July 22, 2017

Trevor Noah: Sessions is an elf, not a genie! He couldnt predict he'd have to recuse himself.

Trevor Noah last night on Trump saying Sessions should have told him before he took the job that he would recuse:
"Why would you think Sessions could magically predict he would have to recuse himself after he took the job? He’s an elf, not a genie! He can’t do this. It’s not how his brain works. It’s not his magic."

http://www.cc.com/episodes/p6jc8w/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-july-20--2017---issa-rae-season-22-ep-22133

about the ten minute point
won't let me post video

July 20, 2017

Joy in for Chris Hayes. Just talked about T threatening Mueller. Next up more on this.

Just talked about McCain and after break going to NYT article RE T saying Mueller should not investigate his finances and extra meeting with Putin. Malcolm Nance on next.

July 19, 2017

"Secrets and Lies": the Trump-Russia scandal lands the cover of People magazine

People magazine has breathlessly covered the Trump family as celebrities for decades — even after Donald Trump won the presidency — to the ire of many. But on its latest cover, the weekly magazine notably changed course, blasting the "SECRETS & LIES" involved in the Trump campaign-Russia scandal.

The cover shows a photo of President Trump, his daughter Ivanka, son Donald Jr., and son-in-law Jared Kushner behind a large banner headline proclaiming “THE TRUMP FAMILY SECRETS & LIES.” Beneath the headline, it reads: “Donald Trump taught his children to fight dirty and win, no matter what the cost. How the ruthless family culture has shaped Don Jr., his siblings — and the Presidency.”

Despite statistics showing Trump voters care little about the first family’s contact with Russian government actors, the story’s prominence on a People cover indicates that the scandal has broken through to become relevant beyond the realm of political junkies, and is getting through to the average American consumer of news and entertainment. People boasts an audience of more than 41 million people, one of the largest of any American magazine, and is ubiquitous in a way many publications aren’t: People is available not only by subscription and in the magazine racks of bookstores and newsstands but also in the checkout racks at most major grocery chains.

In short: The editors of People are motivated to sell magazines, and the People covers, calling out from among racks of other magazines, are a major tool for selling them. Per reporting from the magazine data organization MagNet, in 2016, 373.2 million magazines were sold at newsstands and grocery store checkouts around the country. Time Inc., which owns People, was listed as the second-largest national distributor. If People’s editors didn’t think readers would be interested in this story, they wouldn’t have broken with their typical fawning coverage of the Trumps and pushed other go-to topics like the British royal family and Kardashian-related drama to the margins (literally).

More:
https://www.vox.com/2017/7/19/15997896/secrets-and-lies-trump-russia-scandal-people-magazine-cover

July 18, 2017

Great Sousa photos of our favorite president with Sasha & Malia

I always find it bittersweet to see a great photo of Obama, and that is probably the case for most of us. Sweet for what we had, but it makes the loss more acute to see such a photo.

July 18, 2017

Good New for Russia: 15 States Use Easily Hackable Voting Machines, Computer Experts Warn

Touch-screen machines can be programmed to change votes and are nearly impossible to audit, computer experts say.

WASHINGTON ― In 2006, Princeton computer science professor Edward Felten received an anonymous message offering him a Diebold AccuVote TS, one of the most widely used touch-screen voting machines at the time.

Manufacturers like Diebold touted the touch-screens, known as direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines, as secure and more convenient than their paper-based predecessors. Computer experts were skeptical, since any computer can be vulnerable to viruses and malware, but it was hard to get ahold of a touch-screen voting machine to test it. The manufacturers were so secretive about how the technology worked that they often required election officials to sign non-disclosure agreements preventing them from bringing in outside experts who could assess the machines.

Felten was intrigued enough that he sent 25-year-old computer science graduate student Alex Halderman on a mission to retrieve the AccuVote TS from a trenchcoat-clad man in an alleyway near New York’s Times Square. Felten’s team then spent the summer working in secrecy in an unmarked room in the basement of a building to reverse-engineer the machine. In September 2006, they published a research paper and an accompanying video detailing how they could spread malicious code to the AccuVote TS to change the record of the votes to produce whatever outcome the code writers desired. And the code could spread from one machine to another like a virus.

That was more than a decade ago, but Georgia still uses the AccuVote TS. The state is one of five ― the others are Delaware, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina ― that rely entirely on DREs for voting. Ten other states use a combination of paper ballots and DRE machines that leave no paper trail. Many use a newer version of the AccuVote known as the TSX ― even though computer scientists have demonstrated that machine, too, is vulnerable to hacking. Others use the Sequoia AVC Advantage, which Princeton professor Andrew Appel demonstrated could be similarly manipulated in a 2007 legal filing. Appel bought a Sequoia machine online for $82 and demonstrated that he could remove 10 screws and easily replace the Sequoia’s memory card with a modified version that would alter the outcome of an election.

Election security, typically a niche topic, emerged as a mainstream concern last summer after the Democratic National Committee announced that Russian hackers had penetrated its computer systems. The DNC hack was an early indication that Moscow had decided to interfere with the U.S. presidential election, raising alarms that Russian efforts could extend to the vulnerable touch-screen machines that record millions of votes around the country. By the time the cyberattack became public, it was too late to replace them, but in the year since the DNC hack revelations, there has been little tangible progress in securing America’s voting machines.



snip

Trump’s stance on election security makes it hard for Republicans to publicly advocate changes to voting machines, since doing so would imply that Russian interference, not voter fraud, was the main problem with last year’s election. Some Trump allies have followed the president’s lead on the Russia hacking issue ― including Kemp, who is now running for Georgia governor and recently told The Washington Post he doesn’t “necessarily believe” that Russia interfered with the 2016 elections.

snip

Much more; very important info:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/electronic-voting-machines-hack-russia_us_5967e1c2e4b03389bb162c96

July 14, 2017

What's so important to GOP that they'd throw their country under the bus to achieve their agenda?

I just read this is a Slate article:
If nothing else, Republican behavior—the extent to which the party is still powering through a hyper-partisan agenda, even as evidence of something untoward mounts—is an implicit statement that foreign interference is an acceptable path to partisan gain. At the risk of cliché, it normalizes outside meddling in American democracy. And the 2016 election won’t even be the end of Russian interference in our elections. There is real potential for further, more damaging hacking aimed at often-obsolete local election infrastructure. Preventing this is of national concern and requires cooperation from both sides at all levels of government. It requires both parties to show a commitment to the ideals of American democracy.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/07/republicans_are_downplaying_russia_at_great_risk.html?wpsrc=newsletter_tis&sid=589dfd6ebcb59c58118b45d5

So when I read the above, I asked myself, what could be so important to them that they were willing to go this route in the first place, and for those who are not complicit, to keep making excuses? Just what is it they hope to gain? More money? More power?

I guess I am falling for the trap I so often warn people about: they live in a parallel universe and it doesn't work to apply my values and my logic to their universe because all the rules and all the values are different there.

July 13, 2017

Rachel loaded with LOTS of weighty stuff tonight. Two new major scoops coming up.

TRump's lawyer might have to resign. Big article in Pro Publica with lots of dirt on him.

Scoops coming up. I will add edits as able.

If you don't have TV you can watch it live streaming here:
http://www.livenewschat.eu/politics/
You have to turn off any ad blocks, though.

Shane Harris WSJ coming up and also McClatchy reporter; Mike Pence's problems with explaining himself also coming up.

Edited to add:
Fox News today asked VP spokesman if Pence ever met with Russian representatives
Spokesman would not answer yes or no to repeated questions - did he or didn't he? Kept being evasive. Rachel said credit to Fox.
(So what will the base think? )

July 12, 2017

Christopher Wray Will Not Be Trump's Stooge (Slate)

Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director hasn’t even gotten through the first step of his confirmation process, and the president has already tried to use him.

Leon Neyfakh is a Slate staff writer.

You can be forgiven for not noticing: It happened on June 7, the morning before James Comey was set to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Trump surely knew how much anticipation had been building for Comey’s testimony, and he couldn’t have been happy about it. (When he said back in January that Comey had “become more famous than me,” he didn’t mean it in a nice way.) And so, Trump got on Twitter and broke a little news:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/872419018799550464
Despite all the normal caveats about how Trump may not be sophisticated enough to deploy tweets as a distraction mechanism, it’s hard to believe the timing here was an accident. More likely, Trump’s naming of Christopher Wray was meant to coincide with the avalanche of coverage the president knew was coming as soon as Comey was sworn in the next day. Like a lovelorn high school senior making a point of talking to his new girlfriend in front of an ex who’d dumped him, Trump looked to be projecting strength and steadiness. Have your little hearing, he seemed to be saying. I’ll just be over here with my new FBI director.

The move didn’t work. Wray, a total unknown outside the federal law enforcement community, was the furthest thing from a splashy “statement” pick. Instead of finding someone who might chart a defiant new course at the FBI—someone like Joe Lieberman, the former senator, who was reportedly under consideration before Wray got the nod—he’d settled on a former federal prosecutor who identified strongly with the institutional culture of the Justice Department and the FBI. In other words, he’d picked another James Comey.

Before Trump fired Comey, the president told his aides there was “something wrong with” the FBI director. It was an inscrutable comment, but it’s always seemed to me that the “something” Trump picked up on—Comey’s awkward reticence in the face of improper advances, his total refusal to play ball on Michael Flynn—was exactly the same “something” the FBI’s rank-and-file investigators had liked and respected about their boss. Given Wray’s long history at DOJ—he put in five years as an assistant U.S. attorney in Georgia working with Sally Yates, then five more in the halls of Main Justice working with Comey and Robert Mueller—I would bet that Wray has that something, too.

More:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/07/christopher_wray_will_not_be_trump_s_stooge.html?wpsrc=newsletter_tis&sid=589dfd6ebcb59c58118b45d5

July 12, 2017

Go rec EarlG's post for net neutrality on home page & sign petition! People seem to be missing it.

Graphic at top left of home page. There is a petition to sign. Only has 60 recs and it's been up there all day. Should have hundreds. I think maybe people don't realize it's a link to a thread.

Then rec this thread so people know to go rec his.

Net Neutrality is critical to freedom of anything and everything. But I am preaching to the choir.

Edited to add: Good! Now it's taking off. 7 more recs since I posted this ten minutes ago.

Kudos to EarlG, and all of you guys.

July 12, 2017

Highlights of Confirmation Hearing for Christopher Wray to Lead F.B.I. (NYT) (Comments on Russia)

• Mr. Wray, a former federal prosecutor in President George W. Bush’s administration and a criminal defense lawyer, is facing questions about whether he will maintain the bureau’s independence and resist pressure from the White House.

• Mr. Wray said that the investigation into Russian election interference and possible links to Mr. Trump’s campaign was not a “witch hunt,” separating himself from Mr. Trump’s repeated assertion.

snip

Mr. Wray tried to sidestep questions about the investigation into Russian election interference by a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who was director of the F.B.I. from 2001 to 2013.

But Mr. Wray acknowledged that he did not agree with Mr. Trump’s repeatedly assertion that the investigation was a “witch hunt.”

“I do not consider Director Mueller to be on a witch hunt,” Mr. Wray said.

snip

?t=15

More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/12/us/politics/christopher-wray-fbi-confirmation-hearing.html?emc=edit_nn_20170712&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=67712298&te=1