward to resolve the mater with legal recourse. It has been reported that the 58 year old business magnate has been hit with a class action lawsuit. The suit slams the card company, accusing it of fraudulent induction practices.
“Plaintiff’s and class members were fraudulently induced into purchasing RushCards and depositing money into their RushCard accounts because they were led to believe their funds would be ‘safe and protected’ with unhindered access to these monies.”
The unfortunate situation has already prompted a number of customers to cancel their RushCard accounts as the uncertainties lead many to believe the card now comes with a number drawbacks. Hopefully, the situation can be resolved and that the company can regain the trust of its customers.

Noam Chomsky blasts modern GOP as extremists whose only policy is ‘don’t do anything or bomb’


Saturday, October 24, 2015

Whole Foods Recalls Salads In Northeast Over Listeria Contamination



No illnesses have yet been associated with a recall of bulk and packaged Curry Chicken Salad and Classic Deli Pasta Salad for possible Listeria contamination. The recall was issued by Whole Market of Cambridge Massachusetts. The recall involves Whole Foods in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.

chickencurrysalad_406x250

A sampling of the products tested positive for Listeria Monocytogenes during a routine inspection of Whole Foods Market’s North Atlantic Kitchen facility.

The recall notice said the recalled products have “the potential to be contaminated with Listeria Monocytogenes” Listeria is a pathogen that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections, especially in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems.

Others may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea, Listeria infection can cause miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women. Anyone with symptoms should seek immediate medical care if they develop these symptoms.

The salads were sold prepackaged, in salad bars, in store’s chef’s cases and in sandwiches and wraps prepared in the stores. The effected products were sold in stores between October 18 and October 22, 2015 and have a “sell by” date of October 23, 2015. The recalled items include:

The recall list with UPC Codes and product descriptions includes these products:

285551–Curry Chicken Salad, Our Chef’s Own, sold by weight
263144–Curry Chicken Salad Wrap, Made Right Here, sold by weight
263126–Single Curry Chicken Salad Wrap,
261068–Curry Chicken Salad CC, sold by weight
263142–PPK Salad Chicken Curry, sold by weight
265325–Curry Chicken Salad Rollup, 7oz
260976–Classic Deli Pasta Salad, Sold by weight
270742– Pasta Salad Classic Deli, sold by weight
0 36406 30001 7–Classic Deli Pasta Salad, 6oz
0 36406 30264 6–Classic Deli Pasta Salad, 14 oz

Republican Trey Gowdy Caught Using Private Email Server

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and Republicans across the country have been obsessing over former Secretary of State and current Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time, determined to use it to find some evidence of negligence or wrongdoing that could be used to frame her and derail her presidential ambitions.

Ignoring the fact that no classified information was found within the emails and that there were no regulations against the use of the private server at the time, Republicans have turned the very existence of the email server into a talking point, using it a launching point for all sorts of outlandish allegations which have no basis in fact.

Which makes it all the more hypocritical to learn that Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) has been exposed for having his own personal email server at treygowdy.com. 

AlterNet remarks that “while it’s not unusual to maintain such a thing particularly for campaign work, it’s not clear that Gowdy utilizes this email solely for political campaign work and not congressional tasks.”

Requests for comment by both Alternet and Correct The Record‘s David Brock were both ignored by the Gowdy camp, which is highly indicative that he does use his personal email for Congressional work- if he had nothing to hide, why wouldn’t he just say so? Especially with the integrity of his failed committee under such harsh scrutiny by the rest of the nation, demanding answers for the colossal misuse of public funds and time. If Gowdy wants to push the fabricated email scandal, he’d better be ready to put his own actions under the microscope.

Here is the full text of David Brock’s inquiry:
Dear Chairman Gowdy:
I noted with interest your public demand that Secretary Clinton turn over her personal email server, presumably so that the committee can access some 30,000 Clinton emails deemed to be strictly private and beyond the reach of the government.
This Orwellian demand has no basis in law or precedent. Every government employee decides for themselves what email is work-related and what is strictly private. There is no reason to hold Secretary Clinton to a different standard— except partisan politics.
But since you insist that Clinton’s private email be accessed, I’m writing today to ask you and your staff to abide by the same standard you seek to hold the Secretary to by releasing your own work-related and private email and that of your staff to the public.
While I realize that Congress regularly exempts itself from laws that apply to the executive branch, I believe this action is necessary to ensure public confidence in the fairness and  impartiality of your investigation.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
David Brock
Correct The Record

Friday, October 23, 2015

Firefox Find My Device Service Lets Hackers Wipe or Lock Phones, Change PINs

A variation on an older Samsung Find My Mobile attack

Vulnerabilities in Mozilla's Find My Device service enabled hackers to carry out attacks that locked the screens of smartphones running Firefox OS, change PINs, make the devices ring, and even wipe all data with only a few clicks.

The Firefox Find My Device service allows users who've lost their Firefox OS phone to lock it or see its location on a map and retrieve it or direct law enforcement to the thief's location. The service is extremely usable and is a similar feature to what Apple has been offering for years for iPhone users.

A variation of CVE-2014-8346 that affected the Samsung Find My Mobile service

Egyptian security researcher Mohamed A. Baset is "guilty" of discovering this flaw, which seems to be a variation (but it's not) of CVE-2014-8346, a security vulnerability that affected the Samsung Find My Mobile service.

For that vulnerability, also revealed by Mr. Baset, the National Institute of Standards and Technology gave a CSVV (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) score of 7.8 out of 10, but got a 10 for exploitability, meaning it was quite easy to carry out, without too many technical skills being needed by an attacker.

According to Mr. Baset's findings, by loading the Firefox Find My Device website inside a hidden iframe on other sites, via basic clickjacking techniques, a hacker would have been able to carry out attacks that would lock or unlock the phone's screen, set a new PIN only known by the attacker, or make the phone ring at maximum volume for one minute, even if set in vibrate or silent mode.

While these actions seem more like bad pranks, they would allow criminals who stole phones to craft a Web interface through which they could unlock PIN-protected phones with the push of a button.

Some differences exist, attackers can wipe phones clean of their data

As Mr. Basat told Softpedia, despite having similar outcomes, "the two vulnerabilities are not related. Even the vulnerabilities themselves are different, Samsung's was vulnerable to a CSRF attack but Mozilla's is vulnerable to a ClickJacking attack."

Unlike the Samsung Find My Mobile vulnerability, the one affecting Firefox's service also allowed attackers to wipe the phones clean, which poses more risk since valuable data can be lost if not properly backed up.

The good news is that this attack needs users to be logged in on the service with their Firefox account, which very few people use. Additionally, more clicks are needed to perform the attacks, ranging from 2 to 4, based on the desired malicious action.

The vulnerability was reported to Mozilla back in March, and it was patched yesterday.

Below is a YouTube video of the Samsung Find My Mobile hack. The Mozilla Find My Device attack should work in a similar fashion.


UPDATE: The article was updated with Mr. Basat statement, which clarified how the two attacks were different.