The RNC, now a wholly owned subsidiary of the scammy Trump Organization, is trying to strong-arm Republicans into exclusively using a new fundraising platform called “WinRed,” the wingnut rejoinder to ActBlue. That’s got to be on the up-and-up, right? [Politico]
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel grew visibly emotional during a meeting with senior GOP officials on Wednesday, as she insisted that she isn’t personally profiting off a new, President Donald Trump-endorsed small-donor platform…
The party chairwoman choked up as she kicked off a closed-door panel discussion on WinRed by addressing ongoing rumors that she and other RNC officials are poised to personally benefit from the new platform. At one point, McDaniel said the only money she is making is her RNC salary…
Those close to McDaniel say she hadn’t initially planned on defending herself during the meeting, which was called to answer questions RNC members had about WinRed. But she and top aides to the president have grown aggrieved in recent days amid questions over who will profit from the new donor platform…
The RNC and the Trump campaign released separate statements on Wednesday saying no one working for them was profiting off WinRed.
Since Trump himself is a known fraudster and top Trump campaign / RNC officials are of the caliber of colleagues who have been literally hauled off in chains and jailed and/or are under investigation for massive financial malfeasance and other unsavory activities, the current crew cannot be expected to view GOP small donors as anything other than slow and fat marks. The only surprising thing is that the marks saw the target on their own asses.
I think this is my favorite detail from the story:
Dietzel [who heads a rival digital GOP fundraising platform] has taken an aggressive posture, deriding the national party’s all-hands embrace of WinRed as tantamount to socialism.
The hostilities show no sign of abating.
I don’t know that any benefit will redound to Democrats. But it gladdens my heart to watch these terrible people fight and hiss “socialism!” at each other like meth-addled, libertarian possums in a pillowcase, so I thought I’d share. Open thread!
low-tech cyclist
Popcorn! More popcorn!!!
Mary G
@low-tech cyclist: An instant Balloon Juice classic!
The Moar You Know
Golly gosh, it’s like the Republicans don’t trust their own. I wonder why that is?
Jerzy Russian
Possums in a Pillowcase should be the name of a restaurant, band, B&B, etc.
rikyrah
Frederick Joseph (@FredTJoseph) Tweeted:
The #KamalaHarrisDestroyed hashtag is primarily MAGA supporters and bots.
That, plus further researching Tulsi Gabbard has me pretty convinced that Tulsi is a plant for the right and the 2020 version of Jill Stein. https://twitter.com/FredTJoseph/status/1156900217356267520?s=17
Ruckus
In fighting over cash and knowledge of the lowest, dirtiest level of humanity.
Who couda known?
Anyone with at least one chinchilla’s worth of sense.
rikyrah
Her true record ??
Kamala changed her position & came out 4 federal decriminalization of marijuana in February & introduced a bill w/ House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler. Her bill would expunge federal marijuana convictions & make it possible 4 ppl 2 participate in the legal pot industry. #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/EdpXmqisrB
— skeptical brotha ? (@skepticalbrotha) August 1, 2019
rikyrah
Yep??
Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) Tweeted:
With all due respect, if you’re a Democrat & you can win a Senate seat that would otherwise go to the GOP, that should be your race. https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1156739205881577473?s=17
rikyrah
???
Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) Tweeted:
The quicker we can get to Warren, Sanders, Harris, Buttigieg, And Obama’s White Friend, the better.
#DemocratDebate2020 https://twitter.com/ElieNYC/status/1156732558010462208?s=17
Ruckus
I first read scammy Trump Organization as scummy Trump Organization.
Whatda know, works both ways.
rikyrah
Truth??
Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) Tweeted:
if anyone but Biden, Harris, Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg and Booker are on the Sept debate stage Dems are nuts. https://twitter.com/JRubinBlogger/status/1156760605883281413?s=17
rikyrah
Yep???
Republicans go on Fox for their debates to answer questions about why Democrats suck. Democrats go on CNN so they can be asked why they suck so much. https://t.co/CGUFDbctFr
— Cake or Death (@Johngcole) July 31, 2019
rikyrah
soonergrunt ?? (@soonergrunt) Tweeted:
If your chosen candidate for the Democratic nomination for President and is attacking Barack Obama and not Donald Trump, then s/he and you are doing it wrong and s/he should not be our candidate, and I will work and donate against them.
Don’t @ me. https://twitter.com/soonergrunt/status/1156898292342513677?s=17
rikyrah
Another phucking Russian Asset???
Like Jill Stein and Donald Trump, Gabbard is counting on Russian support. This is why she won’t criticize Assad. This is what we’ve become. An election rife with foreign influence. This is how they attack our election security, not by hacking, but by doing this. https://t.co/delzVncET1
— Naveed Jamali (@NaveedAJamali) August 1, 2019
J R in WV
@low-tech cyclist:
Ms Cracker:
“meth-addled, libertarian possums in a pillowcase”
Such a way with words, BettyCracker, thank you for this!!!
rikyrah
@Jerzy Russian:
BWA HA HA HA HA AH HA
MattF
Amusing. And I’ll bet that ‘She’s living on her salary’ will become the new Republican mean-girl insult– poor Ronna.
Roger Moore
It might even be true that the people behind WinRed aren’t planning on skimming money from it. Instead, they’re just trying to put together the definitive list of suckers who they can scam in other ways.
rikyrah
They all grift. She’s lying…of course, she is profiting from it. It’s the GOP way.
Betty Cracker
If I were a masochist (which I’m not, all evidence to the contrary), I’d go back and watch last night’s debate a second time because I somehow missed all the “Obama sucks” comments from the candidates. Either I am just completely oblivious (possible!) or people are exquisitely sensitive to any suggestion that Obama-era policies (not the man, we’re talking about POLICIES, correct?) were anything other than unicorns and rainbows. I suspect a combination of the two, but maybe it’s just me.
rikyrah
I’m glad these tapes dropped because the myth that Reagan’s GOP was all about low taxes and smaller government needs to die.
There is a direct connection from the Reagan Revolution to MAGA. Tell the truth. https://t.co/g4zQnSmV3N
— Wakandan War Dog (@Kennymack1971) July 31, 2019
Snarki, child of Loki
“The hostilities show no sign of abating”
Hoping they go all 2nd Amendment on each other.
OzarkHillbilly
@MattF: I’ll bet she has granite countertops.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah:
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
Gold.
@rikyrah:
For anyone who hasn’t checked this out, Reagan is on tape calling African UN representatives monkeys uncomfortable with wearing shoes. Yes, in exactly those words, with no excusing context.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: I could make a reference to Republicans and…. Let’s go with Reagan here, but I’ll get ripped to shreds.
Ooooopps, too late. Good thing I need to get busy.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
I just saw someone in a reply to one of those tweets claim that Bill and Hillary Clinton single-handedly destroyed Haiti, so … ?♀️
Also, I’m pretty sure the candidate referred to was Putin’s BFF Tulsi Gabbard.
Steeplejack
Okay, grabbing some OT real estate here because it’s the most recent thread.
I’m having surgery today. Didn’t see that coming!
I went to the Kaiser med center yesterday to have three small basal-cell carcinomas removed—or so I thought. No big deal, in and out, I’ve had it done several times before. But it turned out to be just a “consult” and some tests (EKG, blood work), because the surgeon wants to do the procedure in the operating room with me under general anesthesia. That’s happening this afternoon. That took me by surprise!
It appears that my “spots”—two on my forearm, on one my shoulder—are such that there is some complicated fabric-like cutting and sewing needed beyond just “cut ’em out.” And apparently there is a limit to the amount of local anesthetic you can inject into someone at one time. So I’m scheduled for 90 minutes of OR time!
I’m taking a cab to the med center at 3:00, and Bro’ Man is going to pick me up around 8:30. I hope to be home by 9:00 or so. Dunno how I’ll feel after anesthesia. Any advice?
TL;DR: Surgery, like a groin injury in baseball, is minor only when it happens to someone else, and general anesthesia is never minor. So maybe shoot me a thought or a prayer later on.
ETA: Zounds! Just got a call from the med center that they want me to come out there as soon as possible, because the surgeon can “fit me in.” WTF. So I’ve got to get a cab here, get the housecat squared away with extra food and confirm that Bro’ Man can pick me up earlier than expected. Steep out.
J R in WV
@Frankensteinbeck:
So blatently racist it appeared to even upset Richard Nixon, who he said it to, twice. After the African UN reps voted to swap out Taiwan for the PRC, back in the day. Which pissed off RWNJ Ronald Reagan, at the time Governor of CA. What a loon!!!
So glad I have never voted for a Republican candidate for anything, ever. Proud, too.
J R in WV
@Steeplejack:
Geeze!! My dad used to go see a plastic surgeon to have his melanomas removed, I would drive him over to the office, about an hour from Dad’s residence.
He would come out looking like a guy who had won a hard-fought knife fight, with big pressure bandages all over his torso, which was where most of them popped up. But often 4 or 5 of them. I would drive his nice sedan sedately all the way home, and help up into the house.
The scars, after a few of those visits, were minor, plastic surgeon after all, but they did add up. Best of luck Steep!!
Barbara
@Steeplejack: Good luck!
Duane
Could peak-wingnut happen when they turn their hate on each other? As always, rooting for Republican injuries.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
Yikes — good luck! If you know or suspect you have sleep apnea, or even if you “just” snore, be sure to tell them since they may need to change how they do the anesthesia. They’re better about asking now, but it’s good to mention in case they don’t. Also tell them about any bad drug reactions you’ve had in the past, just in case.
I had a rough time after my first ACL surgery in 2006 because I had never had surgery before and had no idea how anesthesia would affect me. The second time went a LOT more smoothly because I had some data to tell the anesthesiologist so he could adjust. He looked like he was about 12 years old, but he really knew his stuff.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s rough times when you have to support David Frum’s tweets.
rikyrah
@Steeplejack:
Sending you positive thoughts for your procedure. And, complete healing.
kindness
Damn! Republicans are pulling a Bernie stunt. I am not shocked.
Is there any way we liberals can donate ammunition to this Republican Circular Firing Squad?
dmsilev
This is also not the first time the Republicans have tried to copy ActBlue. There was RightRoots, which was an Erick son of Erick of the House of Erick project/scam, and I think there were one or two others as well. Only real difference now is that this set of scammers is trying to muscle all of the other scammers out of the market.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack:
Old hand here at in and out surgery/procedures. At the VA they make you have someone bring you and make sure they are there the entire time but it’s not all that bad. You go in they inject you, you wake up 30 min/hr later, a bit groggy for 15-20 min and then OK. Well other than the angiogram – have to lay flat for 6 hrs after.
MattF
@Steeplejack: I had surgery three weeks ago with GA, for dealing with bladder stones. For the third time. An overnight stay in the hospital because I’m taking a blood thinner, the usual digestive tract and urinary tract recovery issues. Not much fun, but I’m feeling better now. Good luck.
Frankensteinbeck
@dmsilev:
There are things Republicans can successfully do that we cannot copy because we actually give a damn about truth and good government. This is a reminder that it also works the other way.
the Conster
My unsolicited advice for every Dem candidate:
Support the ACA generally, expansion of Medicaid to red states, and talk about adding a public option buy in. STOP TALKING ABOUT REPEALING AND REPLACING WITH PIE IN THE SKY HEALTHCARE. People just want to keep what they have and see it improved.
Emphasize voter suppression and the threat to democracy of gerrymandering and Russian interference. CALL OUT MITCH MCCONNELL EVERY CHANCE YOU GET.
Demand family separation policy END NOW.
CORRUPTION CORRUPTION CORRUPTION CORRUPTION. Develop and memorize the list of Trump’s appointments that had to go BECAUSE OF CORRUPTION and the family grifting.
Appeal to the Obama and Hillary voting base of Dems by affirming that Obama was the last legitimately elected president, and that HILLARY WAS CHEATED.
KEEP SAYING HOW WE WANT TO RETURN TO NORMS OF BEHAVIOR AND RE-ESTABLISH OUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH OUR ALLIES.
No more policy details – this isn’t a policy election, this is a WHO WE ARE AS A NATION election.
Ceci n est pas mon nymr
Somebody tie that damned pillowcase closed, and then staple and superglue it to make sure.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Somebody tie that damned pillowcase closed, and then staple and superglue it to make sure.
laura
@Steeplejack: Best wishes buddy, I hope it’s a minor inconvenience.
(Auto-splle turned minor into miracle, so take that too!)
Yarrow
@rikyrah:
Soonergrunt is absolutely right. I didn’t see but a few minutes of the debate last night so I’m not sure which candidates were attacking Obama but doing so is the absolutely wrong thing to do.
Any Dem candidate who tries to goad another Dem candidate into doing it shouldn’t be trusted. Any Dem candidate who falls into that trap is making a huge mistake at the very least and sabotaging Dems on purpose at worst. It’s terrible, terrible, terrible politics.
A Ghost To Most
This is why we need to apply a thieves discount to the money raised by the merged RNC/Trump campaign. Much of it will fall into pockets, and never be spent on the campaign.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Frankensteinbeck: FWIW, my first boss was kind of a good ‘ol boy from South Carolina who was uncomfortable with wearing shoes. They’d come off his feet as soon as he got to his desk.
Worked in an office but really wanted to be a farmer. In fact he ended up buying a farm and spending his “off” time farming it, and he wasn’t the only one from that place who did farming for fun. I remember meetings being cancelled because somebody needed to get the hay in.
laura
@Ruckus: Ruckus, do you do your VA’ing at Fort Miley? My Yountville drivers do the round trip daily and when a home member is delayed it really pisses off the rest who want to head back home for dinner and jeopardy. The drivers make sure to communicate the delay so there is a neal on their return however late that may be.
bemused senior
@Steeplejack: have had 4 Kaiser or procedures this year… cataract surgery then diagnosed with cancer and d&c, robotic hysterectomy, and port implanted for chemotherapy (yay! Last cycle today.) All but the robotic op used a mix of iv anaesthetics recovery was very quick. The robotic op needed ga because I had to be kept really still. Recovery took longer but still was able to walk into my house while taking my husband’s arm. PS per Biden, I am 70 and never had surgery before this year. It happens at this age.
wasabi gasp
The only folks cracking on Obama are drinking-gamers who woke today with alcohol poisoning.
Yarrow
@Steeplejack: Sending good thoughts your way.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
We’ll be thinking of you!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Steeplejack: Good to get it over with rather than wait around. Hope all goes well.
zhena gogolia
Who attacked Obama? All I saw in the comments here was that Biden was trying to channel him.
Was it about deportations?
Betty Cracker
@Steeplejack: Good luck, pal!
A Ghost To Most
@Steeplejack:
Good luck. In and out sounds good; hospitals suck.
Sab
@Steeplejack: Good luck. Sorry about the surgery but thank goodness they caught it.
Steeplejack (phone)
Okay, everything squared away, and I just got in the cab. Bro’ Man will be available earlier than expected, and I told him I’d text him as soon as I know something more definite. He said that they often call the designated driver and give them an hour’s notice or so. He’s an ophthalmologist, so it’s the same deal after cataract operations.
Yarrow
From the article in the post at top:
That absolutely cracks me up. Poor, poor widdle rich girl Ronna rMoney McDaniel crying over someone accusing her of making money.
It’s also an absolute tell that someone somewhere is making money off this system, even if it’s not her. Maybe she’s crying because she’s not making the money. Oh, yeah:
Trump technically doesn’t work for his campaign. Jared and Ivanka don’t take a salary. So…
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: Castro said something about Biden not “learning from the past” (paraphrase — don’t remember exact words) regarding deportations. Someone else — Booker, maybe? — said something like Biden couldn’t have it both ways, basking in the reflected glow of the Obama administration and exempting himself from defending policies associated with it that the party has moved on from, also regarding deportations I think. That’s really all I remember in that vein (which I personally didn’t find objectionable), but I may have missed something. Whenever Gabbard opened her gob, I tuned out a bit, hypnotized by her weirdness, so maybe she’s the culprit?
Frankensteinbeck
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I realize you are segueing into an anecdote and not claiming Reagan was doing anything like this, but boy, Reagan was not doing anything like this. Shoe wearing was actually involved in the UN situation under discussion. You could, somehow, have stuck your fingers in your ears and claim his comment about the shoes was innocent. No amount of benefit of the doubt could help the ‘monkey’ comment. Hoo boy.
low-tech cyclist
@the Conster:
If there’s a way to bulletproof the ACA from legal challenges, then yes.
Has anyone figured out how to do this? Because right now, there’s a big lawsuit challenging its constitutionality. It’ll probably fail, but it’s far from a certainty.
Frankensteinbeck
@Yarrow:
I discourage this kind of thinking. Trump and his people straight-up lie. Constantly. Not “Well, TECHNICALLY…” or misrepresentations or half-truths. They out-and-out state facts they know to be incorrect, damn near every time they open their mouths. I think it’s best to start from that assumption, to head off the natural urge to give him even the slightest benefit of the doubt.
the Conster
@low-tech cyclist:
If the ACA is unconstitutional, then how will single payer or Medicare for All be constitutional?
Yarrow
@the Conster: YES to your entire post and especially this part:
YES. Honestly, this in-the-weeds policy stuff hurts us more than helps us. I didn’t have the opportunity to watch last night’s debate but Kay said she thought Biden is running on “Donald Trump is unacceptable.” I think he is too and it’s a smart move. Easy to understand. Every Democrat and many Independents and undecideds agree with it.
Woodrow/Asim
@Betty Cracker: I confess I didn’t watch — but that’s all I heard of, as well.
And even if not — look, we Democrats should be the adults in the room. There’s a huge gap between critiquing the flaws in Obama’s policy approach and “attacking” him by actually trashing the real benefits he and his Administration brought. There’s much — like how to deal with the modern-day GOP — that we’ve learned over the last few years; it’s fair to say he didn’t do the best at that, esp. in the run-up to the election (and I say this as someone who worked for his ’07 primary run!)
Democrats aren’t going to lose the AA vote by critiquing Obama; they’ll lose it by not speaking to the modern needs of that community (among many, many others!). We can have a “new” Obama-style coalition and build on it to win POTUS and Congress, without turning Obama into a Reagan-style myth.
Betty Cracker
@low-tech cyclist: There’s also the fact that millions of people — almost 14% of our fellow citizens — have no insurance (7 million have been added to that number thanks largely to Trump) and that for many insured people (with employer-based insurance, even), the current system sucks big green gator balls.
Maybe MOST people want to keep what they have, and we can argue about the political merits of agitating for change at this moment until the cows come home. But I feel compelled to point out that satisfaction with the current system is by no fucking means universal, and there’s a political cost to pretending like it is. Could be a smaller cost — polls seem to indicate that, FWIW. But there will be a cost associated with a commitment to tinkering on the margins too.
smintheus
I see that Fox News’ former toxic debater Kirsten Powers has sprung to the defense of her ‘brilliant’ friend Marianne Williamson. Turns out “she is not a dingbat”. No discussion of whether she’s a grifting con artist.
No link because it’s Kirsten Powers.
Yarrow
@Frankensteinbeck: What in the world? I was pointing out the obvious as to who doesn’t work for the campaign so where to start looking for who’s making money. They do all lie but some of them are better than others. Some stretch the truth because that’s easier for them to spew out. Some, like Trump, lie like they’re breathing because to them whatever they say is true.
Not that the rest of the them aren’t skimming money from this system. Just that it’s the obvious play to look at the Trump family of grifters first. Ronna Romney McDaniel’s tears are a tell of something. Either she’s making money and is upset she got caught or she got cut out of the grift and is sad about that.
the Conster
@Yarrow:
Why this isn’t obvious to everyone running is beyond me. As long as #MoscowMitch is in place, nothing policy-wise matters. The House has already stacked up a pile of common sense, popular bills that won’t even be voted on in the Senate because of Turtle McTraitor. TALK ABOUT THOSE, AND THAT MCCONNELL IS WORKING FOR PUTIN TO DENY US OUR DEMOCRATIC FRANCHISE.
DAMN, WHY IS THIS SO HARD????
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Frankensteinbeck: Nah, really my point was that in response to Reagan’s sneering that “they aren’t comfortable wearing shoes” the memory that came to my mind of a person “uncomfortable wearing shoes” was a southern whiter than white dude. Who was probably a Reagan and Trump supporter.
MJS
@Yarrow: Not trying to be argumentative, but if every candidate’s platform is “Trump is unacceptable,” how do they distinguish themselves from the other candidates? And how long would it be until the prevailing narrative in the media became, “Dems have no plans, just complaints about Trump”?
HinTN
You certainly can turn a phrase, Ms Cracker.
lamh36
Late in thread so don’t know who will see it, but Prayers or whatever you believe worked. My young coworker came through her battle. She woke up about a week ago and moving and even talking as much as she can with the trach tube. They brought her down to the lab in a wheelchair she looked very good she recognized everyone and she waved and responded
L85NJGT
@low-tech cyclist:
If the ACA is unconstitutional, there is no way to bulletproof anything else but “just die already” from activist courts.
Steeplejack (phone)
Made it to the med center, got tagged and banded (literally) and now waiting for the call. See you on the other side!
smintheus
@Betty Cracker: I think it would be a winning strategy for M4A advocates who aim to eliminate employer sponsored insurance to stress that Democratic legislation would require employers to shift whatever they’re paying currently for insurance into increased pay or retirement benefits. People understandably don’t want to take a loss, especially when they suspect that they’ll have to pay higher taxes to support M4A.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Steeplejack (phone):
There’s a “Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom” joke in here somewhere but I’m going to resist. Good luck!
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack: {{ }} may the ceiling cat be with you. Sending you good thoughts and a quick recovery.
Steeplejack (phone)
Thanks for all the good wishes. Catching up on the thread while I wait.
rp
@L85NJGT: Yes. The legal arguments against the ACA are, and always have been, ludicrous. Sebelius never should have made it to the SCt and it should have been a slam dunk for the Obama admin. if the Court had applied the law as it stood (you know…if they’d just called “balls and strikes.”)
So any successor is going to face the same absurd challenges.
Yarrow
@the Conster: Exactly. It’s so frustrating to watch. And while we’re on that subject, those 1%-polling candidates sure would be put to better use running for Senate. Hickenlooper and Bullock, I’m looking at you. The Senate is essential and it seems like Democrats aren’t taking it seriously somehow.
@MJS: Policy discussions should be about how Trump has failed to do X or has done Y and it has hurt people. The overarching framing needs to be that Trump is unacceptable. Within that “Trump is unacceptable” framing they can talk about how Trump said he’d do X–“make healthcare better for everyone and cheaper,” for example- but however many people have now lost their health insurance. In general I think the candidates believe Trump is unacceptable but they get stuck in the weeds of policy discussion and the overarching theme gets lost.
prostratedragon
Possums in a pillowcase!
Brings to mind “Beetles in the Bog.”
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
Okay, thanks. I worry that that plays into the Repug narrative that Obama was just like Trump on immigration, but okay.
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack (phone): All the best. I hope housecat with a heated throw is up to the aftercare.
Steve in the ATL
@HinTN: FYI I responded to you on the On the Road thread
jl
” The only surprising thing is that the marks saw the target on their own asses. ”
The meeting was RNC retreat of some sort where high level operatives and GOP politicians meet to scheme their next fraud. So, I’m not surprised they are concerned. Those people look at politics as a business proposition and keep a close eye on the ROI. For example, when they send ALEC squads around he country to get sketchy voter suppression and crony-capitalist legislation passed, they expect some results, and some state legislation to signed into law soon
The true marks are the ever shrinking GOP base, the hard core Trumpster base of poorly educated whites who are so frenzied due to their own fear, hate and ignorance that they are living in fantasy dystopia, which distracts them from their real dystopia produced by their GOP leaders. No high level GOPer or Trumpster gives a damn about those losers. And the Trumpsters seem to be underwater with every major demographic except poorly educated young white men, and even there they are only 52 percent.
Trumpsters will probably skim of a lot of the money, and the rest they’ll waste due to incompetence. NRA won’t be there in 2020 to funnel Russian and other foreign money to save the Trumpsters from their own incompetence. So, this scam they are getting ready to run on themselves seems like good news.
misterpuff
No one working for them was profiting. But what about who they report too? Drumpf has to have some skim there for THe Trump Org.
Sure Lurkalot
Every time I hear or read the word “socialism”, I’m going to replace it with “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. Means just as much and maybe I’ll break into song.
I know the ACA has helped a lot of people, and it would have helped many more if it hadn’t been sabotaged but instead improved for its unintended flaws. Employer based coverage has fairly consistently gotten more expensive, confusing and limiting in my 40 year history. Our house of cards, multipronged health care system is vastly inefficient and costly compared to other real world examples. I know that people get complacent with things that sort of work but truly, no other country has a system like ours for good reason.
The Trump maladministration is currently working on allowing drug imports from Canada. Does anyone beside me think that’s crazy, in that we can’t negotiate drug prices with manufacturers but can negotiate with counties that do?
eclare
@Steeplejack: All fingers and paws crossed here for a speedy recovery. Take it easy, don’t rush anything.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
“Dealing with the modern-day GOP” means, and meant, beating them in elections, at the top of the ticket and all the way down. That’s it. Not magic speeches that make The People see at last or platinum-coin-type one-weird-tricks that circumvent the Constitution. It is true that Obama had a bad track record of winning elections when he wasn’t on the ballot, and in places where they call the Civil War, The War of Northern Aggression. Moving on to the present, I don’t think saddling candidates in purple states with unpopular– but BIG and BOLD and inspiring! (to about, maybe, a third of the electorate, as long as you down-play the tax increases)– maximalist sloganeering is a good way to win those elections, even if the wonky, slightly dorky, endearingly earnest and occasionally dope-slapping lady is the one pushing it, instead of the righteously bellowing old coot.
which election?
sdhays
@rikyrah:
They hack us too. They’ve finally admitted that the Russians hacked election systems in all 50 states, but they maintain that nothing was changed (as if they can be sure). In a few months, they’ll admit that a few votes were probably changed in some non-critical states/elections. Then a few months later that it definitely happened in a few more states, but it doesn’t mean that Dump’s election was fraudulent. Then they’ll admit that actually Hillary won Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, but oh well.
L85NJGT
@jl:
Isn’t the issue here who gets to greenwash the $27 credit card donations from sources unknown?
Yarrow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Agreed. The goal is to win. Just win, baby. That’s it.
For the presidential election that means winning the electoral college. That’s it. I don’t like the electoral college. There are moves to make it go away but right now it’s still here. So we need to win the electoral college and that means a few key states are where the attention needs to be. Dumb system, sure. It’s the system we’ve got and the game we have to play.
StringOnAStick
@Yarrow: I think Hickenlooper isn’t running to unseat the odious Senator Cory Gardner because the field already has a couple of good candidates (mike Johnson, Andrew Romanoff), and also because CO has moved to blue enough that Hick is too moderate to motivate the strong D base here that has been gunning for Gardner since 2016.
Mandalay
The story of why WinRed even exists is…er….interesting….
The Moar You Know
@Yarrow: We would literally be better off keeping Trump in office and flipping the Senate (which would neuter Trump and get him to resign, as we could then pull off an impeachment effort that isn’t a vain exercise in doing nothing more than telling Republican voters to go fuck themselves) but Dems have a tendency to focus on the shiny object in the room, and that’s the presidency. So that is what is getting all the money, airtime, attention, and votes.
Meanwhile, a group of Republicans with Mitch McConnell at the head are sitting quietly around a table laughing their asses off. They will still be driving the bus after 2020 and they all know it.
StringOnAStick
@Sure Lurkalot: Drug reimportation from Canada is such a bullshit approach, OK in the short term if you’re paying 10X what a Canadian diabetic pays for insulin, but I have to ask why we should accept an idea that is basically “beggar thy neighbor” for drug cost reduction. Canada has 10% of our population, and yet they were able to negotiate better prices even with being a smaller player than the US drug market. Why should Canada be subsidizing our needs for medications; is it just because they were better negotiators? How will Canada maintain its deals with drug makers if a large amount is being diverted to the US and thus cutting the high profit market here that those same drug makers love so much; why should they continue to give Canada a better deal?
I would not blame Canada for forbidding drug sales to non-citizens if this reimportation starts to hurt the prices they can negotiate with US drug makers. Sure, going to Canada to buy insulin at 1/10 the cost of it here makes for good TV, but it is not a long term solution to our prescription drug prices issue. Actually allowing Medicare to negotiate for better pricing should NOT be illegal in the US, and yet it is. THIS is something that should be brought up by D candidates at every level; sure we know that this is true but people who do not follow politics are utterly unaware and it is a way to point that R’s are not good for average citizens since this is their policy, from inception to winning the vote and implementing it. And yet my FOX addled father who needs insulin for his advanced Type 2 diabetes sees no problem at all on drug prices since he’s on Medicare and has a prescription benefit he pays extra for.
jl
@L85NJGT: Good point. But if, as mentioned in a comment above, if Kushner was in charge of building it, it’s a good question whether it will ever actually work.
Omnes Omnibus
@sdhays: Okay, if you want to say that they changed votes, how did they do it? At what point in the process? Why wasn’t it caught by audits?
Ruckus
@laura:
I’m big city VA. WLA hospital. Still a half a day trip from most of the LA area though. I live 45 miles from there, during rush hours it can easily be a 2 1/2 hour drive. Rush hours can be 6am to 7pm.
Matt
See also the Confederate states near the end of the war that were thinking about seceding *again* because they didn’t want to keep paying for the mess they started.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s not, in many cases, physically possible to audit electronic voting systems with no paper records. You just have ones and zeroes, and those can be changed, including records of what the ones and zeroes used to be. There are data security features that can be used to mitigate the risk of any of these systems being intruded, but they have not been implemented. Children as young as eleven years old have been able to hack the systems still in use in this country, some in as few as ten minutes. (I’m on my phone, so look up “Defcon Voting Village” for stories on this.) Without a paper trail, there is no way to be even slightly confident that the votes match up with the tallies (and even then, you have to be confident the paper trail hasn’t been swapped out, which isn’t a safe bet with today’s GOP).
Electronic voting machines are not merely unreliable; it should be assumed that any district that insists upon using them is conducting fraudulent elections. I contend that it is only a matter of time before we learn that the Russians did change data in 2016, whether removing people from the voter rolls, changing tallies, or both. IT security professionals have been warning about this danger for nearly twenty years. At this point it’s safe to assume that if the Republicans in Congress won’t fix the problem, it’s because they don’t want it fixed and don’t see it as a problem.
tl;dr: What Randall said.
(IT security is my current field of study, BTW.)
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
low-tech cyclist
@the Conster:
Medicare For All would be constitutional the same way Medicare For 65+ is constitutional. M4A would either be an expansion of Medicare, or would be based on close enough principles that you couldn’t tear down one without tearing down the other.
And trust me, the GOP doesn’t want to lose the votes of people on Medicare. Killing Medicare is one of the few things that might bring about the end of the GOP as a major party.
ETA: The legal vulnerability of the ACA is due at least in part to its Rube Goldberg design – there are a number of Jenga blocks where you can pull one out and the whole thing collapses. Medicare doesn’t have that problem.
Miss Bianca
@lamh36: You’re kidding!! That sounds like a miracle!
@Steeplejack (phone): Good luck!
Miss Bianca
@StringOnAStick: Yeah, but I don’t actually know if Mike Johnson or Andrew Romanoff is going to have state-wide appeal. I find the Democratic Senatorial candidates pretty “meh” myself, so far. I think Hick would actually be a far stronger candidate than any of them. But apparently he’d rather be in charge than not. too bad.
Omnes Omnibus
@(((CassandraLeo))): How do you get access to the machines to hack them? I am not an expert about voting machines everywhere, but I worked for the WI GAB. Voting machines in WI must create a paper trail and many, if not most, are optical scanners that record info from paper ballots. The machines are tested before the election and then audited after the election. The machines are not connected to the Internet. If the manufacturer is corrupt and installs tainted software the counting issues would come up in the testing and/or audit; when the machine is turned it doesn’t know if it is being tested, audited, or tabulating real votes.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m about to head to work so I can’t provide a detailed answer now (again, on phone). If someone else hasn’t gotten there by then, I’ll try to remember to answer when I’m home in six hours. The short answer is that for some of these machines it may not even be necessary to have physical access, regardless of whether the machines have an internet connection.
There is also the possibility of the paper trails being fraudulent – a false set of ballots could be swapped in after the fact. Again, don’t put this past the GOP – they’d totally do it if they could get away with it.
Finally, the voter rolls themselves may have been fucked with, so that legitimate voters simply weren’t allowed to vote. This was actually reported widely even back in 2016, but hardly anyone takes voting rights seriously in this country, so only those of us who cared about both voting rights and IT security were sounding the alarm about this as a possibility. If you search my screen names along with “electronic voting machines”, I’ve been suggesting something like this may have happened for years. I didn’t pick this screen name on a whim.
Shift about to start but I do advise you to look up the Defcon stuff – it’ll be quite enlightening if you have sufficient technical knowledge.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
jonas
As we all know — and as is increasingly being acknowledged by Republicans themselves — most GOP fundraising operations have turned out to be thinly veiled grifting operations. No wonder they all suspect each other of corruption.
sdhays
@Omnes Omnibus: A big problem with post-2000 election systems is that in many cases audits are hackable themselves. But the point of my post was that we’ve been getting a drip, drip, drip of how extensive Russian hacking was in 2016, and at this point it’s hard to have confidence that nothing more is going to drip out. It’s a fact that we have been hacked, the Russians (and others) will try again, and pretending like that’s not a real threat doesn’t help.
Omnes Omnibus
@(((CassandraLeo))): I accept the possibility that voter rolls could have been messed with in WI. I know that voter ID suppressed thousands of voters.
OTOH if you think that paper trails have been been falsified, then it really doesn’t matter whether the machines are used or not.
I would be interested in knowing how you access a self- contained voting machine which is only connected to any aspect of the outside world by being plugged into a wall.
Omnes Omnibus
@sdhays: I am not pretending that voting systems as a whole have not been hacked. I am expressing some doubt that the machines themselves in Wisconsin could have had votes altered.
J R in WV
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Somebody tie that damned pillowcase closed, and then staple and superglue it to make sure.
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
Many voting machines do not generate any “paper trail” of any sort or description. At least some voting machines, or servers connecting voting machines to sum vote totals reported by other individual voting machines are networked.
Nearly all voting machines have plug-in devices to initialize the machine for a new voter’s use. Those plug-in devices can be used to modify the instructions followed by a voting machine they initialize.
Votes for candidate 1A can be shown on the screen as cast for candidate R while being added to the total for candidate 2B; there is no way for a voter to detect if this is occurring.
The computerized machines currently used in my county do print a tape with a running total of a voter’s decisions, which is visible (barely) through a plastic cover over the paper tape.
We used to mark a large paper ballot which was folded and pushed into a real ballot box, then later fed through an optical scanner to count which candidates had boxes marked. That’s a real paper trail which can be validated — audited — right there during the scanner process.
The paper tapes provided by the current machines, which could in theory be used for an audit, would take a week to be counted for a single precinct. So far as I know no WV county has ever attempted to audit vote totals using those paper tapes.
Our voting procedure is perfect, and no one has ever tampered with voting totals in West Virginia.This is why now when someone is convicted of tampering with the vote in WV, their guilty plea includes a prohibition against ever running for office again.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I am more and more convinced that some serious drug use is being done by the Right. And, is this why all those GOP Reps aren’t running even when they are in safe Red districts; Trump’s taking all of the money?
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: Earlier in the discussion I described the procedures in WI, and my subsequent comments and questions should be read in that context.
Hilfy
@bemused senior: What in the world is a “robotic hysterectomy”?
KSinMA
@the Conster: This.
(((CassandraLeo)))
So I’m exhausted, so I may not remember everything I intended to say earlier today.
#1: A saboteur does not necessarily need access to a voting machine during the election to sabotage results. The programming of many of these things is incompetent enough that anyone who gains access to a physical space containing the machines at any point before the election can introduce malware that results in the machines outputting fraudulent results. Voters may not even be aware this is occurring: a machine might tell a voter it recorded a vote for Abrams but record a vote for Kemp in its actual vote tally. (However, voters at some precincts in 2016 did report having difficulty getting machines to record votes for Democrats.) In some cases, the software is all loaded onto the machines from the same physical space before the start of an election, so only one set of software actually needs to be corrupted in order to compromise the election. The malware could be loaded onto the machine many months before the election and be programmed not to go into effect until election day. It might also be programmed skilfully enough that “wiping” the machine’s memory might not necessarily actually eliminate the malware – we would in all likelihood have only the manufacturers’ assurance that this is not possible, and as all of them have incentives to lie about the security of their products, this absolutely should not be taken as being worth the paper it is printed on.
#2: Malware can also be programmed skilfully enough that an audit won’t catch it. It can be programmed to activate only at a specific time – for instance, 7am on Tuesday, November 8th, 2016. Testing the machine to make it functions properly before the start of an election is essentially meaningless. It only indicates that the machine is working correctly at the time of the test; it might catch some programming glitches, but it will do nothing to catch time-sensitive malware. There is no way to catch that. Once the machine is corrupted, it is worse than worthless, because many people will assume it will provide accurate vote tallies, and it will not. (A worthless machine would provide inaccurate tallies that everyone knew were inaccurate.)
#3: I don’t have specific evidence that paper trails were swapped out, but I don’t have specific evidence they weren’t, either. And that’s part of the problem. When you have pen and paper ballots with voters’ signatures, you have a fairly reasonable indication that those are the actual ballots voters submitted. If the paper trail requires voters to sign the paper receipts, that is a bit more resistant to fraud, to be fair. I have no idea whether this is the case with WI’s specific system. Regardless, if you’re going to have voters sign the paper receipts, that raises the question of why you have the fucking machines in the first place. The scanner is one matter (and I have reservations about those, too, but not as strong), but the machines themselves are a giant waste of money.
#4: In some cases, it’s not even necessary to have physical access to a machine to hack it, regardless of whether it’s connected to the internet. Wireless security is an oxymoron. I don’t have the patience to get into why, but the WPA2 protocol used for Wi-Fi is notoriously insecure and you should assume that anything you transmit over it can be received and spoofed by a hostile attacker, with the possible exception of secured networks whose passwords are strings of random characters that won’t be in a password dictionary. (Google “Krack attack” if you want to learn about this.) Other wireless protocols are slightly less insecure, but basically, anything that can be affected by wireless networks should be assumed to be compromised. Some voting machines that would theoretically have no reason to be affected by wireless networks can reportedly nonetheless be affected by them.
#5: I have no idea about specific details of the machines WI used/uses; I was initially responding to a general query and didn’t entirely process some of the specifics of your questions because I was about to start work. Some of these can probably only be answered by IT professionals with access to the physical devices WI uses; I once tried to run a search for voting machine software online so I could run some tests on it myself, and I was sorely disappointed at the results of my search.
A few addenda: Voting Village reported in 2018:
It goes on from there.
There is no way to make voting machines safe. They should never, under any circumstances, be used. Optical scanners might be acceptable, but I would still be wary. Pen and paper have existed for millennia. There is no way for malicious hackers to change them remotely. They possess a security that I cannot see computers ever being able to possess.
Apologies for any typos here – it’s late and I’m tired.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.