Russians Hacked Rust Belt Vote Conduits: Stole Election

Indisputable evidence that Russians under the directive of President Vladimir Putin hacked into key voting data conduits which conveyed election voting totals from local voting machines in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida has been uncovered by the National Security Agency working with agents from the FBI and CIA in a coordinated task force.

The Russian approach did not require hacking individual voting machines but targeted the pathways from local hubs which collected data from polling stations and conveyed them to more central loci where vote counts from counties were fed on election night to provide the voting totals used by the national networks reporting on the election results through the night of November 8.


The tactic was crafted to minimize the actual number of computers and servers hacked and is called "Hub Diversion" in reference to the hubs used by American airlines to maximize efficiency of their air traffic routes.  Traffic routed through these computerized "hubs" centralizes and speeds collection of vote tallies so results can be available to television audiences waiting for the news of the election outcomes.


Polling prior to the voting and exit polls predicted a Clinton victory and retrospective studies of exit polls in key voting precincts suggested Clinton had won Pennsylvania and likely Ohio but the vote tallies did not agree with these data. Comparisons between exit polls and actual vote counts in Wisconsin were not as clear.

Mr. Putin subsequently award three medals to the directors of this cyber attack who are employed by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation to:
Yevginy Klebanoff, the medal for "Distinction in Special Operations"

Vasily Primakoff, the medal for "Distinction in Securing Information Security"

Nikita Filonov, the medal for "Distinction in Safeguarding Economic Security."

The NSA report completed on March 6, but President Trump directed the Director of the NSA to "make it go away." The Senate Intelligence Committee has tabled consideration of the report and Paul Ryan denied today that the House Committee on Oversight and Investigations has received a copy of the report, and referred questions from the New York Times to Alex Jones.


Senate Leader Mitch McConnell told the Washington Post he had no plans to request the report be considered before 2020.


Senate Minority Leader Sen. Charles Schumer said this morning, "This would be a matter of grave national concern and we hope we can reach across the aisle to consider this."  Representative Nancy Pelosi responded to a Wall Street Journal question saying, "It makes me very sad. This would be unprecedented."


The National Rifle Association issued a press statement: "If they had attacked the polling places, our members would have been ready to open fire with all the bump stocks and AK-15's at our disposal, which, of course, the Democrats would have tried to prevent."


Rush Limbaugh said this morning, "This is clearly fake news, people. The Russians were too busy listening to tapes of Hillary Clinton having sex with Rachel Madow."


Sean Hannity responded, "This is clearly a diversionary tactic so the press will stop focusing on Hillary Clinton's child porn operation in that Washington, DC pizza pallor, which has never been fully explained."

President Obama reached for comment in Hawaii said, "I can't say I'm surprised, but, you know, I'm so glad to be out here on the beach and I've got way better on my surf board, so really, that's on someone else now."

--Special to the Failing New York Times

Portsmouth Democratic Forum: And Then There Were Three

Mad Dog got a seat up front at the Portsmouth candidates' forum tonight, mostly to hear Terence O'Rourke, but it was the first opportunity to see all 8 candidates together and to hear them on the issues.

Nobody pursued any questions with follow ups, and the moderator, Ray Buckley, made sure everything remained non confrontational and sweet, which is nothing like what the stage will be like when a Republican is standing on it, but this was Democratic forum and there was no Trump calling anyone "Little Marco."

O'Rourke and friend

O'Rourke did not disappoint:  He said we had to get money out of politics, had to reverse the Supreme Court decision on campaign financing, Citizens United and then told us how: When we get a Democratic majority in the Congress we add 6 new Supreme Court justices, which does not require a Constitutional amendment. He noted the last Chief Justice appointed by a Democrat was appointed by Harry S. Truman and he said we were being ruled by the dead, when it came to the Supreme Court.  He vowed to take no PAC money, a non too veiled knock at Maura Sullivan, sitting three spots away, who is leading everyone in outside money. His answer about having gays serve in the military was surprisingly strong and supportive.  He slammed Trump for waging war on a sovereign state without Congressional authorization and said that alone was an impeachable offense. And he slammed Maggie Hassan for voting to gut the Dodd Frank law protecting us against another bank meltdown and he said we needed another Glass Speigal act to separate commercial from community banking.  He inveighed against endless wars without missions and said the 2nd amendment doesn't guarantee every citizen to a right to a military weapon meant to kill people, but he warned about the traps Democrats fall into when talking about guns.  He said we had a Congress bought and paid for by the billionaires and our tax cut law, just passed, was a outright theft by the rich, passed by a Congress which had legalized bribery.

He was satisfyingly left of Bernie, left of Lenin, forceful, a warrior you could see going toe to toe with Jim Jordan, or any of those Freedom caucus Republican creeps.

The real surprise was Lincoln Soldati, who Mad Dog had not previously heard. He was by far the consummate crowd pleaser.  He began by saying he was the oldest candidate and that he was not running to start a career, but because he thought the country was in real trouble and we had to do something right away. In response to Medicare for all, he held up his own Medicare card and said he'd had all sorts of medical insurance over his life but this was by far the best. It's tried and true and everyone should have it. When Mark Mackenzie said Social Security could be saved by raising the cap on taxable income, Soldati said we should do more than raise the cap--we should eliminate it. (O'Rourke noted the rich get away without paying taxes not just by that cap but by paying only 20% on most of their income from stocks and other non wage sources.) Soldati, of all 8, would be the most reliable vanquisher of any Republican opponent. He would simply eat those Republican twits for lunch.

And then there was Deaglan McEachern. He continued to emphasize the importance of not getting so caught up in trying to get everyone a college education we forget that the trades and crafts--electricians, plumbers, carpenters--are the route to the middle class and beyond and these jobs will never be taken over by robots, which is how most of the blue collar jobs will be lost over the coming decades.  He was seated next to Soldati and it was like watching a young Jack Kennedy sitting next to Tip O'Neill. One is the present power, and one is the power to come. 

If anyone came away with new converts out of this exercise, it was likely O'Rourke, who managed to distinguish himself from the others by simply being more insistent on uncompromising liberal positions. Mad Dog's heart was with O'Rourke. But in terms of the reality of politics, O'Rourke is way behind in money raising and does not have a political base, and Soldati, a former mayor of Sommersworth has that. 

McEachern has something else. Call it polish, call it charisma.  It's that ineffable quality Kennedy had, that simply draws people to him. 

Fact is, we'd be blessed by any of the three.  But oh what fun we'd have if it were O'Rourke. He mentioned Paul Wellstone, the Wisconsin Liberal as an inspiration and he is right out of that mold. He'd give Louie Gohmert, Jim Jordan, and all those Freedom Caucus pricks fits. 

Why I Love the President

My friends are mostly liberals. Well, not just mostly. Completely.

When somebody I thought was a friend betrays a MAGA streak, they are no longer my friend.

President Wah-Wah

But I have to admit, I really love the President. 
He is the most entertaining President in my lifetime.

I used to have to wait all week for "All in the Family," but now I can just open Twitter every day and there he is.

Original Wah Wah

Everyone loved Archie Bunker, and here we have life imitating art--we got the American public having put Archie in the White House, and it's been great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALE6ENavvJQ


Every morning he is doing his inner Archie, complaining about this unfair world, doing him--and all of us--wrong.

Annoyed

The MS-13 Mexican rapists are flooding across the border and our laws won't allow us to lock them up!  Jerry Brown is shielding them in an act of outright revolution in California! So unfair!

And Stormy, who was, after all, Obama's girl, is in bed with Comey, sending all those FBI agents to destroy lawyer/criminal confidentiality! So UNFAIR! 

And we bomb the Sh*****t out of ISIS in Syria after they unleash a chemical attack on babies and nobody thanks President Wah,Wah, because the press is composed of the worst people in the world. 

Republicans get the girls

Very dishonest. They all loved that nasty woman, Crooked Hillary and they won't rest until they undo the will of the people who elected President Wah, Wah, with some sort of impeachment. The worst investigation in the history of the world investigating the best President in the history of the world. 
I don't understand why he hasn't fired Mueller, who is the worst special prosecutor in the history of the world. So biased. 
And don't get me started on that woman judge who is presiding over the FBI break in of his lawyer's office. She is so biased. She's a woman and she knows President Wah-Wah would grab her Pus****sy  so she's being unfair. 
So unfair. 
The worst judge in the history of the world--except maybe for that Hispanic judge from Indiana. 
This judge has it in for President Wah-Wah because he says he wants to put his hand in her Pus***sy, well, not her specifically but he does that to all beautiful women, and this judge was, briefly, a Playboy bunny, but that was before she was made a judge. 
But she was known for being beautiful. Even the Senator who nominated her as a judge mentioned how beautiful she was, but he said not to let that influence anyone.
She' s not an active Bunny now. But she is very pretty and that makes her so biased against President Wah-Wah because she has undoubtedly heard Pres Wah Wah talking about how he just can't resist putting his hands up into beautiful women. So she is biased. Just so unfair!

Judge Kimba Wood

That stuff about the Playboy bunny. True. You can't make this stuff up. And now she's all up in Trump's case.

Judge Wood, before becoming a Judge

Well, Gloria Steinem was a Playboy bunny and she doesn't like Trump either. Not one bit. So you can see the pattern. Bunnies hate Trump. So unfair!!!

Fox reality

I'm not really worried about impeachment.
Bill Clinton won after they tried to impeach him. People could see right through it, even though he had sex with Stormy when she was still underaged! They re-elected him just like they'll re-elect President Wah,wah!

There's hope

Twitter is wonderful. It allows me to hear directly from President Wah-Wah every morning without the dishonest, terrible, no good, very bad press getting in the way. 

It's really fun to watch. I look forward to Twitter, every day!

Are American Soldiers Heroes?

"Get jailed, jump bail,
Join the Army if you fail"
--Subterranean Homesick Blues/Bob Dylan

"We went to war; America went to the mall."
--American Army ditty

At the end of the Band of Brothers episode "The Last Patrol," David Webster voice overs a paragraph about how the end of the Second World War was in sight and while American soldiers were still dying in towns like Haguena on the German border, back in America night clubs and casino's were packed and you couldn't get a hotel room at most resorts. Even in that war, when the entire population was mobilized or at risk for mobilization only a small number of men were actually at the tip of the spear, on the front lines. "Nobody back home would ever know what those men sacrificed," Webster says.

So, in modern times, as long as America fights its wars abroad, there will likely be a disconnect between the price paid by a small number of warriors and that paid by the civilian population.

The refrain "they fight to keep us free," is a little shopworn, even after 9/11. After all, no terrorist attack has ever actually threatened our freedom, unless you count the freedom to hop a jet to Florida during the winter. They fight to keep us safe might be more like it, but it's not at all clear any of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Niger or Syria have done that.

America went to the "volunteer" army, to "professionalize" military service after Vietnam, mostly because politicians realized if you drafted boys out of families and sent them into harm's way more or less against their will, you'd better be able to sell that to their parents, and truth is, we haven't had a war since where you could sell the idea to Congress, much less to parents.

So, who does "volunteer?" Are our armed forces comprised of young men and women who are motivated by love of country, eager to defend our freedoms or are they simply young people who have looked around at the available options and concluded the best deal for them, economically, financially, socially is to join the military?

"Hillbilly Elegy" details the dysfunctional Appalachian family and communities from which J.D. Vance fled to the Army. One of the most pathetic scenes in the book is at Chili's restaurant, where Vance, returning home on leave, has enough money to buy his grandparents and sibling dinner. It was the proudest moment in his life. He felt like a man.

Not everyone in the Army was from as desperate circumstances as J.D. Vance. Pat Tillman was a millionaire professional football player who joined the Army after 9/11 and then died in a firefight in Afghanistan, shot by mistake by his own compatriots, killed by friendly fire.

There are likely many reasons young people join:  some are from military families; some are disaffected by school; some dream of becoming heroes.

But they can all claim that most socially acceptable motive of all: Patriotism.

Whatever that may be. 

The armed forces have marketed service with huge flags unfurled at ball fields, action ads on TV, smart uniforms, support of TV shows and movies.  And at the end of every big scene is the line about how we are about to die for freedom and country.

I have never served in combat, so I cannot know, but I suspect if combat shares anything with the service I have seen in the emergency rooms and wards, when you are there, you have no grand illusions of valor. You are just trying to survive and you are trying to not embarrass yourself and you are trying to use your training to get a specific job done.

The fact is, our volunteer Army is a mercenary army. You may not like that word, "mercenary" with it's connotation of motivation devoid of ethics, based on money alone. A prostitute is mercenary. A wife loves her husband, but also benefits financially (if she's lucky.) Human motivation is seldom uni-dimensional. But the fact remains, as President Trump told the wife of a soldier killed in Niger, "He knew what he was signing up for," that was one of truest things President Heel Spurs ever said. 
For Trump, everything thing is financial, a negotiation for the best deal. These soldiers--they are just trying to get the best deal they can. Let's not muddy the waters with "patriotism."  Patriotism is for suckers.

Of course, there are people and times when you can't avoid patriotism. There is that wonderful scene in "Gone With the Wind," in which the most cynical and realistic character in the story, Rhett Butler, sees the old men and young boys who are marching out of Atlanta with rifles slung over their shoulders and he jumps down from the wagon and hands the reins to Scarlett O'Hara and she is outraged, "You can't just leave us to go fight some war!" And Butler tells her he knows it's ridiculous, but sometimes you just have to do something which is not in your own best interest.

We haven't had that sort of choice when it comes to military service in this country since the war against Hitler.

And there is a wonderful sequence in "Full Metal Jacket" where a camera crew interviews Marines on the way to  the fight for Hue, in Vietnam, and the reporter asks Animal Mother, the BAR man (who carries a very big gun) if he is fighting for freedom. "Freedom?" Animal Mother laughs. "You think I'd kill someone for freedom?"

Learning from Fox News

There's a scene in the movie "Patton" in which Patton looks down on a field of battle where his tank command routs the tank corp of the German General Rommel, and Patton calls out, "Take that, you bastard! I read your book!"

Patton studied Rommel's book to learn him better, so he could beat him.
Football coaches go over hours of film to learn the moves and the strengths of their opponents.

But Democrats do not study their adversaries, not nearly enough.

This morning, I watched as CNN interviewed Senators coming out of the Zuckerberg hearings. 
First, they interviewed a Democrat from Delaware, Sen. Coons, who was careful, articulate, qualifying every assertion with modifying phrases. He could have been testifying in court, his statements were so careful and well constructed and bullet proof. 
But then they caught a Republican senator from Louisiana, with the disorienting name of John Kennedy, and he shuffled his feet and said, "I'm giving away at least 75 IQ points to Mr. Zuckerberg, I know that, but he's a whip smart man, and I think he could go back to California and shoo those $1200 an hour lawyers from his office and say, 'I'm gonna write a new users' agreement that's not written in Swahili that most folks can understand, so they'll know how we're gonna use their information.' And he knows there's three things about the Internet and one of 'em is how it can poison elections, and I bet he can figure out how he can stop us from drinking that poison every time we boot up our computers. I sure hope he can, because if he can't we got much bigger problems than Mr. Zuckerberg."

They're on TV; they must know what they are talking about

What this Republican did in those few moments before the camera was amazing. First, the contrast between the short, nervous, bald Democrat, who was ever so careful and the tall, patrician but ever so folksy Republican, with a shock of white hair, carelessly flopping in his eyes was stark.
And then came the smooth flow of funny remarks we can laugh at and agree with--user contracts in Swahili--which appeals to his base back in Louisiana where they know Swahili's are Black and live in Africa and got no business on our computers here in the USA and anyway, nobody can understand all that legalese, which is what Senator Coons speaks and what is in those users agreements.

You can teach a girl to read the news; you can't teach pretty

We need smart, smooth, dumb like foxes Democrats like they got in the Republican party.

They are beating the stuffing out of us.

Okay, watch this or watch CNN?

The South had no factories, few armories, sparse infrastructure at the beginning of the Civil War, but they had better leaders, effective generals and they nearly won that war with leadership.

The Republican Party, which is basically a Southern party--a party which knits together those Alabama-in-between areas from Wisconsin to Montana to Pennsylvania--has been kicking the bejezzus out of Democrats with better generals for years now. 

You can stop channel surfing right now

If the Democrats hope to regain Congress, the courts and/or the Presidency, they will need to find somebody who has read the Fox News book.

That's a gun in her pants

Just watch Fox News: This morning some leggy blond in a dazzling red blouse interviewed a 22 year old coed from the University of Tennessee who had gone viral with her photo wearing a Women for Trump T shirt and a gun tucked in her waistband, pointed toward her crotch. 
The whole interview was eye candy. 
It was all about how coeds needed guns to protect themselves on campus, but the Democrats don't want anyone under 21 buying a gun and they don't want guns on campus. Well, Fox will have you know, Trump women aren't having any of it. 
Dream on that and eat your heart out.

Got girls? Get Conservative

Democrats should be watching Fox every day, figuring out how they succeed and thinking about how to counter that. 

And Trump Won

When they go low, we go high. And how did that work out for us?

Predictions from the Past of Present Day

Henry Louis Mencken was not the kind of guy I'd want to hang out with. Racist, anti Semitic, opposed to the New Deal, opposed to joining the fight against Hitler--he was about a lot of nasty white, comfortable American male things.

But he did have the capacity to observe the American scene with a ruthless eye and he was very quotable.

Here's one which seems particularly apt in 21st century America:

"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

How did he know?

Victory in Virginia Day: A Stillness at Appomattox

April 9th is a day which we should celebrate as fervently as the Fourth of July.
Fireworks, marches, balloons, flags, lots of flags.
It was the day Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox.
The fighting did not entirely cease, but the remaining Confederate armies in the field were rendered ineffective and surrendered ineluctably.
A guerilla war in the form of the Ku Klux Klan, some of it led by Confederate generals like Bedford Forrest tried to undo the outcome, tried to win the war by other means.
Grant exerted every effort to thwart this hideous Klan.

American Swastika

The Civil War was, as James McPherson has described it, the Second American Revolution, the movement with finally freed all men (except, of course for "Native Americans") and Lincoln made sure the fighting was not undone by legal shenanigans and he got the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments passed as a condition of the Southern states being readmitted to the Union.
These amendments did not give the vote to women, but it was a beginning, a step toward universal enfranchisement and full citizenship.

Gentleman slaver.

Of course, the war began as a war to save the Union, but to save a union from what? From Southerners intent on protecting "States' Rights?" And what were these rights which were so cherished?The right to own and sell and rape slaves.

Relentless.

None of us today is as close to that epoch as Abraham Lincoln, and you have to allow him a certain amount of authority here. Looking back at the four years of war at his Second Inaugural a month before Appomattox, Lincoln gave a succinct and utterly persuasive history of the war.  He said that at the outset, nobody wanted to admit it was about slavery, but as the years wore on and as freed slaves made their presence felt, it became clear, the war had been about slavery all along. Union troops, marching through the South were often appalled and repulsed by the freed slaves who followed them, but, eventually, the presence of these slaves sunk in and the ordinary soldier could believe, in some part of his mind, his efforts were in fact heroic. War has a way of crushing any thoughts of heroism in the minds of those who fight it, and men fight for their fellow soldiers, but that experience of seeing overjoyed freed slaves had to affect even the most cynical.

Nobody even comes close.

In one of the greatest speeches ever uttered by anyone on this planet, and certainly by any American President, Lincoln said, as only he could say, what had happened.

"An impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war."

"I will make Georgia howl."

What really good writing is, after all, is an explication, in understandable terms, of the truth.

No American has ever been better at this than Lincoln.

Lee, who many, even today, in the South, regard as a fine gentleman who was too kindly to be a slaver, fought tooth and nail to protect slavery. He was not kind to his own slaves and his armies murdered white Union officers who led Negro regiments and slaughtered the soldiers after they had surrendered or captured them and returned them to slavery. He is buried with his horse in Lexington Virginia. He would have felt violated had slaves been buried nearby, but his horse, oh, that was most excellent. Think about that.

The United States of America is exceptional among nations in only one important way, as far as Mad Dog is concerned:  In the long and bloody history of this planet only one nation across the millennia has ever fought its most costly war, or any war for that matter, to free an underclass within its own body politic.

Protesting the removal of Lee's statue

Walk through our cemeteries here in Hampton, or Hampton Falls or anywhere in the Granite State, as far north as Gilmanton and Holderness and you see them there, men in their twenties, dead in 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864, 1865.  In the Holderness cemetery, the majority of graves from these years are fighting age men. There is a plaque there, and all over New Hampshire there are similar plaques, with the names of the dead soldiers who went South to fight. Nason Road in Hampton Falls is named after a man who raised a Union regiment.

What Lee fought for

Nobody should imagine all these men left town to free slaves. Each man likely had his own reasons. But we cannot be as cynical as Boris Pasternak, who said, no happy man leaves home to go to war. Men whose lives could have been long and often pleasurable went to fight.

Sheridan and his staff (Custer on right)

And  you know the men who joined the Massachusetts 54 th, the Negro regiment about whom the book and movie "Glory" was made went to fight for emancipation.

Falstaff looked at a rotting body on the battlefield and said, "There's glory for you."

Again, cynicism which is often and mostly true, but not entirely.

Grief and History. But not regret.

If this country ever had heroes, it was then:  Joshua Chamberlain who held the Union flank at Gettysburg, Phil Sheridan (whose wife famously said, "I would rather be Phil Sheridan's widow than any living man's wife") Sherman, and, of course, Grant.  And let us not forget the greatest hero of all: Abraham Lincoln.

If we are anything special, if the nations survives Trump, if it survives another 300 years, we will still be looking back to these citizens and wonder how God made such men.

Americans today, none of us were alive then. Because they were great, does not make us great. But their lives can inspire us and teach us. When we think of giving up, of not taking a stand when an aristocracy, a billionaire class tries to secure its own wealth and advantages by stomping on an underclass, we can ask ourselves: What would Lincoln do?