Ashley Madison Hack Includes State Agency

Although not mentioned in the email quoted below, clearly some state employees got caught in the hack of the Ashley Madison website. The odd thing is that the email sent out statewide is entitled “Phishing Scams.” The Ashley Madison hack was just that, a hack. It had nothing to do with phishing scams. I don’t know which is more troublesome, state employees using a website like Ashley—which by the way is blocked for 99% of network users—or that the head security guy is wrongly calling this a phishing scam.

Anyway, here is the email. Please note that links to state intranet sites were removed for this copy. Also, I added emphasis to portion on “data dump”.

Attention CDCR Email Account User,

The CDCR Information Security Office was recently made aware that several CDCR email accounts were published to a public Internet site in a data dump that was hacked by a third-party organization.  The compromised email accounts were used as logons by the users for non-CDCR related activities.  Although corresponding passwords or other personal information were not believe to have been exposed, we ask all users to:

• Do not use the same password for your CDCR account for any non-CDCR purposes such as personal email – this will reduce the risk of having your CDCR account compromised (best practice)
• Do not use the CDCR work email address for personal use such as use your email account to sign up for non-CDCR business related purposes.

Because of this data dump is available to the public, please also take the time to review regarding how to prevent against phishing attacks.

Additionally please:
• Do not enter sensitive or confidential information into any internet website unless it can be verified that the site is authentic,
• Do not reply to emails requesting any sensitive or confidential that originate from an unknown source, and
• Do not provide any sensitive or confidential information over the telephone during conversations that were not initiate by yourself.

If you have any further questions or concerns regarding this email please contact the CDCR Agency Information Security Office.

Summary of Ashley Madison Hack

Tina Turner had a hit many years before her trip to Thunderdome when she asked, “What’s love got to do with it?” After being married to Ike, maybe she really felt that way.

Supposedly other women do too. If you believe their marketing, a vast number of unhappy and promiscuous women are available on the Ashley Madison website for any man married wanting a fling. This website whose motto is: “Life is short, have an affair” was recently hacked.

Some readers many ask why I am spending time on this data breech of a sleazy website. Why? Because thus far, this is the biggest known data breech in the world…ever. Besides, how many websites do you know that dedicate themselves to violating one of the Ten Commandments.

These guys are dirtbags. They are marketing adultery with a money back guarantee.

Affair Guarantee Program Rules

•Under the AshleyMadison.com Affair Guarantee Program, (the “Affair Guarantee Program” or the “Program”) if you don’t find someone within the initial 3 months after purchasing the “Affair Guarantee” Membership Package, we’ll refund you the amount you paid AshleyMadison.com for participating in the Program (the “Refund”).

• The Guarantee Program is available for a limited time only, and open to anyone.

Of course, a certain amount of fine print applies.
Ashley Madison Guarantee

The cost of sin is high. In this case $249 CDN/$199 USD
Source Article

A year ago, the website was claiming 13 million active users. Oh, no cost for women to join. Prices above are the rates men are willing to pay.
Source Article

Distribution of Ashley Madison users by city.

Graph Source

Those with memberships were promised that for a fee of $19, their account would be deleted.

Ashley Madison sold the delete feature for $19, The Guardian reports, promising users it would remove their profiles from the site, including search results. BuzzFeed discovered that the site made close to $2 million for the service in 2014 alone when 90,000 requested such profile deletions.

However, it turns out that Ashley Madison kept a treasure trove of information for each user that’s good enough to identify that person. The company did remove the real name, username, email and profile information as promised but it retained sensitive data that can be used to find out whether a person may have had an account on the extra-marital affairs site.

The company “retained the date of birth, city, state, post- or zip code, country, gender, ethnicity, weight, height, body type and whether the user smokes or drinks,” The Guardian writes.
BGR Article

The hackers of this website call themselves The Impact Team. This manifesto—including locations of the data—can be viewed here. Impact Team Manifesto

According to Toronto Police, employees of Canadian based Avid Life Media—the owners of Ashley Madison and some similar websites—first became aware of the hack on July 12.

In the news conference, the police detailed how users were targeted in an attack that began July 12, when employees of Avid Life Media arrived at work. When the employees opened their laptops, they were met with the song “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC, and an accompanying message demanding that Avid Life shutter both websites.
New York Times

The hackers then provided samples of the hacked data to prove their claims of hacking the website were genuine. Avid Life refused to take down two of their websites so on August 20th, the hacked data was posted.

Impact Team released a 9.7GB data dump that contains over 30 million Ashley Madison user records. This includes names, addresses and emails, but it is thought that credit card details have not been compromised. Not all the email addresses are real, but up to 24 million are said to be active.

The data was posted to a Tor website meaning that it is not accessible to the general public, as well as to peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent. However, details are starting to leak onto the open web via screenshots on social media.

Analysis of the cache has also uncovered a number of government and military email domains. For example one researcher said that over 6,000 of the email addresses were registered as us.army.mil.

“The website has found 1,716 email addresses from universities and further education colleges using the .ac.uk suffix; 124 using .gov.uk; 92 using .mod.uk; 65 local education authorities and schools using .sch.uk; 56 National Heath Service emails and less than 50 police emails,” reported The Telegraph.

Meanwhile, security blogger Robert Graham searched the database to determine the gender balance.

“I count 28 million men to five million women, according to the ‘gender’ field in the database (with two million undetermined). However, glancing through the credit card transactions, I find only male names,” he said.

The Ashley Madison hack is bigger in scale than the recent breach at the US Office of Personnel Management that resulted in the loss of 21 million federal records.
V3-UK

A few days later, the hackers posted a second data dump of 20 gigabytes. These were all internal records of Avid Life Media. This data breech was code of the websites, Google drives of managers, emails, and other internal documents. The Sony data breech was larger in terms of size of the data files but in terms of names this is the biggest in the world.

As a result of the data breech, two people listed on the website have reportedly committed suicide. This from the police news conference mentioned earlier. Their spokesman is Mr. Bryce Evans.

Mr. Evans also said that the police have received two unconfirmed reports of suicides related to the data breach. Security experts had warned the revelations contained in the breach could lead to suicide and violence.

“Others might find the thought that their membership of the site — even if they never met anyone in real life, and never had an affair — too much to bear,” Graham Cluley wrote on his security blog last week, “and there could be genuine casualties as a result. And yes, I mean suicide.”
New York Times

Hack Touches Virtually All of the United States

Gawker’s Gabrielle Bluestone has uncovered that there are precisely three ZIP codes across the country that have no record of Ashley Madison users. That’s ZIP codes, not area codes. And what do they have in common? They’re partially lacking two things: the internet and a large number of people.
Yahoo Finance

Doriana Silva
Thus far we have learned that there are roughly six men for each woman listed on the website. However, the number of women is a matter of some dispute. Many of the female profiles on the website are reportedly fake. Some of the male profiles are also fraudulent.
In 2012, Doriana Silva filed a lawsuit that was later thrown out. Her claim of fraudulent profiles is receiving renewed media interest in the wake of this hack. Below are portions of a news article from New Zealand.

Doriana Silva

A former employee of the Ashley Madison adultery website has claimed she was told to create hundreds of fake profiles of female “members” to entice men to join up.

Doriana Silva, who worked at the company’s headquarters in Toronto, Canada, tried to sue the firm after claiming she suffered repetitive strain injury (RSI) after being given a month to input 1,000 bogus memberships.

Ms Silva, who is Brazilian, was recruited by Ashley Madison’s parent company Avid Life Media to help launch a Portuguese language website in her home country.

According to court documents in Toronto: “Her allegation is that her job entailed concocting phony profiles of alluring females and inputting these profiles into the appellants’ online dating service in order to attract male subscribers.”

She claimed she was given three weeks to create 1,000 fake profiles.

Her claim stated: “The purpose of these profiles is to entice paying heterosexual male members to join and spend money on the website.

“They do not belong to any genuine members of Ashley Madison – or any real human beings at all.”

She said she was led to believe “that doing so was some sort of a normal business practice in the industry” but found her workplace “oppressive and unethical”.

Ms Silva launched the case in 2012, claiming £10 million in damages. Avid Life counter-sued her, denying her claims, and the two sides eventually agreed to drop their cases earlier this year.

New Zealand Herald

Other Fraudulent Names

Ashley Madison claims to have 1.2 million users in the UK, which would equate to almost one in 20 of all adults between the ages of 18 and 50. Increasing numbers of supposed members whose details have been published online by hackers say they had never even heard of Ashley Madison.

Online security experts have suggested the company could have bought bulk email addresses from marketing companies to make it appear that their membership – and their choice of possible partners – was far larger than the reality.

A source close to the FBI investigation into the leak has told The Daily Telegraph that examinations of the database suggest many of the female profiles on the site were created by a relatively small number of individuals.

Ashley Madison says on its website that it cannot “guarantee the authenticity of any profile”. It relies wholly on men for its profits; women can join for free, but men pay a minimum of £39 to be able to contact other members, though there is no guarantee that they will get a response from people they message.

Peter Sommer, a visiting professor at the De Montfort University Cyber Security Centre, said: “A number of internet dating agencies are known to artificially boost the number of profiles they have in order to make them more attractive.

“They take publicly available information from other databases and added it to their own. People then pay to be able to contact other ‘members’ and it’s not until they get to that stage that they realise a lot of them are duds.”

Bulk email addresses can be bought from marketing companies for as little as 10p each.
New Zealand Herald

Identity Theft

Another possible explanation is that people using the site have simply stolen other people’s email addresses so they do not have to give their own name. People can even browse the site using entirely fake email addresses, because no verification emails are sent out by Ashley Madison to check the email is genuine.

Among those who believe they may have been the victims of identity theft is Oliver Coppard, who stood as Labour’s parliamentary candidate in Sheffield Hallam against Nick Clegg earlier this year.

He said an email address for him that appears in the leaked data is one he has not used for three years.

“It’s a bit of a mystery to me,” he said. “I have never been on the site and I’m not even married so I would have no need to use it. It doesn’t really matter to me, but I don’t know how it has happened.”

New Zealand Herald

If you want to see if you know anybody involved in the hack, you can check at these two links. Use at your own risk.

http://www.trustify.info/check

http://www.trustify.info/check

Please be aware that this hack is creating a secondary market in scammers and malware sites.

Remember that email addresses are not verified by Ashley Madison so tread lightly before accusing folks of being actual clients. There is a chance they are innocent.

For a business that is predicated on secrecy and then is hacked with the outpouring of personal details then it no longer becomes a viable business.
New Zealand Herald

Career Opportunity for The Just Us Brothers?

In the wake of the Ashley Madison data breech, a new career opportunity has presented itself for The Just Us Brothers.

The Just Us Brothers know all about data breeches. They have done it themselves so they know what information is harmful to have released on the Internet. In addition, they also have successfully purged all electronic records of CRA including information on current and former members, chapter bylaws and other records. The Just Us Brothers know how to make this information unrecoverable.

On the other hand, Ashley Madison has been charging subscribers a flat fee of $19 to have their accounts deleted from their website. In 2014, they collected almost two million dollars in such fees from a subscriber base of 37 million. Unfortunately, the website folks at Ashley clearly don’t know how to scrub such information. They still retained names, address, credit card numbers and other user preferences after they were supposedly deleted. (Frankly, Ashley Madison sounds almost as insidious as Facebook.)

The hacker group called “The Impact Team” claimed responsibility for this data breech. If you need an impact team to counter “The Impact Team” clearly the folks from “Impact Republicans” have to be on your short list of counter measures. The Just Us Brothers have a proven track record and would be an asset to Avid Life Media—owners of Ashley Madison.

Lest you doubt me, think about this, if the security folks at Ashley Madison had been the administrators of CRA’s membership records, we would still have all names and addresses of current and former members, their payment information, chapter bylaws, backups of all CRA related websites and all emails within the organization; in short, everything since 2002.

Having the right people makes all the difference. 37 million times $19 per account deleted means a potential of over 700 million in termination fees are on the table. Boys it’s time to move on from politics, other more lucrative markets are waiting for your talents.

Dr. Jonathan Crane Reviews RightOnDaily

Note: Since the Just Us Brothers are so good at tearing down strawmen, I thought it only fair that a superior strawman—the Scarecrow—should take a whack at them. Those not familiar with the exploits of the Just Us Brothers and the lore surrounding the Dark Knight will undoubtedly not fully appreciate the following.

Reporter: We are pleased to present an edited transcript of our recent interview with clinical psychologist and psychiatrist Jonathan Crane Ph.D. from Arkham Asylum. 

Please click here For Dr. Crane’s biography.

Reporter: Prior to our interview, Dr. Crane acquainted himself with the patients’ rants on the pages of Right On Daily.

Doctor, if the author of this blog was evaluated for admission here at Arkham Asylum, would you be inclined to admit him?

 

Dr. Crane: Before beginning, our lawyers want me to say that past performance is not always indicative of future results. Any psychiatric results cited may not be typical for all patients. If your psychotic episode lasts for more than four hours please seek immediate help.

Now to the patient evaluation.

I’d like to say thanks for letting me have a look at this unique case.

A person exhibiting the symptoms displayed in the writings of Right On Daily likely does belong here at Arkham Asylum.

 

Reporter: Wow, that was a swift diagnosis.

 

Dr. Crane: Let me explain.

Like many master criminals, this individual seems to have started off meaning well and lost his way.

Many criminals start down the wrong path in their youth by torturing small animals and the like. This fellow has a different pathology. He started torturing other people’s political yard signs. Later he infiltrated political campaigns…but always from a distance. Instead of working for free as a volunteer, he became an explosives expert for hire.

Clearly he learned that the problem with demolitions is that it can shorten the lifespan of the person delivering the bomb. The last mission that he did himself was in neighboring Yolo County several years ago. His target was a sitting judge, Dan McGuire. Unfortunately, the shape charge was backwards and when it went off, his client, Clint Parish, was blown off of the political landscape. After the State Bar finished with Parish, he retired to a non-descript farming town to live out the rest of his years in exile and disgrace.

Learning from this experience, the patient’s solution is the same as many in the Middle East; make the bomb and let others deliver it for you. This strategy allows one to continue saying the right words about their cause and simultaneously recruiting others with minimal personal risk. Clearly he reasons that, if I don’t lead who will?

This fellow has evolved into a skillful operator. He identifies the target, scouts the terrain and then takes advantage of a new recruit. Always he manages the plan but typically he lets others deliver the munitions.

 

Reporter: But doctor, doesn’t this reduce his likelihood of success?

 

Dr. Crane: Yes but he has his reasons. While others around him are proficient in checkers, he fancies himself a chess master.

Let me explain.

His bombing missions are of two types: ambush and suicide.

Ambush missions involve planting the device and detonating from a safe vantage point. From a distance he can perform bomb damage assessment or if he has an epic failure, he has a good head start on any pursuers. No matter the outcome, rarely will he take immediate credit for these operations.

Suicide missions are something different. Once in position and ready to detonate, the person in the vest is required to shout, “Allah AkPark” and then hit the switch.

 

Reporter: Doctor, why involve others?

 

Dr. Crane: Part of his illness requires that others take part so the patient will have a measure of leverage for future missions. It’s a crude but effective way of compromising a person.  It also allows the patient to deflect responsibility.

He justifies wrongdoing by rationalizing like children who say, “But he does it too”. (It’s this type of juvenile reasoning—they do it so I will too—that makes this patient so difficult to treat.)

You see, with the mentally ill, the body develops but the mind can’t get beyond childhood. It gets stuck, and then warps in unhealthy directions.

 

Reporter: And you think that this is the situation here?

 

Dr. Crane: Oh yes. Look at what he does. If the mission succeeds then he can claim credit and if it fails, he can blame the volunteer. Unlike most bombers, this patient will sometimes refrain from claiming credit until after the election cycle. However it turns out, the patient does his best to insure that he will live to see another day.

 

Reporter: So his survival is a priority while the welfare of others is unimportant?

 

Dr. Crane: If there’s anything that we learned from watching the Penguin in season one of Gotham, henchmen are disposable and rather easy to recruit. Not one ever made it to the next episode and yet people stand in line just to work for him.

Similarly, a person like the author of Right On Daily can usually make quite a good first impression on strangers. Only when you compare his words to his actions does the true nature of the patient become evident.  This process takes time.

 

Reporter: Doctor, what’s the point? What is his motivation?

 

Dr. Crane: Mostly ego. Self-worth at the expense of others.

 

Reporter: Doctor, what does he get out of this?

 

Dr. Crane: Off the books money is his typical metric of success. His pyrotechnic payments are often under the table and difficult to trace. He uses third parties and blind drops to transfer funds. This minimizes the risk to the candidate or consultant that hired him.

There is an anecdotal report that a passerby once heard him retrieve a message on his cell phone that said, “Greeting Sergeant York, should you decide to accept this mission… As always, should you or any of your team be caught or killed, we will disavow any knowledge of your actions.”

If that’s not crazy enough, reportedly, the message was in the patient’s own voice.

 

Reporter: Doctor, that’s really nuts. But elections are every two years what else does he do to pass the time?

 

Dr. Crane: Recently, the patient has added to his infractions by branching out into reallocation of resources. He joins organizations to scatter their membership and rape their treasuries. Once he has no further use for the group he will leave them destitute.

Some proceeds from his ill-gotten gain may be used to create new organizations that can be exploited later. These groups also deliver endorsements in exchange for advertising in his modest publications empire.

 

Reporter: Doctor, he seems quite troubled.

 

Dr. Crane: The patient suffers from many things.

One is a delusion similar to Burgess Meredith in the Twilight Zone. Remember the episode where Meredith finally sits down on the Library steps to read his books only to break his glasses? Like Meredith’s character, the patient thinks he can only be truly happy in a society made in his own twisted image.

In many ways, the patient’s behavior is like a bipolar individual that fell on hard times and as a result, quit taking his meds. However, unlike Ted Kaczynski, this patient is in love with technology. He learned how to be LOUD on the Internet, but without medication, he was unable to make cogent arguments.

Everywhere he looks, he sees his own demons in the reflections of others. Instead of seeing others for who they are, they all are morphed in his twisted mind into doppelgängers of his own failings. Due to the advanced state of his illness, these projections of his inner demons are now so distorted that many appear to him as black widow spiders.

 

Reporter: It’s quite a remarkable manifestation.

 

Dr. Crane: Yes but the patient’s fixation on black widows is a subconscious manifestation of his rabid hatred of women; especially those that he can’t control. He wants them weak and demure. Powerful women intimidate him.

 

Reporter: So he has mommy issues? How sad. Anything else?

 

Dr. Crane: A most unfortunate result of his illness is that when those closest to him try to steer him away from self-destructive behavior he turns on them and unleashed his wrath. This repayment of sound council with vitriol pushes people away.

In his world, there are only two categories of people: allies and traitors.

• Allies always agree with him and do what he says.

• Traitors are any with contrary opinions.

Over time, he became a legend in his own mind. He sees himself as a kind of Mad Max figure, bringing order to a world in chaos.

“Order through chaos” is the motto that most sums up how he lives his life. Spread chaos to consolidate control and establish his order.

 

Reporter: Doctor, how can we stop him from harming others or himself?

 

Dr. Crane: Frankly, the only way to prevent him from harming others is a “tough love” approach.

First, his unimpeded involvement in social organizations must be ended. By exposing his past words and deeds—as you have been doing here, it is hoped that others may have ample warning about his character. Furthermore, he must banned from membership in organizations that heretofore have welcomed him. His ability to be an officer or delegate in such organizations must forever be prohibited.

He must be kept as far away from volunteer political organizations and campaigns as possible. Letting him near politics is like letting a pedophile guard the campground…but enough about the Boy Scouts.

 

Reporter: So you mean he has to quit “cold turkey”? Wow.

 

Dr. Crane: Second, an unfortunate side effect to his illness is that he takes things that are not his own and use them in improper ways. By his own admission, he was involved in embezzlement of large sums of money that belonged to others. He has done this several times recently and then had the hubris to brag about it very LOUDLY and publicly.

A careful reading of his blog rants give you an idea of how he reasons. Just beneath the surface you can hear him screaming:

”Behold what evil I have done, thou canst undo it. I have denied you your property and the work of your hands and declare this evil deed an act of charity.”

 

Reporter: So he is a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour?

 

Dr. Crane: Yes. Only when you put his words and actions in chronological order can you see how off the rails this guy really is. He has more bluster than a hurricane and is just as empty in the middle.

Here’s an example. He and his brother “liberated” all the money from the Placer County Republican Assembly bank accounts on May 20th and then held a sham vote on May 30th—a full ten days later—that was supposed to authorize (whitewash is a better word) an illegal action that had already been taken. Then in an email dated May 30, 2015 he brags about the whole thing as if they had just done it that morning.

He must learn that wealth redistribution using other people’s money is something only Democrats and big governments can legally do.

 

Reporter: Is this why he now feels comfortable in the presence of Jeb Bush?

 

Dr. Crane: Sadly it appears so.

He must restore what he has taken and learn to respect the property rights of others.

 

Reporter: Anything else that can be done?

 

Dr. Crane: Third, sometimes the mentally challenged have the habit of needlessly exposing themselves in public. This poor fellow has his own unique manifestation of this symptom. He feels compelled to needlessly expose the private things of his former associates on the Internet. Their names, addresses, bank account numbers, email addresses, political affiliations and alleged marital details are often posted for all to see.

Lacking a conscience, this man revels in the harm he caused others; for to him, tearing down others is to build himself up.

 

Reporter: Glass houses and stones…how sad.

 

Dr. Crane: He needs to make restitution to those he has wronged but until he has a change of heart, this is just a dim hope.

 

Reporter: Dim, indeed.

 

Dr. Crane: Lastly, his untoward behavior is enabled by his employment situation and subsidies that they provide for him. It would be in his best interest if he were deprived of those things that amplify his voice. Pressure must be brought to bear to revoke his vocational license. Since his microphone is in fact owned by his employer, it is hoped that he can be deprived of this instrument of harm also.

 

Reporter: But, Doctor this seems harsh. Is there no other way?

 

Dr. Crane: Unfortunately, if men won’t govern themselves then it must be done for them. This is why he should be entrusted to the facilities of Arkham Asylum.

 

Reporter: But isn’t that costly.

 

Dr. Crane: Yes but his friends have already collected six thousand dollars to help him on to the “straight and narrow way.” If needed, more can be raised without much trouble. Many all over the State want to see him receive the intervention that he so desperately needs.

 

Reporter: Doctor, you seem to be saying that the sooner this intervention begins the less people he can harm in the future.

 

Dr. Crane: Yes. Please don’t misunderstand; I have no ability to cure him. If he was kept at a facility like Arkham, we would be protecting the public and the patient.

The patient is suffering from what some call “hardness of heart”. Curing this is beyond my training. Only God can take his heart of stone and give him a heart of flesh.

Given the cognizant disconnect that he displays, it may be decades—if ever—before he will regain his right mind.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for a therapy session.

 

Reporter: Doctor Crane, thank you for taking time for this interview.

More Sutter-Yuba RA Minutes

This an analysis of the body of the Sutter-Yuba Republican Assembly minutes for June 8, 2015.

Priory to looking at these minutes a brief summary of the timeline for the period will be helpful for readers.

January 24, 2015

• CRA Board meeting where Aaron Park remarks than Placer has more money that Statewide CRA.

March 13—15, 2015

• CRA Annual Convention—run by George and Aaron Park in the name of Placer RA

March 25, 2015

• George Park closes CRA Business Roundtable account and gives balance to himself.

April 15, 2015

• CRA Board members call for May 30, 2015 business meeting.

April 17, 2015

• Aaron Park goes nuclear with campaign to block lawfully called meeting.

April 18, 2015

• Impact Republicans dot com is registered.

April 30, 2015

• George Park kills CRA’s Hightail and Mailchimp accounts. This results in deliberate purge of all statewide CRA files “in the cloud.”

May 13, 2015

George and Aaron get a front row seat to see Jeb Bush in Reno. This event and their photo are seen nationwide.

May 18, 2015

• March Convention Financial Summary given to CRA with zero receipts.

May 20, 2015

• Placer County Republican Assembly general fund was liquidated.

A portion of money allegedly went to refunding dues members. No record of disbursal of this money has ever been given to Placer RA or statewide CRA. It was purposely done as an untraceable transaction. Per membership records subsequently turned over by George Park (after May 30), Placer RA had four members in the club. Previously Aaron Park has repeatedly stated Placer RA membership was 105 souls. No proof exists that this was ever the case.

The balance of money was then allegedly divided amongst three charities.

Per current leadership of Placer RA, the account did have as much as $24,000 in it during calendar 2015. No receipts exist as to what happened to this money. On a side note, Aaron Park—at the January CRA Board meeting—was claiming that the Placer balance was greater than what statewide CRA had in their bank account. The statewide number at the time was over $25K. Aaron was indicating they had about $27K.

• CRA Convention checking account was closed. Again, no receipts were even submitted to account for the money. The convention hotel was able to provide receipts for items that they billed; however, about $5K claimed as expenses is still undocumented. In addition, large amounts of cash are unaccounted for. I know of at least $1,000 in cash from just two sources.

• Placer County RA Political Action Committee was unilaterally closed by George Park. $5,000 was disbursed to liquidate the funds.

May 21, 2015

• CIR Bylaws near final draft.

May 30, 2015

• Sham vote held to close Placer RA checking account and give money to charity. This was already done ten days prior to this vote.

• Later this same day, Parks booted from CRA

June 8, 2015

• George and Aaron Park are keynote speakers at Sutter-Yuba Republican Assembly meeting.

And now for the SYRA minutes.

Here is the first paragraph.

Guest speakers George Park, former CRA Membership Secretary, and Aaron Park, former CRA Vice President, reported the CRA board voted life-time expulsions for them at the May 30, 2015, CRA Board meeting in Santa Barbara. George discovered and reported multiple fraudulent memberships and delegates to the CRA Board. Aaron reported the discoveries, cover-ups, and fallout on his blog, which he keeps updated … Through fraud and violations of CRA and chapters’ Bylaws, CRA elections have been manipulated. At the behest of fraudsters on the Board, rather than address and fix the well-documented corruption, the CRA Board chose to expel for life George and Aaron, the whistleblowers. As a result, several CRA members have resigned, including SYRA’s two Senate District Representatives. CRA has failed to notify SYRA of anything.

Just to review for the Sutter folks:

If George found fraud then he had the Credentials and Charter Review Committees to investigate it. It is my recollection that he sat on both committees. If he didn’t get satisfaction, he could have gone to full convention. George reported nothing to anyone. Not until CIR was beginning to take shape did George and Aaron start the campaign about fraud in CRA. Please see timeline above. Aaron cried fraud on his blog April 17th and the next day CIR had a registered website. So how hard did they fight for integrity in CRA?

George is the author of the chaos that he used to claim was fraud. (FYI the new mantra shifted in July claiming that this was all Tom Hudson’s fault because he was trying to kiss-up to Tom McClintock.) Anyway, back when they were claiming this was about fraud, the only documented person with a record of membership fraud was George.

George was directly accepting membership dues without membership forms for the Sacramento Republican Assembly. Of the twenty plus members added to the club by paying directly to George, only two ever went to an SRA meeting. One attended his first meeting several months after his dues were paid. Also, none of these mysterious members ever renewed their dues.

If 20 people joined your unit without ever attending a single meeting and the dues never went to your treasurer and you received no membership application would you think this was proper?

In addition, to playing fast and loose with memberships, George kept sloppy records. Georges talks a good game and makes people think he works with attention to detail but the reality is much different. Based on the work product that he had at the first of the year (prior to the current controversy), his record keeping was like the general contractor that has his office under the seat of his pickup truck. His lists weren’t just wrong, they were really wrong. He had an error rate between about 30 to 40 percent on several lists that I am aware of. He ignored input from chapters about their lists and literally kept his own.

Lastly, he lost whole units. If he didn’t like you, he would just quit communicating and say the chapter was no longer meeting. If he thought you were ripe for induction into CIR then he dropped you from all records so he was the only conduit to CRA. Think Stockholm Syndrome and you will be close to the mark. Sutter-Yuba RA has always been viewed as a take-over target by the Park boys. They chartered it so it’s their club not CRA’s.

Paragraph two has partially been discussed in a previous post.

George provided information about the California Impact Republicans, an alternative to the CRA that he and Aaron founded. CIR has support of several legislators and Jim Brulte, the Chairman of the CA GOP, who has offered to donate $10,000 to ClR. Ten members minimum. Membership dues – $10 for two years. SYRA members agreeing to join CIR will be transferred at no cost until membership dues are payable October 1, 2017. Each chapter can select its own name. (Larry and Carla prefer Sutter-Yuba Conservative Republicans.) Each member attending a CIR convention will have one vote—no appointed delegates or proxy voting.

It’s what George leaves out of his full-throttled push for CIR that should give the folks at Sutter-Yuba pause. Perhaps they should at least read the CIR Bylaws and see if they resemble the draft language that I previously posted.

Per their May 21st draft, you must be a CIR member for one year before you can serve as County Commissioner or Senate District Director. The requirement jumps to two years to run for VP and three to be “el presidente.” I don’t know of any other group with such a requirement. If they do go for chartering at the CRP Convention, I don’t know if this provision will survive.

The third and final paragraph was also interesting.

After a question and answer period, a discussion was held regarding whether to quit CRA or stay and whether to join CIR. Results of a secret ballot advisory vote:

0- No change – remain with CRA

0- Remain with CRA and join new organization

7 – Join new organization and phase out of CRA

2 – Other – Troubled by fragmentation of organization – same as Republicans

Per the minutes, 12 members were present for the Just Us Brothers presentation. However, only nine voted. Curious.

Two and a half months have transpired since this “advisory ballot” but Sutter-Yuba is still meeting as a CRA chapter. If they go to “the dark side” I won’t be surprised.

The fact that George and Aaron had to work so long to convince them to jump ship has to be a hindrance to their announced timetable. Won’t they be surprised when they learn that there will still be a Sutter-Yuba CRA chapter no matter what ends-up happening?

Ghost Fleet

27 Ford vehicles showed-up in the parking lot where I work over the last week. All are new fleet vehicles with spot lights on driver and passenger sides and generic paint jobs. Clearly someone is about to upgrade vehicles for use in law enforcement. It’s just strange what kind of things folks leave in the parking lot where I work.

Left Behind: A Christian Argument for Abortion?

Last night, we watched the 2014 version of “Left Behind” featuring Nicholas Cage. Cage makes no pretense of being a believer but some folks in his family are working on him. These family members are also involved in film and talked him into being in the movie. Cage takes many roles that would be risky for other actors. I commend him for taking the risk. Ghost Rider to Left Behind covers a lot of ground.

In the movie, Cage is an airline pilot on a transcontinental flight from New York to London. About halfway thru the flight, the secret rapture of Christians takes place.

At this point in the film, I stopped it and said to my ten year old son that all the babies will be taken too. Sure enough, when I hit play, viewers learned that along with the Christians some “other sheep” were also taken. I tried to explain that not just the Christian children but all the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and all the rest were gone too. Per the movie, no children were left on the planet.

I have a real problem with the theology in this film. Both Premillennialism and Dispensationalism have no Biblical warrant and when married together, it results in some crazy theology. I explained to my son that the reason the children were taken is because in Baptist Theology, they have a doctrine called the Age of Accountability.

Instead of baptizing their children, Baptists—and like-minded Protestant folks—have a baby dedication ceremony. They believe until children are old enough to truly understand right from wrong, that they can never choose to believer or reject Christ, therefore they are innocent until reaching this “Age of Accountability”. Oh, this age is arbitrary for each child; for some seven, others ten, and if they are handicapped, maybe never.

So who should I believe? Paul the Apostle or Tim LaHaye, Billy Graham, and the good folks at Dallas Theological Seminary?  Baptists are logically inconsistent on this point.

Do they believe the Scriptures when it says?
• “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”.
• “For all we like sheep have gone astray.”
• “There is none righteous, no not one.”
And other such verses.

Baptists try to simultaneously affirm both positions. Sorry but the Bible knows of no doctrine of the Age of Accountability. The Scripture is clear that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, the Life; no one comes to the Father except by Him.

If all children can go to heaven without going thru Christ—because they are innocent of sin—then why let them grow older and have a possibility of rejecting Christ? Kill them now and insure they do go to Heaven.

I can’t take credit for pointing this problem out but I sure got smacked with it in a very real world way. Here is how it happened.

Back in the day, I used to hang-out with folks involved in a prolife movement called “Operation Rescue.” I met some good people involved in this organization and learned a lot about my faith during this period of my life.

One activity that I went to was a “baby shower” at Gibson Ranch. It just so happened that the local Planned Parenthood group (or other like-minded abortion provider in the area) was having their company picnic at a nearby spot. We all grabbed signs and went over by their activity and began to protest. Seeing our challenge, the people at the picnic came over and exchanged words with us.

One lady and I had an actual discussion in the midst of this. She asked me why I was prolife to which I responded that I wanted to stop babies from being killed. She then asked me if I believed that the aborted babies went to heaven, to which I responded “yes”. Her next inquiry was the very point that I raise in this blog, if these same children were allowed to be born then at least some would grow-up to reject Christ and thus end-up in Hell. Her conclusion was that by aborting the children she was doing them the service of insuring their eternal destiny. I was unprepared to respond to this logic. About all I could say was killing was wrong. It was weak. I had lost.

Thankfully, shortly after this experience, I began a paradigm shift towards Reformed Theology and Postmillennialism. Parting with the Age of Accountability doctrine and embracing a Covenantal understanding of the faith addressed the shortcomings and contradictions that were so painfully illustrated to me by an abortion provider many years ago.

Watching the key moment of Left Behind brought to mind that whole incident. It’s Jesus or Universalism not some crazy cosmic hybrid of both.

Just Us Brothers Claim Brulte to Donate 10K to CIR

Today in my email, I received a copy of the Sutter-Yuba Republican Assembly minutes for their June 8th meeting. Not much of a surprise, The Just Us Brothers —George and Aaron Park—were the guest speakers at that evening’s festivities.

Prior to their May 30th ouster, the Just Us Brothers had already purged all references to this club from any CRA records and have been targeting this chapter for annexation into CIR. Understandably these guys in the Sutter Basin area feel isolated, because they were…by George and Aaron. As keepers of all chartering information for the statewide membership of CRA, it was an easy task for them to obliterate Sutter-Yuba RA from all official records. (The Parks did this to many other chapters in their last months in CRA.)

George and Aaron Park with Jeb Bush on 05-13-2015

While the minutes deserve more commentary in a future blog, the bombshell in the minutes was attributed to George Park who said

CIR has support of several legislators and Jim Brulte, the Chairman of the CA GOP, who has offered to donate $10,000 to ClR.

On June 8th, CIR consisted of five people: the three Park brothers (George, Aaron and John), Benita Gagne and the lowly Todd Blair. It is more than curious that Jim Brulte’s name would be invoked by the Just Us Brothers at this early date. As you recall, CIR did not even have a website up and running.

If this claim about Brulte is true it is problematic for many reasons.
• $10,000 is more than the State Party contributed to many of the Senate and Assembly candidates in the 2014 election cycle. Except for some targeted races, candidates were lucky if the State Party helped with the filing fee and ballot statement.
• $10,000 is more than the Party has given to CCR, CCC, CRA, Women’s Federated or any other volunteer group in the state in decades. If an unrecognized group with five statewide members can get this kind of cash from the Party, Brulte better be prepared to pony-up a lot more than that to other groups in the State.
• Where will this mythical $10,000 come from? Brulte has some discretionary funds he can direct but ultimately it must come from donors such as Charlie Munger. The Conservatives have their horses in this race already so only the “moderates” have walking around money for such a risky venture.

So as I see it, either the Just Us Brothers are spouting B.S. to try to impress their audience in the Sutter-Yuba RA or Jim Brulte has been outed as the “Angel” that is bankrolling the Park’s efforts to further divide Conservatives in California.

The one commonality in all this is that the Parks try to work using other folk’s money and not their own. Per Aaron’s admission, they have embezzled about $34,000 that we know of in the first half of 2015. These funds include
• Placer RA general fund ~$24K
• Placer PAC ~$4.5K
• CRA convention ~$5K
• CRA Business Roundtable ~$1.5K.

Oh, and in case you aren’t up on current affairs, I bet you didn’t hear the rest of the story about their early May 30th liquidation of the Placer Treasury. The money they voted to give to charity on May 30th was withdrawn from the bank ten days before the vote. Yeah, May 20th per the bank statement. Talk about fraud. They stole the money and then had a sham vote to cover their actions.

These guys are the real life Sharky and Grimma. They go from place to place trashing the Republican Shire wherever they tread and leave chaos and destruction in their wake.

Update 08-18-2015
In order to prompt those without the instinct to do the right thing, I submit the following additional comments:

Since clearing out the funds of Placer County RA on May 20th, to date Park has used the “E” word 18 times on his blog. The first time was on May 26th during a rant on Santa Clarita RA; the balance of times has been related to attacking Tom Hudson.

Instead of name calling let’s look at the description of Embezzlement and then let folks decide if it applies.

Elements common to embezzlement are as follows:
(1) the property must belong to a person other than the accused, such as an employer or principal;
(2) the property must be converted subsequent to the defendant’s original and lawful possession of it;
(3) the defendant must be in a position of trust, so that the property is held by him or her pursuant to some fiduciary duty; and
(4) the defendant must have an intent to defraud the owner at the time of the conversion.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/embezzlement

So Just Us Brothers, (1) if funds belonged to others such as Placer RA, (2) ya’ll controlled it because you were signers on the account and (3) had a fiduciary responsibility as an officer and (4) then defrauded the rightful owners you’re guilty.

As I see it, your only defense is produce receipts to justify how the money was spent.

Building Student Computer

People think I spend all my time documenting the exploits of the Just Us Brothers which just ain’t so. I spend most of my day with computers but mostly I’d rather be building them.

Recently I had to make a new computer for my daughter. She is an aspiring teacher about to enter her first year instructing third graders. I went to visit the classroom and found that the student computer in her room was a veritable antique. It was a 350 MHz computer with 198 MB of RAM running Windows 98 with a Novel network client. It was not connected to the school’s network. It was clear that this private school was living off the donations of others and needed some help.

I did a lot of research and decided that my best bang for the buck would be to get an AMD A8 processor—since it had CPU and video on the same chip—and then get a compatible motherboard and 4 GB of RAM.

I wanted a 32 bit version of Windows 7 as I deemed it would be the most backwards compatible. I went to my local Fry’s Electronics and bought these items plus a DVD Writer for $15. My budget was $200 and I spent $222 including tax for the four items that I purchased.

The computer was housed in an old case with a 430 watt power supply that I had out in the garage. Everything when together well until I tried to install the operating system and then the BSOD (blue screen of death) appeared about 14 percent of the way through the installation process. I tried two different hard drives and got the same result. Not knowing if the drives were bad, I had my wife pick up a new drive at Fry’s. The ones at my house were living for many years in the garage so they might be bad…

My wife got a 1 TB drive for about $50. I installed that and hoped for the best. BSOD.

I tried a different DVD drive and got the same result. BSOD.

A that point, I removed part of the RAM, and tried the installation with only one 2 GB stick of RAM. The installation worked! I then tried to install the drivers from the motherboard DVD. BSOD. Finally, the computer refused to boot into Windows; even after trying all restore points.

I then ran the memory checker on the Windows DVD. For the first time ever, the on screen message said that I had a hardware problem. I don’t run that utility very often but that was a disturbing result.

Instead of taking the time to troubleshoot the motherboard, CPU and RAM, I decided to return the whole mess, get a store credit and start over.

I checked Fry’s weekly ads and saw a motherboard/CPU combo for about $222. It was and Intel i5 with onboard video and an ASUS motherboard. I decided to go with this since it was $75 cheaper to get this combo than purchasing the items separately. I then had to get a 4GB memory stick. This set-up cost me an additional $81. (Of course the Fry’s closest to my house did not have the CPU in stock so I had to run to Roseville and get it there.)

I took everything home and installed it in the case. I turned on the power and surprise, it booted up into Windows 7. Yeah, the Windows install created on the AMD processor booted up on the Intel motherboard. (By the way, this has worked every time I have tried it. It’s a testimony to the diversity of Microsoft.) After a few reboots to load additional drivers, I installed the network drivers from the motherboard DVD and ran Windows update.

The hardest part was finding a 32 bit copy of Office in my house. We all use 64 bit programs when possible. I found an unused copy of Office 2010 and loaded that.

So now my daughter has an up to date computer. The computer even has the flag in the bottom corner asking if I wanted to upgrade to Windows 10. My own computer doesn’t even prompt me for that.

My take away from this is that AMD has a quality control problem. Anybody can manufacture a motherboard for their processors but whether it works properly or not is completely out of their control. All the AMD motherboards for which I could find reviews for the A Series processors were in the same situation. 60 percent of the reviews rate the motherboards as good and the other 40 percent were reporting that the boards were junk. AMD needs to get this issue in hand.

Oh, all motherboards mentioned in my review are by ASUS.