US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6333

On November 29 2016 11:20 pmh wrote:
Just out of curiousity,this should be the end of electronic voting in the usa right?
I mean, apearently the machines can be hacked and are not 100% safe to use.

Now which claim is more outrageous. The claim that millions voted illegally in a country where you don't have to identify yourself when voting, or the claim that the electronic voting machines (which I doubt even have an internet connection) where hacked.

On November 29 2016 11:20 pmh wrote:
Just out of curiousity,this should be the end of electronic voting in the usa right?
I mean, apearently the machines can be hacked and are not 100% safe to use.

In the summer of 2015, armed American drones over eastern Syria stalked Junaid Hussain, an influential hacker and recruiter for the Islamic State.

For weeks, Mr. Hussain was careful to keep his young stepson by his side, and the drones held their fire. But late one night, Mr. Hussain left an internet cafe alone, and minutes later a Hellfire missile killed him as he walked between two buildings in Raqqa, Syria, the Islamic State’s de facto capital.

When Julia Jones arrived at her office in Santa Monica at 8 a.m. — by Hollywood screenwriter standards, the crack of dawn — she found Stephen K. Bannon already at his desk, which was cluttered with takeout coffees. They were co-writers on a Ronald Reagan documentary, but Mr. Bannon had pretty much taken it over. He had been at work for hours, he told her, writing feverishly about his political hero.

Today, with Donald J. Trump, whose election Mr. Bannon helped engineer, on the threshold of power, the 2004 film “In the Face of Evil” has a prophetic ring. Its trailer has an over-the-top, apocalyptic feel: lurid footage of bombs dropping on cities alternating with grainy clips of Reagan speeches, as a choir provides a soaring soundtrack. The message: Only one man was up to the challenge posed by looming domestic and global threats.

...

In August 2015, Mr. Bannon told Ms. Jones in an email that he had turned Breitbart, where employees called certain political stories “Bannon Specials,” into “Trump Central” and joked that he was the candidate’s hidden “campaign manager.” He hosted Mr. Trump for friendly radio interviews and offered tactful coaching. This August, with the Trump campaign foundering, Mr. Bannon took over as chief executive.

...

Ms. Jones, the film colleague, said that in their years working together, Mr. Bannon occasionally talked about the genetic superiority of some people and once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners.

“I said, ‘That would exclude a lot of African-Americans,’” Ms. Jones recalled. “He said, ‘Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.’ I said, ‘But what about Wendy?’” referring to Mr. Bannon’s executive assistant. “He said, ‘She’s different. She’s family.’”

On November 29 2016 13:04 IgnE wrote:


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/world/middleeast/isis-recruiters-social-media.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Obama is killing keyboard warriors.

On November 29 2016 13:45 LegalLord wrote:

This seems like a good time to mention the "killing civilians in the line of fire" scenario. It would make perfect sense to take the shot and hit both of them rather than risk the possibility of failing to kill him, if you take the "civilian casualties are acceptable" philosophy.

Emergency officials in Tennessee say a wildfire has set 30 structures ablaze in Gatlinburg, including a 16-story hotel, and is at the edge of the Dollywood theme park.

Tennessee Emergency Management Agency spokesman Dean Flener says in a news release Monday night that mandatory evacuations were underway for areas in and around Gatlinburg, including the south part of Pigeon Forge, where Dolly Parton's theme park is.

Flener says strong afternoon winds fanned the wildfire on land in the great Smoky Mountains National Park to move quickly onto private property.

Gatlinburg police had been going door to door in one neighborhood asking for voluntary evacuations. But the Knoxville News Sentinel reported that as wind picked up and fallen trees sparked fires from downed lines, Gatlinburg fire officials declared a mandatory evacuation of a larger area.

The newspaper said some park employees were also evacuating and some locations closed.

A news release from the Gatlinburg Chamber of Commerce said the National Park Service reported more fire growth expected in the park with spot fires possibly forming outside the main area.

TEMA says no deaths have been reported.

On November 29 2016 11:20 pmh wrote:
Just out of curiousity,this should be the end of electronic voting in the usa right?
I mean, apearently the machines can be hacked and are not 100% safe to use.

Now which claim is more outrageous. The claim that millions voted illegally in a country where you don't have to identify yourself when voting, or the claim that the electronic voting machines (which I doubt even have an internet connection) where hacked.

After failing in the United States, American evangelicals are now attempting to push a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in Romania.

Liberty Counsel, the evangelical law firm that represented anti-gay Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, has been at the frontline of the anti-LGBT movement in the United States for the past few years.

However the group, which has bragged about helping to draft anti-LGBT bills in more than 20 US states, appears to be seeking new frontiers, and has taken up meddling in Romania.

In a message to supporters, the group bragged about its interventions in the eastern European country in a bid to secure a ban on same-sex marriage.

The group said: “Liberty Counsel continues to assist the citizens of Romania who are working on a nationwide constitutional referendum that would modify their Constitution to clarify that marriage is the foundational and fundamental societal institution and is naturally defined as the union of one man and one woman.

“Romania’s Constitutional Court recently approved and confirmed more than three million citizen signatures (in a country of less than 20 million people) calling for the national referendum.

“Liberty Counsel provided that Court with an amicus brief in defense of natural marriage, to counter numerous briefs filed by Soros-backed non-governmental organizations, which called on Romania to abandon its national sovereignty and cede the definition of the family to the European Union.

[...]

On November 29 2016 13:40 xDaunt wrote:

It'll be interesting to see whether liberals suddenly grow a conscience after Trump takes over and keeps bombing/droning the shit out of ISIS.

WASHINGTON — The escalating American military engagement in Somalia has led the Obama administration to expand the legal scope of the war against Al Qaeda, a move that will strengthen President-elect Donald J. Trump’s authority to combat thousands of Islamist fighters in the chaotic Horn of Africa nation.

The administration has decided to deem the Shabab, the Islamist militant group in Somalia, to be part of the armed conflict that Congress authorized against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to senior American officials. The move is intended to shore up the legal basis for an intensifying campaign of airstrikes and other counterterrorism operations, carried out largely in support of African Union and Somali government forces.

The executive branch’s stretching of the 2001 war authorization against the original Al Qaeda to cover other Islamist groups in countries far from Afghanistan — even ones, like the Shabab, that did not exist at the time — has prompted recurring objections from some legal and foreign policy experts.

The Shabab decision is expected to be publicly disclosed next month in a letter to Congress listing global deployments. It is part of the Obama administration’s pattern of relaxing various self-imposed rules for airstrikes against Islamist militants as it tries to help its partner forces in several conflicts.

WALLACE: How flexible is Mr. Trump about the promises he made to the American people in the campaign?

PRIEBUS: Well, look, it's not a matter of flexibility. I think it's a matter of listening and declaring to the American people that, look, he’s not -- let me get -- if I can hit each one of them very quickly, I won't take up a lot of time. But on the issue in regard to Hillary Clinton, his point there is he's not seeking methods and ways to persecute and prosecute Hillary Clinton.

But I would also tell you that if the attorney general and the Congress find evidence that would indicate that something needs to happen and our attorney general, Jeff Sessions, at the DOJ says something needs to happen, I would suspect that President-elect Trump is going to be open to listening to what that is, but ultimately it's going to be the DOJ's call.

Number two, as far as this issue on climate change -- the only thing he was saying after being asked a few questions about it is, look, he'll have an open mind about it but he has his default position, which most of it is a bunch of bunk, but he'll have an open mind and listen to people. I think that’s what he’s saying.

[...]

On November 29 2016 17:15 Laurens wrote:


You can hack an offline system, just use a USB.

Neither claim is more outrageous than the other imo.

On November 29 2016 20:55 Sbrubbles wrote:


Well, if you're close enough to hack with an USB, other more traditional kinds of fraud are also plausible, so I'm not sure that would be a fault of the electronic voting machines

On November 29 2016 22:24 LegalLord wrote:
Stuxnet is also a great example of how state-sponsored malware can backfire considering that it proliferated and was in some cases sent right back at its creators.

IEEE article: http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-real-story-of-stuxnet

On November 29 2016 22:59 LegalLord wrote:
The latter case is definitely the most severe case of how it backfires, yes. Part of the problem of malware is that when you send malware they can analyze it and abuse the same exploits to also wage cyber war right back on you.

I'm not sure Stuxnet is a great idea for a policy prescription at all.