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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
That sounds nice, but, ignores very real political realities.
More to the point, part of why Trump, and the Republicans in general, are so terrible is because they very clearly only care about the interests of the people who vote for them (it's easily argued they don't even really care about that, but they at least pay lip service to it), where as the President is supposed to be, well, everyone's president.
And you don't really do that by writing off huge swaths of people "deplorable" whom you have no interest in, even if there is truth in it.
edited 6th Apr '18 10:04:25 PM by LSBK
Really, I think the point would be less "court racists" and more specifically "don't drive them away if they're willing to vote for you despite their racism".
I assume we all think it's terrible that some people really had to think about whether it's better to vote for Hillary or Trump, but at the end of the day, getting them to actually vote for Hillary would do more good than laying into them about what a horrible person they are for even thinking about voting for Trump.
The latter might have been more cathartic, but the former would be much more likely to have an actually positive impact.
edited 6th Apr '18 10:19:11 PM by LSBK
DHS compiling database of journalists and "media influencers": https://goo.gl/NocwQm
Stuff like this is why I keep worrying about staying here and considering moving back to Europe. Unfortunately, they seem be making it harder to escape in case things go completely to hell...
edited 6th Apr '18 10:30:17 PM by Wariolander
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It might be better to read the original article rather than the op-ed that links said article. The actual article isn't quite as ominous, though still a cause for concern.
This bit from the article is slightly encouraging.
edited 6th Apr '18 10:27:51 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedIt was bad politics, but only in the sense that it was exactly the wrong move in the modern way elections are won and lost.
No one seriously tries to bridge the gap between the two parties anymore. So elections are all about two things: encouraging your base and discouraging your opponent's base. The deplorables comment therefore failed on both aspects. It became a rallying point for Trump voters (deplorable and proud anyone?) whilst it led to a lot of hand wringing in the Hillary camp as people debated if it was a slur on the (white) working class - not exactly a good feeling to take to the polls with you.
It was obviously intended to drive a wedge between the MAGA crowd and traditional Republicans. But trying to woo the opposition support doesn't work anymore. There is too much of a gap between them (perceived or otherwise).
I guess if I wanted to fix US institutions, I'd want the gap between the two parties to narrow, so we would no longer be in this position where we can't even agree on the same facts, let alone compromise on any policy. Of course, I'd require the Republicans to do most of the running, as it was they who jumped off the alt/far right deep end.
Not even close, the cost per voting machine is is 10,000 dollars a unit for the kind that have a paper trail... and there are 175,000 voting precincincts in the US.
Even giving a conservative estimate of needing 4 machines per precinct, which will cause incredible backups in some of the ones in urban areas.... your looking at a cost of 7 BILLION dollars.
A tank for reference costs 6 million, you could literal order over a THOUSAND of them for the cost of replacing the voting machines.... if you insist on comparing it to military costs, your looking more along the line of a USS Nimitz class aircraft carrier, with all 5,000 mens training, and the 80 aircraft aboard.
....
Something that the navy commissions right now at a rate of about once every decade for the ship, and its been 40 years now since they commissioned the aircraft.
The costs are very non trivial.
Edit: 50 years on the airplanes, the 70s was half a century ago now.
Edit Edit: Also last I had heard, there was no indication the machines themselfs had been tampered with, rather Russian "Hacking" consisted of getting the voter rolls and then delivering ultra-targeted advertising designed to exploit those most vulnerable.
Which is just as awful, and way more exploitative, but not something new machines would fix.... even if new machines would be nice in general so that all districts could be up to the same standard.
And to be clear hacking is only quoted, because the way it keeps being used implies the machines were tampered with, when the reality is it was the voters who were tampered with, there was most definitely hacking as the voter rolls are supposed to be confidential information, but you cant tap into a machine without some kind of network connection...
TL:DR; New Machines = Good, invest in them, but the costs are not trivial, and will require an an investment, and there also not going to prevent 2016 from happening again.
edited 7th Apr '18 3:18:00 AM by Imca
You pull it off the machines local storage....
Electronic voting machines store the votes on internal storage, which is behind a key lock.... the only way to tamper with them is to physically access them as a member of a voting commission that has access to said security features.
There honestly harder to mess with then a paper ballot if you look into how there secured.
The machines can only be ‘tampered’ with (if that is a possibility) but as these, machines are always kept under high security, nobody should have access to them.
Therefore ,for tampering an electronic voting machine, a person has to have an access to its unit, chances of which are next to negligible.
Furthermore, to have an impact on the election’s outcome, one will have to access multiple EVM units which is again not possible.
Also, the operating program of EVM’s controller unit is engraved permanently in silicon by the manufacturers. This program cannot be changed once the unit is manufactured, even by the manufacturer.
The fact that the programing of the machine is permanent is actually a surprise to me, its not like putting permanent code in a chip is any thing new... and its a rather good security feature, I am just kind of surprised it is implemented.
edited 7th Apr '18 3:35:37 AM by Imca
No, they really are not. Defcon cracked every single model they got their hands on and none of them were hard.
Pens, paper. Everyone else does fine with that technology, and it is much less vulnerable because the required conspiracy goes from "5 hackers" to "thousands of people, not all of them from the same party".
edited 7th Apr '18 3:54:35 AM by Izeinsummer
5 hackers cant tamper with the electronic voting machines, you need physical access to the secured parts of each individual machine, meaning that you need just as many people to tamper with them as paper ballots..... Only all those people need to be grade-a hackers as well, not just a script kiddie.... or a guy with a pen and paper.
Also counting paper ballots in Amercia is one hell of an order, the country has 300,000,000 people, and the distribution of them is just..... awefull.
edited 7th Apr '18 3:53:44 AM by Imca
On the list of "media monitoring" thing, I'm not sure how to feel about it. On one hand it makes me nervous, especially with Cheeto in the White House, but on the other hand, we're also in the midst of an Information War, and knowing the playing field would not be a bad thing.
edited 7th Apr '18 6:03:46 AM by megaeliz
A person with severe narcissistic personality disorder does not have a long game. They are all impulse, all the time. There's no strategy.3/
People naturally find it hard to believe Trump is a simpleton given his alleged wealth but as Euripedes famously said... 4/
"Along with success, there comes a reputation for wisdom."
Trump has a reputation of being canny and shrewd. His pathology allows him to be an effective manipulator of the moment. That's all. 5/
Trump is literally incapable of crafting a multi-step strategy or plan and even if he could, he'd blow it as a result of his impulsivity. 6/
Severe narcissists are entirely "transactional". Every conversation is a transaction. They try to manipulate the moment. That's it. 7/
They also don't look backwards - and thus contradict whatever did in the last "transaction". While this seems weird to non-disordered people, people like Trump think of nothing other than this second and what to blurt out to get their way with no regard for past or future. 9/
There's some consolation in this. Trump is not an evil genius. There is no Karl Rove inside that Homer Simpson. It's all Homer Simpson. 10/
So, while this makes Trump a god awful diplomat since he can't play the long game, it also allows us to not fear what he is planning, because Donald J. Trump is pathologically incapable of planning anything beyond how he is going to manipulate the next moment in time.12/
So, if you fear he's got a master plan up his sleeve, sleep better tonight. He doesn't. At all. 13/
This is also why even trying to prepare for an interview with Mueller is pointless as well.
edited 7th Apr '18 7:09:21 AM by megaeliz
Exclusive: Trump adviser played key role in pursuit of possible Clinton emails from dark web before election
[CNN] Article Quote
Schmitz met with officials at the FBI, the State Department and the Intelligence Community Inspector General — the watchdog tasked with investigating Clinton's alleged mishandling of classified information. He claimed a source he called "PATRIOT," an unidentified contractor he was representing, had discovered what he believed was likely material stolen from Clinton that could contain classified information. Both the client and Schmitz were afraid that going through the material without permission could jeopardize their security clearances, though there is no indication their actions were illegal. While officials at the State Department and Inspector General briefly interviewed Schmitz, they declined to review or accept the information, according to sources familiar with the process. The FBI interviewed him as a part of its ongoing criminal investigation into Clinton's emails, sources said. It is not clear whether special counsel Robert Mueller is pursuing information about Schmitz's efforts.
Schmitz then took a memo outlining his claims and concerns to the House Intelligence Committee. One cybersecurity expert outside the government who also saw the material on the dark web said the emails appeared to be fake, based on his review and the forum where they were posted.
"I'm pretty sure they were posted on the (dark web) equivalent of Reddit," the source said.
All the below articles are linked: they're pretty much about how Trump's public war with Bezos could potentially affect both Trump's business and Amazon's business.
What is the Donald Trump v Jeff Bezos feud really about?
[Guardian] Article Quote
Trump was apparently gleaning that information from a Wall Street Journal article published days earlier titled Why the Post Office Gives Amazon Special Delivery that argued that Amazon was using its size to take advantage of the postal service.
According to Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist with Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, there’s no question Trump attacks Amazon as a surrogate for Bezos and the Washington Post.
“He’s hoping Bezos will apply some pressure on the Washington Post to back down on its criticisms,” said Holman. “I seriously doubt that’s going to happen. The Washington Post is a seriously independent newspaper, and Jeff Bezos is much wealthier as a result of Trump’s tax cuts. This won’t have much of an impact.”
Last week, Business Insider published a study comparing Trump voters (63 million) with Amazon Prime members (in the region of 60 million, according to some estimates). In a showdown that might threaten US consumers’ access to free shipping, the outcome is a no-brainer.
“If Trump were to take action that caused Amazon’s shipping costs to go up, the relevant stakeholders – including nearly 100 million American customers – would be broadly united on Amazon’s side of their business dispute with Trump,” predicted the publication.
Still, says Holman, there is concern that Trump’s continued attacks on Amazon and the Washington Post will feed into existing distrust of the media and, increasingly, of tech giants through which the news media is distributed and who are now gearing up for regulatory battles.
“He’s using every avenue he can think of to undermine the credibility of the independent press,” Holman says. “But I have the feeling Trump is out in the wilderness and he’s not going to succeed in his efforts to undercut the Washington Post or the mainstream media.” Americans, he says, “have become for good reason much more skeptical of his intentions”.
Trump Isn't Attacking Amazon Over Washington Post News Coverage, Says Steve Mnuchin
[Time] Article Quote
The president has assailed Amazon and its business practices in a series of tweets and public statements since March 29, criticizing its delivery contract with the Postal Service and its tax practices. The attacks have raised speculation that Trump’s true concern is Bezos’s ownership of the Washington Post, which aggressively and critically covers him and his administration.
”Absolutely not,” Mnuchin said. “Okay, the president is focused on Amazon and the economic issues that are impacting retailers all around the country.”
The president’s company, The Trump Organization, leases space to retailers who could potentially compete with Amazon. Trump has never divested himself from the firm, though he has said his official actions won’t benefit his company.
“They’ve absolutely dominated the retail business,” Mnuchin said. “They’ve put tons of retailers out of business, so that is what the president is really focused on.”
Why President Trump's War of Words Against Amazon Could Backfire
[Blog op-ed; but interesting read in light of the Mnuchin article] Article Quote
Amazon, meanwhile, has been building out its logistics network for years and many people believe that the company has ambitious plans to eventually handle the bulk of its package delivery, in a move that could challenge Fed Ex, UPS, and the Postal Service. Any move by the post office to increase package rates could give Amazon a financial incentive to accelerate those plans, which could spell trouble for the post office and Amazon's other delivery partners.
Any opportunity to reduce those costs would be embraced by Amazon. While its competitors and many analysts believe Amazon's delivery network is only meant to complement those of its shipping partners, rather than replace them, Bezos has shown that he plays the long game and any market is fair game. Two decades ago, very few people could have foreseen the powerhouse that Amazon has become.
Meanwhile, President Trump's public war of words and threats to increase shipping costs could spur Amazon to further its ambitions in the package delivery space, even more quickly than it may have originally planned.
Trump attacked Amazon for not paying enough taxes — but his own online store reportedly collects sales tax from only 2 states
[CNBC, also reported in the Wall Street Journel
, but that's paywalled] Article Quote
President Donald Trump has been accusing online retailer Amazon of paying and collecting few state and local taxes, but his own company's online store collects sales taxes in just two states, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Although the Trump Organization is based in New York, Trump Store.com collects sales taxes only in Florida and Louisiana, the Journal reported.
The website sells Trump-branded apparel and gifts, including $35 baseball caps, $20 body lotions, $50 blankets – and $36 Trump toddler polo shirts.
"Trumpstore.com has always, and will continue to collect, report, and remit sales taxes in jurisdictions where it has an obligation to do so," a Trump Organization representative told CNBC.
Currently, online retailers are only required to collect sales taxes in states where they have a physical presence. The Trump administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court in March that argued retailers should have to collect sales taxes even in states where they aren't physically present. The top court will hear arguments on the issue later this month.
One of the central arguments in Trump's attacks on Amazon is all wrong — and it's Citigroup's fault
[Business Insider] Article Quote
Where did he get these figures? He didn't make them up. He's relying on an equity research report from Citigroup, which doesn't quite say what the president says, but it says something pretty close.
The Citi note, from last April, proposes that the post office might need to raise the average price per piece for all of its "competitive products" by $1.46 — that is, not just deliveries for Amazon, and not just parcels, but also priority and express mail.
But Trump's garbling of the precise figure isn't the important thing.
The important thing is that the Citi note itself is wrong. The bank made a key math error in coming up with the figure the president has seized on.
Essentially, Citi assumed competitive products were less lucrative for the post office than they really are, and so they greatly overestimated how much prices would have to rise to meet a specific revenue benchmark. If Citi had the right numbers, they would have called for an 11-cent increase in price-per-piece for competitive products, which is a lot less than $1.46.
Plus, Citi's underlying analysis of how the post office ought to price package delivery makes little sense, even if you correct the math. It leads to a useful talking point for a president with a vendetta against Amazon, but it's not good business analysis.
But figures from 2015 and 2016 were available, showing the postal service had achieved ratios of 13.3% and 16.5% in those two years, respectively. Using an average of those figures would have cut Citi's proposed price increase roughly in half.
I asked Citi's lead analyst on the note, Christian Wetherbee, whether it was simply a mistake that they hadn't used figures on the post office's actual performance to calculate how much it would have to raise prices to meet the revenue benchmarks they proposed.
"I'd love to say it wasn't a mistake," he said. "It's something that should have been in there."
That's why the post office has fought efforts to restrict the way it prices; if it couldn't grow this business, it would lose more money. As the PRC correctly noted, the correct question to ask when seeking to determine whether competitive product pricing is competitive and fair is whether the post office makes money at the margin when it sells those products, and they conclude it does.
It's hard to see how forcing USPS parcel price increases could benefit consumers by fostering competition — after all, there is an existing, robust competitive market in package delivery, as demonstrated by the fact that UPS and Fed Ex already exist and make profits.
A free hand on package pricing at the post office has been good for consumers, good for the post office, and good for online sellers for Amazon. It's not great for shippers that compete with the post office, and it's not great for presidents who hate Jeff Bezos because he owns the Washington Post. But they'll live.
edited 7th Apr '18 8:55:39 AM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

I agree, calling out racists as racist should not be a bad thing
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas Edison