On today’s BradCast, we catch up with a grab bag of stuff, most of which doesn’t have to do with Donald Trump’s idiocy — you’re welcome — but a lot of which has to do with what Americans need to do about him! [Audio link to full show is posted below.]
Among the many stories covered on today’s program…
- The front page of the New York Times now, officially, looks like a pre-2016 parody of what the Times might look like if Donald Trump were ever elected President;
- Denmark still doesn’t want to sell Greenland to the US. Why, after all, would its citizens want to give up “universal health care, free higher education, five weeks of annual paid vacation and 12 months of paid parental leave, subsidized childcare and more”? But the Premier of Greenland is, however, interested in buying the U.S.!;
- Two-term WA state Governor Jay Inslee, the climate change candidate, drops out of the 2020 Presidential race, but accomplished quite a bit and will now run for a third term as WA Governor;
- Former CO Governor John Hickenlooper, who dropped out of the Presidential contest a week or so ago, announces his run for U.S. Senate to take on vulnerable Republican Sen. Cory Gardner in an already very crowded field of Dems vying for the nomination. (But, ahem….hint, hint, O’Rourke, Castro and Bullock!);
- And, on the Republican side of the aisle, “reformed” Tea Party Republican and former one-term House Rep. Joe Walsh appears set to announce plans to primary Trump from the right next year. If his recent, blistering NYTimes op-ed is any indication, in which he eviscerates Trump for, well, just about everything, he would be a welcome participant along with already-declared former MA Gov. Bill Weld and a few other potential GOP challengers that may be coming soon;
- In more disturbing and much-less noticed news, 22 Texas towns have been simultaneously crippled by coordinated ransomware attacks that have shut down all computerized city services. The hackers are demanding some $2.5 million to restore services to the unidentified towns which may all have used the same private contractor for municipal IT services. The attack-via-contractor is reminiscent of the 2016 spearphishing attack on voter registration services vendor VR Systems as described in Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel report. That attack appears to have resulted in penetration of voter registration databases in several Florida counties in 2016, and perhaps other states (such as North Carolina) serviced by the same private vendor.
But, sadly, none of this has prevented states and counties around the country from moving swiftly to fully-computerized voting and tabulation systems, as well as computerized electronic pollbooks (all frequently serviced by a small group of private contractors) as we move toward the critical 2020 elections. If those any of those thousands of jurisdictions whose poling places now rely on such automated systems on Election Day — often without paper backup for ballots or pollbooks — were to be similarly crippled by a ransomware attack on or before Election Day, the result would be unimaginable chaos next year. But how likely is that, really? Why worry?;
- Some voters in Georgia are, in fact, very worried, and justifiably so, about the state’s newly certified, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems now planned for first-time use in 2020. As we reported on the show a few days ago, those voters have invoked a little-known provision in GA’s election code to demand a reexamination of the new systems which the state certified just weeks ago. The multipartisan voters charge Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensberger violated state requirements in his initial certification, and failed to do any security testing at all. The Sec. of State’s office now says the petitioners, who prefer state voters use verifiable hand-marked paper ballots systems, simply disagree with the “policy preferences” of the Georgia General Assembly and must pay the costs for the second examination themselves;
- In similar-ish news here in Los Angeles County — the nation’s largest voting jurisdiction, which is also planning to move to new, 100% unverifiable computer touchscreen Ballot Marking Devices for the 2020 election — the county’s Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan is refusing to answer questions by voters on Twitter as to whether they will be allowed to vote on hand-marked paper ballots at the polling place this year. That has been a mandate by the CA Sec. of State for many years.
Also, Logan has similarly failed to respond for several days to a generous offer by legendary Finnish cybsersecurity and voting systems expert Harri Hursti to examine the county’s new, never-before-used-in-any-election BMD systems for security concerns. Hursti, the first to have hacked a Diebold voting system over a decade ago, runs the now-infamous annual Voting Village event at the DefCon hackers convention in Las Vegas — where, year after year after year, enormous vulnerabilities are discovered in every voting system put before the attendees. Despite Hursti’s offer, Logan has not responded to it via Twitter.
Why has the previously communicative Logan gone so mum? He has been very outspoken on Twitter in the past, and still seems to have no problem citing L.A. Times stories about his new system there. (Perhaps because those stories shamefully fail to mention any of the many security and verifiability concerns about them, as cited by cybersecurity and voting systems experts.) Why is Logan, a long time, usually quite responsive and responsible election official no longer answering questions from his voters and media about such a huge sea-change in voting for some five million L.A. County voters?;
- Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on record wildfires from the Amazon to the Arctic, record Alaskan heat killing salmon in the rivers, Jay Inslee’s exit and teen climate activist Greta Thunberg’s imminent U.S. arrival…by solar-powered boat.
George Conway: ‘I hereby order White House staff’ to admit Trump to ‘Walter Reed’
If we want a cui bono for why California Democrats may have wanted touch-screen machines all over the state so much . . .
I say, look to the march 3rd, 2020 CA primary election, and how progressives do against centrists.
(note: the folks in charge of the state election decisions are mainly centrists)
If centrist after centrist get “surprise” wins (measured against pre-election polls) over progressives all over the state, then we may have our reason (if you catch my drift).
INFO on that election:
https://www.sos.ca.gov/election...-march-3-2020/
Just sayin’.
Disgusting and foul mouthed: Trump attacked former white house aid
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