The Republican Thread

[Cknolls]

“There’s no need to have a Democratic budget in my opinion,” Reid said in an interview Thursday. “It would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage.”

 

 

[southsider2k5]

OMG Balta really? lol. I laughed harder at you than I did 2K5's joke

 

That was the worst part. The joke wasn't even that funny to begin with.

[Balta1701]

Mitch is out.

Reporting from Washington —

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told supporters early Sunday morning that he has decided not to run for president. In an email sent just after midnight Eastern time, Daniels said that "the interests and wishes" of his family led him to decide not to make the race.

 

Herman Cain also officially declared yesterday.

[Balta1701]

[Balta1701]

Obama's signature on the Westminster Abbey Guestbook today.

[Jenksismyhero]

Obama's signature on the Westminster Abbey Guestbook today.

 

What's with the comma?

[southsider2k5]

Obama's signature on the Westminster Abbey Guestbook today.

 

I can't even read what it said.

[StrangeSox]

The date looks like 2008 or 2013. Or 200B.

[Jenksismyhero]

 

Looks like, "It is a great privilege to commemorate our common heritage, and common sacrifice."

[Balta1701]

The date looks like 2008 or 2013. Or 200B.

The date is clearly 3 years off.

[StrangeSox]

The date is clearly 3 years off.

 

2008 is now 200B, in honor of Barack.

[southsider2k5]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405...=googlenews_wsj

 

WASHINGTON — Justice Department prosecutors and lawyers for former Sen. John Edwards are in last-ditch plea agreement talks that could avert felony charges over alleged campaign-finance violations, people familiar with the matter said.

 

If the talks fail Wednesday, Justice Department prosecutors are expected to seek a grand-jury indictment against Mr. Edwards, these people say.

 

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

 

Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 2004 and ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.

 

Prosecutors have been examining whether donors to various political entities affiliated with Mr. Edwards funneled money to a woman with whom Mr. Edwards had an extramarital affair and with whom he fathered a child, these people said. More than $1 million was allegedly paid to the mistress and to an Edwards aide who Mr. Edwards initially said was the child's father. The money was allegedly aimed at keeping the affair quiet and avoiding problems for Mr. Edwards's 2008 campaign.

 

A key question driving the probe is whether the money is deemed to have served a campaign purpose, people familiar with the investigation said. Federal election laws restrict the personal use of campaign donations and require disclosure of contributions.

 

Mr. Edwards has hired several top campaign-finance-law experts to lead his defense and in recent months added Greg Craig, former White House counsel.

 

U.S. Attorney George Holding in Raleigh, N.C., has led the inquiry, while the Justice Department's public-integrity unit has helped with preparations for a case, if it goes to trial, people familiar with the matter said.

[Balta1701]

If this guy was on my network, this would be cause for a fairly solid suspension.

"President Obama is going to be visiting Joplin, Mo., on Sunday but you know what they're talking about, like this right-wing slut, what's her name?, Laura Ingraham?" he said on his radio show. "Yeah, she's a talk slut. You see, she was, back in the day, praising President Reagan when he was drinking a beer overseas. But now that Obama's doing it, they're working him over."

[StrangeSox]

Any time I've caught a brief glimpse of that guy, he's been in the middle of shouting some incredibly dumb, borderline offense rant. He's trying to be a Democrat version of Rush but fails miserably.

[mr_genius]

He's trying to be a Democrat version of Rush but fails miserably.

 

pretty much.

[Balta1701]

On the heels of a nationally released film about her, the former half-term governor of Alaska is going to start a national bus tour soon.

In a move designed to propel her closer to a presidential run, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will set out on a bus tour of the country on Sunday, making stops at symbolic sites along the way.

 

"Starting this weekend, Sarah Palin will embark on a ‘One Nation' tour of historical sites that were key to the formation, survival, and growth of the United States of America," SarahPAC treasurer Tim Crawford said in a statement to RealClearPolitics. "The tour will originate in Washington, D.C. It will proceed north up the east coast."

 

Details were still being hammered out on Thursday, but sources indicated to RCP that the bus tour is expected to last several weeks and will be divided into separate geographical stretches for logistical reasons.

 

Members of Palin's immediate family are expected to join her on the trip, which will eventually take her through key early-voting states.

 

Coming on the heels of the revelation that Palin commissioned a documentary extolling her accomplishments as governor, which will premiere in Iowa next month, the impending nationwide voyage is yet another strong indicator that she is leaning toward jumping into the 2012 race.

 

Though the expedition is certain to generate an avalanche of media attention, Palin will utilize the trip primarily to recapture the everywoman persona that was so integral to her political rise.

[Balta1701]

As always, just don't Google his name.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum plans to kick off his Republican presidential campaign next month in western Pennsylvania coal fields where his immigrant grandfather once worked.

 

Santorum said Thursday on his Facebook page that he will announce his next steps on June 6. He then scheduled a visit to Iowa and New Hampshire, familiar stops for politicians with White House ambitions.

[Y2HH]

On the heels of a nationally released film about her, the former half-term governor of Alaska is going to start a national bus tour soon.

 

Oh jeeez...please no.

 

I wish people would just start ignoring her already and we could move on and pretend she never happened to American politics.

Edited May 27, 2011 by Y2HH

[Balta1701]

Oh jeeez...please no.

 

I wish people would just start ignoring her already and we could move on and pretend she never happened to American politics.

I'll be surprised if this isn't a precursor to a candidacy declaration. I could be wrong, but this is a major publicity move from her right at the time people are declaring.

[southsider2k5]

I guess a party chairman being a hypocrite isn't news anymore?

 

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-roo...-drive-american

 

The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) appears to drive a foreign car, despite criticizing Republican presidential candidates for supposedly favoring foreign auto manufacturers.

 

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the chairwoman of the DNC, ripped into Republican presidential contenders who opposed President Obama's 2009 bailouts for General Motors and Chrysler.

 

"If it were up to the candidates for president on the Republican side, we would be driving foreign cars; they would have let the auto industry in America go down the tubes," she said at a breakfast for reporters organized by The Christian Science Monitor.

 

But according to Florida motor vehicle records, the Wasserman Schultz household owns a 2010 Infiniti FX35, a Japanese car whose parent company is Nissan, another Japanese company. The car appears to be hers, since its license plate includes her initials.

[bigruss]

I guess a party chairman being a hypocrite isn't news anymore?

 

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-roo...-drive-american

The whole buy "american" company cars is such a scam anyways, nobody should be pointing out that buying a "foreign" car is unamerican.

[Y2HH]

The whole buy "american" company cars is such a scam anyways, nobody should be pointing out that buying a "foreign" car is unamerican.

 

It's not un-American. However, anyone that does it, IMO, loses the ability to to cry about foreign nations "stealing our jobs". I'm not one that cries about it, either, it's a reality of a global economy. That said, there is nothing more infuriating than having to listen to a rant from someone about foreign jobs/outsourcing when they jump in their foreign cars and fly to foreign countries on all of their vacations, and spend their money there instead of here.

 

Again, to clarify, I'm not crying about the reality of economics, or that people should buy only American, because I agree with you on that. But I also don't do it and then b**** about the things that go hand in hand with it.

Edited May 27, 2011 by Y2HH

[bigruss]

It's not un-American. However, anyone that does it, IMO, loses the ability to to cry about foreign nations "stealing our jobs". I'm not one that cries about it, either, it's a reality of a global economy. That said, there is nothing more infuriating than having to listen to a rant from someone about foreign jobs/outsourcing when they jump in their foreign cars and fly to foreign countries on all of their vacations, and spend their money there instead of here.

 

Again, to clarify, I'm not crying about the reality of economics, or that people should buy only American, because I agree with you on that. But I also don't do it and then b**** about the things that go hand in hand with it.

Pretty much. No one should be making such a statement anyways, not in this day and age. It's well documented that many foreign cars actually have more parts made in the USA than many American cars.

 

The hypocripsy that politicians and the media spew out is unbearable most of the time.

Edited May 27, 2011 by bigruss22

[greg775]

Our country is great, but bizarre.

 

Obama can't fix the economy, gas prices are so high, yet he's going to win re-election in a landslide.

Is it because the Republican's have such horrific candidates like Palin or ????

 

Repulicans got nobody to excite anybody. If it's because of race, are there any good African American Republicans to go against Obama??

[southsider2k5]

This ought to be interesting...

 

By SIOBHAN GORMAN And JULIAN E. BARNES

 

WASHINGTON—The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.

 

WSJ's Siobhan Gorman has the exclusive story of the Pentagon classifying cyber attacks by foreign nations acts of war. - News Hub

 

The Pentagon's first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, represents an early attempt to grapple with a changing world in which a hacker could pose as significant a threat to U.S. nuclear reactors, subways or pipelines as a hostile country's military.

 

In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S. in this way. "If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks," said a military official.

 

Recent attacks on the Pentagon's own systems—as well as the sabotaging of Iran's nuclear program via the Stuxnet computer worm—have given new urgency to U.S. efforts to develop a more formalized approach to cyber attacks. A key moment occurred in 2008, when at least one U.S. military computer system was penetrated. This weekend Lockheed Martin, a major military contractor, acknowledged that it had been the victim of an infiltration, while playing down its impact.

 

The report will also spark a debate over a range of sensitive issues the Pentagon left unaddressed, including whether the U.S. can ever be certain about an attack's origin, and how to define when computer sabotage is serious enough to constitute an act of war. These questions have already been a topic of dispute within the military.

 

One idea gaining momentum at the Pentagon is the notion of "equivalence." If a cyber attack produces the death, damage, destruction or high-level disruption that a traditional military attack would cause, then it would be a candidate for a "use of force" consideration, which could merit retaliation.

The War on Cyber Attacks

 

Attacks of varying severity have rattled nations in recent years.

 

June 2009: First version of Stuxnet virus starts spreading, eventually sabotaging Iran's nuclear program. Some experts suspect it was an Israeli attempt, possibly with American help.

 

November 2008: A computer virus believed to have originated in Russia succeeds in penetrating at least one classified U.S. military computer network.

 

August 2008: Online attack on websites of Georgian government agencies and financial institutions at start of brief war between Russia and Georgia.

 

May 2007: Attack on Estonian banking and government websites occurs that is similar to the later one in Georgia but has greater impact because Estonia is more dependent on online banking.

 

The Pentagon's document runs about 30 pages in its classified version and 12 pages in the unclassified one. It concludes that the Laws of Armed Conflict—derived from various treaties and customs that, over the years, have come to guide the conduct of war and proportionality of response—apply in cyberspace as in traditional warfare, according to three defense officials who have read the document. The document goes on to describe the Defense Department's dependence on information technology and why it must forge partnerships with other nations and private industry to protect infrastructure.

 

The strategy will also state the importance of synchronizing U.S. cyber-war doctrine with that of its allies, and will set out principles for new security policies. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization took an initial step last year when it decided that, in the event of a cyber attack on an ally, it would convene a group to "consult together" on the attacks, but they wouldn't be required to help each other respond. The group hasn't yet met to confer on a cyber incident.

 

Pentagon officials believe the most-sophisticated computer attacks require the resources of a government. For instance, the weapons used in a major technological assault, such as taking down a power grid, would likely have been developed with state support, Pentagon officials say.

 

The move to formalize the Pentagon's thinking was borne of the military's realization the U.S. has been slow to build up defenses against these kinds of attacks, even as civilian and military infrastructure has grown more dependent on the Internet. The military established a new command last year, headed by the director of the National Security Agency, to consolidate military network security and attack efforts.

 

The Pentagon itself was rattled by the 2008 attack, a breach significant enough that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs briefed then-President George W. Bush. At the time, Pentagon officials said they believed the attack originated in Russia, although didn't say whether they believed the attacks were connected to the government. Russia has denied involvement.

 

The Rules of Armed Conflict that guide traditional wars are derived from a series of international treaties, such as the Geneva Conventions, as well as practices that the U.S. and other nations consider customary international law. But cyber warfare isn't covered by existing treaties. So military officials say they want to seek a consensus among allies about how to proceed.

 

"Act of war" is a political phrase, not a legal term, said Charles Dunlap, a retired Air Force Major General and professor at Duke University law school. Gen. Dunlap argues cyber attacks that have a violent effect are the legal equivalent of armed attacks, or what the military calls a "use of force."

 

"A cyber attack is governed by basically the same rules as any other kind of attack if the effects of it are essentially the same," Gen. Dunlap said Monday. The U.S. would need to show that the cyber weapon used had an effect that was the equivalent of a conventional attack.

 

James Lewis, a computer-security specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has advised the Obama administration, said Pentagon officials are currently figuring out what kind of cyber attack would constitute a use of force. Many military planners believe the trigger for retaliation should be the amount of damage—actual or attempted—caused by the attack.

 

For instance, if computer sabotage shut down as much commerce as would a naval blockade, it could be considered an act of war that justifies retaliation, Mr. Lewis said. Gauges would include "death, damage, destruction or a high level of disruption" he said.

 

Culpability, military planners argue in internal Pentagon debates, depends on the degree to which the attack, or the weapons themselves, can be linked to a foreign government. That's a tricky prospect at the best of times.

 

The brief 2008 war between Russia and Georgia included a cyber attack that disrupted the websites of Georgian government agencies and financial institutions. The damage wasn't permanent but did disrupt communication early in the war.

 

A subsequent NATO study said it was too hard to apply the laws of armed conflict to that cyber attack because both the perpetrator and impact were unclear. At the time, Georgia blamed its neighbor, Russia, which denied any involvement.

 

Much also remains unknown about one of the best-known cyber weapons, the Stuxnet computer virus that sabotaged some of Iran's nuclear centrifuges. While some experts suspect it was an Israeli attack, because of coding characteristics, possibly with American assistance, that hasn't been proven. Iran was the location of only 60% of the infections, according to a study by the computer security firm Symantec. Other locations included Indonesia, India, Pakistan and the U.S.

 

Officials from Israel and the U.S. have declined to comment on the allegations.

 

Defense officials refuse to discuss potential cyber adversaries, although military and intelligence officials say they have identified previous attacks originating in Russia and China. A 2009 government-sponsored report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said that China's People's Liberation Army has its own computer warriors, the equivalent of the American National Security Agency.

 

That's why military planners believe the best way to deter major attacks is to hold countries that build cyber weapons responsible for their use. A parallel, outside experts say, is the George W. Bush administration's policy of holding foreign governments accountable for harboring terrorist organizations, a policy that led to the U.S. military campaign to oust the Taliban from power in Afghanistan.

 

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405...l#ixzz1NwyTGKnH