Conservative chasm: Some pundits vow to fight Trump till the bitter end

This may blow up in their face. What's done is done.  I'm not crazy about him myself but I say give the guy a chance. We already know everything we need to know about the Clintons… none of it good. They have shown time and time again lying to them is as natural as breathing. The Clinton Foundation is nothing more than a slush fund. Who would be tough on illegal immigration and invading Muslim refugees ...Clinton? When it comes to protecting illegals  (aka amnesty) wasn't it Killary who said, "Obama didn't go far enough". She is for all intents and purposes Barry's 3rd term. Ponder the Supreme Court after she makes her appointments which will extend y-e-a-r-s after she leaves office! Oh...and tell me again what candidate said, "I never sent or received classified information on my private email server" and is currently under criminal investigation by the FBI?

Think of all the scandals in the Obama and Clinton administrations...and somehow Trump is going to turn out worse than them!?!

Give me a fucking break.

Not supporting Trump in effect is a vote for Killary. 

 So her term could be four years maybe eight. 

Not sure yet if it's in the WH or the slammer.

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By Howard Kurtz

From the insular political system to the naysaying media culture, Donald Trump essentially clinching the Republican nomination is a stunning development, especially the swiftness with which his two remaining rivals gave up.

But for the anti-Trump folks, it is sheer torture.

In the wake of an Indiana victory that drove Ted Cruz and John Kasich from the race, they are left with a series of unpalatable choices that will have an impact on fall campaign—and on the GOP’s future.

Some are already declaring themselves to be in the #NeverNeverEverTrump camp. They will oppose the billionaire up to and until he raises his hand over the Bible next January.

In doing so, of course, they will tilt the election toward Hillary Clinton. But the diehards are willing to accept another four years out of power as a reasonable price to pay for blocking Trump.

Trump, for his part, says he doesn’t want or need the support of everyone in the party. The truth is—and this is hard for his detractors to accept—he is remaking the party in his own image. Trump is not a doctrinaire conservative, and for the moment, he is the face of the GOP.

George Will, the syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor, casts the choice as a moral test:

“Donald Trump’s damage to the Republican Party, although already extensive, has barely begun. Republican quislings will multiply, slinking into support of the most anti-conservative presidential aspirant in their party’s history. These collaborationists will render themselves ineligible to participate in the party’s reconstruction.”

Trump fired back on “Morning Joe”: “Well, George is a major loser. You know, he’s a dour guy. Nobody watches him. Very few people listen to him. It’s over for him, and I never want his support.”

Steve Hayes, the Weekly Standard writer and Fox News contributor, quickly posted a piece titled “No Trump”:

“Trump's claim to be a unifier is not just specious, it's absurd. This casual dishonesty is a feature of his campaign. And it's one of many reasons so many Republicans and conservatives oppose Trump and will never support his candidacy. I'm one of them.”

Another Fox contributor, Townhall’s Guy Benson, tweeted: “Much to my deep chagrin (& astonishment ~8 months ago), for the 1st time in my life, I will not support the GOP nominee for president.”

Influential blogger Erick Erickson tweeted: “Reporters writing about the ‘Stop Trump’ effort get it wrong. It's ‘Never Trump’ as in come hell or high water we will never vote for Trump.”

The Daily Caller’s Jamie Weinstein: “There is just no question: I’d take a Tums and cast my ballot for Hillary — and I suspect so would many other life-long conservatives, whether they are willing to admit it now or not.”

There is a camp within this camp, led by the Standard’s Bill Kristol, that is actively encouraging a conservative third-party run. This would undoubtedly hand Hillary the keys to the White House. There is a fantasy that somehow it would throw the election into the House. But the Wall Street Journal editorial page, hardly a fan of Trump, calls this a truly bad idea.

An even smaller subset is finding Clinton, who is more hawkish than Trump, a better alternative. These include Mark Salter, once John McCain’s top strategist.

But there are other conservatives who are softening on Trump, saying that perhaps he wouldn’t be that bad. Some are acting out of party loyalty. Some want to clamber onto the winner's bandwagon (even after saying incredibly harsh things about him, according to Trump). Some think Clinton would be far worse. And some may be looking for jobs or contracts. I suspect this group will grow in size.

Here’s the bottom line for those on the right who still oppose Trump: How do they explain that he won one state after another, in some cases every county, before sweeping to seven straight victories? How do they explain that he beat 16 other senators and governors and assorted luminaries? How do they explain that his vision of conservatism proved more popular than theirs with Republican voters?

Maybe Trump’s critics are right that he will lead the party to a major defeat. The question now is how many will work toward that outcome.

Conservative chasm: Some pundits vow to fight Trump till the bitter end

Romanian hacker Guccifer: I breached Clinton server, 'it was easy'

Well, if it was easy for him who else hacked into her email server?

EXCLUSIVE: The infamous Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer,” speaking exclusively with Fox News, claimed he easily – and repeatedly – breached former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal email server in early 2013. 

"For me, it was easy ... easy for me, for everybody," Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker "Guccifer," told Fox News from a Virginia jail where he is being held.

Guccifer’s potential role in the Clinton email investigation was first reported by Fox News last month. The hacker subsequently claimed he was able to access the server – and provided extensive details about how he did it and what he found – over the course of a half-hour jailhouse interview and a series of recorded phone calls with Fox News.

Fox News could not independently confirm Lazar’s claims.

In response to Lazar’s claims, the Clinton campaign issued a statement Wednesday night saying, "There is absolutely no basis to believe the claims made by this criminal from his prison cell. In addition to the fact he offers no proof to support his claims, his descriptions of Secretary Clinton's server are inaccurate. It is unfathomable that he would have gained access to her emails and not leaked them the way he did to his other victims.”

The former secretary of state’s server held nearly 2,200 emails containing information now deemed classified, and another 22 at the “Top Secret” level.

The 44-year-old Lazar said he first compromised Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal's AOL account, in March 2013, and used that as a stepping stone to the Clinton server. He said he accessed Clinton’s server “like twice,” though he described the contents as “not interest[ing]” to him at the time. 

“I was not paying attention. For me, it was not like the Hillary Clinton server, it was like an email server she and others were using with political voting stuff," Guccifer said.

The hacker spoke freely with Fox News from the detention center in Alexandria, Va., where he’s been held since his extradition to the U.S. on federal charges relating to other alleged cyber-crimes. Wearing a green jumpsuit, Lazar was relaxed and polite in the monitored secure visitor center, separated by thick security glass. 

In describing the process, Lazar said he did extensive research on the web and then guessed Blumenthal’s security question. Once inside Blumenthal's account, Lazar said he saw dozens of messages from the Clinton email address.

Asked if he was curious about the address, Lazar merely smiled. Asked if he used the same security question approach to access the Clinton emails, he said no – then described how he allegedly got inside.

“For example, when Sidney Blumenthal got an email, I checked the email pattern from Hillary Clinton, from Colin Powell from anyone else to find out the originating IP. … When they send a letter, the email header is the originating IP usually,” Lazar explained. 

He said, “then I scanned with an IP scanner."

Lazar emphasized that he used readily available web programs to see if the server was “alive” and which ports were open. Lazar identified programs like netscan, Netmap, Wireshark and Angry IP, though it was not possible to confirm independently which, if any, he used.

In the process of mining data from the Blumenthal account, Lazar said he came across evidence that others were on the Clinton server.

"As far as I remember, yes, there were … up to 10, like, IPs from other parts of the world,” he said. 

With no formal computer training, he did most of his hacking from a small Romanian village.

Lazar said he chose to use "proxy servers in Russia," describing them as the best, providing anonymity. 

Cyber experts who spoke with Fox News said the process Lazar described is plausible. The federal indictment Lazar faces in the U.S. for cyber-crimes specifically alleges he used "a proxy server located in Russia" for the Blumenthal compromise.

Each Internet Protocol (IP) address has a unique numeric code, like a phone number or home address. The Democratic presidential front-runner’s home-brew private server was reportedly installed in her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., and used for all U.S. government business during her term as secretary of state. 

Former State Department IT staffer Bryan Pagliano, who installed and maintained the server, has been granted immunity by the Department of Justice and is cooperating with the FBI in its ongoing criminal investigation into Clinton’s use of the private server. An intelligence source told Fox News last month that Lazar also could help the FBI make the case that Clinton’s email server may have been compromised by a third party.

Asked what he would say to those skeptical of his claims, Lazar cited “the evidence you can find in the Guccifer archives as far as I can remember." 

Writing under his alias Guccifer, Lazar released to media outlets in March 2013 multiple exchanges between Blumenthal and Clinton. They were first reported by the Smoking Gun. 

It was through the Blumenthal compromise that the Clintonemail.com accounts were first publicly revealed.

As recently as this week, Clinton said neither she nor her aides had been contacted by the FBI about the criminal investigation. Asked whether the server had been compromised by foreign hackers, she told MSNBC on Tuesday, “No, not at all.”

Recently extradited, Lazar faces trial Sept. 12 in the Eastern District of Virginia. He has pleaded not guilty to a nine-count federal indictment for his alleged hacking crimes in the U.S. Victims are not named in the indictment but reportedly include Colin Powell, a member of the Bush family and others including Blumenthal. 

Lazar spoke extensively about Blumenthal’s account, noting his emails were “interesting” and had information about “the Middle East and what they were doing there.”

After first writing to the accused hacker on April 19, Fox News accepted two collect calls from him, over a seven-day period, before meeting with him in person at the jail. During these early phone calls, Lazar was more guarded.

After the detention center meeting, Fox News conducted additional interviews by phone and, with Lazar's permission, recorded them for broadcast. 

While Lazar's claims cannot be independently verified, three computer security specialists, including two former senior intelligence officials, said the process described is plausible and the Clinton server, now in FBI custody, may have an electronic record that would confirm or disprove Guccifer’s claims.

"This sounds like the classic attack of the late 1990s. A smart individual who knows the tools and the technology and is looking for glaring weaknesses in Internet-connected devices," Bob Gourley, a former chief technology officer (CTO) for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said. 

Gourley, who has worked in cybersecurity for more than two decades, said the programs cited to access the server can be dual purpose. "These programs are used by security professionals to make sure systems are configured appropriately. Hackers will look and see what the gaps are, and focus their energies on penetrating a system," he said.

Cybersecurity expert Morgan Wright observed, "The Blumenthal account gave [Lazar] a road map to get to the Clinton server. ... You get a foothold in one system. You get intelligence from that system, and then you start to move."

In March, the New York Times reported the Clinton server security logs showed no evidence of a breach. On whether the Clinton security logs would show a compromise, Wright made the comparison to a bank heist: "Let’s say only one camera was on in the bank. If you don‘t have them all on, or the right one in the right locations, you won’t see what you are looking for.”

Gourley said the logs may not tell the whole story and the hard drives, three years after the fact, may not have a lot of related data left. He also warned: "Unfortunately, in this community, a lot people make up stories and it's hard to tell what's really true until you get into the forensics information and get hard facts.” 

For Lazar, a plea agreement where he cooperates in exchange for a reduced sentence would be advantageous. He told Fox News he has nothing to hide and wants to cooperate with the U.S. government, adding that he has hidden two gigabytes of data that is “too hot” and “it is a matter of national security.” 

In early April, at the time of Lazar’s extradition from a Romanian prison where he already was serving a seven-year sentence for cyber-crimes, a former senior FBI official said the timing was striking.

“Because of the proximity to Sidney Blumenthal and the activity involving Hillary’s emails, [the timing] seems to be something beyond curious,” said Ron Hosko, former assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division from 2012-2014.

The FBI offered no statement to Fox News.

Romanian hacker Guccifer: I breached Clinton server, 'it was easy'

Trump last man standing?

Less we forget, Jim Gilmore, the ever resourceful, has not thrown in the towel!

Trump last man standing?

Cruz, Kasich, say goodby

Which, like it or not, leaves this guy as the Republican nominee. 

And forget about a contested convention in Cleveland!

No Republican has ever won the WH without carrying OH. A smart move for Trump... put John Kasich on the ticket. He's more than capable and would be a tremendous asset for Trump and knows the ins and outs of Washington not to mention carry OH.

I'm trying to look at the bright side. It's inconceivable to me Trump can turn out worse than the asshole currently occupying the WH.

The MSM propaganda machine is at full throttle trying to convince us there is no way Trump can beat Killary. This is the same MSM who told us Trump will never be the Republican nominee.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-08-11/-trump-will-never-be-the-republican-nominee-charlie-cook-says

A lot of breaking news in the last 24 hours. What could top that?

Sanders smiling in the not to distant future.

Cruz, Kasich, say goodby

Donald Trump needs a running mate: Here are four names for him to consider

Really...Kobe Bryant the rapist?

Don't think any of the following are being considered although I really like John Bolton. 

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A FOX news Opinion piece:

FILE -- April 27, 2016: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gives a thumbs up after giving a foreign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) 

Will Donald Trump ever be "presidential" in the conventional manner we have come to expect?

It's a path he may never follow. But after his victory in Indiana on Tuesday night, and Ted Cruz's decision to suspend his campaign, there is now rampant speculation as to what "presidential" will mean should Trump's executive desk move to the Oval Office.

As with any presidential nominee, the selection of their vice presidential running mate is important because it offers us a window into their thinking. 

Trump recently gave some insight into his thoughts on the matter when he told Neil Cavuto on the Fox Business Network: "I would want to choose a politician. I'm a businessman. I don't think we need two guys like me."

His comments suggest that he wants a running mate with experience and expertise in areas where he is seen as lacking. At the same time, political pundits and election followers predicting that Trump will do something ordinary and expected simply have not been paying attention to how the man operates. 

Here are four individuals who may very well get the call from the presumptive GOP nominee:

U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. To a large extent, the Trump candidacy gained its initial traction and momentum by his promise to get tough on illegal immigration. So forget where you stand on immigration. The point here is that for a Trump presidency to succeed, he must deliver on this issue to the satisfaction of his supporters—a group that views this issue as a matter of national security. 

It is not coincidence that Trump named Senator Sessions the head of his national security advisory group. In the Senate, he has carved out the role of the leading conservative voice advocating a tough stance on immigration and the border with Mexico.

He is tough without being confrontational. Just the sort of person needed to actually get legislation passed.

As a former judge, he understands how to navigate the complicated legislative waters. Further, rewarding loyalty is something that history shows is a solid strategy. Senator Sessions endorsed Donald Trump early. Choosing him as a running mate sends a message for everyone to see that there are consequences, positive and negative, for giving or withholding support -- an action that is part and parcel of how Trump operates.

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton. Bolton briefly considered seeking the 2016 presidential nomination himself. He is highly regarded among conservatives for being an outspoken advocate for a strong America and a foreign policy that will not blink in the face of confrontation by our adversaries. These are qualities Trump recognized when he discussed Bolton last year on "Meet the Press.": "I think he's, you know a tough cookie, knows what he is talking about. I think he's terrific."

After eight years of feckless leadership from President Obama, our friends no longer trust us and our foes do not fear us.

Assuming former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be the nominee for the Democrats, having Ambassador Bolton on the ticket goes a long way toward eliminating the argument that a Trump presidency would be without an adult at the table when it comes to foreign policy.

Who is better prepared and equipped to make the case that Hillary Clinton's tenure at the State Department was nothing but an exercise in failure?

Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio. It will be no easy task for the next president, Republican or Democrat, to actually pass a legislative agenda. As we have seen, unity among the strongest conservatives in the House of Representatives has impacted the results, or lack of results, coming out of Washington.

At least 36 House Members belong to the Freedom Caucus and Congressman Jordan is their chairman. He has a following that must be dealt with.

A former wrestler, Jordan is dogged and undaunted in his passion to put his and his caucus colleagues' conservative principles into actual policy. Having Jordan as vice president would help both Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan advance a Trump agenda in the U.S House of Representatives.

In addition, he hails from what has become the number one target state for both parties: Ohio. No Republican has ever been elected to the presidency without winning Ohio, while no Democrat has been elected without carrying the Buckeye State since 1960.

While having Jordan on the ticket hardly guarantees that the GOP would carry the Buckeye State, it certainly gives Republicans a head start.

Trump's selection of Congressman Jordan would be consistent with his promise of a new way of doing things. 

Kobe Bryant. Yes, he's a wild card but he is looking for a new career… and we all know Donald Trump follows his own playbook.

Donald Trump needs a running mate: Here are four names for him to consider