GOP Led Gov't Shutdown Part Of Obama's 2012 Win Strategy

Is The GOP Forcing A Gov't Shutdown To Occur? YES!

Why?

Because It Will Slow America's Economic Growth While On Pres. Obama Watch!

Little Do GOP Leaders Realize They Are Playing Right Into Pres. Obama's Hands.

Ha Ha Ha!

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Disagreements Persist on Plan to Avert Government Shutdown


Members of Congress remained at loggerheads Friday over a plan to avert a government shutdown, with House Republicans digging in behind a bill that would make it the law of the land to cut $61 billion from current spending, despite the fact that the Senate has already rejected that idea.

Democrats in the Senate, which ended its workweek Thursday, remained resistant to both the deeper cuts demanded by House members as well as the scores of amendments seeking to make policy changes by reining in environmental regulations, financing for family planning groups and plans to carry out the health care overhaul.

Though both parties oppose passing any more short-term spending plans, the threat of a government shutdown continued to loom, something President Obama, speaking at a shipping facility in Landover, Md., implored lawmakers to avoid.

“It would be the height of irresponsibility to halt our economic momentum because of the same old Washington politics,” he said. “The American people don’t want us to go to our respective corners and have the same battles we’ve been having for decades.”

Speaker John A. Boehner reiterated that Republicans also wanted to avoid a politically and financially costly shutdown. “If you shut the government down, it’ll end up costing more than you’ll save because you interrupt contracts,” he said at a news conference Friday. “There are a lot of problems with the idea of shutting the government down. It is not the goal.”

Staff members of the Appropriations Committees in both the House and the Senate were expected to work through the weekend to figure out how to spread roughly $33 billion in cuts across government agencies. Lawmakers on both sides of the Rotunda and from both parties have informally agreed on that number as a target for reducing spending for the rest of this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

Yet in the House it remains unclear whether the more conservative members, especially the 87 Republican freshmen, would accept that figure. In the Senate, which Democrats control, it is uncertain if lawmakers would agree to deeper spending cuts, as well as rollbacks of some environmental regulations and other amendments.

“We announced the other night in our meeting with the vice president that the White House nor Senate leaders are going to accept any E.P.A. riders,” Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, said in a conference call with reporters Friday.

With the weekend on the horizon, the House spent Friday afternoon serving up partisan warfare, with a side order of mockery. Republicans narrowly passed a bill that called for their 2011 spending bill — one that already failed in the Senate — to become law should the Senate fail to approve its own spending measure by April 6. The vote was 221 to 202, with no Democrats in support and 15 Republicans against it.

At one point, Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, read aloud on the House floor from “House Mouse, Senate Mouse,” a children’s book sold in the Congressional gift shops. The story explains how a bill becomes a law — a process that requires both Senate and House “mice” to back a measure, “ ‘And if enough do, if enough do, this president signs it if he likes to,’ ” read Mr. Weiner, before accurately noting that the “Senate mice” had yet to pass the spending bill approved by the House.

Because the measure to bypass the Senate would itself require Senate approval, a highly unlikely outcome, Friday’s vote was largely meaningless. But it did allow Republicans to make the point that the Senate has yet to pass its own spending bill.


Sources: MSNBC, NY Times

Ronald Reagan's Speech: "Government Is The Problem" (Video)

Sources: MSNBC, Youtube

Hackers Take Down U.S. & South Korean Government Web Sites...Both N. Korea, China Suspected

MSNBC----


WASHINGTON - A widespread and unusually resilient computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of several government agencies, including some that are responsible for fighting Cyber crime.

Suspected cyber assaults also paralyzed Web sites of major South Korean government agencies, banks and Internet sites in a barrage that appeared linked to the attacks in the U.S., South Korean officials said Wednesday.

The Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points over the holiday weekend and into this week, according to officials inside and outside the government. Some of the sites were still experiencing problems Tuesday evening.

U.S. officials refused to publicly discuss details of the cyber attack. But Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the agency's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a notice to federal departments and other partner organizations about the problems and "advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks."

The U.S., she said, sees attacks on its networks every day, and measures have been put in place to minimize the impact on federal Web sites.

It was not clear whether other federal government sites also were attacked.

A lot of computers involved:

Others familiar with the U.S. outage, which is called a denial of service attack, said that the fact that the government Web sites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and sophisticated attack. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.

"It certainly seems to be a well-organized attack," an anonymous government official told The Washington Post. "There are a lot of computers involved. What we don't know is who is orchestrating it."

In South Korea, the sites of 11 organizations including the presidential Blue House, the Defense Ministry, the National Assembly, Shinhan Bank, Korea Exchange Bank and top Internet portal Naver went down or had access problems since late Tuesday, said Ahn Jeong-eun, a spokeswoman at Korea Information Security Agency.

They appeared to be linked to the knockout in the United States, though investigators are still unsure who was behind the attacks, Ahn said.

An initial investigation found that many personal computers were infected with a virus ordering them to visit major official Web sites in South Korea and the U.S. at the same time, Korea Information Security Agency official Shin Hwa-su said.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said that military intelligence officers were looking at the possibility that the attack may have been committed by North Korean hackers and pro-North Korea forces in South Korea.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said it could not immediately confirm the report.

South Korean media reported in May that North Korea was running a cyber warfare unit that tries to hack into U.S. and South Korean military networks to gather confidential information and disrupt service.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies, said he doubts whether the impoverished North has the capability to knock down the Web sites.

But Hong Hyun-ik, an analyst at the Sejong Institute think tank, said the attack could have been done by either North Korea or China, saying he "heard North Korea has been working hard to hack into" South Korean networks.

Two government officials acknowledged that the Treasury and Secret Service sites were brought down, and said the agencies were working with their Internet service provider to resolve the problem.

Ben Rushlo, director of Internet technologies at Keynote Systems, called it a "massive outage" and said problems with the Transportation Department site began Saturday and continued until Monday, while the FTC site was down Sunday and Monday.

Keynote Systems is a mobile and Web site monitoring company based in San Mateo, Calif. The company publishes data detailing outages on Web sites, including 40 government sites it watches.

According to Rushlo, the Transportation Web site was "100 percent down" for two days, so that no Internet users could get through to it. The FTC site, meanwhile, started to come back online late Sunday, but even on Tuesday Internet users still were unable to get to the site 70 percent of the time.

"This is very strange. You don't see this," he said. "Having something 100 percent down for a 24-hour-plus period is a pretty significant event."

He added that, "The fact that it lasted for so long and that it was so significant in its ability to bring the site down says something about the site's ability to fend off (an attack) or about the severity of the attack."

Denial of service attacks against Web sites are not uncommon, and are usually caused when sites are deluged with Internet traffic so as to effectively take them off-line. Mounting such an attack can be relatively easy using widely available hacking programs, and they can be made far more serious if hackers infect and use thousands of computers tied together into "botnets."

For instance, last summer, in the weeks leading up to the war between Russia and Georgia, Georgian government and corporate Web sites began to see "denial of service" attacks. The Kremlin denied involvement, but a group of independent Western computer experts traced domain names and Web site registration data to conclude that the Russian security and military intelligence agencies were involved.

According to The Washington Post, Joe Stewart, the director of malware research at Atlanta based SecureWorks, said the attack software contained few clues about its origins, although a line of text deep in within the malware carried the cryptic message "get/china/dns."

Documenting cyber attacks against government sites is difficult, and depends heavily on how agencies characterize an incident and how successful or damaging it is.

Government officials routinely say their computers are probed millions of times a day, with many of those being scans that don't trigger any problems. In a June report, the congressional Government Accountability Office said federal agencies reported more than 16,000 threats or incidents last year, roughly three times the amount in 2007. Most of those involved unauthorized access to the system, violations of computer use policies or investigations into potentially harmful incidents.

The Homeland Security Department, meanwhile, says there were 5,499 known breaches of U.S. government computers in 2008, up from 3,928 the previous year, and just 2,172 in 2006.


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Sources: MSNBC, Washington Post, Keynote Systems, Tech Shout, Google Maps

Iran Government Cracks Down On Demonstrators, Blames U.S. For Chaos, Police Arrest Ex-Iranian Leader's Daughter

MSNBC----

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's government said Sunday it arrested the daughter and four other relatives of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the country's most powerful men, in a move that exposed a rift among the ruling Islamic clerics over the disputed presidential election.

State media also reported at least 10 more deaths, bringing the official toll for a week of confrontations to at least 17. State television inside Iran said 10 were killed and 100 injured in clashes Saturday between demonstrators contesting the result of the June 12 election and black-clad police wielding truncheons, tear gas and water cannons.

Police and members of the Basij militia took up positions in the afternoon on major streets and squares, including the site of Saturday's clashes. There was no word on any new clashes Sunday, although after dark many people in Tehran went to their rooftops to shout "Death to the dictator" and Allahu akbar," a common form of defiance in recent days.

State-run Press TV reported that Rafsanjani's eldest daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, and four other unidentified family members were arrested late Saturday. On Sunday evening, it said the four others had been released but that Hashemi remained in detention. However, Iran's ambassador to France Seyed Mehdi Miraboutalebi said on France's RFI radio that Hashemi had been released.

Serious divide among clerics:

Last week, state television showed images of Hashemi, 46, speaking to hundreds of supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. He alleges fraud in the June 12 election, which the government said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won.

After Hashemi's appearance, hard-line students gathered outside the Tehran prosecutor's office and accused her of treason, state radio reported.

The arrests are the strongest sign yet of a serious divide among Iran's ruling clerics.

Also Sunday, Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said on state television that the number of people questioning the election results was large and "this group should be respected and one should not mix this big population's account with a small group of rioters."

Rafsanjani, 75, heads two powerful institutions. One of them, the cleric-run Assembly of Experts, has the power to monitor and remove the supreme leader, the country's most powerful figure. The second is the Expediency Council, a body that arbitrates disputes between parliament and the unelected Guardian Council, which can block legislation.

The assembly has never publicly reprimanded the unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei since he succeeded Islamic Revolution founder Aytollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. But the current crisis has rattled the once-untouchable stature of the supreme leader with protesters openly defying his orders to leave the streets.

Underscoring how the protesters have become emboldened despite the regime's repeated and ominous warnings, witnesses said some shouted "Death to Khamenei!" at Saturday's demonstrations — another sign of once unthinkable challenges to the virtually limitless authority of the supreme leader.

Rafsanjani was deeply critical of Ahmadinejad during the presidential campaign and has the potential to lead an internal challenge to Khamenei.


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Sources: MSNBC, Huffington Post, Google Maps

Sarah Palin's At It Again...."The Government Wants To Control People"

CNN
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Alaska governor Sarah Palin let loose Wednesday on the Obama administration for enacting fiscal policies that "fly in the face of principles" and "defy Economics 101."

In a speech introducing Michael Reagan — the son of former President Ronald Reagan — to an audience in Anchorage, Palin warned that the government is planning to "bail out debt ridden states" so it can "get in there and control the people."

"Since when can you get out of huge national debt by creating trillions of dollars of new debt?" Palin asked. "It all really is so backwards and skewed as to sound like absolute nonsense when some of this economic policy is explained."

"We need to be aware of the creation of a fearful population, and fearful lawmakers, being led to believe that big government is the answer, to bail out the private sector, because then government gets to get in there and control it," she said. "And mark my words, this is going to be next, I fear, bail out next debt-ridden states. Then government gets to get in there and control the people."

"Some in Washington would approach our economic woes in ways that absolutely defy Economics 101, and they fly in the face of principles, providing opportunity for industrious Americans to succeed or to fail on their own accord," she said. "Those principles it makes you wonder what the heck some in Washington are trying to accomplish here."

Though the bulk of her remarks focused on government encroachment into the private sector, and praise for former President Reagan's views on limited government, the former vice presidential candidate briefly touched on national security. She told the crowd that "the terrorists are still dead set against us" and that her son Track is still deployed in Iraq.

"It is war over there, so it will not be war over here," she said. "And it had better still be our mission that we win, they lose."

She also pointed to the recent dismissal of another ethics complaint against her, one that accused the governor of having a conflict of interest for wearing a jacket to the opening of the Tesoro Iron Dog race in February that feautured the logo of the sponsor of her husband's team. Palin has been forced to set up a legal defense fund to help pay for fees related to an onslaught of ethic complaints.

Palin said of the people who have filed the complaints: "Those are the folks who want to tell me, they want to tell you, to sit down and shut up. We will not do that. I just can't, because I love my state. I love my country."


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Sources: Politico, CNN, Day Life, Google Maps

President Obama Announces U.S. Government's Strategic Plan To Secure Cyber Space (Full Text)

President Obama: "Hello, everybody. Please be seated. We meet today at a transformational moment, a moment in history when our interconnected world presents us at once with great promise but also great peril. Now, over the past four months, my administration has taken decisive steps to seize the promise and confront these perils. We're working to recover from a global recession while laying a new foundation for lasting prosperity."

"We're strengthening our armed forces as they fight two wars. At the same time, we're renewing American leadership to confront unconventional challenges from nuclear proliferation to terrorism, from climate change to pandemic disease. And we're bringing to government and to this White House unprecedented transparency and accountability and new ways for Americans to participate in their democracy."

"But none of this progress would be possible, and none of these 21st century challenges can be fully met without America's digital infrastructure, the backbone that underpins a prosperous economy and a strong military and an open and efficient government. Without that foundation, we can't get the job done. It's long been said that the revolutions in communications and information technology have given birth to a virtual world."

"But make no mistake, this world, Cyberspace is a world that we depend on every single day. It's our hardware and our software, our desktops and laptops and cell phones and Blackberries that have become woven into every aspect of our lives. It's the broadband networks beneath us and the wireless signals around us, the local networks in our schools and hospitals and businesses and the massive grids that power our nation."

"It's the classified military and intelligence networks that keep us safe and the Worldwide Web that has made us more interconnected than at any time in human history. So cyberspace is real, and so are the risks that come with it. It's the great irony of our information age, the very technologies that empower us to create and to build also empower those who would disrupt and destroy. And this paradox, seen and unseen, is something that we experience every day. It's about the privacy and economic security of American families. We rely on the Internet to pay our bills, to bank, to shop, to file our taxes."

"But we've had to learn a whole new vocabulary just to stay ahead of the cyber criminals who would do us harm. Spyware and malware, spoofing and phishing and bot-nets, millions of Americans have been victimized, their privacy violated, their identities stolen, their lives upended, and their wallets emptied. According to one survey, in the past two years alone, cyber crime has cost Americans more than $8 billion. I know how it feels to have privacy violated because it has happened to me and the people around me. It's no secret that my presidential campaign harnessed the Internet and technology to transform our politics."

"What isn't widely known is that during the general election, hackers managed to penetrate our computer systems. To all of who donated to our campaign, I want you to all rest assured our fundraising Web site was untouched. (LAUGHTER) So your confidential, personal, and financial information was protected. But between August and October, hackers gained access to e-mails in a range of campaign files from policy position papers to travel plans. And we worked closely with the FBI and the Secret Service and hired security consultants to restore the security of our systems. It was a powerful reminder."

"In this information age, one of your greatest strengths, in our case, our ability to communicate to a wide range of supporters through the Internet, could also be one of your greatest vulnerabilities. This is a matter as well of America's economic competitiveness. The small businesswoman in St. Louis, the bond trader in the New York Stock Exchange, the workers at a global shipping company in Memphis, the young entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, they all need the networks to make the next payroll, the next trade, the next delivery, the next great breakthrough."

"E-commerce someone last year accounted for some $132 billion in retail sales. But every say, we see waves of cyber thieves trolling for sensitive information; the disgruntled employee on the inside, the lone hacker a thousand miles away, organized crime, the industrial spy, and increasingly, foreign intelligence services. In one brazen act last year, thieves used stolen credit card information to steal millions of dollars from 130 ATM machines in 49 cities around the world. And they did it in just 30 minutes. A single employee of an American company was convicted of stealing intellectual property reportedly worth $400 million."

"It's been estimated that last year alone, cyber criminals stole intellectual property from businesses worldwide worth up to $1 trillion. In short, America's economic prosperity in the 21st century will depend on cyber security. And this is also a matter of public safety and national security. We count on computer networks to deliver our oil and gas, our power and our water. We rely on them for public transportation and air traffic control."

"Yet we know that cyber intruders have probed our electrical grid and that, in other countries, cyber attacks have plunged entire cities into darkness. Our technological advantage is a key to America's military dominance, but our defense and military networks are under constant attack. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have spoken of their desire to unleash a cyber attack on our country, attacks that are harder to detect and harder to defend against."

"Indeed, in today's world, act of terror could come not only from a few extremists in suicide vests but from a few key strokes on the computer, a weapon of mass disruption. In one of the most serious cyber incidents to date against our military networks, several thousand computers were infected last year by malicious software and malware. And while no sensitive information was compromised, our troops and defense personnel had to give up those external memory devices, thumb drives, changing the way they used their computers every day. And last year, we had a glimpse of the future face of war."

"As Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, cyber attacks crippled Georgian government Web sites. The terrorists that sowed so much death and destruction in Mumbai released not only to guns and grenades but also on GPS and phones using voice over the Internet. For all these reasons, it's now clear this cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation."

"It's also clear that we're not as prepared as we should be as a government or as a country. In recent years, some protect has been made at the federal level, but just as we failed in the past to invest in our physical infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, and rails, we failed to invest in the security of our digital infrastructure. No single official oversees security policy across the federal government."

"No single agency has the responsibility or authority to match the scope and scale of the challenge. Indeed, when it comes to cyber security, federal agencies have overlapping missions and don't coordinate and communicate nearly as well as they should with each other or with the private sector. We saw this in that disorganized response to Conficker, the Internet work that, in recent months, has infected millions of computers around the world."

"This status quo is no longer acceptable, not when there's so much at stake. We can and we must do better. And that's why, shortly after taking office, I directed my National Security Council and Homeland Security Council to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the federal government's efforts to defend our information and communications infrastructure and to recommend the best way to ensure that these networks are able to secure our networks as well as our prosperity. Our view -- our review was open and transparent."

"I want is to acknowledge Melissa Hathaway, who's here, who is the acting senior director for cyber space on our National Security Council who led the review team as well as the Center for Strategic and International Studies bipartisan commission on cyber security and all who were part of our 60-day review team. They listened to a wide variety of groups, many of which are represented here today and I want to thank for their input."

"Industry and academia, civil liberties and privacy advocates, we listened to every level and branch of government from local to state to federal, civilian, military, homeland as well as intelligence, Congress, and international partners as well. I consulted with my National Security teams, my Homeland Security teams, and my economic advisers. Today, I'm releasing a report on our review and can announce that my administration will pursue a new, comprehensive approach to securing America's digital infrastructure. This new approach starts at the top with this commitment from me."

"From now on, our digital infrastructure, the networks and computers we depend on every day will be treated as they should be; as a strategic national asset. Protecting this infrastructure will be a national security priority. We will ensure that these networks are secure, trustworthy, and resilient. We will deter, prevent, detect, and defend against attacks and recover quickly from any disruptions or damage."

"To give these efforts the high level focus and the attention they deserve, and as part of the new single national security staff announced this week, I'm creating a new office here at the White House that will be led by the cyber security coordinator. Because of the critical importance of this work, I will personally select this official. I'll depend on this official in all matters relating to cyber security. And this official will have my full support and regular access to me as we confront these challenges."

"Today, I want to focus on the important responsibilities this office will fulfill, orchestrating and integrating all cyber security policies for the government, working closing with the Office of Management and Budget to ensure agency budgets reflect those priorities, and in the event of major cyber incident or attack, coordinating our response. To ensure the that federal cyber policy enhance our security and our prosperity, my cyber security coordinator will be a member of the National Security Staff as well as the staff of my National Economic Council."

"To ensure that policies keep faith with our fundamental values, this office will also include an official with a portfolio specifically dedicated to safeguarding the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There's much work to be done, and the report we're releasing today outlines a range of actions that we will pursue in five key areas. First, working in partnership with the communities represented here today, we will develop a new, comprehensive strategy to secure America's information and communications networks."

"To ensure a coordinated approach across the government, my cyber security coordinator will work closely with chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra, and my chief information officer, Vivek Kundra. To ensure accountability in federal agencies, cyber security will be designated as one of my key management priorities. Clear milestones and performance metrics will measure progress. And as we develop our strategy, we will be open and transparent, which is why you'll find today's report and a wealth of related information on Web site, www.whitehouse.gov."

"Second, we will work with all the key players, including state and local governments and the private sector, to ensure an organized and unified response to future cyber incidents. Given the enormous damage that can be caused by even a single cyber attack, ad hoc responses will not do. Nor is it sufficient to simply strengthen our defenses after incidents or attacks occur. Just as we do for natural disasters, we have to have plans and resources in place beforehand, sharing information, issues warnings, and ensuring a coordinated response."

"Third, we will strengthen the public-private partnerships that are critical to this endeavor. The vast majority of our critical infrastructure in the United States is owned and operated by the private sector. So let me be very clear. My administration will not dictate security standards for private companies. On the contrary, we will collaborate with industry to find technology solutions that ensure our security and promote prosperity."

"Fourth, we will continue to invest in the cutting-edge research and development necessary for the innovation and discovery we need to meet the digital challenges of our time. And that's why my administration is making major investments in our information infrastructure, laying broadband lines to every corner of America, building a smart electric grid to deliver energy more efficiently, pursuing a next-generation of air traffic control systems, and moving to electronic health records with privacy protections to reduce costs and save lives."

"And, finally, we will begin a national campaign to promote cyber security awareness and digital literacy from our boardrooms to our classrooms and to build a digital work force for the 21st century. And that's why we're making a new commitment to education in math and science and historic investments in science and research and development because it's not enough for our children and students to master today's technologies -- social networking and e-mailing and texting and blogging -- we need them to pioneer the technologies that will allow us to work effectively through these new media and allow us to prosper in the future."

"So these are the things we will do. Let me also be clear about what we will not do. Our pursuit of cyber security will not include -- I repeat will not include monitoring private-sector networks or Internet traffic. We will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil liberties that we cherish as Americans. Indeed, I remain firmly committed to net neutrality so we can keep the Internet as it should be, open and free."

"The task I have described will not be easy. Some 1.5 billion people around the world are already online, and more are logging on every day. Groups and governments are sharpening their cyber capabilities. Protecting our prosperity and security in this globalized world is going to be a long, difficult struggle demanding patience and persistence over many years. But we need to remember we're only at the beginning. The epics of history are long. The agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, by comparison, our information age is still in its infancy."

"We're only at Web 2.0. Now, our virtual world is going viral, and we've only just begun to explore the next generation of technologies that will traffic accident our lives in ways we can't even begin to imagine. So a new world awaits, a world of greater security and greater potential prosperity if we reach for it, if we leap. So as long as I'm president of the United States, we will do just that. And the United States, the nation that invented the Internet, that launched an information revolution that transformed the world, will do what we did in the 20th century and lead once more in the 21st. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you."

Sources: Whitehouse.gov, Politico, Washington Post, Guardian, Day Life