Thanks to commenter JCJ for the recommendation, here’s the Brook’s Falls live feed bear cam from Katmai National Park in Alaska. So tune in and watch the grizzlies eat all the salmon they can eat!
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.
Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.
And we’re all out of bubblegum.
Consistently wrong since 2002
They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!
When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?
Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?
So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.
rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius
“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”
In my day, never was longer.
Damn right I heard that as a threat.
Let’s not be the monsters we hate.
JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?
After roe, women are no longer free.
I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.
Black Jesus loves a paper trail.
If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.
They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.
You can’t love your country only when you win.
Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.
People are complicated. Love is not.
Impressively dumb. Congratulations.
Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.
You are here: Home / Food & Recipes / Crock Pot Craziness / Late Night/Early Morning Open Thread: All You Can Eat Buffet
guachi
I love political season because comments go off the chart.
Will we have the same live commentary system for the 2016 debates like we did for the 2012 debates?
“Please proceed governor” was a definite winner in that debate chat, as I recall.
Big R
I just saw a Mama Bear with three cubs. She looked scrawny – I can’t say I’m surprised, what with feeding three mouths. Any ideas how common that many births are?
Linnaeus
#Bearcam!!!!
Major Major Major Major
Live bears!
Haha that’s cool.
Keith G
These cams are fun as heck, but for better action Google Tiger attacks woman in China.
Never leave your vehicle in a big cat safari park. Never.
Here. I did the work.
Linnaeus
@Big R:
Brown bears most commonly give birth to pairs of cubs, but anywhere from 1 to 4 cubs is not unheard of.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m hypnotized by the salmon
Major Major Major Major
I posted this tweet I found below but I figured I’d give it some more room to breathe up here.
RaflW
I thought Bernie did very well. Michelle Obama is beyond amazing.
I found Elizabeth Warren to be surprisingly flat. I only watched a few mins of Corey Booker. A few folks I know (not pundits) thought he did great.
Meanwhile, the TeeVee news business sucks goat balls.
Eric U.
Cspan is proof that God loves me and doesn’t want me to watch media pundits make fools of themselves
Major Major Major Major
@RaflW: My friend who doesn’t watch much politics thought Booker was amazing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@RaflW: I’m not a fan and I was very impressed by Booker’s speech.
I’ll be interested to see if Bubba address any hecklers, as in, is he practicing an ad lib as we speak. (I always suspected his best line from 2012, ‘now that’s brass’, was rehearsed.
ETA:
Big mistake, I think, to have her follow Michelle, especially without a transition. Well, maybe not ‘big’
Quinerly
@RaflW:
I thought Warren was flat, too. I think that chant spooked her in the beginning. Plus, she’s a chick, you know…going on just before Saint Bernie….certainly couldn’t upstage him.
Dog Dawg Damn
So glad we have HRC and not Warren. She’s the only one who can pull this off. Booker would have done well as VP, but I like Kaine.
Major Major Major Major
@Dog Dawg Damn: Booker’s 47. He has time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
What in the hell is going on on MSNBC right now?
ETA: some kind of weird, unmixed round table with Al Franken, and all the reporters want to talk about is renegade Bernistas and how much Minnesota hates Hillary
Katie Hunt just interrupted Franken talking about Minnesota to ask about Bernie on SNL. This is bizarre.
karen marie
@Eric U.: The interviews with 20-year-old Bernie dead-enders was cruel – to the viewers and to those callow delegates. Do they have no experienced people around to explain how things work?
Punchy
Yes, and sometimes the Cubs are the ones doing the feeding. Just tonite, Arrieta feed their territorial adversaries some meatballs.
Miss Bianca
I’ve been using grizzly cam for breaks at work when I get stressed out. Because I’ve already got Real Live Kitten Cam going. The kittens stand up on their hind legs and paw at the bears! And the fish!
seaboogie
@Major Major Major Major: He was.
burnspbesq
@Major Major Major Major:
Booker hit it in the upper deck. Michelle hit it out of the stadium and broke some poor shlub’s windshield in the parking lot.
Major Major Major Major
Ok, so, reports are dripping in, and my idiot Bernbuster friends have stepped off the ledge. “Of COURSE I’m voting for Hillary,” they say, the epitome of quiet reason.
Except the ones who were Steiniacs or glibertarian ratfuckers to start.
Suzanne
@Major Major Major Major: A few friends who aren’t that into politics are currently freaking out about how great Booker was.
gf120581
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Are you talking about their interviewing of the BoBs? High comedy hour. Those are some deeply stupid people.
eclare
I’m watching Colbert and offended. I keep thinking he’ll be the former guy I really liked, but I guess he’s gone.
CaseyL
Booker’s speech – I thought he was trying too hard at first, but then realized he was speaking over hecklers. The speech improved as he went on, and was great toward the end.
Everyone’s speech tonight was aces. And this was just the first night! Gonna be amazing if the rest lives up to tonight, much less surpasses it.
gf120581
@Suzanne: Republicans watching Booker tonight were probably thinking of Obama’s speech at the 2004 DNC and thinking, “Oh shit, another one!”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This MSNBC round table is fascinatingly awful, in form and content– all what about the BoBs? what about those other BoBs? and those ones over there?
ETA: Andrea Mitchell, on a half dead mike, makes the 40th joke about when will hear MO’s speech at a Republican event
maeve
hottest news story in my local media: What happens when a truck overturns in Juneau
http://www.ktoo.org/2016/07/25/overturned-truck-blocks-egan-load-fish/
On a more positive note = the local police dp just had a “no violence” hotdog cookout with recognition of more need for community involvement and recruiting more Alaska Native recruits.
jl
TPM blog reports that Trump doubled down on all sorts of crazy tonight. Wonder how the media will report the contrast with the Dem convention.
Example: Trump says, yeah, we gotta walk from NATO, then they’ll run back throwing money at us, begging us for protection. Idiot.
Edit: and Trump finally admits all the women don’t love him, wonders what is wrong with them… yeesh. Trump may prove to be a really horrible candidate for the general. But I won’t get my hopes up too much. It’s just one day.
Mike J
Bernie replied to Trump’stweet calling him a sellout:
dww44
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: In threads below, a commenter made the point that Sanders insisted on being last, so that meant that Warren had to be his lead- in when she had originally been scheduled to follow him. Commenter’s thought was that she had to tamp down her rhetoric in consideration of his following her. While maybe a bit flat, her speech was actually quite meaty.
Plus, Michelle was supposed to be last, I believe. At any rate, it seems to have all turned out for the best. Remains to be seen if the rude Bernie supporters return tomorrow night. Because, honestly, as an older adult, I give no quarter to rudeness, even in an open Democratic forum. Let’s see if Bernie has shut them up for good. He created them;he now needs to show them a polite way forward.
But tonight answers that CNBC person I heard last Friday morning who, when reviewing the just completed RNC, said that since they had just staged a truly consequential convention, the Democrats better not stage a totally scripted one in Philadelphia.
Just compare the Dem speakers tonight versus those last Monday night in Cleveland. I think we’ve just answered him.
amk
Cuddly bears? You must think we really are babies, Adam.
Punchy
@jl: Yup, Trump is openly advocating an international protection racket slash extortion scheme. With nukes and dictators and trade partners. Yet every GOPer will disavow his comments but still vote for him.
Tribe over nation, yo.
Major Major Major Major
@CaseyL: That’s how I felt about Booker basically exactly.
geg6
@jl:
Also said there was something wrong with American women. Men? Just fine. The women, something wrong going with them. You know, right?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@shomi: they’re talking about having him and Corden switch time slots, which I gather is considered a huge demotion. I can’t put my finger on what I don’t like about his new incarnation: too nice, more than a little self-indulgent, dare I say… low energy?
and now on MSNBC, Hugh Hewitt. The only Clinton supporter they’ve had on is Al Franken, and they kept interrupting him to repeat questions about BoBs, and trying to be funny.
Mnemosyne
@RaflW:
I think Warren got a little rattled by hecklers — there seemed to be a largish commotion over one of them.
She needs to take lessons from Mrs. Obama on how to smoothly talk right over them. And also to be so beloved that even the other hecklers in their group shush them so they can hear the speech.
Bruce Webb
Bears are all too human.
During times of scarcity they will eat everything/whatever. But when times are ripe, like when the salmon are running hot, they will catch the fish then eat only the roe sack (that’s ‘caviar’ to you and me) and then leave the carcasses for the Bald Eagles. Who in contrast will go fish catching in thin times with glorious snatches of prey from lakes and streams but are perfectly content gorging on the fish bodies left by the bears.
We like to think of top end animal predators as being in some sense morally superior. But like us they are mostly assholes. Lions will chase hyenas off their prey and given a chance a bear will eat your picnic leftovers. And eagles will eat carrion. It ain’t all Wild Kingdom.
Adam L Silverman
@amk: I don’t have to outrun the grizzly, I just have to outrun you!
James E Powell
Did MSNBC’s coverage of the RNC consist almost entirely of Democrats and Republicans who oppose Trump?
Quinerly
@dww44:
I am still confused about what the original order of the last three speakers was. It’s been a long day but I thought originally FLOTUS was going to be right before Bernie. He wanted that changed. Was he always going to be last? That one supporter with the BS tattoo was whining that BS had to go last…she felt she had had to sit through a “Hillary Love Fest” and there had been no BS supporters speaking…yes, I know…she apparently wasn’t paying attention to Ellison, Jealous, Silverman, Merckley, etc…
Adam L Silverman
@jl: I think we covered that in the previous thread. In the 100s.
Linnaeus
@Adam L Silverman:
Sometimes they just sit down next to you.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bruce Webb: Okay, and?
Emma
I didn’t think Warren was flat. I think she understood that it was her role to bring the substantive policy stuff, as it was Michelle’s to bring the inspirational. It’s going to draw less emotional reaction but it’s important.
hovercraft
@James E Powell:
No.
But Hugh Hewitt just described Michelle’s speech as having sparkle, like her husbands 2004 speech.
Miss Bianca
@Mike J: You know, I’m almost starting to like Bernie.
Quinerly
@James E Powell:
A lot of young BS supporters who don’t have a clue. One who just got a BS tattoo, doesn’t know when the roll call is (she’s a delegate), cried when she got a Bernie sign, and wished she didn’t have to sit through all that other stuff before hearing BS. I don’t think MSNBC has interviewed just a regular, old Hillary supporter all day. Tattoo girl is voting for Stein if Bernie doesn’t get the nomination. Yes, that’s pretty much what she said.
amk
@Adam L Silverman: Ingrate.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the heat in Philly is not being kind to Tweety’s hair, and he seems to have had his colorist give him Trumpian rinse
Mnemosyne
@dww44:
I actually think the original order would have been better — Warren intros Sanders, Sanders intros Michelle Obama. I don’t think the speeches quite built they way they planned. Sanders’ speech was fine, but it wasn’t a barnburner like Mrs. Obama’s so having hers go first threw off the rhythm of the evening.
Oh well. Not the end of the world, and it was fine, if not as transcendent as it could have been if “The Closer” had stayed in the right position.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good. Tweety needs to suffer.
Omnes Omnibus
@Emma: I think you are right, but the narrative may be different. It will be wrong.
BR
Everyone watching the networks — maybe you could send them an email, a tweet, a call and complain about the coverage? That’s how to push them in the right direction. Say “over on network such and such” they were doing a better job. I bet they’ll respond.
(I wasn’t watching so I don’t know, but sounds like it’s been lousy.)
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: Too bad he didn’t run for president.
@Quinerly: I really want to know more about this tattoo.
Adam L Silverman
@Bruce Webb: Given a chance the bear will eat you and your picnic leftovers!
Miss Bianca
@Linnaeus: Holy shitsnacks!
Adam L Silverman
@Linnaeus: you don’t see that every day.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Joy Reid: “If there had been a ‘b’, the start of a boo, during Michelle Obama’s speech, there would have been trouble.”
Cacti
@Bruce Webb:
Or if you fish for them yourself, the roe skeins are the best salmon bait there is.
Brachiator
@Bruce Webb:
Not all of us do, not by any means. And fortunately there are some good nature documentaries that don’t expect the animals shown to meet our approval or to be seen as just like us, only furry.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
You could tell that there were a couple of places where people tried to disrupt and people around them told them to sit their asses back down. Plus Mrs. Obama knows how to talk over hecklers and not get distracted.
Mike J
Hey Californians. can you name your governor? No, not Brown, he’s out for town, who is the acting gov? The Lt Gov? Nope. President of the State Senate? Speaker of the House? Nope, Philly. Secretary of State? Attorney General, State Treasurer, State Controller? No, no, no All at the convention.
Next in line, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Torlakson, your acting gov!
Steve in the ATL
(1) Have been hiking around Colorado Springs the last couple of days. Haven’t seen a bear yet, but I almost stepped on a rattlesnake yesterday. Hearing the rattle and seeing it about 2.5 feet from my face was…rattling.
(2) Booker would have been a horrible VP choice. Perceived as tight with Wall Street, just like Hillary. If elected VP, his replacement would be named by Chris Christie.
(3) Traveling in Virginia and Colorado the last couple of weeks, have seen a lot of Hillary and Bernie bumper stickers. As for Trump stickers? Outnumbered by both Obama/Biden (one) and Jefferson Davis (one), versus *zero* Trump. Have seen a couple of anti-Hillary, but no pro-Trump.
4) I am so fucking sick of Bernie dead-enders, including my erstwhile step-sister who is at the convention as a BS delegate and Facebook Live-ing the event. You’re almost sixty years old–time to grow the fuck up.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: OK. Sorry. I probably skipped through the ‘100s’
Quinerly
@Major Major Major Major:
I kinda think you are mocking me a bit. That’s ok. I repeated myself several times. The Bernie tattoo girl is the poster child for your average 20 year old supporter. It was like someone wrote a script for her…and she got that…..you know what.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Quinerly: Guess she’ll need to get that ink ‘modified’ then.
MomSense
@Big R:
My son came back from a camping trip in the White Mountains. A bear went into their campsite, wandered all about, and tried to get into their car. They heard it but obviously stayed in their tent. They found sandy prints and scratches on the sides of the car.
It’s unusual for that area but the warden said they haven’t had much rain so the berries and other food sources are sparse. Yikes.
pseudonymous in nc
Our local experts on the black bear population say that more trash pickings = more cubs (threes and even fours instead of the typical pair) but also more health problems. I heard a story down in north Georgia of a mountain winery losing its year’s Malbec vintage in late summer because a few bears showed up and ate all the grapes off the vines.
trollhattan
@Mike J:
It’s Torlakson’s barista. Tom’s been phoning it in but you’ll really like Governor Wolfbane..
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL:
When the kid and I went hiking in the San Gabriels earlier this year, she was very concerned about bears. I hike alot not and hiked quite alot when I was a teen; I’ve seen one bear(it wandered near our camp in Yosemite), but I’ve run across 2 rattlers.
seaboogie
@gf120581: This.
Steve in the ATL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Have you seen more bears than Trump stickers?
Fortunately, rattlesnakes have really bad eyesight, so they aren’t that dangerous if you’re about three feet away.
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: Isn’t this how Battlestar Galactica wound up with the Secretary of Education as President after the Cylon attack?
amk
deadbeat’s ‘surrogate’.
Lord: Obama’s unpopularity will hurt Clinton
Axe: Actually Obama’s popular
Lord: He won’t be on the ballot
Axe: Actually you just implied…
Adam L Silverman
@jl: No worries, just wanted to let you know that there is some substantive discussion of it. And no offense, its late and I’m tired and I can’t do one more paragraph on NATO tonight!
Linnaeus
@Miss Bianca: @Adam L Silverman:
Yeah, I don’t know how calm I would have been with a big bear deciding to sit right next to me.
Luthe
@Steve in the ATL: Lucky you. Here in CT I’ve seen three Trump stickers already, plus some lawn signs. Not many Hillary stickers and only a few Bernie.
I Am Not King Jon Snow
Operation Shakedown: Tonight Trump said in NC that he’d leave NATO to force our allies to come back to the US with an offer of morey.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL:
Nope; one bear, one Trump sticker(asswipe across the street has one on his loud ass truck).
ETA: The neighbor next door has a “I’m With Her” sticker.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: Actually it was two posts back. I’m sorry. Again, a bit tired.
Ninedragonspot
After a day of BernieBros, I’m set to rewatch this. Seldom have committee meetings been portrayed with such black humor and menace.
Major Major Major Major
@Mike J: Yeah, I heard it on the radio! :D
Fair Economist
I got a Hillary sticker but hadn’t decided what to put it on. My teen son just put it on his PS4. Won’t influence a lot of voters there, but I’m happy.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: I was probably listening to the speakers.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: You know a few years ago we had a gay governor for a couple of hours.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: What? No headphones?
Villago Delenda Est
@I Am Not King Jon Snow: This really is not a very good way to get all those European legislators he spammed to make contributions.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Tweety introduces Nina Turner as a long time supporter of Bernie Sanders. Less than a year. When he said “long term support of…”, I thought he was gonna mention her pre-Bernie history of mutual support with the Clintons.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: And that was well worth your time, certainly more than reading me answering questions about NATO. But its there if you want to go back and read it.
Major Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Ha, who was that?
Calouste
@I Am Not King Jon Snow: Trump doesn’t seem to realize that selling out the Baltics to Russia means that the rational thing to do for them is to get rid of him. They sure as hell aren’t going back to a Russian occupation, and they can’t outbid Putin. Whether they can manage that is a different question.
And of course if Trump can’t deliver, Putin will call in the chips and send over his heavies.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: So what’s Turner’s play? She’s no longer in state level office, what did she think she was going to get from Senator Sanders and what does she think she’s going to get by playing coy regarding Secretary Clinton? I don’t understand the politics here. Given what was on display last week, she can’t honestly believe that any of the constituencies and communities she cares about and thinks she still represents are going to weather four years of a heighten the contradictions to set the conditions for the revolution Trump Administration.
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She’s still not ready to support the candidate she was with a year ago, because she doesn’t trust her. The e-mails about Bernie’s religion cut deep. She doesn’t trust Hillary to keep to the platform, because politicians never follow through on them, but this year Hillary has to. And the way to get Bernie’s supporters on board is for her to acknowledge their pain over the e-mails and apologize for the pain that was caused. So I guess she needs to get up on stage on Thursday and say I’m sorry some assholes at the DNC don’t like Bernie. Them they’ll be good right?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Don’t remember, I think it was the Senate Pro Tem at the time.
ETA: Google is my friend:
California Will Have An Openly Gay Governor — For About Eight Hours. For eight hours today, California will have its first openly gay governor. State Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D) will serve as acting governor until tonight, when Gov. Jerry Brown (D) returns from a trade mission in Mexico.Jul 30, 2014
?BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: But no bears?
Cacti
@Adam L Silverman:
Her play is that of a political lightweight who doesn’t want her 15 minutes of fame to end.
She lost the Ohio Secretary of State race by 24 points and 800,000+ votes.
Without a national campaign to attach her name to, she has nothing to offer any of the Democratic heavy hitters.
Uncle Cosmo
@Major Major Major Major: Concur. Pissed me off that he had to shout over those bozos.
Mnemosyne
I ended up re-watching Mrs. Obama’s speech while putting it on my Facebook page. Day-um.
Though, watching some of the hand gestures, you could see who her coach was. And the other speakers could take lessons from her in how to time your speech so it sounds unhurried but leaves no gaps for hecklers to jump in.
ETA: Though in the few spots where hecklers tried to jump in, it seemed pretty clear that the people around them shushed them.
amk
@Adam L Silverman: Forgotten by tomorrow.
Adam L Silverman
@Cacti: But even with a national campaign she has nothing to offer. She obviously couldn’t deliver Ohio for Senator Sanders because she couldn’t deliver it for herself. So her positioning makes no sense. What’s her day job? She’s not being paid to go on Hardball for 15 minutes tonight. And I’m sure the Sanders’ campaign isn’t paying her a salary. So what is there for her to get out of this?
Quinerly
@Adam L Silverman:
I have a friend who is deep in Ohio Dem Party and politics. Gets her pic taken with Obama kinda stuff when he comes to town. She says Nina is toast in the Ohio Dem Party. I seem to recall that Nina, like Ben Jealous have been well paid Bernie surrogates. She’s on tv enough. TV gig in the future?
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
I think something happened with the Clinton’s her level of antipathy strikes me as personal. If you go back and look at her appearances on the Melissa Harris Perry show, she was very pro Hillary, you don’t go from that to I can’t trust her for no reason.
Villago Delenda Est
@amk: Jeffrey Lord is a moran, to say the least.
aimai
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, I could pretty much watch that again several times.
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
I’ve had a super paranoid thought, but I’m not quite sure I’m ready to make the leap from what we know about Trump’s backers to wondering if those same people might be paying some of those surrogates.
Adam L Silverman
@Quinerly: Maybe? As I’ve written before: I don’t do the domestic politics gig. I only cover NATO stuff because its a foreign/defense/security policy issue. And my interests are strategy and policy. I just don’t understand her personal strategy here. Clearly no one, even in a potential Sanders Administration, is going to give a significant appointed position to a former state level legislator that got blown out in her last statewide election just because she’s a really vocal advocate.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
Yes she is, they hired her as a contributer last week. She was also appointed to a police/ community relations board by Kasich. She made a crack about how her name was part of his stump speech.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: Is it possible she thinks the Clinton’s didn’t do enough to try to help her win as Secretary of State for Ohio?
Quinerly
@hovercraft:
I have thought something personal happened, too. I liked Nina way back when. My friend in Ohio is heavily involved in the party said she was a rising star and really liked her personally pre Bernie. Now she can’t stand her. She’s as obnoxious within the party in person as she is on tv.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
Have the Kleenex handy — it actually made me cry MORE the second time around.
And I loved the way the whole thing was framed: who do you want *your kids* to look up to as president?
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: Okay, I did not know that as I almost never watch cable news (other than BBC World News).
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: You’re allowed to have opinions on things you aren’t a paid expert in, you know.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Tweety just asked if the Russian’s hacking the DNC servers is as bad as Watergate given the parallel of a physical/cyber break in at the DNC. For good or for ill the Russian connection now has legs. For many of the older political new media folks – reporters and commentators – this is going to be a real parallel to Watergate and they cut their teeth either on the scraps from it or it was a formative experience for them in their careers. I don’t think they’re going to let it go.
Quinerly
@Adam L Silverman:
I haven’t talked to my Ohio friend in a few days. She has been working hard for Hillary and wanted her to pick Booker for VP. I love Kaine and was waiting for a few days to pass to chat. I’ll ask about Nina. She knew her pretty well pre BS obsession.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: Huh, shit, just noticed the parallels.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Its not that. While I’m currently a consultant type of contractor, when I go back on a full time equivalent contract or a term appointment civil service position or a GS/Title 5 civil service position, I’m a national security professional and a civilian member of the Profession of Arms. While I don’t believe we should be apolitical – I vote in every election and I think everyone should be informed and vote – I don’t take positions in campaigns. That’s why I treated both Trump’s and Clinton’s foreign policy addresses in April straight up. What’s the overarching strategic narrative? Is their a Trump or Clinton doctrine? What were the policies proposed? Are they feasible, acceptable, suitable? Same approach I’ve tried to take with Trump’s position on NATO and our other alliances and partnerships. I’m not into advocating for specific parties or candidates.
Adam L Silverman
@Quinerly: No worries and no rush. I’m just curious.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: Well, you don’t take public positions. You vote, so one presumes you must hold them.
That just seemed like an odd choice of topic to play that card on.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: When Tweety is right, he’s right and he pointed out the parallel. The analysis of what the media is going to do is mine. I once watched Keith Olbermann give an interview where he explained that the reason the news media didn’t really dig into the voter disenfranchisement in the 2000 election is they couldn’t bring themselves, as both Americans and journalists or commenters, to tell Americans that this type of malfeasance had gone on and ultimately resulted in the way that the 2000 election was resolved. It was a just a bridge to far to explain that the ship was sinking, not just in need of a retrofit.
In this case there is a clear, external threat. A foreign power that is a peer competitor and that we have a fitful, for lack of a better term, relationship right now appears to have launched a cyber attack against the American political and electoral system. The only conclusion that makes sense for doing that is because that foreign power believes that Trump would be better for their interests. This is, should the credible allegations of Russian Intel being behind the cyber attack and wikileaks working in collusion with it, essentially a cyber act of war. Americans have been primed by the GOP and conservative media for over 20 years to be concerned with voter fraud. We know from news reporting that Russian Intel did the same type of hack on Ukrainian election authorities in 2015 and on one of the states in the US as well. I actually seem to remember it was Ohio, but that may not be right.
So the real worry now is not just that they can get in and look around and take information out, but what happens if they decide to mess with what’s there? What does this mean for get out the vote? Voter registration? We know that the electronic voting machines are vulnerable, so imagine what happens if the cyber war on the US election goes all out? And this drives us to a question of what should be the US response? And how can we harden 50 states and thousands of counties worth of election information – from voter registration to election returns – given that we decentralize our elections because of the nature of our Federal system? Especially as these same hackers have been able to access the White House and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department’s servers. I guarantee that the Feds are better than the states or counties even though they’re clearly vulnerable.
What do we do if the pre election estimates and the exit polling line up with a result for one candidate and the other candidate sweeps both the popular vote and the electoral college? What happens when one party’s candidates take all the Senate seats being contested this time out? As opposed to what we expect – a small to medium sized swing. We are now in uncharted water. And this is all before anyone raises the domestic politics questions about how Trump is surrounded by people close to Putin or Putin’s allies.
Dog Dawg Damn
@Adam L Silverman: this is indeed powerful stuff and cannot be laughed off with the usual excuses.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Sorry if I was unclear. Yes I have political preferences. I try to keep them out of my professional work and what I write for public consumption. In many ways I’m inline with Tom Nichols from the Naval War College. Both parties put forward a large number of candidates that, regardless of what you though of their particular positions on the issues, fit within the normal bounds from both parties and American politics. The only one that didn’t is Trump. He is something we’ve not seen before as a major party candidate. We are basically now off the map. And I’m not sure anyone is really sure what this would mean.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
Good for you, BBC is much better for you brain and soul. As for the other, the Clinton’s generally have been very good at helping in down ballot races and I know that when she first started her campaign against Husted, it was seen as a possible upset. Hillary has always been about cultivating down ballot candidates. Husted was vulnerable but I don’t think Turner was ever going to win.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: Eek.
I came here to post a lighter read for the end of the evening–Was Tim Kaine a Hottie Once?
James E Powell
@Dog Dawg Damn:
Oh, but it will be. As Silverman points out, the corporate press/media cannot bring themselves to report the story straight.
Dog Dawg Damn
We need to acknowledge that we are in a new Cold War with Russia, and Obama needs to eat crow and admit that Romney had a point (not in those words). If the Dem nominee were similarly positioned, there would be an independent
prosecutorexecutioner already in place. This isn’t politics; this is national security.Adam L Silverman
And on that note I wish everyone a good night. I’m to bed!
Adam L Silverman
@James E Powell: I think in this case the dynamic is changed because we’re dealing with a cyber act of war. This crosses the line of the normal cyber espionage, of which we also engage because everyone who can does so. From what I’m seeing I think this is going to give the news media the space it needs to cover this story.
BR
@Adam L Silverman:
Oh god, I didn’t think about Russia hacking voting machines. And I know a lot about them, too, and it didn’t cross my mind.
Sounds like we need a corps of cybersecurity experts in the U.S. to do some white hat hacking before the election to identify and fix holes, at least to get us through the election.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
You have more faith in our media than I do. The republicans are already squawking that the democrats are just deflecting. They will scream media bias, and most of the media will back off. Since it’s the gop bitching and they are the party of national security, it will be a given that they do not have to take it seriously, remember when Bin Laden was just a distraction to throw us off Monica?
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: The MSM (ha!) should be exploring the very obvious financial ties between Drumpf and the Russian Oligarchs. Drumpf is persona non grata with the big banks in this country, for good reason. He’s a deadbeat.
Villago Delenda Est
@hovercraft: Remember when once bin Laden had done his part for the deserting coward and the Dark Lord to give them an incredibly thin justification for a war of aggression (and, let’s be blunt…conquest) against Iraq, he was totally forgotten?
AnotherBruce
@Adam L Silverman: You would kinda think that the whole reason for the NSA is to protect us from this kind of thing. But you would probably have the wrong think with that one.
Steeplejack
@Adam L Silverman:
Could you define what is a “civilian member of the Profession of Arms”?
RadioOne
I guarantee the roll call vote tomorrow is going to be a shitshow.
amk
Well, for all the shenanigans from the russians and wikileaks, today turned out to be a lemon for them. And a bad lemon at that. Since they couldn’t fix the ‘outcome’. Any further ‘revelations’ from them are gonna get meh, what else reactions. So, there is that.
Adam L Silverman
@Steeplejack: The Profession of Arms is the profession/vocation for those that serve in the military. Uniformed service members make up the bulk. There is a component, however, made up of civilians. Most of the civilian positions are in support positions even with the operating force, but some of us have done operational work. I’m one of the smaller subset that has done operational work, albeit non-lethal operational work.
This should help give you a better understanding:
http://cape.army.mil/repository/ProArms/Army%20Profession%20of%20Arms,%20v19,%2007OCT10,%20low%20resolution.pdf
and:
http://cape.army.mil/repository/white-papers/profession-of-arms-white-paper.pdf
and:
http://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Publications/aprofessionofarms.pdf
I contributed to the Army’s Profession of Arms study. I wrote the information papers on professional cultures and sub-cultures for the person overseeing that portion of the work.
Repatriated
@Adam L Silverman: Congress won’t do it, but can the President force the entire election process to revert to manual fallback processes? Print out voter rolls, make all ballots pen-on-paper with manual counting, that sort of thing. Is there even time to do it if he could order it?
Oh, and it’s not like I needed to sleep tonight anyhow.
Adam L Silverman
@Repatriated: I have no idea. And I’m now going to sleep before I fall over while typing.
amk
@RadioOne: Nope. All the yelling and boos have been done & dusted.
Villago Delenda Est
@Repatriated: There’s no way the President can do that. Elections are a matter that the states have full control over. Even elections for Federal offices, such as President, VP, Senators, and Representatives.
Quinerly
@RadioOne:
If it helps to ease any fears, the whining Bernie delegate who got the Bernie tattoo on her boob thinks the roll call is Thursday. Maybe nobody will tell her. She looks like she’s been sleeping in her mommy’s Audi. Definitely needs some rest after two days of Mountain Dew.
BlueDWarrior
@Quinerly: It’s stunning that people who profess such passion for a candidate can be so ignorant of the actual mechanics of an election and all the other sundry things that go on in politics.
Like knowing when the delegate counts are actually finalized… WHEN YOU ARE ONE OF THE GODFORSAKEN DELEGATES!!
Steeplejack
Hmm, the blog seems to have dried up an hour ago.
I just downloaded Charles Stross’s The Atrocity Archives and have started on that. But I need to go to bed, because I have a dentist’s appointment in the morning.
I thought the first night of the convention went pretty well, all in all.
seaboogie
@Steeplejack: Hey, Steep – salmon are still jumping – but bears retired for the evening….
Not much, but this is what I have to bring….
Greg
Adam Silverman, you are always informative and on point. Thanks for doing the bloggy thing here. You are a true illuminator.
EconWatcher
George frickin’ Will has just basically endorsed the Clinton/ Kaine ticket. And in the pages of National Review no less. This is really getting weird:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438306/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-general-election-matchup-favors-clinton
raven
wtf-k?
Poopyman
No one from the morning shift show up yet? Must be hungover from Bernie’s barn burner speech.
Well, I actually went to bed around 9:30 so I could get out the door by … now. So you kids behave.
And as the role of running elections is a state duty, it’s unlikely the NSA has taken on the job of election cyberdefense, although it’s possible they may have looked into how a hacker might break in to an election system and alerted the proper authorities. But even if they did that, no one is obligated to fix any problems, because who has the money for that, and who would bother breaking in to an election system?
Yeah, I might be a pessimist. Or I might be a realist. But either way keeps me nervous.
Joel
@Keith G: why would someone want to watch a person being killed live on camera? Why share this?
Quinerly
@BlueDWarrior:
Thanks for my morning laugh.
Peej01
When I was working as an election judge for the primary here in Maryland, one of my fellow judges told me that the reason the state reverted back to a paper ballot system was that the electronic voting machines had been hacked. I have no way of knowing whether or not this is true, but it’s scary to think so.
Miss Bianca
@Steve in the ATL: late to thread (so long dead) – but where did you hike around Springs? Garden of the Gods?
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Damn, Adam…I’m really glad I’m reading this in the morning, not before I racked out for the night!
Steve in the ATL
@Miss Bianca: In case you check back on this thread, I did Garden of the Gods, North Cheyenne Cañon Park, and the ominous-sounding Section 16 by Red Rock Canyon and Pike’s Peak. All were awesome.