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
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
'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
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Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions.
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----- 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.
_______________________________________________
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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.
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To reach the listadmin, mail rick(a)linuxmafia.com
----- End forwarded message -----
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.
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.
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.)
[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 -----
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 -----
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 -----