Thoughts on Trump

As a divided America fails to understand why Donald Trump is their new president, I just want to scream "Told you so" from atop of Mount Rushmore. I'm heard all sorts of theories, like "this was a 'whitelash' ... ", or "Putin did it". How it is that nobody understands that this is primarily Hillary Clinton's fault bewilders me.

The Clinton campaign seems to have expected that the presidency would  be handed to them on a silver platter. They simply could not fathom that so many Americans would not "fall in line" after stealing the nomination from their champion, Bernie Sanders. They certainty never expected that all of the polls, suspiciously skewed in their favor, would be absolutely wrong. Perhaps some of that can be attributed to the silent majority factor (aka, people that were afraid to admit they're intention to vote for Trump), and the rest to lackluster polling. Whatever happened, in my brutally honest opinion, the Democratic party got exactly what it deserved (cheers DNC, now take a sip from a tall glass of We Told You So!).

Admittedly, I never thought that Trump had a chance, as I expected that the election fraud we witnessed during the primaries would surely continue into the general, but that turned out to be conjecture. Trump did lose the popular vote, but won more electorates. These are the rules of the race, and so all things considered, Trump did win fair and square. No matter how many Trump piñatas are set ablaze in the streets, he will be president.

This has been quite the atypical election, thus it's not surprising that there are voices petitioning for the electorate to do something quite unprecedented. Change.org hosts a desperate last-grasp petition which calls upon the electorates to "go rogue", and cast their votes against their constituents wishes and elect Hillary Clinton on December 19th. If you're a Clinton supporter, don't get too excited yet, because it's never going to happen.

On election night, I felt some very mixed emotions while watching the electorate map grow steadily red. Although I really didn't want Hillary Clinton to win, I just always assumed that she would. Until around midnight, I kept thinking "any minute now she'll take the lead, there's no way ..." However, there came a point when I realized that the only way Clinton could win was if she won every remaining state. There were only a handful left at this point, and it seemed quite dubious that the pattern would suddenly break, permitting Hillary to shatter that glass ceiling in celebratory fashion. But it didn't happen. That glass ceiling was instead trashed, and with it, the Transpacific Partnership Agreement. Others claim a looming war with Russia may also have been avoided. I have no idea if that's accurate or not.

Don't get me wrong-- I am not an idiot. There are many things about Trump that not only bother, but genuinely scare me. And I'm not talking about his lack of filter, but rather his total incomprehension of how technology works:

David Sanger: You’ve seen several of those countries come under cyberattack, things that are short of war, clearly appear to be coming from Russia.

Donald Trump: Well, we’re under cyberattack.

Sanger: We’re under regular cyberattack. Would you use cyberweapons before you used military force?

Trump: Cyber is absolutely a thing of the future and the present. Look, we’re under cyberattack, forget about them. And we don’t even know where it’s coming from.

Sanger: Some days we do, and some days we don’t.

Trump: Because we’re obsolete. Right now, Russia and China in particular and other places.

Sanger: Would you support the United States’ not only developing as we are but fielding cyberweapons as an alternative?

Trump: Yes. I am a fan of the future, and cyber is the future.

Trump clearly doesn't know  what he's talking about. His responses contain literally nothing of substance. Okay, he was new at this, so I do cut him slack here. However, governments using offensive security tactics and developing cyber weapons could blow up in our faces. I truly hope that he realizes that he only won this election because of the nature of our free internet, and that protecting our constitutional rights on the internet is every bit as important as protecting them in the physical world (no pun intended).

This also could turn out to be a particularly dangerous time for the future of the internet, thanks to the changes to rule 41 of the the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which absent some massive popular uprising, will become law on December 1st. In fact, I am quite frustrated that the country is so distracted by Trump that nobody is paying attention to this pertinent issue.

I am also more than a little concerned about his environmental positions. Science does not lie, and we are headed for quite a disaster if we don't stop tearing this planet apart in search of gas and oil. Fracking , along with tar-sand oil production are some of the most disgusting, terrifying, toxic, and counter-productive energy extraction methods in use today. We should not inject poison into our drinking water sources to make a buck. We should not, in any way, contribute to, or purchase anything that is responsible for that giant cesspool of tar-sands waste in Northern Canada; you know, the one that's so large that it can be seen from outer space.

 What Now?



Trump could do a very good job. He is in a rare position where he could make real positive change occur. As he put it on 60 minutes, this is a unique moment in time where politicians have been taking advantage of people for a long time, and that all needs to change. 60 Minutes also reported that they felt the radical things said in the campaign were not meant to be taken literally, but were "opening pitches". 

To everyone whom is fearful of or concerned about Trump's presidency, I say this-- I hear your concerns, and I also have mine. But give him a chance,and I would encourage you to take a constructive approach toward securing your futures, and share your concerns and ideas with him. At this point, it would be far more effective for us to try to work with, rather than against, our president elect. He has asked for our council, and has encouraged us to share our ideas, concerns, and viewpoints with him. You can do that right now, at this website.

Whether or not he will listen to us remains to be seen, but at this point, unless you've got a better idea, and as the saying goes; if you can't beat them, join them-- No, not the Republican party. That's not what I am saying. I am saying, work within the system. Hold Trump accountable for every decision that he makes, and every (sane) promise he made during the election. Tell him what he's wrong about, and help him see your point of view. He's expressed that he would like to unite people. Surely this is a more constructive approach than burning piñatas.

Sometimes I Prefer Computers to People

Computers are easy. If the computer is not making sense, or doing something weird like crashing, freezing, or shutting down spontaneously, than it's definitely either your fault, or something is simply broken. It's almost always easily fixable. People, on the other hand, are much more complicated. People don't keep kernel logs, and are much less debuggable. I wish human brains ran on Linux and kept verbose debug logs. Than I could just sort of like ...



# ssh into the brain in question
anon@nixbox:$ ssh root@brain
Last login: n/a          
##############################

# get uptime, unset history, and grab emotional/chemical stats
 
root@brain:# unset HISTFILE ; uptime ; env|grep "EMO\|CHEM"|tr -d '\n'
14:50:31 up 1 day, 19:24,  1 user,  load average: 0.61, 0.74, 0.93
EMO_HAPPY=0 EMO_SAD=1 EMO_FEAR=1 EMO_LOVE=0 CHEM_DOPAMINE=44% CHEM_SERATONIN=53% CHEM_GABA=50% CHEM_epinephrine=87%
root@brain:# dmesg | grep 'because\|reason'
# remount the responsible parts of brain as writable
root@brain:# mount -o remount,rw /dev/amygdala /mnt/brain0
root@brain:# mount -o remount,rw /dev/hippocampus /mnt/brain1
# strace whatever program is responcible for emotions for a while
 
root@brain:# strace -v /mnt/hippocampus/bin/emotions > out.log
 grep "happ*\|sad*\|ang*\|anx*\|fear*\|*secure*\|love*\|hate*\|irritat*\|panic*\|comfort*\|joy\|despair\|disgust\| \
 trust*\|scare*\|relief\|bliss" out.log > debug.log ; shred -zu out.log
# diagnostics: figure out what they're feeling and why
root@brain:# grep "feeling\|because\|reason\|suggest*\|CHEM*" debug.log

 
Mon Aug 08 01:23:59 EDT 2016 DEBUG: feeling happy because: 'sun is shining, skies are blue '
 CHEM: [dopamine: 75%] [seratonin: 89% ] [GABA: 90%] [epinephrine: 10%]
Tue Aug 09 18:23:53 EDT 2016 INFO: feeling angry because: 'smells like teen spirit playing on radio again '
 CHEM: [dopamine: 45%] [seratonin: 57% ] [GABA: 70%][epinephrine: 51%]
Wed Aug 10 12:02:26 EDT 2016 INFO: feeling happy because: 'got paid today, '
 CHEM: [dopamine: 75%] [seratonin: 60% ] [GABA: 100%][epinephrine: 3%]
Thu Aug 11 09:55:41 EDT 2016 WARN: feeling irritable because 'craving nicotine, low dopamine '
 CHEM: [dopamine: 24%] [seratonin: 51% ] [GABA: 70%][epinephrine: 60%]
Thu Aug 11 12:30:44 EDT 2016 ERR:  system unstable, reason: 'chemical inbalance! '
 CHEM: [dopamine: 15%] [seratonin: 42% ] [GABA: 10%][epinephrine: 88%]
Fri Aug 12 08:12:43 EDT 2016 WARN: feeling anxious because: 'sleep deprivation [-2 hours] '
 CHEM: [dopamine: 55%] [seratonin: 60% ] [GABA: 42%][epinephrine: 90%]
Fri Aug 12 08:12:43 EDT 2016 INFO: suggest: '10 mgs diazepam to induce somnia and more sleep'
Fri Aug 12 11:56:01 EDT 2016 FATAL: feeling: 'depressed because: '(null) error: no reason found'

# shred the evidence (not sure that in any universe this would be legal)
 
root@brain:# shred -zu debug.log 

# create a boot script to kill bad emotions, trigger good ones, and let's just do our brain owner a favor and correct that seratonin inbalance once and for all, each reboot (or, every morning, i suppose. [it's pseudo science fiction].)
 
root@brain:# grep -v "exit 0" /etc/rc.local > /tmp/rc.tmp ;
root@brain:# echo "echo 1 > /proc/emo/happy ; echo 0 > /proc/emo/sad ; echo 0 > /proc/emo/fear ;echo 1 > /proc/emo/love;\
 echo 100 > /dev/chem/dopamine ; echo 100 > /dev/chem/seratonin ; echo 0 > /dev/chem/epinephrine ; echo 100 > /dev/chem/GABA \
 exit 0" >> /tmp/rc.tmp && mv /tmp/rc.tmp > /etc/rc.local

# turn panic attacks into blissful trips, in fact, lets just unset panic as a variable altogether and save some pharma costs. than we should be good to simply reboot the brain and all will be well
 
root@brain:# echo 'alias PANIC="echo 1 > /proc/emo/bliss;echo 0 >/proc/emo/panic ; unset PANIC\"' >> /etc/profile
root@brain:# ln -s /dev/chem/GABA /dev/chem/epinephrine ; reboot
Broadcast message from root@brain
        (/dev/pts/1) at 13:21 ...
The system is going down for reboot now!
Connection closed by remote host.

# log back in and make sure nothing went terribly wrong




anon@nixbox:$ ssh root@brain
Last login: Fri Aug 12 15:29:57 EDT 2016 from nixbox.lan
##############################
root@brain:# env|grep "EMO\|CHEM"|tr -d '\n'
EMO_HAPPY=1 EMO_SAD=0 EMO_FEAR=0 EMO_LOVE=1 CHEM_DOPAMINE=100% CHEM_SERATONIN=100% CHEM_GABA=100% CHEM_epinephrine=0%
root@brain:# >$HISTFILE; exit
Connection to brain-099343343322.lan closed
anon@nixbox:$ # All better now

# Looks good. Our subject is flying on dopamine, has a health seratonin balance, lots of GABA, and we've disabled adrenaline (for now, cause ya, adrenaline has it's uses)


As nice as this would be, it's just not the way life works. Life is not binary. The world is not black and white, it's rather colorful. But it's nice to dream.

Making Facebook Chat Suck Less: Messenger Over IRC!

The Problem: 

We all know how bad the Facebook Messenger platform is, so I won't go into too much detail. The CIA probably has access to every single message ever sent over the service, and the mobile messenger app requires permissions to just about everything on your phone. The only other option is to use the HTML service on facebook's site, or the standalone messenger client, which is equally inconvenient. But if you are using a mobile device, you may have noticed that you can't even use the browser anymore (at least, not without spoofing your user agent string). If you're on a smartphone, it seems Facebook will stop at nothing to get you to install their spyware-oozing, trojanized, piece-of-shit app. (Why, Zuckerburg, in God's name, WHY?)

There used to be an alternate way, connecting via the XMPP service that Facebook used to provided. This allowed users to use the service on the XMPP client of their choice (profanity is mine, Pidgin is more commonly used). Many users, myself included, were quite angry when Facebook killed that service. After that happened, I pretty much gave up on ever using facebook chat for anything other than occasionally tracking down long lost friends.

After all, who needs this crap? There are plenty of ways to communicate with your friends securely, with end to end encryption, and away from the prying eyes of Google and the NSA. There is Signal Private Messenger, a plethora of XMPP servers available for public use, and hell, even doing clumsy shit like:

echo -ne "Decrypt this shit"|gpg -a -r 'Alice' --encrypt|nc lol.com 6969

is better than facebook messenger! The problem is getting your friends to use the encrypted services (which, btw, are very easy to use). Sometimes the party you need to talk to just doesn't know how or care to use alternate communication services. Maybe you're dating someone who is not as technically oriented as you are, or someone that just really likes to use facebook. Or maybe you have to use Facebook because of your job, or maybe your friends simply don't care that every word exchanged over that service is being stored on tape inside one of Dick Cheney's underground bunkers.

The attitude toward perpetual warrentless wiretapping in this country is somewhere between an apathetic "oh well" and a misguided "i don't care because i have nothing to hide". I could tell you about how those attitudes, throughout human history, have lead to awesome events such as the rise of the Nazi Germany, but I digress. Besides, if you're using Facebook's servers in any way, than forget about hiding messages from three letter organizations.

Messenger's Annoying (Anti)Features:

That aside, I cannot be the only one that feels like their chatting experience has been wrecked by all of these new "features", such as the ability to see when your friend has "seen" the message your sent, or the distracting ability to see when your contact is typing you a message. Perhaps you also don't appreciate the fact that everyone in the world can see your idle time, down to the second, from which you were last online (this is how my mom used to know when I stayed up till 3:00 AM).

Maybe you think I am being silly, perhaps you like these features. I would not mind them if I simply had the option to shut them off, without disabling chat altogether. I feel like the seen, is typing. and idle features rob the user of some of the better aspects of text messaging that make it appealing to begin with. For instance, I like how when talking to someone over sms, I feel like I can take my time replying, and do not feel like my cell phone is eating my attention span alive. With IRC and sms, I am engaged with both the conversation and world around me. But with facebook, I feel like my attention span has been totally hijacked and monopolized. I don't want the distraction of knowing the second someone "sees" my messages. Maybe sometimes I don't want them to know when i saw theirs. I don't like when people can see that I am typing either. Sometimes I feel compelled to type faster, or feel silly if I spend five full minutes typing a message, only to delete it and say "yeah". Sometimes I feel like if I don't reply in a reasonable time, than I am somehow indirectly "ignoring" my contact. Yes, it all sounds trivial, but that's how the messenger platform makes me feel. Wouldn't good old IRC be better?

Whatever the reason compelling you to use this terrible platform, if you find yourself with a facebook browser tab open all of the time, running inside of your dedicated sketchy virtual machine to avoid cross contamination with all your other shit, than I have good news for you. If you also hate these ever increasing amount of anti-features like "seen", than this blog is for you too. The situation is fixable! Without further ado, meet Bitlbee.

Making It Suck (Way) Less: 

(Note: it should go without saying that no matter how you interact with facebook's servers, your messages will still be stored on those servers. Besides using some end-to-end encryption plugin like blowssi or copy and pasting gpg encrypted messages, there is nothing you can do about that part of the problem.)

There is finally a way to chat on facebook, using your IRC client of choice (I like irssi), while reclaiming some privacy. Finally, I can talk to people on Facebook without ever having to leave the comfort of my terminal emulator. This is possible thanks to Bitlbee, and bitlbee-mqtt. What is bitlbee?

"BitlBee brings IM (instant messaging) to IRC clients. It's a great solution for people who have an IRC client running all the time and don't want to run an additional MSN/AIM/whatever client.
BitlBee currently supports the following IM networks/protocols: XMPP/Jabber (including Google Talk and Hipchat), MSN/Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM and ICQ, the Twitter microblogging network (plus all other Twitter API compatible services like status.net)
There are also plugins for facebook and steam, and you can use libpurple to get even more protocols."

Basically, Bitlbee provides a way to use all of your favorite (or most hated) messaging services over good old IRC. It is an irc daemon, so preferably you should run it on some linux box that is online all of the time.

How to Bitlbee-Facebook:

Full instructions here. You will need:

 - a linux server
 - a facebook account
 -  ~ 30 minutes
 - an irc client
 - an irc bouncer
 - an IQ =< 60
 - some basic linux skills 

First you need to install  both bitlbee and bitlbee-facebook. These packages can either be built from source, or you can use the bitlbee repositories if your Linux distribution is supported (easier). Pre-compiled binaries may also be available, but I don't mess with those, and neither should you.

For simplicities sake, let's use the repositories. First, find out if your distro is supported. Currently, a few Debian and Ubuntu releases are:

wheezy:  Debian 7.0 (old-stable)
jessie:  Debian 8.0 (stable)
testing:         Debian testing
trusty:  Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (trusty tahr), Linux Mint 17
wily:    Ubuntu 15.10 (wily werewolf)

There are two repositories you need to add, the readme's are located here and here. I'll assume you are using Debian Jessie, because it's my favorite out of all of those, and this is my blog. If you're using something else, just replace the distro when you run these commands (where applicable).

First, we need the release key (same for all versions), and than we need to add an entry to our sources.list for apt:

$ wget -O- https://code.bitlbee.org/debian/release.key | sudo apt-key add -

$ wget -O- https://jgeboski.github.io/obs.key | sudo apt-key add -

Than we need to add the repositories to our sources list (as root):

# echo 'deb http://code.bitlbee.org/debian/master/jessie/amd64/ ./'\

 >/etc/apt/sources.list.d/bitlbee.list

# echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/jgeboski/jessie ./'\

 >/etc/apt/sources.list.d/jgeboski.list

Next, we need to update apt and than install the packages bitlbee and bitlbee-facebook, and than restart the daemon for good measure:

sudo apt-get update;sudo apt-get install bitlbee bitlbee-facebook;(sudo service bitlbee restart || sudo service bitlbee start)

Congratulations, you should now have a functional bitlbee server that supports facebook! Now it's time to make sure that everything works. First, generate an app password for bitlbee to use (this is much more secure than logging in using your actual facebook password). Next, using your favorite IRC client (i like irssi), connect to your server, try to add a facebook account, and message someone:

/server localhost

account add facebook <email> <password>

account facebook on 

/msg PersonsDisplayName hello from an oldschool irc client! 

If everything went well, you should be logged in to facebook chat. In the channel &Bitlbee, you will see all of your friends as they come on and offline. You start a conversation just like you would on any other IRC server, by doing /msg UserName. You will notice that Bitlbee's mqtt works much better than the old XMPP did. Hyper-links and images work properly too, they are converted to unique links to facebook's content delivery service that you can open in your browser to view. It's really quite impressive how well this works. As an added bonus, you will appear online all of the time, so nobody can get your idle time, nobody can see when you are typing, and the "seen" feature is rendered useless as well (this behaviour can be changed, see the docs).

At this point, everything works, but you may have noticed that bitlbee does not natively support SSL. And while bitlbee does have a nice feature for taking over sessions when you switch devices, everything runs much more smoothly if you configure an IRC bouncer that does support SSL, and run it on the same box as the bitlbee server. This way you can simultaneously be online from multiple devices, and you won't miss any messages when you switched devices, or if/when your connection drops. The bouncer will cache those messages for you, providing both convenience, and if the bouncer supports SSL, security (funny how that works out in this case). A popular bouncer that is available in the Debian/Ubuntu repositories is ZNC, which is very easy to configure (just run znc --makeconf , and follow the prompts).

This is what it looks like when everything is working, using irssi. This is a screenshot of my facebook friends coming online and going idle. Nerds like me will appreciate how bitlbee translates facebook mqtt messages into emulated irc messages:

This is a screenshot of a conversation in irssi. Notice how when the user goes idle, bitlbee emulates that by with an irc quit message:

Finally, here is a screenshot of the &Bitlebee status feed on an Android, in this case using the AndChat IRC client (of course you could also use connectbot and tmux or something):

A conversation on AndChat:

Pretty cool, right? I can finally use facebook on my phone without dealing with browers and user agents (I have always refused to use Messenger).

So, that's how you can reclaim some of your privacy, and turn your attention-monopolizing facebook experience into something much more pleasant, with a retro IRC feel.

Important:

Do not use Bitlbee straight over the internet! Either use a bouncer that supports SSL, run it through a VPN, tunnel it over SSH, or use something else, like stunnel. The IRC protocol is ancient, and operates over plain text. Intercepting your messages and passwords would be trivial for an ISP or someone on your LAN to do.

I am considering running a public Bitlbee server, which would use SSL. If you think you would be interested in using that service, leave a message. I hope that this blog helps someone. Enjoy.

USA SOL As Usual - Fuck Trump & Clinton

Trump totally sold out to the far right. From his religious pandering to his terrible choice of running mate, it's clear that Trump was lying every time he ever said that his campaign was about taking on the establishment. Considering this, it's not hard to imagine that he was never serious about taking on money in politics either. But mostly, I can't support Trump because the Republican convention was so sickening. Watching those paranoid, miserable lunatics rant on and on about terrorism and "pro-life" policy made me remember why Obama was elected over Romney-- because allowing those people back into power would set us back decades environmentally, socially, and economically.

Maybe if Trump had picked a more moderate VP instead a far-right establishment Republican insider than he'd still hold some appeal. But can you imagine what would happen if Trump got impeached or assassinated, resulting in a Pence presidency? That would be a fucking nightmare.

Perhaps if he had at least acknowledged that we are in an environmental crisis, or had not switched his position on woman's rights, just perhaps he would be a viable candidate.

Maybe if the only insane things he had said were that we need to build a wall, ban all Muslims, and punish woman for abortions, just maybe he could deflected those particular things and still had been taken seriously.

Most sickening are his statements about "bringing back torture, even if it doesn't work". Trump, did you seriously say that and expect it not to cost you votes? The thing is folks, I don't believe that Trump is serious about winning. He is either playing the Republicans or playing us. Maybe both. I don't know.

Don't think for a second that this means I would ever vote for Hillary Clinton, however. I can't even believe that she is still running. The woman could not pass a simple background check. She is, all for intended purpouses, a closet Republican, and certainty is every bit as much of a neocon as say, Henry Kissinger or George Bush.

So, what choice does that leave us? There are two third party candidates, Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party, and Jill Stein, of the Green Party. Johnson will be on the ballet in all fifty states, while Stein only twenty-three. I'll likely be voting for one of them, unless Bernie Sanders makes some kind of stellar comeback.

The Age of Shale: An Orwellian, Globalist Nighmare

Blissful Ignorance ...

A few years ago, a giant conspiracy theorist movement exploded in American pop culture. Perhaps the growing distrust of our government was because the people began to seriously question the 9/11 Commission's official story. Or perhaps it was the severe disappointment that came with the Obama administration after eight years of Bush-era tyranny. Something pushed us to the edge. Something had changed.

As I become increasingly aware of the numerous injustices committed against humanity every day, I can't help but feel like it's not smart to bring children into this world right now. From crimes against people to crimes against the planetary ecosystem as a whole, virtually every case shares at least one commonality-- that these crimes are almost always perpetrated or enabled by the very systems of protection men built to prevent these very occurrences, and not to mention, are often linked to Halliburton.

From the war on drugs to the war on terror, or from the war against encryption to the war against the American constitution, it was already enough to make anyones head spin. But than the election year came, and with it a reignited movement against hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as "fracking". I only knew that fracking was the process of drilling for natural gas, and that it is controversial. Despite this being a big issue throughout the election, for some reason I never bothered to look into it.

Perhaps nobody around here was talking about fracking because I live in New England, a region which has no large natural gas deposits, a place nobody thought would be "getting fracked" anytime soon. Whatever the reason, there was a giant media blackout and general ignorance of this issue, particular in this area. Even when the Kinder Morgan pipeline was threatening my backyard, I still didn't have a clue what was really going on. I thought that it was oil that they wanted to transport through our state... I have not asked around, but I can't have been the only ignorant one.

Than a few days ago fracking came up in a conversation with a friend. He told me, "Fracking has severely damage the Earth, possibly irreversibly." Now I knew that the f word was bad, mmkay, but nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to learn from the documentary, Gasland. Nobody could have convinced me that I of all people, one week after watching two documentaries, would literally still be nauseous because of what I had learned. In other words, absolutely nothing could have prepared me for the truth.

Awful Truth ...

So, what is hydraulic fracturing, how does it work, and why is it so despised? Are you sure you want to know? I must warn you that if you begin investigating fracking as I have, it's quite possible that you will never be able to look at the world optimistically again. Last chance to hit the back button...

The United States has several very large deposits of natural gas deep under the Earth, and spread across roughly half of the states. Deep beneath the water line, and trapped underneath shale rock, are trillions of tons of methane, a naturally occurring, highly toxic and volatile gas. Until the last decade, most natural gas produced came from much shallower deposits, and it was generally thought that drilling for shale gas was not economically viable. That all changed when Halliburton pioneered the technology to drill into shale and extract the gas inexpensively. The process is much worse than it sounds...

First a deep hole is drilled down several thousands of feet, sometimes a mile downwards. Than they drill horizontally for another few thousand feet, to reach more pockets of gas. The entire process Halliburton came up with is known as Hydraulic Fracturing because the next step involves pumping millions of gallons of fluid, which is about 99.5% water and 0.5% extremely toxic, often unknown chemicals into the ground. The pressure causes the shale rock to fracture and release the stores of methane, which than vent up through the well to the surface over the next forty of fifty years.

Before going any further, ask yourself how mature adult men could ever honestly have believed that it would be acceptable to inject a trillion gallons of water mixed with neurotoxins such as benzene, methanol and ethylene glycol into US soil over the last decade? Now speculate for a moment about what the negative effects of this part of the process could be. Now consider the fact that enormous quantities of methane gas, a greenhouse gas that traps eighty times more heat than carbon-dioxide, leaks throughout the entire industrial process, all the way from the well to the tank outside your home.

That's not even the half of it. For every million gallons of frack water that is pumped into the ground, only about four or five hundred thousand gallons, or half ever comes back up. This means that there are now potentially about a hundred thousand little pockets of highly poisonous, radioactive waste water deep underground, in the United States alone. And the water that does come back up is rarely disposed of properly. Did I mention it's often radioactive? That's because there is lots of stuff deep under ground that does not normally, and is not ever supposed to ever flow back up to the surface. You are probably wondering how this water is disposed of. This is when it gets really sickening. "Produced" water, as the industry calls it, is some of the nastiest, most unnatural shit in the world. Often black, full of glycol ethers, and smelling of turpentine, it is virtually good for nothing. This waste water is stored in a pit and sprayed into the sunlight to accelerate evaporation before being removed by truck (and taken where?). Often times it's not removed at all, and is actually injected right back into the ground, and incredibly also is often injected directly into deep underground drinking waters supply wells.

Ah yes, the water cycle. Mother Earth has the amazing ability of filtering our dirty waste water for us, naturally, through all the porous dirt, and thanks to microbes that live in that dirt, which eat crap, turn sewage into pure drinking water again. Incredible! It worked great until George Bush decided to sign a law making the fracking industry exempt from every environmental law that exists in the United States. This is not an exaggeration, by any means. Google it. But the earth cannot filter out stuff like ethylene-glycol, or
2-Bromo-2-nitro-1,2-propanediolso... this stuff is not going anywhere for a long, long time.

By now you're probably feeling betrayed, I am. How could that happen? How does a guy like Bush get away with something like that, and how can we let these people rape the planet like this. Also interesting is how just about all of horrible things Americans face today can be traced back to Darth Cheney and Halliburton. Do these guys just sit around and wonder, "What would be the darkest, most unnatural, unpatriotic, wildly deceptive and insidious way we could screw up the planet, while dehumanizing or straight up murdering people for a prophet? Hmm..." To which Cheney replies, "We will inject trillions of gallons of poisons into the Earth, starting out west, and in the heartlands near the nations food supplies, and than we will do it on a global scale."

Remember in Obama's state of the union address when he rather randomly told us that America has enough natural gas to last a century, and told us his administration would do "Everything in our power to safely develop this energy. Thank you very much and God bless America!" I recall it seemed strange at the time, like why did he bring that up? Most forgot about it, or didn't ask why natural gas, although technically cleaner burning fuel than oil, should be the energy source of the future, at a time when solar and other renewable energy sources appeared to have extremely promising futures just around the bend. Now there is a global fracking campaign, made possible by so called democrats, which is putting the rest of the Earth at risk. And what timing.The Tesla electric car had just rolled out, the solar industry was booming, and for a split second the future looked greener. But fracking was only growing, and the practice would only become more reckless. Obama, bought and owned by the energy companies, than attacked the Environmental Protection Agency, halting long overdue investigations, which otherwise could have blown the lid off of the entire fracking frenzy.

There have been thousands of cases of water contamination around the country (and world) since the age of shale began in 2002. Entire towns of people have been forced to move out of their homes because the environment around them has been completely destroyed. Entire ecosystems have been destroyed. People living close to the gas wells have suffered headaches, lost their sense of taste or smell, gone blind, gotten cancer, and in some cases died. We don't really know the extent of the damage, because every time this happens, there is a lawsuit. The families reach a settlement, are forced to sign non-disclosure agreements, and the energy companies keep fracking us all the same. The truth is buried underneath the ground right along with the wastewater. The now radioactive wastewater, which originally came from sources like the Great Lakes, and our drinking water aquifers... the precious supplies of water of which the creator blessed America with so much of.... turned into black sludge... I think I am going to cry, how about you?

in Our Hands ...

While the people of Pennsylvania were discovering that post fracking, they could literally light their well water on fire because it is so contaminated, our "leaders" were trying to figure out how they could seduce the people of New York into allowing them to drill in the New York City Watershed area, which supplies drinking water to about sixteen million people. Most thankfully, the people of New York united, and twice now have been able to get legal moratoriums placed against natural gas drilling in their state. (The EPA did a study of the likely outcomes of such an insane proposition in 2009, which is worth reading.)

Around 2010-2013, a type of "Frack Off" movement developed as the toxic effects of the industries recklessness began to quite literally come to the surface. Although many states have finally began to regulate the industry, Vermont is the only state that has managed to ban the practice altogether. And it is something that must be banned entirely. Scientists tell us that there is no possible way to drill for shale gas safely. I don't know about you, but I am a firm believer in science, above all else. In fact, it was just yesterday when Donald Trump reiterated his position on climate change denial and proposals to expand this nightmarish practice that I decided I will never vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Not to politicize this crisis too much, but fracking has been the final deciding factor in my decision to be #BernieorBust. It's really quite disappointing, because until now I actually kind of liked Trump.

What happens next? With Obama and Clinton pushing for fracking on a global scale, and Hillary being #forgainst pretty much every controversial issue, especially fracking... this election, in my eyes, just became even more important. Seriously, the fate of the entire human face is at stake. Actually, the fate of the entire planetary ecosystem is seriously at risk. Remember, there are no regulations against fracking, even at sea. It really matters who wins this election. If you look at the geography of the shale gas deposites around the Earth, you will realize that perhaps a third of the planet could potentially be destroyed over the next fifty years because of fracking, and you must keep in mind that water flows everywhere, so don't let them tell you that this cannot affect you too. What happens then? You think that the Syrian migrant crisis is bad? What will happen when billions of people around the world are displaced because of this greedy industry's bloodlust? What happens when water starts to become a commodity instead of a basic human right? Because everywhere this has happened, the people are quietly being told to shut up and move.

This is war. It is another war against the people, waged by the ruling class, on their own subjects, and only in an Orwellian world would we accept that. Only in the Orwellian age would we sit by as governments use psychological warfare techniques against their own people to roll the red carpet. This is unquestionably criminal. Who would willingly allow this in their backyard? We only have one planet. Is this why finding water on Mars was such a big deal. Wake up and smell the turpentine.

Trump - STFU About Torture!

It drives me insane! I have really tried to give Trump the benefit of the doubt on certain extreme positions, like Muslims, "The Wall", and even torture... After changing his rhetoric and moving slightly towards sanity, last night he brought a lot of people back to square-one by again stating that he wants to do "Worse, much worse than water-boarding". ???

This election is starting to give me a feeling of deja-vu. You know, when suddenly all of your excitement and passion about the electoral process is extinguished, and you realize that once again you are either choosing evil or voting green-party?

As a somewhat decent human being, I just can't write this off. Of course, Trump would never actually be able to implement those policies, but the fact that it's what he wants to do is disturbing. Trump, if you seriously want to win this election, and if you're seriously not just playing some weird game, than you need to clarify some things immediately:

- Acknowledge that torture is bad, mmkay? Apologize for scaring the crap out of half the country by even considering it.

- Pledge to protect internet freedoms and promise to never consider "shutting down the internet in some of 'those places'" again. If you don't understand that the open & free internet is the only thing that enabled you to get this far, when the media was smearing you left and right, than I don't know what to tell you.

- Change your position on banning all Muslims from entering the country. It's just never going to fly, and Muslims, like the rest of us, are people. Theres' good ones and bad ones.

- Tone down The Wall. Roger Waters must be beside himself right now.

Saying these ridiculous things only benefits Hillary Clinton, surely you must see that? (I am so confused right now LOL ... )


If you can do all of that, and if Hillary gets the nomination, and if Bernie fades away, than there's still a chance I'd vote for you. I do believe I'm not the only one that feels this frustrating moral dilemma...

We need to do away with political parties and start working together as The People. Left or Right, I think everyone agrees that the establishment has got to go. If you're wondering why someone that loves Bernie also can't help liking certain things about Trump, it's because I think that people will never agree completely, and there are valid, powerful messages coming from both sides. Wouldn't it be great if we could work together to put our differences aside and reclaim our nation with unity?

"So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause" 

Twist: Clinton Even Bit-Flips Controversy Away?

Earlier today I made an interesting find. There is a website, wontvotehillary.com where people sign a pledge not to vote for her, under any circumstances. While showing this to a friend, he accidentally typed in wontvotehilary.com, forgetting the second l. The domain resolved to what appeared to be some type of malicious website, and he quickly exited the page. This is an attack called key-squatting that takes advantage of mistyped or misspelled domain names to direct the client's query to an unintended destination server with a similar domain. Typically this is done for nefarious reasons, sometimes for ip-address harvesting, but usually to serve malicious JavaScript code

Further investigating the issue, I discovered another one, but this time it looked like a site possibly being prepped for a bitsquat attack. Initially I anonymously notified the author. Next I enumerated all of the possible bit or key squats and checked to see which are currently registered. Out of 396 potential similar domains, two were active. (Links don't go to the sites themselves, rather to shodan):


Original*   wontvotehillary.com    208.113.222.56 (real site)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Omission    wontvotehilary.com     174.137.132.28 (keyflip or 'typo' attack site)
Subdomain   wontvoteh.illary.com   198.64.249.65 keyflip with bitsqat potential ?)



Turns out that the same thing is happening for superdelagatelist.com , which is a website where constituents can get in touch with their super delegates and try to tell them to vote the way that the people vote in their states:

Original*      superdelegatelist.com    208.113.223.13
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bitsquatting   superdelagatelist.com    141.8.224.93
Subdomain      super.delegatelist.com   178.79.174.192
Subdomain      superdele.gatelist.com   104.130.124.96 (cloudfare, go figure)
Subdomain      superdelega.telist.com   72.52.4.119
Subdomain      superdelegate.list.com   141.8.224.183
Subdomain      superdelegatel.ist.com   109.235.170.97

And what do you know, looks like berniesanders.com could also be targeted...

Original*       berniesanders.com      104.16.42.58
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bitsquatting    ferniesanders.com      192.64.119.18
Bitsquatting    barniesanders.com      141.8.224.169
Bitsquatting    burniesanders.com      168.235.79.101
Bitsquatting    berniesandars.com      50.63.202.39
Homoglyph       berniesamders.com      185.53.177.7
Homoglyph       bermiesanders.com      141.8.224.183
Homoglyph       berniesandlers.com     141.8.224.93
Hyphenation     bernie-sanders.com     104.131.97.43
Insertion       berniewsanders.com     174.137.132.28
Insertion       brerniesanders.com     174.137.132.28
Insertion       bereniesanders.com     103.224.182.226
Insertion       berniersanders.com     158.69.143.80
Insertion       berniesandeers.com     141.8.224.93
Insertion       beerniesanders.com     184.168.221.60
Insertion       berniesansders.com     141.8.224.93
Insertion       berniesanderes.com     174.137.132.28
Insertion       berniessanders.com     141.8.224.93
Omission        berniesandrs.com       141.8.224.93
Omission        berniesandes.com       185.53.177.7
Omission        beniesanders.com       51.254.28.161
Omission        beriesanders.com       174.137.132.28
Omission        bernesanders.com       192.64.147.196
Omission        erniesanders.com       141.8.224.93
Omission        bernisanders.com       199.59.243.120
Omission        berniesander.com       50.63.202.17
Omission        berniesaders.com       185.53.177.7
Omission        brniesanders.com       141.8.224.93
Omission        bernieanders.com       199.59.243.120
Omission        berniesaners.com       74.208.178.101
Omission        berniesnders.com       141.8.224.93
Repetition      bberniesanders.com     141.8.224.93
Repetition      bernniesanders.com     141.8.224.169
Replacement     berniessnders.com      141.8.224.93
Replacement     beeniesanders.com      141.8.224.93
Replacement     berniesandrrs.com      141.8.224.93
Replacement     berniesabders.com      141.8.224.93
Replacement     betniesanders.com      141.8.224.93
Replacement     bernirsanders.com      185.53.177.7
Replacement     berniesandera.com      141.8.224.169
Replacement     berbiesanders.com      141.8.224.93
Replacement     verniesanders.com      184.168.221.39
Replacement     bernuesanders.com      141.8.224.93
Replacement     berniesandwrs.com      54.72.9.51
Replacement     bernoesanders.com      141.8.224.93
Replacement     berniwsanders.com      185.53.177.8
Replacement     berniedanders.com      141.8.224.169
Replacement     nerniesanders.com      54.72.9.51
Replacement     bernissanders.com      141.8.224.169
Subdomain       b.erniesanders.com     141.8.224.93
Subdomain       be.rniesanders.com     141.8.224.169
Subdomain       berni.esanders.com     208.73.210.217
Subdomain       berniesa.nders.com     98.124.245.24
Subdomain       berniesan.ders.com     98.124.199.24
Transposition   benriesanders.com      174.137.132.28
Transposition   berinesanders.com      174.137.132.28
Transposition   berneisanders.com      185.53.177.7
Transposition   berniesnaders.com      141.8.224.93
Transposition   berniesandres.com      185.53.179.9
Various         wwwberniesanders.com   185.53.178.6


And just for static record, here are dig queries of the domains as of last night:

$ dig wontvoteh.illary.com
; <<>> DiG  <<>> wontvoteh.illary.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 22876
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 3
;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;wontvoteh.illary.com.        IN    A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
wontvoteh.illary.com.    86400    IN    A    198.64.249.65
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
illary.com.        172799    IN    NS    ns14.databasemart.net.
illary.com.        172799    IN    NS    ns13.databasemart.net.
illary.com.        172799    IN    NS    ns5.databasemart.net.
illary.com.        172799    IN    NS    ns6.databasemart.net.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns13.databasemart.net.    172799    IN    A    45.35.0.97
ns14.databasemart.net.    172799    IN    A    67.211.45.3
;; Query time: 866 msec
;; SERVER: 10.69.69.69#53(10.69.69.69)
;; WHEN: Wed Apr 27 06:49:38 EDT 2016
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 187

$ dig wontvotehilary.com
; <<>> DiG  <<>> wontvotehilary.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 13424
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 3
;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;wontvotehilary.com.        IN    A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
wontvotehilary.com.    1800    IN    A    174.137.132.28
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
wontvotehilary.com.    172800    IN    NS    is2.domainingdepot.com.
wontvotehilary.com.    172800    IN    NS    is1.domainingdepot.com.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
is1.domainingdepot.com.    167262    IN    A    174.137.132.44
is2.domainingdepot.com.    167262    IN    A    174.137.132.44
;; Query time: 327 msec
;; SERVER: 10.69.69.69#53(10.69.69.69)
;; WHEN: Wed Apr 27 06:50:28 EDT 2016
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 146

This attack is possible due to incontrollable circumstances such as cosmic rays, excessive heat, poor quality RAM or capacitors, and other unpredictable environmental phenomenons affecting computer memory. Defcon had a presentation on DNS bitflipping (which you should watch if you want to understand the attack), which is what it would appear that her campaign may be doing. Basically, an anomaly occurs in memory, and characters that are digitally similar on the ASCII chart can become different characters, provided the computer, for whatever reason, reads the data incorrectly. Related, from the wiki page, this is how a bit flip attack works:

A bit-flipping attack is an attack on a cryptographic cipher in which the attacker can change the ciphertext in such a way as to result in a predictable change of the plaintext, although the attacker is not able to learn the plaintext itself. Note that this type of attack is not—directly—against the cipher itself (as cryptanalysis of it would be), but against a particular message or series of messages. In the extreme, this could become a Denial of service attack against all messages on a particular channel using that cipher.^[1]
The attack is especially dangerous when the attacker knows the format of the message. In such a situation, the attacker can turn it into a similar message but one in which some important information is altered. For example, a change in the destination address might alter the message route in a way that will force re-encryption with a weaker cipher, thus possibly making it easier for an attacker to decipher the message.

When applied to digital signatures, the attacker might be able to change a promissory note stating "I owe you $10.00" into one stating "I owe you $10000".

Or from  "wontvotehillary.com" to "wontvoteh.illary.com"..? In this case it's plain text DNS that's affected rather than cryptographic errors. This type of error can occur on either the client machine, or somwhere along the route, probably at the dns server. For more information, see this.  I am not sure if character additions happen in bit errors, but I wouldn't doubt that's possible. Even if not, than it certainly has key squat potential, but with a lower probably of a hit than from the missing "l" domain.

For obvious reasons, I did not want to look much more into it beyond that. The point is, first it was million dollar trolls going after Bernie supporters. Now this suggests there is more under the surface, and perhaps that the Secretary is less "for us" than she claims. If she indeed has a cyber mercenary force working with her campaign, than that is disturbing. Imagine what she would do as president, armed with the NSA? Ask yourself, who else stands to gain from trying to pull off this kind of sophisticated attack? To be fair, it is possible, although unlikely, that these domains were registered by someone else, whom has no affiliation with her campaign, perhaps a security researcher.

Couple this with the Sanders facebook groups vanishing due to hilltrolls plastering porn all of them or something, and the fact that she (and Trump, disappointingly) also mocked the concept of free speech on the internet, and you've got a recipe for disaster.  I guess that we know #WhichHillary won this week. Now you should have little doubt that she will censor and manipulate our internet. Since you're at this blog, I assume that internet freedom is somewhat important to you. Bernie is for the internet. Alas, at least Trump said "We need to talk to Bill Gates and some of these people that reallt know what's happening ..." before claiming we may have to "shut down the internet in some of the places." That shows Trump is quite oldschool and rather ill-informed on technology. The only silver lining is that he is admitting that he needs to talk to someone that knows something, even if he's confused about whom that may be. Besides, I would like to think that Gates would tell Trump that he's wrong. Hillary appears to have already started attacking the internet. She can't earn our respect, she can't magically erase public record, and she can't get away with flip-flopping policies as easily these days. Instead of trying to earn our votes, she hired an army of trolls to make it look like she has inspired the people. I'm sorry Madam Secretary, but you simply cannot buy passion. These people are incredibly easy to spot on the net. They're aura of inauthenticity is blatantly obvious, even after radiating through thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable.

So that's just one more reason why you should probably sign the pledge on the real site, http://wontvotehillary.com . I was going to write a boring blog about how Hillary Clinton made me dislike Hillary Clinton, but than she pretty much made the case for me.

Trump Rants

Revolution can be a scary thing, for everyone involved. Some chilling things came with the Trump campaign for sure, but there was an appeal that I could not dismiss. So I finally stopped taking the media's word for it and decided to go find out for myself whether or not this guy is for real. And after watching the uncensored, uncut speeches of his that were not taken completely out of context, I realized that he is totally right. The final diagnosis is this-- Trump is a true nationalist. "An imperfect messenger carrying a very real message", to quote the New York post. Someone with the money, power, resolve, and fame that it takes to make a difference. The best part?  A guy that has never been a politician either! The only person that will take Hillary on, and that has the guts to expose her for what she really is. Bernie, why will you not talk about the thousand other scandals and corrupt things that could end her campaign? Google "Hillary Scandals". Just do it. I just don't understand how someone like that got where she is today. It's a disgrace.

Edit: I would likely still would vote for Bernie if he gets the nomination over Trump. I like both. They're both revolutionary candidates, in my opinion.

Trump appears to be the real deal. Because he is a state's man. Because he never even wanted to be a politician. Because if you watch every interview he's appeared on over the last 25 years, his message has been consistent-- That the USA is being exploited and laughed at all around the world. That it is truly unbelievable what is happening. That none of our "leaders" are doing anything about it. That our country is in serious trouble. Most convicting, that our leaders are all in on it. Who else in history has had the guts to really take on the corrupt United States establishment to this degree? Yes, Bernie is taking on Wall Street, and I would still vote for him. I still #FeelTheBern. But Trump's message has simply transfixed me over the last few days.

The media loves to pick on him. They love to take the things he says out of context, or only show the first half of his sentences, before he gets to make his point. We have ridiculously effective filter bubbles on our social media. You see what Google's servers think that you want to see. The algorithm decides what news you will get. Once you start to look past the filter bubbles, and make that algorithm think you are interested in other viewpoints, suddenly you will begin to see an entirely different world! That is what's happened to me lately.

I wondered why CNN was giving Trump so much press, considering they are a liberal media company. Well, it's because they were taking great pains to make Trump look bad. To stop his momentum at any cost and ensure the presidency to Crooked Hillary, who owns them. Even Trump himself has acknowledged that Bernie Sanders, whom I still love by the way, has been stonewalled. "Sanders wins, Sanders wins, the last six primaries, Sanders wins, yet what does the media say? Hillary is winning? It's all a lie." That's what he said.

How about drug policy? If you believe that the war on drugs is stupid, than take a closer look at Trump. His proposal is to legalize all drugs, tax them, and use the profits to educated the public about the risks of using drugs. That is the most sensible drug policy I have ever heard.

So let's talk about the controversial things he's said, like immigration. When Trump called for a total cessation on Muslim immigration, you probably did not here the other half of the sentence, which was "until we figure out just what the hell is going on". Fair enough, because there is something really fishy going on with this "war on terrorism". Let me be clear-- I do not think this is a good idea. In my eyes, people are people are people, and Americans must not discriminate. However, there is so much controversy surrounding the San Bernardino shootings, the September 11th attacks, and even recent attacks like Paris have left many questions unanswered. Sure, you can't get away with discriminating against an entire religion of people in this country. But I will give him the benefit of the doubt here and say this-- There is something totally insane going on here, and we need to take care of ourselves first. It's only logical. Every other country seems to do it but us. So I understand his frustration. I am hoping he changes his mind on this one.

Okay, so than there is that giant wall thing... Yes, it's ridiculous. I can't advocate for that, because walls not only keep people out, they also keep people in. I don't want to live in East Berlin. But the thing is that we have a very slow, very gridlocked government, and it would take a hell of a lot of negotiations to make that happen. Besides, he is going to have to tone this wall thing down a bit at some point, because America is very diverse, and Mexico is never going to pay for it. But you can't deny that there is a serious problem with immigration. I don't know if there is any solution to it, and maybe it's better left as it is. But there's something there. The allegations and concerns are valid. Trump's wife legally immigrated to this country. Trump has said that he would love to have Oprah Winfrey as his running mate! So, do you still think he's a racist?

Another thing that has people terrified of a Trump presidency is a fear of fascism, because he is, after all, another billionaire. Would Trump blur the lines between business and state? Would he use his power to advantage his own business? Maybe, but that's not why he's doing this. Update: It's 2019 and it's clear that Trump was certainly in this for the money... primary motivation? Not sure. But certainly a major motivation for running. This election is costing him a fortune, and he reiterated over the years that he really enjoyed what he was already doing, and would much prefer to stay out of politics. Him and Bernie are the first candidates I can remember to not take donations from controlling interest groups (with perhaps the notable exception of Ron Paul). Why else would he do this if he was just in it for the money? He's had many wealthy entities approach him and try to donate to his campaign, and he's turned them down. He is self funding his campaign so that his interests do not conflict with ours. It's legit.

It comes down to this. When I look at Hillary, I see a total phony. She has never accomplished anything of note in all her years as a senator, or as first lady. She points to her scandal-ridden time in the white house as her main qualification for her candidacy.  If I was not such a Bernie fan, I'd love to see that debate. He would rip her apart! Really, what is she going to say when Trump starts hammering her about any of the three-dozen or so scandals she has been caught in over the years (Whitewater, PardonGate, EmailGate, Benghazi, not to mention she's under two current federal indictments that I know of)? I do not see a leader, I see a career criminal, and a compulsive liar that would be going into office already owing favors to Big Corporate and Big Military [industrial complex entities]. The best debate would be Hillary in '08 vs Hillary in '12 vs Hillary in '16... She's full of shit, folks! Admit it!

When I look through the media smokescreen, and really analyze Donald Trump's motives for running, I see a man that is passionate about saving his country from a staggering group of incompetent, greedy, corrupt, bought-paid-and-owned group of elites. I see a genuine person. A real person. Ever since 2012, I have been aching to see a real person run for president. Someone who is not a neocon. Finally, we have someone fighting for us. So he's not perfect. So what? Who is? Not you, not I, not even Bernie (although I admire him very much), but certainty not Hillary Clinton. It's never going to happen, Hillary. Not on our watch.

Thus, I now support Donald Trump. My heart i still with Bernie, but if he does not get the nomination, I will vote for Trump. Fortunately, I am an independent registered voter, so I have the "privilege" of voting for whoever I like in November (but not in the primaries. Yes, it is true-- The system is rigged). A vote for Trump (and to a degree, Bernie) is a vote against the establishment that keeps us scratching our heads in disbelief while dragging an ever-heavier ball and chain.

It's true. We don't win anymore. I can't believe I am saying this, but you know what? It really is time to make America great again.