Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The willow is too close to the house.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Infrastructure week. at last.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

No one could have predicted…

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

After roe, women are no longer free.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Schadenfreudelicious (Fake) News Open Thread: RED SLIME!

Schadenfreudelicious (Fake) News Open Thread: RED SLIME!

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This post is in: , , , ,

When the Grifter King falls, all the courtiers find themselves scrambling. As long as Trump was The Biggest Dick in the Room, the up-and-coming disinformation outlets felt they could push lies without being called out, but now that there’s a new President coming to town…

And you know having to explain OAN’s plight is just breaking the NYTimes’ heart (not). “The ‘Red Slime’ Lawsuit That Could Sink Right-Wing Media”:

… Here’s the thing: Smartmatic wasn’t even used in the contested states. The company, now a major global player with over 300 employees, pulled out of the United States in 2007 after a controversy over its founders’ Venezuelan roots, and its only involvement this November was with a contract to help Los Angeles County run its election.

In an era of brazen political lies, Mr. Mugica has emerged as an unlikely figure with the power to put the genie back in the bottle. Last week, his lawyer sent scathing letters to the Fox News Channel, Newsmax and OAN demanding that they immediately, forcefully clear his company’s name — and that they retain documents for a planned defamation lawsuit. He has, legal experts say, an unusually strong case. And his new lawyer is J. Erik Connolly, who not coincidentally won the largest settlement in the history of American media defamation in 2017, at least $177 million, for a beef producer whose “lean finely textured beef” was described by ABC News as “pink slime.”

Now, Mr. Connolly’s target is a kind of red slime, the stream of preposterous lies coming from the White House and Republican officials around the country…

Mr. Mugica isn’t the only potential plaintiff. Dominion Voting Systems has hired another high-powered libel lawyer, Tom Clare, who has threatened legal action against Ms. Powell and the Trump campaign. Mr. Clare said in an emailed statement that “we are moving forward on the basis that she will not retract those false statements and that it will be necessary for Dominion to take aggressive legal action, both against Ms. Powell and the many others who have enabled and amplified her campaign of defamation by spreading damaging falsehoods about Dominion.”

These are legal threats any company, even a giant like Fox Corporation, would take seriously. And they could be fatal to the dream of a new “Trump TV,” a giant new media company in the president’s image, and perhaps contributing to his bottom line. Newsmax and OAN would each like to become that, and are both burning money to steal ratings from Fox, executives from both companies have acknowledged. They will need to raise significantly more money, or to sell quickly to investors, to build a Fox-style multibillion-dollar empire. But outstanding litigation with the potential of an enormous verdict will be enough to scare away most buyers…

Fox News and Fox Business, which have mentioned Dominion 792 times and Smartmatic 118 times between them, according to a search of the service TVEyes, appear to be taking the threat seriously. Over the weekend, they broadcast one of the strangest three-minute segments I’ve ever seen on television, with a disembodied and anonymous voice flatly asking a series of factual questions about Smartmatic of an expert on voting machines, Eddie Perez, who debunks a series of false claims. The segment, which appeared scripted to persuade a very literal-minded judge or jury that the network was being fair, aired over the weekend on the shows hosted by Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo, where Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell had made their most outlandish claims…

Reader Interactions

161Comments

  1. 1.

    jl

    “living in a refrigerator box behind the strip club eating dog food out of the can”

    Baudists have thrived, personally and politically, on that regimen. Our thought and political leaders just have to pull up their socks and toughen up, is all.

  3. 3.

    hells littlest angel

    They could have pronounced Hugo Chavez’ name correctly, and maybe even mentioned that he’s been dead for seven years.

  6. 6.

    Omnes Omnibus

    It gets interesting when you defame someone/thing with a shitload of money and without public figure status.

  8. 8.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Baud:

    If there’s anything I’ve learned from Q, it’s that you ARE president, Baud.  The information that you’re already in charge has been kept from the American people, but soon the Great Flush will arrive and you will suck all of Balloon Juice’s enemies down the drain.

  10. 10.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    his new lawyer is J. Erik Connolly, who not coincidentally won the largest settlement in the history of American media defamation in 2017, at least $177 million, for a beef producer whose “lean finely textured beef” was described by ABC News as “pink slime.”

    Zounds! I remember the pink slime thing, but I thought it was McDonald’s. No memory of the lawsuit. Somebody on MSNBC today mentioned states where food has legal protection from defamation. If memory serves, the Texas Beef Protection Association (I may have that name wrong) sued Oprah! for bad-mouthing red meat, and she moved her whole production down to TX for the length of the trial. I think that’s where she found “Dr” Phil. I think he was some kind of trial consultant. Is that gobshite still on the television

    ETA: I was not far off.
    Texas Beef Group v. Winfrey.

  12. 12.

    jonas

    Good grief, I mean if on-air hosts on MSNBC or something went around for weeks claiming that all Apple computer products were specially designed to store and transmit child pornography or something, Apple’s lawyers wouldn’t be ripping their heads off and shitting down their necks? Please. Defamation is a tough needle to thread legally (as I understand) but this is so blatant that I think these networks’ lawyers see pretty clearly that if it ever went to trial, they’d be toast.

  17. 17.

    cain

    Schaden-fucken-freude – I’m all here for this.

    Watching all the news channels forced to repudiate their own lies – the right wing noise machine is going to go ballistic. I can see a lot of pushback going against these news people. I think a lot of people are going to watch their entire news bubble and the false reality contained within bursting.

  19. 19.

    moops

    @Baud: 

    I think you just have to send your own alternate electors to DC and have them select you to be President. No need to go whoring around looking for votes.

  22. 22.

    moops

    @jonas:  This won’t make it trial.   But this on-air back tracking is designed to soften the financial blow they are about to take when they make their settlement while admitting no wrongdoing.  It is designed to be part of the negotiations that are now certainly coming.

  23. 23.

    Mary G

    The lawyer’s letter was 20 pages long, with examples, and specifically said that retraction might not be good enough. I like to imagine the Fox lawyers faces as they read it.

    Of course, this won’t convince any of the true believers, who will chalk it up to the Deep State.

  25. 25.

    moops

    I’m curious if Dominion will make the firing of certain on-air talent a condition of the settlement.

  27. 27.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Wait, wait, wait. Point of information. I remember the pink slime story. Are we now to believe that there is not in fact a beef “product” made of sweepings and discards processed into something the chemists think looks and tastes like meat?

  28. 28.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    I’m surprised there hasn’t been a porn movie titled “Deep State”.

    They really dropped the balls on this one.

  32. 32.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Mark Meadows @MarkMeadows · 2h
    Several members of Congress just finished a meeting in the Oval Office with President @realDonaldTrump, preparing to fight back against mounting evidence of voter fraud.
    Stay tuned.

    this morning Meadows was one of the enablers who had become a guard rail

  33. 33.

    Chyron HR

    Styrofoam is not made from kittens
    The U.F.O. was a paper plate
    Lyndon B. Johnson did not provide the voice of Yosemite Sam
    Roy Rogers was not buried inside his horse
    The other U.F.O. was an upside-down salad spinner
    Our universities are not “hotbeds” of anything
    Audrey Hepburn never weighed 400 pounds
    The “Cheers” gang is not a real gang
    Salt water does not “chase the thirsties away”
    Licking an electrical outlet will not turn you into a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger

  34. 34.

    Baud

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Mark Meadows @MarkMeadows · 2h
    Several members of Congress just finished a meeting in the Oval Office with President @realDonaldTrump, preparing to fight back against mounting evidence of voter fraud.
    Stay tuned. Please donate.

    Fixed.

    ETA: The idiot wants to fight the evidence of voter fraud.  Not the fraud, but the evidence of it.

  35. 35.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    OT – I just went down the rabbit hole of Cameo (that thing where you hire popular actors to record greetings or messages of congratulations, etc. for your friends and family).

    Pretty cool – I’ve got a daughter who’d be really jazzed to hear from either Crowley or Lucifer from Supernatural ($100 for Crowley, $50 for Lucifer). The Office cast is more expensive – Kevin, Packer, Toby and David Wallace are available.  Lots of shows are represented!

  43. 43.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Baud: Yeah, the phrasing is odd.

    There was in fact a case today here in PA of a dead person voting.

    For Trump.

    I’m sure the Republicans will be demanding the maximum penalties the law allows, or more.

  45. 45.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Ha! That’s nothing! Joe Biden’s infant daughter (Naomi, aka Amy) faked her own death in that traffic accident 42 years ago and grew up to become Amy Coney Barrett. The incontrovertible proof of this is that the family car was hit by a truck full of corncobs, and — I hope you’re sitting down — the name of the turkey Trump pardoned at Thanksgiving was “Cob.”

    Wonkette lays out all the legal reasoning: https://www.wonkette.com/is-amy-coney-barrett-secretly-joe-bidens-dead-daughter-qanon-creeps-think-so

  46. 46.

    Roger Moore

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    You are supposed to understand that the story was extremely one sided and presented the “lean finely textured beef” business in an unfair light. I don’t know enough about the issue to know if that’s true, but it’s at least a facially reasonable complaint. A lot of criticism of processed food in the media is based on a gut reaction to the way it’s processed and ignores the substantial effort food processors have made to ensure their food is provably safe.

    More generally, there are two conflicting issues in the way we treat food in this country.  On the one hand, we want food that we perceive as wholesome and recognizable.  On the other hand, we demand food processors reduce waste by using every part of the food.  Unfortunately, some of the things that are done to reduce waste result in products that we see as weird, disgusting, and unrecognizable, like pink slime.  You can’t have it both ways.

  48. 48.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    Suspecting that you were right, I did a quick Google, then erased my search history – it’s a rough trade leather gay bareback orgy title from 2018.

    Here’s to the Industry – they’re always ready to capitalize a popular phrase….

  49. 49.

    Baud

    Wilkerson says Flynn should be called back to active duty and court martialed.

     

    ETA: On Hayes show.

  52. 52.

    Raoul Paste

    Apparently even Pat Robertson is feeling the heat .   He’s telling Trump to give it up  and concede,  and he is publicly  saying  that Trump’s behaviour is erratic

    Is there any doubt that Robertsons motivation is fear and money?   His organisation can be sued too.   The threat of economic annihilation seems to be the key to dealing with the cancerous right-wing media

  55. 55.

    trollhattan

    @Baud:

    Beginning to think this Mark Meadows person is not terribly bright.

    preparing to fight back against mounting evidence of voter fraud.

    Fight that mounting evidence mister president sir. It’s encroaching on your safe space.

  57. 57.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Baud:

    If doable, I recommend  it highly. Same for MacInerney.

    Wouldn’t they have to maintain IRR status?

  58. 58.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Baud: Not until after 20 JAN 2020.

     

    @zhena gogolia: LTC (ret) Lawrence Wilkerson. He was Secretary Powell’s long time chief of staff. Including when Powell was Secretary of State.

  60. 60.

    trollhattan

    @Raoul Paste:

    Ever since Pat Robertson blamed 9/11 on the gays that very same day, I’ve made it a habit not to pay close attention to things Pat Robertson says. Am surprised the dude’s still alive. How?

  69. 69.

    Another Scott

    @lowtechcyclist: One of the tropes I remember from school was that Native Americans used every part of the bison.  And that was good!

    But us using every part of cattle and turkeys and pigs is bad!

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  70. 70.

    terben

    “living in a refrigerator box behind the strip club eating dog food out of the can“

    As someone who was actually born in Yorkshire, all I can say is ‘Luxury!’

  71. 71.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Raoul Paste:

    Apparently even Pat Robertson is feeling the heat . He’s telling Trump to give it up and concede, and he is publicly saying that Trump’s behaviour is erratic

    Before the election, Robertson was telling his followers that God told him Trump would be re-elected.

    Those evangelicals do love their false prophets, so this won’t be a problem for Pat.

  72. 72.

    Another Scott

    Gradually, and then suddenly…

    Breaking: A Fairfax judge just struck down jury trials to be held in courtrooms with pictures of (almost all white) former judges because it creates a potential racial bias against a non white defendant. Read it here:https://t.co/feKXkIdgoQ

    — Ben Tribbett (@notlarrysabato) December 22, 2020

    Good, good.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  73. 73.

    Kent

    Breaking. We are so fucked. Biden is going to have to raze Washington to the ground and rebuild it.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/us/politics/russia-hack-treasury.html WASHINGTON — The Russian hackers who penetrated United States government agencies broke into the email system used by the Treasury Department’s most senior leadership, a Democratic member of the Senate Finance Committee said on Monday, the first detail of how deeply Moscow burrowed into the Trump administration’s networks.

  74. 74.

    Kent

    @UncleEbeneezer:Can this guy also sue FB/Twitter etc., in his defamation suit?  Please say “yes”…

    No, but he can sue anyone who knowingly posted lies on FB and Twitter.

    Love to see Donald Trump himself sued for both libel and slander. He’s done enough of it.

  78. 78.

    TS (the original)

    @Kent:

    Love to see Donald Trump himself sued for both libel and slander. He’s done enough of it.

    And he’s done it to people who are/were not public figures. One defence gone already.

  80. 80.

    Mike in NC

    Forget about the Red Slime. I’m eager to see the Orange Slime slither off to Merde-A-Lago next month.

  81. 81.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kent: E Jean Carroll is suing him for defamation, I think one of the other women he called a liar when she went public about his sexual assault

  85. 85.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Kent: As I wrote the other night: the strategic assumption has to be that they got into everything and have compromised everything.

  87. 87.

    TS (the original)

    @Kent:

    I think he may pardon himself – for all and any items arising during the period he was president.  Then again, none of his current “associates” are person enough to tell him of what he will be facing come 20 January.

  88. 88.

    Kent

    @TS (the original):I think he may pardon himself – for all and any items arising during the period he was president.  Then again, none of his current “associates” are person enough to tell him of what he will be facing come 20 January.

    Libel and slander (i.e. defamation) are not Federal crimes.  They are always tried under state defamation laws.  He can’t pardon himself for that.

  90. 90.

    Kent

    @Adam L Silverman:@Kent: As I wrote the other night: the strategic assumption has to be that they got into everything and have compromised everything.

    Rebuilding the entire Federal computer infrastructure is probably looong overdue to begin with, but is also going to be a hell of a stimulus and jobs package for tech workers and tech contractors.  It will be nationwide too, as there are Federal computer systems everywhere.

  91. 91.

    Keith P.

    Very ironic if Newsmax/OAN went the way of Gawker, ultimately purchased for peanuts at a bankruptcy auction by Stephen Colbert.

  92. 92.

    M31

    @Kent: Senior Trump Treasury officials? their conversations were probably so boring; “Money is so cool!” “wow, money, let’s take it all” “Cool, look at all the money!”.

    Putin would be like ‘amateurs, no one can shake down the oligarchy like I can’

  93. 93.

    trollhattan

    @Ken:

    As I recall from The Devil and Daniel Webster, after the original seven years are done, the Devil offers an extension — provided you have children…

    Should that apply to Trump, his response will be, “Take any you want, except the pretty one.”

  94. 94.

    Ken

    @Omnes Omnibus: Sorry, was making a Spartacus joke. At least your nym is unique – there’s someone else who’s been using “Ken”, and I’ve been pondering whether I should change mine — but I was here first!

  95. 95.

    Kent

    @M31:

    @Kent: Senior Trump Treasury officials? their conversations were probably so boring; “Money is so cool!” “wow, money, let’s take it all” “Cool, look at all the money!”.

    Putin would be like ‘amateurs, no one can shake down the oligarchy like I can’

    Boring?   It’s probably full of traitorous plotting to subvert the rule of law for Trump and the Russians now have them all by the balls.

  98. 98.

    Mary G

    The deplorables keep losing:

    Robert E Lee statue removed from US Capitol overnight pic.twitter.com/rkFN9MuSY9— Erik Wasson (@elwasson) December 21, 2020

    Also, too WaPo reports that the Covid stimulus bill includes raft of provisions to fight climate change.

    The most substantial federal investment in green technology in a decade includes billions for solar, wind, battery storage and carbon capture. Congress also agreed to cut the use of HFCs, chemicals used in refrigeration that are driving global warming.

    Sweet!

  101. 101.

    TS (the original)

    @Ken:

    I’ve been pondering whether I should change mine

    I had the same issue – hence my change of nym a year or two ago – and then the duplicate disappeared.

  103. 103.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Rachel Maddow reports from “sources”: Federal prosecutors discussing request for Giuliani’s electronic communications.

  104. 104.

    M31

    @Adam L Silverman: Biden’s incoming tech team has got an astonishing job ahead. The mind boggles.

    Who knows what kind of spyware has burrowed deep into all kinds of systems with 4 years of Trumpian malfeasance and Jared’s security clearance.

    and who knows what the fuck secret shit Trump spilled over his unsecured cell phone

    well, besides Russia, China, Israel, the Saudis, etc.

  107. 107.

    Kent

    @M31: It will be a good excuse to abandon a lot of bullshit old legacy systems and build up modern stuff from scratch.  But it is going to be enormously expensive and time consuming to do.

  108. 108.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I hope federal prosecutors go after these treasonous Trump lawyers with the full force of the law. They need to lose their law licenses and be prosecuted for treason. Thankfully, once he leaves office, Trump can’t pardon any more criminals so their goose will be cooked.

  109. 109.

    Amir Khalid

    A news organisation with any principles would have given the correction the same prominence as the erroneous story. In this case that would mean Fox and Newsmax and that entire ilk would have to go 24×7 confessing to their “election fraud” lies. I consider no less to be a fitting and sufficient penance.

  110. 110.

    dmsilev

    Excellence in Headlines:

    Trump assembles a ragtag crew of conspiracy-minded allies in flailing bid to reverse election loss

    With his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud rejected by dozens of judges and GOP leaders, President Trump has turned to a ragtag group of conspiracy theorists, media-hungry lawyers and other political misfits in a desperate attempt to hold on to power after his election loss.

    The president’s orbit has grown more extreme as his more mainstream allies, including Attorney General William P. Barr, have declined to endorse his increasingly radical plans to overturn the will of the voters. Trump’s unofficial election advisory council now includes a felon, adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a White House trade adviser and a Russian agent’s former lover.

    Edit: if you need a program to keep track of the cast,

    Gathered around the Resolute Desk on Friday were: Sidney Powell, the lawyer who has promoted a baseless allegation that hostile nations manipulated voting machines to flip votes for Biden; Michael Flynn, the recently pardoned former national security adviser who has publicly suggested invoking martial law to “basically rerun an election”; former Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne, who now promotes election conspiracy theories; and White House officials including Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Staff Secretary Derek Lyons and Counsel Pat Cipollone. Giuliani joined the meeting by phone.

  111. 111.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Kent:

    You know whose server was never compromised?

    Yup.

    Of course, when I think of Internet-linked control functions and critical databases being subject to intrusion and manipulation, you’d think that none of these dorks watched the pilot of the Battlestar Galactica reboot as to Adama’s problem with networked computers.

  112. 112.

    Martin

    @Baud: I voted for you, and I’m pretty everyone I know voted for you. It inconceivable anyone else could have won this election.

  115. 115.

    M31

    @dmsilev: “ragtag” makes it sound like a bunch of scrappy kids, as opposed to a bunch of treasonous anti-democratic unamerican pieces of shit

    but ‘flailing’ is pretty good

  118. 118.

    dmsilev

    @M31: It’s a cross between the Scooby Gang, the Dirty Dozen, and the A Team. Except, you know, the exact opposite in competence. Also, Trump hates dogs.

  119. 119.

    M31

    @Kent: it would be such a huge task, it’s hard to imagine — all that data, who knows how many formats, how much crucial stuff that has to be saved, maintained, aligned, jesus. Even the tiniest ‘cleaning up database’ work (to adapt an old system to a new one) I’ve been involved with was a fiddly awful chore with all kinds of ways to break it hahahaha

    I wonder what is the oldest legacy system still running in the federal gov’t? I’m sure there are some offices still using 8″ floppies. Maybe they got rid of the punch cards, though

  120. 120.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Patricia Kayden: I always thought it would be a pretty safe bet that the books, and files, of Giuliani Associates or whatever it is wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny, and that’s before he became Chief Flying Monkey to Big Orange Glob of Corruption

    And I wonder if Letitia James is getting any heads ups from SDNY, how much and how closely state and federal prosecutors can cooperate, when an Attorney General is watching.

  121. 121.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @trollhattan:

    Should that apply to Trump, his response will be, “Take any you want, except the pretty one.”

    The joke’s on the Devil. Trump already sold his kids to the Unseelie Court, decades ago. He forgot to include a clause in the contract, insisting that the changeling substitutes be realistic.

  123. 123.

    Kent

    @M31: NOAA had a bunch of old mainframe computers running old legacy scientific survey stuff when I was working there in the 90s and early 2000s.  Basically  old mainframe databases full of fisheries data that were running totally proprietary one-off software systems designed to do things like convert midwater acoustic fisheries surveys into stock assessments and such.  The people who originally designed all that stuff are long retired.   It’s nothing you can replace with anything off the shelf.  Basically complicated algorithms tweaked over decades that convert hydro-acoustic data from survey ships into fisheries biomass estimates.  That sort of thing.  Only a handful of people even know how the stuff works.

    I expect there are similar examples all across the government because so much of it is utterly unique and not duplicated by any commercial applications.

    Of course these are not the systems that the Russians are hacking into.

  124. 124.

    Kent

    @M31:@Kent: it would be such a huge task, it’s hard to imagine — all that data, who knows how many formats, how much crucial stuff that has to be saved, maintained, aligned, jesus. Even the tiniest ‘cleaning up database’ work (to adapt an old system to a new one) I’ve been involved with was a fiddly awful chore with all kinds of ways to break it hahahaha

    I think they have to build up new systems from scratch for the critical secure stuff and just keep all the old legacy stuff running separately and try to patch it up as best they can on a triage basis.  And we will have several decades of old and new running side by side.

  127. 127.

    Bill Arnold

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Robertson was telling his followers that God told him Trump would be re-elected.

    I have been wondering today whether Pat Robertson has been thinking about who exactly it was who was whispering in his mind’s ear. A Prince of Lies, perhaps?

  128. 128.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Kent: Bullshit old legacy systems run not just in government, but all over business and industry. There are still mainframes, there’s still a market for COBOL programmers.

  129. 129.

    Another Scott

    @M31: An example – ERAM replaces Host:

    [Avionics Today 05-01-2015] “As of today, Host is history,” FAA Administrator Michael Huerta announced yesterday morning at a press conference regarding the rollout of the new Air Traffic Control (ATC) En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) system held at the Washington Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va. ERAM, which was contracted in 1990 to replace the agency’s antiquated Host system, has finally taken over at all 20 ATC centers in the United States, enabling many of the NextGen air traffic modernization initiatives that the FAA is currently working to put in place.

    25 years.

    For one system in one agency. And, IIRC, there’s a big push to use GPS systems now and not rely on ATC so much, so things are not “over”.

    The federal government runs gigantic specialized networks of computers that have to run for decades. And can’t go down for weeks/months/years while some new system replaces it.

    As with the rest of the government, there are complex rules about how the system is specified, who can bid on the contracts, how the contracts are awarded, how the contracts are monitored, and how the systems are maintained and upgraded. Technology often marches on at a much faster clip than the contract requirements.
    Congress is very, very bad about funding decades-long projects, when their main concern too often is the next election…

    Given all the other real constraints on the federal budget, don’t expect hundreds of billions of dollars to suddenly appear to fix any security issues. There will be money spent, but it will be modest (is my guess). Upgrades will of necessity be piecemeal.

    IMHO.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  131. 131.

    debbie

    @M31:

    Bet it turns out that Trump ended some oversight group or disbanded some committee that provided an opportunity for the Russians to get into systems.

  132. 132.

    Elie

     

    This is gonna be fun to watch.  Dominion and Smartmatic don’t have to play this shit with Fox, OAN or Newsmax.  They are not politicians who have to worry about these jerks.  They are private companies with enough dough to protect themselves and to punish someone who forgets that….

  133. 133.

    Bill Arnold

    Ah, Pat Robertson has been on the God Will Reverse The Election (well, until yesterday?) : ““the Lord himself” will make sure that Donald Trump is president for another four years.”
    Pat Robertson has made false prophesies many times, yet he never seems to get called out for false prophecy.

  135. 135.

    Ruckus

    @M31:

    I’d bet the hardest part would be the language and age of the servers/data would be 8 bit, or maybe 16, so the structure of the languages would be so far different from what’s used today that even finding enough people with the knowledge of both would be very difficult. Company I worked for still had every thing for all their main business, which was a membership organization that’s now 96 yrs old, written in Cobol and finding people 20 yrs ago who could maintain it was tough. The federal government started to computerize earlier than that organization did.

  136. 136.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Another Scott: The real problem is you don’t “fix security issues.” Security has to be designed in from the beginning, and with the Internet, it wasn’t. Internet communications is based on 40-year-old protocols that were designed when there was a handful of systems and the operators all knew each other.

  137. 137.

    Bill Arnold

    @Kent:
    The press is all-in on attributing these attacks to Russians/SVR without solid forensic evidence, just patterns. Wish they wouldn’t do that; at least (and reasonably) say “probable”. Also, a Microsoft analysis notes that there were two backdoors found in the SolarWinds Orion SW, and that they appeared to be installed/used by different actors. Bold mine:
    Analyzing Solorigate, the compromised DLL file that started a sophisticated cyberattack, and how Microsoft Defender helps protect customers (December 18, 2020, Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team)

    Additional malware discovered
    In an interesting turn of events, the investigation of the whole SolarWinds compromise led to the discovery of an additional malware that also affects the SolarWinds Orion product but has been determined to be likely unrelated to this compromise and used by a different threat actor. The malware consists of a small persistence backdoor in the form of a DLL file named App_Web_logoimagehandler.ashx.b6031896.dll, which is programmed to allow remote code execution through SolarWinds web application server when installed in the folder “inetpub\SolarWinds\bin\”.

    This will (may/could be) of course be used to spin up narratives about china and russia, etc. Ugh. The second backdoor found could easily have been installed and used by a non-state actor, and it is unclear whether the main actor was the one that triggered (accidentally?) a Duo MFA new-device alert (including a message to the employee) at FireEye, triggering an internal analysis that found the breach in the SolarWinds Orion SW.

  138. 138.

    Matt McIrvin

    OT: gah, why do half the leftists in the world insist the Democratic Party has been continuously moving to the right? I’ve been watching it for 40+ years. It WAS moving right… from the 1970s until about 2004. The defeat of John Kerry was about the furthest point. Been moving leftward ever since then, in just about every way. The center of the party is currently left of Obama. Scott Lemieux is right about this.

  139. 139.

    Bill Arnold

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Hillary’s server was far more secure.

    Smaller attack surface, at least.
    The Russians (it was thought) were in the State Department unclassified email servers for years. Perhaps exorcised in (2014?) but who knows for sure except the Russians.

  141. 141.

    HalfAssedHomesteader

    “I’m reluctant to cheer on a defamation case against news organizations, even networks that appear to be amplifying dangerous lies.” [my emphasis]

    Holy mother of god.

  142. 142.

    billcinsd

    @Roger Moore: ignores the substantial effort food processors have made to ensure their food is provably safe.

    I think you mean, ignores the substantial efforts food processors are forced to make because they didn’t used to make food that was safe

  144. 144.

    dnfree

    @Gin & Tonic: I retired from 45 years as a programmer analyst etc. in 2011. On the day I retired, there was not a single line of code I had written still in use anywhere. (The reason I retired when I did was that my last employer replaced most of their custom code with SAP.). But I never wrote in COBOL, other than a little maintenance, and I didn’t work for the government. Y2K resulted in replacement of a lot of old code.

  145. 145.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Baud: “Dp you solemnly swear to uphold and defend the Constipation of the United States against all enemas, foreign and domestic?”

  146. 146.

    Another Scott

    @Gin & Tonic: True, and well known, but we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.  And it’s not just the network, of course.

    In 2018 DARPA had a BAA for a program to address the issue of figuring out ways to find software vulnerabilities faster.

    The Department of Defense (DoD) maintains information systems that depend on Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software, Government off-the-shelf (GOTS) software, and Free and open source (FOSS) software. Securing this diverse technology base requires highly skilled hackers who reason about the functionality of software and identify novel vulnerabilities. This process requires hundreds, if not thousands of hours of manual effort per discovered vulnerability and does not scale sufficiently to secure the continuously growing technology base. Hackers use program analysis techniques and tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities, but this process requires considerable expertise, manual effort, and time. Automated program analysis capabilities can reason over only a few vulnerability classes without human involvement, such as memory corruption or integer overflow, but cannot address the majority of vulnerabilities. These unaddressed vulnerability types depend on subtle semantic and contextual information, which is beyond the grasp of modern automation. Scaling up existing approaches to address the size and complexity of modern software packages is not possible given the limited number of expert hackers in the world, much less the DoD.

    […]

    Even if the ARPANET/Internet had been “secure” from the beginning, no complex, useful system can survive and thrive for 50 years without being re-engineered[1].  We’d still be having the same discussions today.  ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    [1] – Even Knuth made mistakes!

  148. 148.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Hey! Look who’s getting all unifying again!

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC
    I accept that by challenging the idea that we should support pro-Trump Dems in safe seats, I’m gonna take a few knocks. What’s disappointing to hear is that this decision incl open discussion of political donations. As a party that talks abt money in politics, we shld do better.

    I like the way she never names names, like when she talked about her “colleagues” who view BLM as an enemy. It’s so much easier to not have to argue specifics….

  150. 150.

    Kent

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Pro-Trump” Dems in safe seats?

    Yes, I do think you have to name names.  Who are these “pro-Trump” Dems in safe seats?

    Far as I recall, Tulsi is the only Dem in Congress who didn’t vote to impeach the bastard.

  151. 151.

    Yutsano

    @Kent: Tulsi didn’t run for her seat again. So unless AOC is twisting the knife on her way out, it’s not Tulsi. I think Hawai’i still has an all Democratic delegation but have to check.

    Still two Democrats with a Native in there now!

  152. 152.

    Jay

    @Kent:

    she’s talking about votes on legislation.

    Kyrsten Sinema has 51.1% of the time, voted for Yurtle and the Orange Douchebags legislation.

    It’s a “call out” on the Blue Dogs.

    Naming names, would be devisive.

  154. 154.

    Kent

    @Jay: What legislation?

    Name me one piece of legislation passed by the Senate and signed into law during Sinema’s tenure in the Senate that didn’t also pass the House under Pelosi.

  155. 155.

    Jay

    @Kent:

    way too much “ in the weeds” detail for my time and fog brain.

    Progressive Dems have been calling out Blue Dogs for decades,

    sometimes by name,

    But now, because of AOC Derangement Syndrome, now it’s a “thing”.

  161. 161.

    Miss Bianca

    @Jay: It’s almost as if, when challenged, you can’t bother to provide the receipts.

    Kind of like AOC in this instance.

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