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ndawg

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by ndawg

  1. I don't think Trump has the ability to exercise enough discretion to realistically sustain such a firewall.
  2. I'm putting faith in our IC's intrusion detection efforts. It's public knowledge that our digital voting systems are insecure. If you're robbing a bank, and they left the front door unlocked, you may be more likely to avoid getting caught in the act, but you're still going to have to survive a thorough investigation. It's very hard to even know just what the US Government is capable of when it comes to detecting and thwarting cyber crimes, but suffice it to say, they're no slouches.
  3. To be fair to Obama, his response was already hamstrung by Trump's victory. If it were Romney that won with Putin's help, not Trump, transparency might have been a more viable option. And now large scale amounts of Russian meddling and small scale amounts of actual hacking have been normalized, so we can guarantee an escalation of severity and scope in the future. It was well known in tech circles twenty years ago that voting machines were insecure pieces of shit, and that the only thing stopping anyone from hacking them was the legitimate fear of reprisal from our IC. The root of this particular problem was when the government awarded a lucrative contract for building and deploying election machines. That should have never, _ever_ been entrusted to a private corporation.
  4. If a malicious external actor attempted to hack our voting counts, our intelligence agencies would at the very least notify the commander-in-chief and likely the press, if they didn't thwart the intrusion outright. There's no way any American president, right or left, would downplay such an incident or deflect blame from the guilty party. Retribution would be swift, and it wouldn't just be the US -- the whole Western World would retaliate. Like I said, this rationale was my best attempt to explain why no one has so far directly altered our election counts. Ultimately, abusing social media proved pretty damned effective without putting the Russians in any real risk. The worst possible outcome for them was being told to stop -- after all, the election *still* faithfully represented the will of the people. Where Trump is taking us, though, is a political climate where there's no consequences for severe and direct attacks on our elections. I'm intending to argue two things: first, without a political climate that would impose consequences on actual election hacking, the odds of our elections being targeted go up dramatically. Second, Trump is steering us toward precisely such a political climate.
  5. Something to think about: our electronic voting machines rolled out in the last few decades have never been particularly secure. There was heaps of evidence that Diebold was a money sucking, incompetent shitshow of an organization that couldn't deploy a secure system if their lives depended on it. (To be fair, I'm not sure how many of our voting machines today were deployed by Diebold). At any rate, we've never experienced a significant security breach in our voting machines that materially impacted voting counts or altered election outcomes. I suspect the reason for this is the most obvious one that comes to mind: what stops foreign actors from hacking our voting system has never been the technical challenge, but rather a really low likelihood of being able to get away with it. For instance, I've got no doubt that Putin's hackers could seriously change voting counts, but I really doubt they've ever tried. But all bets are off if Trump establishes a political climate that would allow a foreign actor like Putin to get away with actually hacking our voting systems. Trump seems to be setting Putin up to be able to get away with it in broad daylight.
  6. I think there's some desperation on their part. There's a whole intelligence apparatus closing in around them, and it's accellerating. I suspect they'd be happy to keep Trump/Putin out of the news cycle otherwise, but they need to normalize this shit now, so that by the time Mueller et al move, a significant percentage of the country is prepared to accept Russia's interference and Trump's corruption at straight up face value. That's the optimist in me, at least.
  7. Ah, the old tried-n-true tactic of floating an idea that would deepen his authoritarian rule, and then backing away. He gives his base a chance to arrive at the conclusion that it was the fake news, and later by the time he actually pulls the trigger and allows it, the act will seem normal.
  8. NATO may well solidify in response to the Putin friendly shift in US foreign policy. They must be shitting themselves right now.
  9. Yeah, I've definitely started the process of figuring out what my options are. I'm fortunately in a profession that other countries actively attract, but it's still by no means guaranteed. It's scary to think about anyone wanting to leave but not being able to.
  10. I'm wondering where everyone's line in the sand is for expatriating. If the Dems don't win the house this year, do y'all plan on sticking around? What about if Trump wins in 2020?
  11. The other scary thing is that he really doesn't need to continue his path of gradually normalizing increasingly obvious collusion with Russia in order to be an effective agent for them in broad daylight. He can operate within the context of what is presently permitted and execute Putin's agenda of weakening NATO, relieving sanctions, and legitimizing his regime on the world stage. The even scarier other other thing is that he and Putin might try their hand at taking things further, and still not face any real backlash.
  12. If only there were, like, a means by which the significance of each occurrence coinciding could be rationally assessed.
  13. There is no reason to believe that ICE is fully infiltrated by white supremacists. There is reason to believe that the author of the document is, however, and perhaps a few others working together. Besides, there are white supremacists in this country. Don't you think they'd want to work for ICE?
  14. Cute, now demonstrate the statistical likelihood of these events coinciding.
  15. True, but this is so mathematically concrete that the opening for equivocation is extremely narrow. There's no squirming out of this one with gymnastics *except* to argue that it was deliberate but not meant to be taken seriously -- which is itself so extremely absurd that there's really no way out.
  16. If a majority of Americans could be relied upon to understand the most basic, rudimentary statistics, they'd understand exactly what this development means. Fortunately, our systemic dismantling of our public education system will ensure most Americans react exactly like @JBJ just did. If they even notice it at all.
  17. Using 14 words that start with "we must secure" and choosing 88 as a random reference point for a statistical quote is one of three things: 1. An astronomically improbable coincidence 2. A sympathetic signal to white supremacists 3. Somebody trolling knowing that it's a signal to white supremacists You can't brush this one off, bud.
  18. Especially because it begs another question, why don't men have to "take responsibility?"
  19. I bet folks at Tahoe's chapter might even discuss how concerned they are. Assuming that's a subject that pertains to the particular coalitions that showed up that way. You see, political parties aren't just a monolithic entity, you realize, right? Or something.
  20. Let's get real for a second. The GOP has proven it can get its basedcompletely riled up at the left without Waters' help. Exactly what risk is she running right now? If the middle of the political spectrum is susceptible to being turned off by Waters, then we're hopeless anyways.
  21. "Con-man Don" would be a fitting Trump-name for Trump.
  22. You're actually just incapable of contributing to a rational discussion. And there's no participation trophies here, champ.
  23. I, for one, enjoy watching people exercise whatever mental gymnastics are necessary to compare any ole idea here and communism. It's cute and mildly entertaining. It's part of the erosion of civil discourse that's ruining this country, but, hey, we're probably too far gone anyways.
  24. I'm cool with preserving inheritance if we also agree to hold those born into wealth culpable for the actions of their ancestors. Fair is fair, right?
  25. I concede there is likely some truth to this. Her goal may be to preserve the peace at all costs, anticipating larger scale defections from the GOP. But if she fails, we're fucked.
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