April 17, 2018

Just have to say this again: Obi Wan was SO wrong when he said you'll never find a more wretched

hive of scum and villainy. The hive just keeps getting bigger and more wretched by the day. You'd never be able to sell it as a movie. Too unbelievable.

April 14, 2018

Congress people saying illegal to bomb Syria w/o their approval. T just announced he's bombing??

What??? Two congress folks on Chris Hayes just said he has to get congressional approval to bomb and that it's illegal. But I guess this is just one more example of him being outside the law.

April 14, 2018

On Chris Hayes: Cohen is a fixer, not an attorney, and there is no client/fixer privilege.

Therefore, attorney / client privilege does not apply.

ANd if Trump pardons Cohen, Cohen can no longer take the fifth amendment.

April 11, 2018

Important point about framing gun debate at town hall with my state reps and senator

Last week I went to a town hall with my state rep and another from a neighboring district and my senator; all progressives, all wonderful; they do regular town halls and are very responsive to constituents. They have been on the right side of the gun debate all along and have always worked for better gun laws, but getting only incremental change each legislative session due to the amount of resistance.

It was my state rep and one from a neighboring district and my state senator. What I noticed is that they were very careful to always say "gun violence prevention" rather than "gun control." It wasn't automatic yet; sometimes they would start to say gun control and then change to gun violence prevention. There were two NRA types who started shouting when the gun issue came up; insisting the reps and senator wanted to take away the second amendment and generally spouting NRA talking points. The others in the audience told them to be quiet let the reps/senator answer the questions. I realized that "gun control" is like a red flag in front of a bull, and gun violence prevention is a much better way to frame it.

This is Oregon, and we have liberal Portland and then a whole bunch of rural areas in the eastern part of the state, so a lot of gun lovers.

On another note, one of the reps referred to the "tax deform bill." It has made it very difficult for them to figure out a state budget becasue nobody really knows what the tax bill does yet. They spent a lot of time talking about all the things they are having to do at the state level in response to all the craziness in DC. It has taken a lot of time away from what they would have been doing with state business if that were not the case.

April 10, 2018

You were wrong, Obi Wan. We have found a more wretched hive of skum and villainy.

April 7, 2018

Hillary 2004: "Without paper, voting machines could be programmed to help GOP steal elections"

Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Bob Graham co-sponsored a bill to require paper prior to the 2004 election because they saw the writing on the wall This is an excellent article that lays out all the problems and controversy around the introduction of paperless DREs.

I read this August of 2004 and knew then it was going to be stolen, along with a lot of other DUers. Now finally we have NYT publishing a video of a voting machine hack by a cyber security expert.
See https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210459183

It has been exceedingly difficult to get attention on this issue. Verified Voting has worked tirelessly since before the 2004 election and it was through their efforts that the NYT piece happened.


The Nation
How They Could Steal the Election This Time
Electronic counts, unaudited touch-screen ballots, enhance opportunities for fraud.
By Ronnie Dugger
July 29, 2004


In the US Senate seven Democrats and the one Independent are co-sponsoring a bill by Senators Bob Graham and Hillary Clinton to require paper trails on DREs by November, with a loophole for jurisdictions whose officials deem it to be technologically impossible. Clinton told the press that without a voter-verified paper trail GOP-leaning corporations might program voting machines to help Republicans steal elections [see sidebar, page 16]. In an interview in his hideaway office in the Capitol, Graham told me that he regards his and Clinton’s bill as so obviously needed that it’s “a no-brainer.” The absence of a paper trail on the DREs could endanger “the legitimacy” of November’s election, Graham said.

New Jersey Democrat Rush Holt introduced a House bill more than a year ago requiring a paper trail on DREs. It has 149 co-sponsors, including a few prominent Republicans. Holt says, “The verification has to be something that the voter herself or himself has to do”; without that, “we will never have a truly secure election.” Holt’s bill has opened up a partisan divide in the House. The chairman of the committee to which his bill is assigned, Ohio Republican Bob Ney, informed Holt that he is against the bill and would not allow a hearing on it. A few days later Graham and Holt wrote their fellow members of Congress that “without an independent, voter-verified paper trail, we will be able only to guess whether votes are accurately counted.” Last month Ney relented and scheduled two hearings. Holt plans to offer his bill as an amendment to the Treasury appropriation after Congress returns from its August recess. Graham is still mulling his strategy.

Much more:
https://www.thenation.com/article/how-they-could-steal-election-time/

And of course we know that much more than a paper trail is needed, but the point is a lot of people were on it way back then and trying to do something about it.

April 7, 2018

Brilliant Dutch comedy sketch on American gun love: "Nonsensical Rifle Addiction" (NRA)

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/9/16448302/guns-nra-sunday-lubach

April 7, 2018

NYT video "I hacked an election. So can the Russians." Voting machine hack by computer science prof.

Finally MSM is paying attention. Video at link - couldn't get it to post - if someone else can, please post.

https://www.facebook.com/nytopinion/videos/2135954899752788/

The New York Times Opinion Section on Thursday

A University of Michigan computer science professor shows just how easy it is to hack an election with voting machines when its archrival, The Ohio State University, wins a mock election.

Edited to add this, thanks to Elleng:

Tune In, Turn Out
I Hacked an Election. So Can the Russians.

It’s time America’s leaders got serious about voting security.
Published OnApril 5, 2018
Andrea Havis

By J. Alex Halderman
April 5, 2018

This video is part of a series on voting in America, which will run until Election Day in November. For more, see:

Part 1: On the importance of voting.
Part 2: On a court case over a Kansas voter registration law.
Part 3: On discriminatory voting laws.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/opinion/election-voting-machine-hacking-russians.html

Edited to add: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210462136
Hillary 2004: "Without paper, voting machines could be programmed to help GOP steal elections"

April 1, 2018

Pope Francis: "Dear young people, you have it in you to shout. It is up to you not to keep quiet."

March for Our Lives
Parkland students guest edit Guardian US
'The NRA are fearmongers': students excoriate gun group and politicians' lack of action

Very long snip, then this:

Meanwhile the pope seemed to refer to the demonstrations on Sunday when he addressed tens of thousands for a Palm Sunday service in St Peter’s Square.

“The temptation to silence young people has always existed,” Pope Francis said.

“There are many ways to silence young people and make them invisible. Many ways to anesthetize them, to make them keep quiet, ask nothing, question nothing. There are many ways to sedate them, to keep them from getting involved, to make their dreams flat and dreary, petty and plaintive.

“Dear young people, you have it in you to shout,” he said, without mentioning the anti-gun protests in the US directly. “It is up to you not to keep quiet. Even if others keep quiet, if we older people and leaders, some corrupt, keep quiet, if the whole world keeps quiet and loses its joy, I ask you: will you cry out?”

The young people in the crowd shouted: “Yes!”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/25/march-for-our-lives-parkland-students-excoriate-nra-politicians

April 1, 2018

The Parkland Teens Are Winning the Culture War

snip

Ingraham’s swift retreat is just the latest sign that, six weeks after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the gun reform movement is winning the cultural battle that must precede any sweeping political change.

snip

As the media-savvy students blanketed the airwaves with their eminently reasonable arguments, the big questions were whether the momentum they created could actually last, and, if it did, whether it might actually result in major changes to the country’s gun laws, a goal that has eluded activists for decades.

snip

Public opinion polls have emphasized this new reality, showing a marked trend toward more robust gun laws. As Vox’s Dylan Matthews notes, the polling shifts immediately after school shootings have traditionally been ephemeral. But, while it’s still early and surveys have varied, there are signs that Parkland may really be different. The surge in gun reform sentiment hasn’t faded as much as in previous instances, while some of the transformations in public opinion have been dramatic. One particularly striking Gallup poll, conducted in early March, showed that support for stricter gun laws stood at 67 percent, its highest level since 1993, and that 13 percent of Americans mentioned guns as the most important problem facing America, the highest number since the issue was first included in that question in 1994.

Another clear sign that the winds of opinion are changing is that right-wing commentators have largely abandoned their well-rehearsed talking points about guns themselves in favor of ad hominem attacks against the Florida students.

As conservative websites peddle outrage and easily disprovable conspiracy theories about the students, commentators like Ben Shapiro and Erick Erickson have adopted a strangely aggressive attitude toward David Hogg. Lesser residents of the fever swamps have followed suit with the insults. On Saturday, gun zealot and White House guest Ted Nugent said that the Parkland student activists are “soulless” liars, and Hollywood also-ran Frank Stallone called Hogg a “pussy.”

These brutal tactics seem likely to backfire, as they already have in the case of Ingraham. As the old political maxim goes: “If you’re personally attacking the survivors of a school shooting, you’re losing.”

In the past, the NRA has been able to exert so much sway not because of its money, but because of the passion it stirs among members, which in turn terrifies Republican lawmakers nationwide. Taken together, the shifts in culture since February 14 show that the Parkland students have supercharged the gun reform movement that gained steam after the shootings at Sandy Hook in 2012. For the first time in recent memory, gun reform advocates have a clear advantage on the raw emotional terrain of America’s gun debate. Given the country’s entrenched gun culture and the natural advantages its political system hands rural voters, it was always going to take this kind of deafening, concerted outrage to seriously challenge a gun-rights movement that has expertly redefined what it means to own a firearm.

More:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/the-parkland-teens-are-winning-the-culture-war.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nymag%2Fintelligencer+%28Daily+Intelligencer+-+New+York+Magazine%29