March 2018 - luv-talk

Fwd: Intel's Management Technology is indeed vulnerable
by Douglas Ray 17 Oct '19

17 Oct '19

Firmware remote vulnerability in Intel business products -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Intel's Management Technology is indeed vulnerable Date: Tue, 2 May 2017 19:49:54 +0200 (CEST) From: I love OpenBSD <lampshade(a)poczta.fm> To: misc(a)openbsd.org INTEL-SA-00075 There is an escalation of privilege vulnerability in Intel® Active Management Technology (AMT), Intel® Standard Manageability (ISM), and Intel® Small Business Technology versions firmware versions 6.x, 7.x, 8.x 9.x, 10.x, 11.0, 11.5, and 11.6 that can allow an unprivileged attacker to gain control of the manageability features provided by these products. Can I preview a bitlink before clicking on it? https://support.bitly.com/hc/en-us/articles/230650447-Can-I-preview-a-bitli… Arstechnica: http://bit.ly/2qyHCQn Semiaccurate: http://bit.ly/2pB2MjO Intel's PDF: http://intel.ly/2qAK4G0

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Take action: Don’t send 267 people back to offshore detention
by Peter Ross 28 Oct '18

28 Oct '18

http://bit.ly/1R3MiYB Maybe Australians can avoid another "Sorry" fifty years later this time. Thanks Peter

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Re: [luv-talk] Does Australia Need a Donald Trump?
by Mark Trickett 24 Mar '18

24 Mar '18

Hello Rick, Trent and Russell I would not call Abbot an Arsehole, that is assigning him purpose and function, and I think he has no valid purpose or function. Tom Switzer has a program on Radio national, "Between The Lines", where he tries to think, but fails to think things through. He is one of John Howard's "Right Wing Phillip Adams", a delusion as Phillip Adams is a thoughtful intellectual who happens to sound "Left Wing". It is good to hear someone from the nominal "Right" trying to think, but I wish they would actually think things through. They accuse the "Left" of being ideological, when they are actually so ideological as to make the "Left" look pragmatic. On 3/23/18, Trent W. Buck via luv-talk <luv-talk(a)luv.asn.au> wrote: > Rick Moen via luv-talk wrote: >> [Terry] also forwards Forteana. > > For lurkers unfamiliar with this Americanism, > > | Charles Fort (1874 – 1932) was an American writer and researcher who > specialized in anomalous phenomena. > | The terms Fortean and Forteana are sometimes used to characterize various > such phenomena. As to what is anomalous in this day and age, there is so much out there that it is becoming a moot point. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortean#Fortean_phenomena > > cf. http://www.weeklyworldnews.com > (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekly_World_News) Regards, Mark Trickett

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(forw) Re: [skeptic] Fw: [New post] Does Australia Need a Donald Trump?
by Rick Moen 24 Mar '18

24 Mar '18

'Catallaxy Files' is an Australian supposed right-libertarian blog site. Terry Colvin, a retired US military chap living in Thailand, sometimes sees fit to forward its blog postings to the Skeptic mailing list. ----- Forwarded message from "Terry W. Colvin" <fortean1(a)mindspring.com> ----- Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2018 17:27:09 +0700 (GMT+07:00) From: "Terry W. Colvin" <fortean1(a)mindspring.com> To: Skeptic <skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com> Subject: [skeptic] Fw: [New post] Does Australia Need a Donald Trump? X-Mailer: EarthLink Zoo Mail 1.0 Reply-To: "Terry W. Colvin" <fortean1(a)mindspring.com> -----Forwarded Message----- From: Catallaxy Files Sent: Mar 22, 2018 3:01 PM To: fortean1(a)mindspring.com Subject: [New post] Does Australia Need a Donald Trump? Sinclair Davidson posted: "DOES AUSTRALIA NEED A DONALD TRUMP? With Tom Switzer, Parnell McGuinness, James Morrow and Miranda Devine Join us after work for drinks and canapes in Sydney on April 3 as we debate whether Australia needs a disruptive leader like Donald Trump. " New post on Catallaxy Files [bla] Does Australia Need a Donald Trump? [2e8639] by Sinclair Davidson DOES AUSTRALIA NEED A DONALD TRUMP? With Tom Switzer, Parnell McGuinness, James Morrow and Miranda Devine Join us after work for drinks and canapes in Sydney on April 3 as we debate whether Australia needs a disruptive leader like Donald Trump. He has turned US politics upside-down by mocking the media, provoking critics, cutting bureaucracies, setting ambitious targets and pursuing them with the unpredictability of a world-class negotiator. By doing so, Donald Trump has revived investment, employment, share prices, consumer confidence and US global power, not to mention grass-roots patriotism. Australian politicians, meanwhile, are constrained by Canberran conventions. Could we use a maverick? Could a shrewd outsider with a showbiz streak do to Australia what Trump has done for the US? Join us as our two panels - Miranda Devine and James Morrow (for) and Tom Switzer and Parnell McGuinness (against) - imagine the consequences. DATE: Tuesday, 3 April 2018, 6pm-8pm VENUE: Hudson House, Level 15, 131 Macquarie Street, Sydney COST: $30 pp/ $15 members. Click here to book ENQUIRIES: Please contact James Mathias at events(a)menziesrc.org or (02) 6273 5608. Sinclair Davidson | March 22, 2018 at 7:01 pm | URL: https://wp.me/ pScng-kSX Comment See all comments Unsubscribe to no longer receive posts from Catallaxy Files. Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://catallaxyfiles.com/2018/03/22/does-australia-need-a-donald-trump/ * _______________________________________________ skeptic mailing list skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/skeptic To reach the listadmin, mail rick(a)linuxmafia.com ----- End forwarded message ----- ----- Forwarded message from Kevin France <kevinfrance0a(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2018 11:11:31 +0000 From: Kevin France <kevinfrance0a(a)gmail.com> To: Skeptic <skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com> Subject: Re: [skeptic] Fw: [New post] Does Australia Need a Donald Trump? No one fucking needs Donald Trump. _______________________________________________ skeptic mailing list skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/skeptic To reach the listadmin, mail rick(a)linuxmafia.com ----- End forwarded message ----- ----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> ----- Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2018 05:59:40 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> To: skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com Subject: Re: [skeptic] Fw: [New post] Does Australia Need a Donald Trump? Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. I note with appreciation my learned colleague Kevin France's comment. ;-> Further: Quoting Terry W. Colvin (fortean1(a)mindspring.com) citing Sinclair Davidson at Catallaxy Files: > Sinclair Davidson posted: "DOES AUSTRALIA NEED A DONALD TRUMP? With Tom > Switzer, Parnell McGuinness, James Morrow and Miranda Devine Join us after > work for drinks and canapes in Sydney on April 3 as we debate whether > Australia needs a disruptive leader like Donald Trump. " There are multiple errors in the question. First, the Toddler-in-Chief is nothing like a leader. He is merely a talentless hereditary mafia don (pun not entirely intended), an infantile third-rater. Second, the correct word is not 'disruptive' but rather chaotic. He doesn't even serve his _own_ agenda, because he doesn't have one. > He has turned US politics upside-down by mocking the media, provoking > critics, cutting bureaucracies, setting ambitious targets and pursuing them > with the unpredictability of a world-class negotiator. Third, that's not turning US politics upside-down, but rather introducing a great deal of noise and debasing (his portion of) public discourse, along with emboldening Neo-Nazis and misogynists. Fourth, it's turned out he's an absolutely abysmal negotiator, who merely lied about that along with just about literally everything else. > By doing so, Donald Trump has revived investment, employment, share > prices, consumer confidence and US global power, not to mention > grass-roots patriotism. He's done none of those things, actually. Economic indicators are declining, US global power is in tatters and the nation an international laughing-stock, and the only patriotism he's inspired is among those inspired to put an early end to his incompetent misrule. > Australian politicians, meanwhile, are constrained by Canberran > conventions. It's called a functional parliamentary democracy. Fscking it up by inviting a small-handed banana-republic strongman to seize power would be an epic own goal, and if I didnt't already know from repeated forwards that Catallaxy Files is the redoubt of morons, this suggestion would have proved it. _______________________________________________ skeptic mailing list skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/skeptic To reach the listadmin, mail rick(a)linuxmafia.com ----- End forwarded message -----

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Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Trent W. Buck 20 Mar '18

20 Mar '18

Russell Coker wrote: > On Saturday, 17 March 2018 4:08:46 PM AEDT Trent W. Buck via luv-talk wrote: > > Russell Coker wrote: > > > So 72.7% of Australians can't follow politics in non-English countries > > > easily. > > That's like saying most Mexicans can't follow US politics because USA > > is an English-speaking country, and they only speak Spanish. > > Mexicans who don't speak English will find it difficult to follow US politics. Even though there's a huge Spanish-speaking minority in USA? :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language_in_the_United_States "United States [is] the third-largest Hispanophone country in the world, after Mexico and Colombia." I think it's easier for a Mexican to follow the politics of USA than the politics of Spain. My point was to poke holes in your (apparent) implication that because Australia is an English-majority country, we can only understand and hang out with other English-majority countries, and (therefore) that Mexico and USA can't understand one another because USA is English-majority and Mexico is Spanish-majority. > Of course there will be significant interest in US politics given how much US > politics matters to them, compared to Spain for example where they can easily > follow the news but it won't matter much to them. > > Why do you think it's at all controversial that the US has a major > influence on Australia? That was not my intention. You initially started talking about the US, and when I asked why, you said (paraphrasing) they're a shit anglophone country, and when I asked why you focused on anglos, you said (paraphrasing) they're the only ones we have a relationship with. So I was like: "hang on, yes, we interact with the US, but not ONLY them. China drives our economic policies and Indonesia drives our military policies". > Having a PM elected by parliament instead of an elected president > makes a significant difference to politics. Er, if you mean here in Australia, AFAIK the way it works is this: 1. party X elects a leader Y (i.e. only party X members vote) 2. party X gets a majority of seats 3. party X goes to the Queen (via GG) and says Dear Queenie, We'd like to form a government, with Y as your PM, is that OK? 4. The Queen (via GG) rubber-stamps it (unless she's REALLY REALLY REALLY angry). In this system, if the ALP has a majority, other elected MPs (e.g. from the Greens or Nationals) have no say in who the PM is.

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Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Rick Moen 19 Mar '18

19 Mar '18

Quoting Russell Coker (russell(a)coker.com.au) > I watched Yes Minister when it was first on air. I haven't watched House of > Cards, I'll watch the British original (thanks Rick). Yr. very welcome. The best part is Ian Richardson's performance. His Uruquart has had enough of being taken for granted, used as a reliable enforcer but never allowed his just reward by (Tory) party leaders, and he decides to get revenge by systematically conniving his way to the top seat no matter how many lives must be destroyed, getting there. Uruquart frequently breaks the fourth wall and confides to us, the unseen audience as he does this. Also, the black humour of how the Tories, now in power, blithely ignore societal problems they find inconvenient, is done wittily. But, at the time of its release, the first run of episodes benefited from insanely lucky timing (through dumb luck): Episode one aired the very day that The Iron Lady, Ms. Thatcher, was suddenly ousted, ending the UK's longest Prime Ministership, from within her own party -- and, hours later, the character Uruquart is opening his first scene with an ironic comment on the 10 Downing Street upheaval that put his faction into power: 'Nothing lasts forever.' With arched eyebrow. The plotline seemed almost ripped from headlines. It'd reported that all activity around Whitehall stopped when BBC1 aired each new episode. > Having a PM elected by parliament instead of an elected president > makes a significant difference to politics. Mark Latham showed > himself to be mentally incapable of properly fulfilling the duties of > a PM shortly after losing the election. One can only speculate as to > how long he might have lasted if Labor had won, but the fact that > Labor only needed a no-confidence vote to remove him (as opposed to > impeachment which among other things requires admitting culpability at > a party level) would have made it much different than the issues with > Trump. Perhaps you can clarify that reference to 'at a party level', as I'm not sure what you mean. Strictly speaking, the process of impeachment (indictment) of government officials in and by the House of Representatives, followed if indictments ensue by trial where all 100 Senators form a jury, is done entirely without reference to political parties, as the latter have no official recognition anywhere in the US Federal framework.. More figuratively speaking, it is of course awkward and unpalatable for leaders of a party in the House to indict fellow party members, particularly the heads of the Executive Branch (Pres. and VP). You might have meant that. The current severely (historically) gerrymandered House is artificially dominated by the GOP, which in turn continue to (apparently) fear Trumplandia voters punishing any failure to cover for The Toddler's transgressions, and so are in effect held hostage to his takeover. It is inconceivable for said lot to charge either The Toddler or his scary mediaeval-minded henchman, Vice-President Mike Pence. However, strong winds of change may blow in from the November mid-term elections. There are multiple signs the House GOP expect a massive Democratic Party wave to throw the out of power and decisively overturn their control despite the gerrymandering advantage. What a House with a strong Democratic majority would do is a wholly different question.

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Political parties in the USA (are different)
by Rick Moen 18 Mar '18

18 Mar '18

As an addendum to the earlier long rundown about how the United States has been unraveling, I should further clarify what political parties _are_ in the USA, because my European friends from parliamentary countries (not sure about you with your 'washminster' hybrid model) are continually astonished when I explain the matter. A UK voter, to be a member of a political party, pays a fee, fills out an application, and then can cast votes for the party's 'list' of candidates for the Parliament in Westminster. The party has the prerogative of ousting individual voters as members in extreme cases of unsuitability. Parties have official recognition, and form coalitions following each major election to seek enough seats to support a stable government, embodied in the Cabinet and the PM, approaching the Queen in her capacity as head of state to propose a new 'government' (cabinet with PM) when a working coalition has enough votes to survive vote-of-confidence polls. In the USA, voters often speak of being 'members' of some political party, but that is entirely misleading. No party _really_ has official recognition at all. The Founding Fathers had no idea they would arise after independence and drafting of the Constitution. When parties spontaneously arose as an emergent effect of the government framework adopted, the Founding Fathers were dismayed and condemned them as the sin of 'faction', which of course did nothing to dismantle them. A USA political party is a self-governing and self-perpetuating private association that backs and helps raise funds for certain candidates affiliated with the party. Once in office, a politician may drop that affiliation if he/she wishes. Some such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Joe Lieberman have disaffiliated themselves with their original parties and declared themselves 'independent', yet generally 'caucused with' (voted and worked with) their former parties. My state, California, has lately had better (in the sense of less misleading) official terminology than most: In registering to vote, I can (and did) declare a 'party preference', in my case the Democratic Party. By doing so, I pay no fees to the Democratic Party or anyone else, and have no obvious power to contribute to setting California Democratic Party policies or priorities. (They'll happily accept my money, but I'll get only 'trust us' in return.) My declaring a party preference permits me to vote in 'primary elections' for 'partisan offices' among Democratic Party candidates to choose which of the set of Democrats for a given 'partisan' office (e.g., governor of the state of California) shall become the party's standard-bearer to advance to the subsequent 'general election' competing against the standard-bearers of other parties. Currently and for over 100 years, the only two USA political parties with significant potential to hold office have been the Democratic Party and the Republican Party (the latter nicknamed the Grand Old Party aka GOP). Minor parties exist in many states, e.g., in California _four_ other parties routinely generate enough primary election votes that California is willing to pay for ballots for them in primary elections, but none is strong enough to win any office except extremely rarely, hence affiliating with them (declaring a 'preference' for a minor party in primary elections) is an ideological statement rather than a pragmatic choice. (This is because of a phenomenon called Duverger's Law, http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#duverger, 'The simple-majority single-ballot system favours the two-party system.') Minor US parties tend to be laboratories for development and promotion of ideas, lacking as they do the ability to (normally) win offices. California's arrangements to de-facto 'recognise' political parties if they have recently roused enough primary votes (and to gain initial recognition upon submitting enough voter names on a petition) is an uneasy compromise in recognition of political reality even though the parties are NOT, when all is said and done public institutions but rather private committees. The parties predated California's formation as a state in 1850, so they had to be accomodated. The rationale of how the state treats them is that primary elections occur anyway for reasons having nothing to do with the parties, e.g. for non-partisan offices and voter initiatives, so adding ballot support for 'recognised' parties effectively costs almost nothing more, and if enough voters wish a given party to have such a de-minimus subsidy, why not? Under California's election regulations, each party may decide whether or not 'no party preference' or other-party-preference voters may elect their primary ballots and participate in selecting the party's candidates advancing to the general election. Each party can adjust its policies in this area before any given primary election. For the June 2016 primary election, California's Republican Party permitted ONLY voters with registered Republican Party affiliation to vote in its primary. The Green and Peace & Freedom minor parties adopted parallel policies (only our voters may vote in our primary). California's Democratic Party permitted its own and no-party-preference voters to participate in its primary races. Minor parties American Independent and Libertarian adopted parallel policies (our own and unaffiliated voters may vote in our primary). Few California voters really understand that odd setup. I documented it as part of my comprehensive guide to the June 2016 primary election, here: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/election-2016-06-07.html#primaries Each of the 50 USA states regulates and almost-sort-of-recognises political parties in its own idiosyncratic way, but California's is the one I know best and care about, so it's the one I've studied and documented. I as a Democratic Party-preference voter remain entirely free to vote for the Republican candidate for a 'partisan' office (e.g, governor, state treasurer, and many other state, Federal, and local offices) in the general election following a primary election -- or in theory for the Libertarian, Peace & Freedom, American Independent, or Green candidates, too. On occasion, I have voted for a Republican Party candidate over the Democratic Party one in a general election, specifically in cases where the Republican candidate was the 'clean government' option and the Democratic candidate's history was more suspect. (This has happened often enough to mention, but not often.)

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Re: [luv-talk] [skeptic] Another rat flees the rapidly-sinking SS Trump
by Rick Moen 17 Mar '18

17 Mar '18

[same thing, except better copy-edited to expunge some possibly confusing gaffes] In which I recap Yank political follies for you, my Oz friends, once more. In case the jibe is unfamiliar, 'Faux News' is a US-familiar taunt denoting Murdoch-owned far-right mouthpiece cable television's supposed news organisation Fox News. They have long claimed to be 'fair and balanced', a cheeky claim that fools nobody except perhaps the 27.2% of the Nov. 2016 electorate who voted Trump/Pence. (28.4% voted Clinton/Kaine, and 3.4% voted third-party, but the decisive faction was the 41.0% who didn't vote.) ----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> ----- Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2018 14:15:56 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> To: skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com Subject: Re: [skeptic] Another rat flees the rapidly-sinking SS Trump Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. Quoting Wade T Smith (skepticus(a)earthlink.net) > So, here it is, March 17th (amateur night, doncha know), and that’s > two days after the Ides of March. > > Obviously, no Brutuses amongst us. > > Bruti? Many Bruti with many knives would be required, not just one, _if_ that non-democratic remedy were ever the solution -- a second civil war -- because The Toddler-in-Chief and his Administration are, when all is said and done, irritating and continually boggling (and corrosive to the Republic), but a mostly ineffective reality-TV chaos sideshow, and not the real problem. (Say I, at least.) Which is to say, you're about to hear my What the Hell Happened to the United States quick-take. (I will also review some basics, as I have a mind to forward this to a group of my Australian friends.) It all traces back to way, way too much money in politics (thank you, Citizens United Supreme Court decision for turning a small trickle of corruption into the Johnstown Flood of corruption), and the plot to 'get' Bill Clinton through both Special Prosecutors (thank you, Ken Starr), and the weaponising of Congressional politics and poisoning of Congress's Executive Branch relations under any GOP majority with any Democratic President (thank you, Newt Gingrich). Under Gingrich, the House of Representatives (in particular) GOP majority was incredibly upset that Bill Clinton's ability to grab the centre of American politics empowered him and permitted him to start fixing Reagan's twisting of institutions and, worse, start appointing Supreme Court justices to have a lasting effect. Gingrich was the first of a new and growing breed of GOP leaders who want to overpower all opposition at all cost, and to have discarded compromise and democratic values. You may recall he was so determined to destroy the Clinton Administration that he literally defunded and shut down the Federal government for the first time ever. His intellectual heirs are the detested Ted Cruz, and Mitch McConnell the traitor. The government shutdown backfired in the short term, but showed GOP extremists they could conduct sabotage without being removed from office and pointed to the outer darkness. Meanwhile, the GOP extremists supported Special Prosecutor Ken Starr in his futile and stupid effort to remove Bill Clinton from office, settling for a consolation goal of reducing his administration's effectiveness while under attack. Although the Faux News propaganda narrative of moral equivalency between GOP extremism and (supposed) equal and opposite Democratic Party extremism is a barefaced lie, the Democrats have not had clean hands through this corrosion of politics. Honest and endearingly old-time conservative analyst David Frum listed some of the ways the Democrats have acted to worsen the partisan divide in his recent book _Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic_, which I recommend highly. I would add the extreme politicising of hearings for Supreme Court appointees, which started with the 1987 hearings over Reagan-appointed extremist ideologue Robert Bork. Bork was a disaster, but was totally, clearly _qualified_ for the post, and so it was a jarring and destructive break from all of American tradition for Democrats to deprive Reagan of his (foolish) choice. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/the-sad-legacy-of-robe… There were never ideological litmus tests in Judiciary Committee hearings on Supreme Court appointees _before_ that. Since then, always and every time. The avalanche of money created the lunatic Tea Party as an astroturf (faux grassroots) far-right organising effort (and a branding concept rather than a party). This was actually just cover for finding gullible & trollable citizens and siphoning their donations money, hence was shut down when the targets _ran out_ of funds (I'm not joking), but was a harbinger of lunatic combines and astroturfing to come (Faux News, far-right believer online forums, the Freedom Caucus). The Democratic Party remained, throughout this process, a diverse coalition with modest goals, still aligned with pluralist democratic values, civil rights, and support for (and by) labour unions, but also undisciplined and gutless. To the best of my recollection, the only significant shift in its carefully moderate agenda was a late embrace of marriage equality (same-sex marriage) after the tide of public opinion already lurched in its favour. By contrast, the Republican Party became by degrees more militant and ideologically purist, with moderates (and principled conservatives such as David Frum) being forced out. Worst of all, top leadership became fixated with gaining and perfecting single party rule at any cost. After eight years of right-leaning but surprisingly steady by current standards (other than the horrible war thing) George W. Bush -- who at least, for all his faults, would not tolerate anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant idiocy -- the Republican aspirations for one-party rule were set back horribly by the surprising emergence of Barack Hussein Obama, who trounced GOP standard-bearers John McCain in 2008 and then Mitt Romney in 2012. In response, yet more dirty money poured in (especially from the toxic Koch Brothers) and the GOP turned in desperation to attempting outright sabotage and de-legitimising the new President, far _more_ than they did with Bill Clinton. Their near-total failure to destroy Obama drove the GOP and its craziest voters into greater psychosis including open racism and anti-religious bigotry (Obama's middle name didn't help), not to mention anti-immigrant demagogery. In the latter regard, to their credit, GOP leaders attempted to prevent that specific craziness, as reflected in their remarkably thoughtful 2013 97-page report on the Romney defeat, 'Growth and Opportunity Project', popularly called the GOP 'Autopsy Report'. This is where the GOP mandarins noted gravely the ongoing demographic shift where a massive number of legitimate citizen voters who are children of recent Hispanic immigrants, among others, were making the United States for the first time _truly_ multiracial and multicultural, to a degree it never has quite been before. In particular, it was no longer the case that Caucasian voters were an absolute majority, but just one huge ingredient in the melting pot among many. The Autopsy Report strongly urged reform of GOP policies towards immigrants lest all these newer voters create a permanent Democratic Party majority, and leaders began adopting all of its wise recommendations. But then, a low-cost but accidentally effective sabotage effort changed everything: This was Project REDMAP, Redistricting Majority Project, created in 2010 to take advantage of a unique, historic opportunity occasioned by decennial redistricting for both state and Federal offices _combined_ with unprecedentedly effective computer modeling, to do gerrymandering an order of magnitude more effective than ever before. This project cost only $18m, a pittance, was effective beyond Republicans' wildest dream, and has (ironically) made them captive of their own success. For reasons I'll explain, this plot twist forced them into extremism, killed the Autopsy Report reforms, and enabled The Toddler's bizarre takeover of the GOP. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-red… But first, the unplanned success of Project REDMAP didn't _merely_ give Republicans artificial, undemocratic dominance in dozens of states and the US House of Representatives, but also created a deep reservoir of _crazy extremist_ GOP politicians in state houses and Congress's lower house, by making their newly gerrymandered districts 'safe' against non-GOP challenge: When a seat is so protected against Democratic and independent challengers that moderate policies aren't necessary to win, the looniest, most far-right, least pluralist GOP candidate tends to gain and hold that office. This emergent effect, more than anything else, made the Autopsy Report policies a dead letter, starting around 2015, as the GOP, while knowing this would be a long-term catastrophe, was forced by Freedom Caucus loonies to abandon the report's wise recommendations and about-face against them. Captive of its REDMAP-enabled lunatic fringe, the GOP still greatly feared being swept away by the future Democratic Party wave the Autopsy Report warned against and tried to avert, but now it was forced into stronger measures in place of Autopsy Report reforms. First up was outright appeal to (previously latent) racism and xenophobia, the best weapon against Obama; and misogyny, the best weapon against Hilary Clinton. The GOP tried and failed to sabotage Obama's first term, and he managed to pass an overhaul of health insurance (directly copying GOP Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's 'Romneycare' health insurance reform that originated in the right-wing Heritage Foundation) despite GOP refusal to participate. By now, REDMAP had transformed enough House districts that a large House GOP majority joined a bare Senate GOP majority in 2012, and the effort to neuter Obama's Executive Branch redoubled. Obama kept trying fruitlessly for a while to work out a bipartisan relationship with Congress, and eventually gave up and attempted reforms through Executive Branch orders _only_, having been left no other options. In this, he further enraged the GOP power-politics supremacists by transgressing norms and infringing on Congress's prerogatives. For example, the pre-2012 Obama had honestly admitted that he alone had no constitutional power to give relief against deportation to 'dreamers', American young people born abroad and brought to the USA by unauthorised immigrant parents, thus in violation of immigration law through no personal fault and knowing no country but the United States. (Congress alone could enact the necessary reforms.) The post-2012 Obama reversed course and decreed 'DACA', Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, through an Executive Order despite his earlier statement that this would unconstitutional, because the extremist-controlled Congress refused to pass the DREAM Act or take any other action. (Even with the justification of empathy towards enormously admirable, blameless young immigrants, Democratic President Obama, though this wrongful action and others, drove the militant GOP further into psychopathy.) The money-corruption problem continued to worsen. Koch Brothers money was now joined by that of radical-right billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebecca, who saw a chance to disassemble the regulatory state through the right extremist presidential candidate. Their standard bearer was the hated Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. When his campaign imploded, they switched to bizarre junk-television celebrity, multiple failed businessman and spectacularly failed business owner, one-time slumlord, and conduit for ex-Soviet money-laundering money Donald John Trump. Trump promoted himself with the tired, stupid line that he'd run America 'like a business' -- and some people failed to notice that his business was a _family_ business empire in which enforced secrecy (strong NDAs) covers up criminality and incompetence, with the sole sacred duty being personal loyalty not to the business but to The Toddler himself. GOP mandarins were appalled by The Toddler's multifaceted severe failings -- he's a malignant narcissist, he's a-literate and cannot even read a one-page memo or be taught the basics of his office, he has no policies (only intuition-driven urges), he drives away all but third-raters willing to abase themselves and show total loyalty (that is never returned) (this being why competent lawyers will not work for him) -- but the GOP by this time was carried along, hostage. The point is that The Toddler isn't _competent_ evil, but rather spastic and borderline self-defeating evil. If Mitch McConnell and Robert Mercer are Vito Corleone, The Toddler is merely Fredo. Trump's damage to the Executive Branch has been severe and ongoing, but amateur. In computer-security terms, it can be compared to a fuzzing probe of a codebase, trying semi-random nonsense inputs to government processes, to find unsuspected avenues of attack. The GOP in Congress, haunted by the prospect of being swept away by a Democratic wave driven by both revulsion and demographic shifts, in desperation crossed the Rubicon into outright treason with Putin and his captive oligarchs and well-funded hacking teams -- as did, of course, to a much greater and less well-concealed degree, The Toddler. One of the few areas The Toddler has done competent damage is by packing Federal judgeships solely with far-right loons whose names were tendered by the extremist Federalist Society. That will be a long-term problem. Fixing this situation, preferably without knives, will require a large purge of traitors, correcting the REDMAP 'ratf*cking' of district boundaries (the GOP apparatchiks' own term), and somehow overturning Citizens United. This repair, I fear, will take depressingly long, even if the traitors are swept away. But my point is, The Toddler is just a psychotic blip, madly waving his tiny little hands and distracting from the larger problem. My view, yours for a small fee.[tm] _______________________________________________ skeptic mailing list skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/skeptic To reach the listadmin, mail rick(a)linuxmafia.com ----- End forwarded message ----- ----- End forwarded message ----- ----- End forwarded message -----

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(forw) [skeptic] Cambridge Analytica Suspended From Facebook
by Rick Moen 17 Mar '18

17 Mar '18

Another case in point. Note that they don't even _try_ to avoid looking like Bond villains. Pity that Japanese volcano used as the supposed location of SPECTRE headquarters in 'You Only Live Twice' just blew up, or they could have moved there. ----- Forwarded message from Ben Avery <bavery715(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2018 16:53:21 -0400 From: Ben Avery <bavery715(a)gmail.com> To: skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com Subject: [skeptic] Cambridge Analytica Suspended From Facebook Facebook has suspended Cambridge Analytica (the Trump campaign's data firm) and its parent Strategic Communication Laboratories because they acquired user data in way that violated Facebook's terms of service (and likely violated British privacy law) https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/03/suspending-cambridge-analytica/ Facebook is trying really hard to minimize this. While the release says 270,000 people used the app, data of friends of those people was also acquired so the number affected is likely in the hundreds of millions. When Facebook found out that CA/SCL had this data they asked for certificate of destruction...and that was the entirety of follow-up until they recently heard the data wasn't destroyed. The guy who created the app us to get the data is one Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, who is a Russia/American dual national who in addition to a postion at Cambridge University is also a professor at St. Petersburg University. He also, I kid you not, changed his name to Dr. Spectre for a while. https://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/people/ak823%40cam.ac.uk The New York Times has more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-trump-ca… The Guardian has a profile on Christopher Wylie, the data nerd who helped built CA and now regrets it: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistleblower-christo… -- Ben Avery bavery715(a)gmail.com <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campai…> Virus-free. www.avast.com <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campai…> <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2> _______________________________________________ skeptic mailing list skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/skeptic To reach the listadmin, mail rick(a)linuxmafia.com ----- End forwarded message -----

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(forw) Re: [skeptic] Another rat flees the rapidly-sinking SS Trump
by Rick Moen 17 Mar '18

17 Mar '18

In which I recap Yank political follies for Oz friends, once more. In case the jibe is unfamiliar, 'Faux News' is a US-familiar taunt denoting Murdoch-owned far-right mouthpiece cable television supposed news organisation Fox News. They have long claimed to be 'fair and balanced', a cheeky claim that fools nobody except perhaps the 27.2% of the Nov. 2016 electorate who voted Trump/Pence. (28.4% voted Clinton/Kaine, and 3.4% voted third-party, but the decisive faction was the 41.0% who didn't vote at all,) ----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> ----- Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2018 14:15:56 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> To: skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com Subject: Re: [skeptic] Another rat flees the rapidly-sinking SS Trump Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. Quoting Wade T Smith (skepticus(a)earthlink.net) > So, here it is, March 17th (amateur night, doncha know), and that’s > two days after the Ides of March. > > Obviously, no Brutuses amongst us. > > Bruti? Many Bruti with many knives would be required, not just one, if that non-democratic remedy were ever the solution -- a second civil war -- because The Toddler-in-Chief and his Administration are, when all is said and done, irritating and continually boggling (and corrosive to the Republic), but a mostly ineffective reality-TV chaos sideshow and not the real problem. (Say I, at least.) Which is to say, you're about to hear my What the Hell happened to the United States quick-take. (I will also review some basic, as I have a mind to forward this to s group of my Australian friends.) It all traces back to way, way too much money in politics (thank you, Citizens United Supreme Court decision for turning a small trickle of corruption into the Johnstown Flood of corruption) and the plot to 'get' Bill Clinton through both Special Prosecutors (thank you, Ken Starr), and the weaponising of Congressional politics and poisoning of Congress's relations under any GOP majority with any Democratic President (thank you, Newt Gingrich). Under Gingrich, the House of Representatives (in particular) GOP majority was incredibly upset that Bill Clinton's ability to grab the centre of American politics empowered him and permitted him to start fixing Reagan's twisting of institutions and, worse, start appointing Supreme Court justices to have a lasting effect. Gingrich was the first of a new and growing breed of GOP leaders who want to overpower all opposition at all cost and have discarded compromise and democratic values. You may recall he was so determined to destroy the Clinton Administration that he literally defunded and shut down the Federal government for the first time ever. His intellectual heirs are the detested Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell the traitor. The government shutdown backfired in the short term, but showed GOP extremists they could conduct sabotage without being removed from office and pointed to the outer darkness. Meanwhile, the GOP extremists supported Special Prosecutor Ken Starr in his futile and stupid effort to remove Bill Clinton from office, setting for a consolation goal of reducing his administration's effectiveness while under attack. Although the Faux News propaganda narrative of moral equivalency between GOP extremism and (supposed) equal and opposite Democratic Party extremism is a barefaced lie, the Democrats have not had clean hands through this corrosion of politics. Honest and endearingly old-time conservative analyst David Frum listed some of the ways the Democrats have acted to worsen the partisan divide in his recent book _Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic_, which I recommend highly. I would add the extreme politicising of hearings for Supreme Court appointees, which started with the 1987 hearings over Reagan-appointed extremist ideologue Robert Bork. Bork was a disaster, but was totally, clearly qualified for the post, and it was jarring and destructive break from all of American tradition for Democrats to deprive Reagan of his (foolish) choice. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/the-sad-legacy-of-robe… There were never ideological litmus tests in Judiciary Committee hearings on Supreme Court appointees before that. Since then, always and every time. The avalanche of money created the lunatic Tea Party as an astroturf (faux grassroots) far-right organising effort. This was actually just cover for finding gullible citizens and siphoning their donations money, hence was shut down when the targets ran out of funds (I'm not joking), but was a harbinger of lunatic combines and astroturfing to come (Faux News, far-right believer online forums, the Freedom Caucus). The Democratic Party remained, throughout this process, a diverse coalition with modest goals, still aligned with pluralist democratic values, civil rights, and support for (and by) labour unions, but also undisciplined and gutless. To the best of my recollection, the only significant shift in its carefully moderate agenda was a late embrace of marriage equality (same-sex marriage) after the tide of public opinion already lurched in its favour. By contrast, the Republican Party became by degrees more militant and ideologically purist, with moderates (and principled conservatives such as David Frum) being forced out. Worst of all, top leadership became fixated with gaining and perfecting single party rule at any cost. After eight years of right-leaning but surprisingly steady by current standards (other than the horrible war thing) George W. Bush -- who at least, for all his faults, would not tolerate anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant idiocy -- the Republican aspirations for one-party rule were set back horribly by the surprising emergence of Barack Hussein Obama, who trounced GOP standard-bearers John McCain in 2008 and then Mitt Romney in 2012. In response, yet more dirty money poured in (especially from the toxic Koch Brothers) and the GOP turned in desperation to attempting to outright sabotage and de-legitimise the new President, far _more_ than they did with Bill Clinton. Their near-total failure to destroy Obama drove the GOP and its craziest voters into greater psychosis including open racism and anti-religious bigotry (Obama's middle name didn't help), not to mention anti-immigrant demagogery. In the latter regard, to their credit, GOP leaders attempted to prevent that specific craziness, as reflected in their remarkably thoughtful 2013 97-page report on the Romney defeat, 'Growth and Opportunity Project', popularly called the GOP 'autopsy report'. This is where the GOP mandarins noted gravely the ongoing demographic shift where a massive number of legitimate voters who are children of recent Hispanic immigrants, among others, were making the United States for the first time _truly_ multiracial and multicultural to a degree it never has quite been before. In particular, it was no longer the case that Caucasian voters were an absolute majority, but just one huge ingredient in the melting pot among many. The autopsy report strongly urged reform of GOP policies towards immigrants lest all these newer voters create a permanent Democratic Party majority, and leaders began adopting all of its wise recommendations. But then, a low-cost but accidentally effective sabotage effort changed everything. This was Project REDMAP, Redistricting Majority Project, created in 2010 to take advantage of a unique, historic opportunity occasioned by decennial redistricting for both state and Federal offices _combined_ with unprecedentedly effective computer modeling to do gerrymandering an order of magnitude more effective than ever before. This project cost only $18m, a pittance, was effective beyond Republicans' wildest dream, and has made them captive of their success, forced them into extremism, killed the Autopsy Report reforms, and enabled The Toddler's bizarre takeover of the GOP. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-red… But first, the unplanned success of Project REDMAP didn't _merely_ give Republicans artificial, undemocratic dominance in dozens of states and the US House of Representatives, but also created a deep reservoir of crazy extremist GOP politicians in state houses and Congress's lower house by making their newly gerrymandered districts 'safe' against non-GOP challenge. When a seat is so protected against Democratic and independent challengers that moderate policies aren't necessary to win, the looniest, most far-right, least pluralist GOP candidate tends to gain and hold office. This emergent effect, more than anything else, made the Autopsy Report policies a dead letter starting around 2015 as the GOP, while knowing this would be a long-term catastrophe, was forced by Freedom Caucus loonies to abandon its wide counsel and about-face against them. Captive of its REDMAP-enabled lunatic fringe, the GOP still greatly feared being swept away by the inevitable Democratic Party wave the Autopsy Report warned against and tried to avert, but now it was forced into stronger measures in place of Autopsy Report reforms. First up was outright repeal to (previously latent) racism and xenophobia, the best weapon against Obama, and misogyny, the best weapon against Hilary Clinton. The GOP tried and failed to sabotage Obama's first term, and he managed to pass an overhaul of health insurance (directly copying GOP Governor Mitt Romney's 'Romneycare' health insurance reform that originated in the right-wing Heritage Foundation) despite GOP refusal to participate. By now, REDMAP had transformed enough House districts that a large House GOP majority joined a bare Senate GOP majority in 2012, and the effort to neuter Obama's Executive Branch redoubled. Obama kept trying fruitlessly for a while to work in a bipartisan effort with Congress, and eventually gave up and attempted reforms through Executive Branch orders only, having been given no other options. In this, he further enraged the GOP power-politics supremacists by transgressing norms and infringing on Congress's prerogatives. For example, the pre-2012 Obama had honestly admitted that he alone had no constitutional power to give relief against deportation to 'dreamers', American young people born abroad and brought to the USA by unauthorised immigrant parents, thus in violation of immigration law through no personal fault and knowing no country but the United States. The post-2012 Obama reversed course and decreed DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, through an Executive Order despite his earlier statement that this would unconstitutional, because the extremist-controlled Congress refused to pass the DREAM Act or take any other action. (Even with the justification of empathy towards enormously admirable, blameless young immigrants, Democratic President Obama, though this action and others, drove the militant GOP further into psychopathy.) The money-corruption problem continued to worsen. Koch Brothers money was now joined by that of radical-right billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebecca, who saw a chance to disassemble the regulatory state through the right extremist presidential candidate. Their standard bearer was the hated Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. When his campaign imploded, the switched to bizarre junk-television figure, multiple failed businessman and spectacularly failed business owner, one-time slumlord, and conduit from money-laundering Donald John Trump. Trump promoted himself with the tired, stupid line that he'd run America like a business -- and some people failed to notice that his business was a _family_ business empire in which enforced secrecy (strong NDAs) covers up criminality and incompetence, with the sole sacred duty being personal loyalty not to the business but to The Toddler himself. GOP mandarins were appalled by The Toddler's multifaceted severe failings -- he's a malignant narcissist, he's a-literate and cannot read a one-page memo or be taught the basics of his office, he has no policies only intuition-driven urges, he drives away all but third-raters willing to abase themselves and show total loyalty (that is never returned) (this being why competent lawyers will not work for him) -- but the GOP by this time was carried along, hostage. The point is that The Toddler isn't competent evil, but rather spastic and borderline self-defeating evil. If Mitch McConnell and Robert Mercer are Vito Corleone, The Toddler is merely Fredo. Trump's damage to the Executive Branch has been severe and ongoing, but amateur. In computer-security terms, it can be compared to a fuzzing probe of a codebase, trying semi-random nonsense inputs to government processes, to find unsuspected avenues of attack. The GOP in Congress, haunted by the prospect of being swept away by a Democratic wave driven by both revulsion and demographic shifts, in desperation crossed the Rubicon into outright treason with Putin and his captive oligarchs and well-funded hacking teams -- as did, of course, to a much greater and less well-concealed degree, The Toddler. One of the few areas The Toddler has done competent damage is by packing Federal judgeships solely with far-right loons whose names were tendered by the extremist Federalist Society. That will be a long-term problem. Fixing this situation, preferably without knives, will require a large purge of traitors, correcting the REDMAP 'ratf*cking' of district boundaries (their own term), and somehow overturning Citizens United. This repair, I fear, will take depressingly long, even if the traitors are swept away. But my point is, The Toddler is just a psychotic blip, madly waving his tiny little hands and distracting from the larger problem. My view, yours for a small fee.[tm] _______________________________________________ skeptic mailing list skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/skeptic To reach the listadmin, mail rick(a)linuxmafia.com ----- End forwarded message -----

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