{"id":12519,"date":"2018-03-22T18:36:49","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T01:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=12519"},"modified":"2018-03-22T18:51:11","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T01:51:11","slug":"congress-finds-funds-wrong-solution-to-us-election-vulnerabilities-bradcast-3222018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=12519","title":{"rendered":"Congress Finds, Funds Wrong Solution to U.S. Election Vulnerabilities: &#8216;BradCast&#8217; 3\/22\/2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/BradCast_USCyber_032218.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">Before Thursday&#8217;s late bombshell <a href=\"https:\/\/nyti.ms\/2pA2b0T\">news<\/a> that Trump&#8217;s National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster is being replaced by hard-right Fox &#8220;News&#8221; neo-con wingnut John Bolton, we covered a number of stories on today&#8217;s &#8212; at times maddening, sad, frightening (and occasionally humorous and encouraging) &#8212; <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><em>BradCast<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Among them&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Dow <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2018\/03\/22\/us-stock-futures-dow-data-fed-and-politics-on-the-agenda.html\">plunges<\/a> more than 700 points after Trump announces his trade war with China;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>John Dowd, Trump&#8217;s lead defense attorney responding to the Special Counsel probe, has had enough, <a href=\"https:\/\/m.nytimes.com\/2018\/03\/22\/us\/politics\/john-dowd-resigns-trump-lawyer.html\">quits<\/a>, as hard-right Fox &#8216;News&#8217; conspiracist\/attorney Joe diGenova <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/b563c766aae74dba9a658ee3bffc7896\">joins<\/a> the team;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>U.S. House approves <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/bc38a23b54294dbba22ace2aaed9d76d\/Lawmakers-release-huge-budget%3B-big-military,-domestic-boosts\">massive<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/powerpost\/house-prepares-for-rapid-vote-today-on-jam-packed-13-trillion-spending-deal\/2018\/03\/22\/2074fe7e-2dd6-11e8-8688-e053ba58f1e4_story.html?utm_term=.821e39c9f9f5\">last-minute<\/a> $1.3 trillion spending bill to keep the government open before Friday&#8217;s midnight deadline for a government shutdown, and so they can get out of town before student protesters show up on Saturday for the <a href=\"https:\/\/marchforourlives.com\/\">&#8220;March for Our Lives&#8221;<\/a> gun safety rally;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Included in the massive, last-minute omnibus spending bill is <a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/cybersecurity\/379737-state-back-omnibus-with-election-security-funds?amp&#038;__twitter_impression=true\">hundreds of millions<\/a> of dollars for cybersecurity &#8220;upgrades&#8221; to our nation&#8217;s election systems. That funding comes on the heels of ill-considered new <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Docs\/SSCI_ElectionCyberSecurityRecs_032018.pdf\">recommendations [PDF]<\/a> from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/senators-warn-urgent-threat-us-elections\/story?id=53917923\">meant to protect<\/a> U.S. elections by increasing, rather than decreasing, the amount of cyber hardware and software used in elections, and instead of increasing the ability for public <i>oversight<\/i> of elections. (I have just a few words to say about all of that,as you might imagine, if you can hear them over the sound of my brain exploding. You might hear me mentioning <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7417\">hand-counted, <i>hand-marked<\/i> paper ballots<\/a> once or twice, since election officials and members of Congress still seem to have trouble hearing that phrase, despite what happened in 2016, and after some 15+ years of folks like me trying to warn them about the very vulnerabilities they <i>think<\/i> they are now trying to correct. P.S. Russia isn&#8217;t the <i>only<\/i> serious and ongoing threat to U.S. elections&#8230;by a long shot. But my brain is exploding now again. So just listen to the show.);<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Wisconsin&#8217;s Gov. Scott Walker is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jsonline.com\/story\/news\/politics\/2018\/03\/22\/eric-holder-lawsuit-against-gov-scott-walker-over-wisconsin-special-elections-hits-snag\/448743002\/\">ordered<\/a> by a judge (who he appointed) to immediately call special elections for two vacant state legislative seats. He&#8217;s avoided doing that ever since a recent long-held Republican seat in the state Senate was lost to a Democrat in a January special election amid anti-Trump fervor;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Trump-loving Republican U.S. House candidate Rick Saccone finally <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2018\/03\/21\/politics\/lamb-saccone-concession\/index.html\">concedes<\/a> last week&#8217;s special U.S. House election in Pennsylvania&#8217;s very Republican 18th Congressional district to Democrat Connor Lamb, who appears to have defeated Saccone by about 750 votes out of more than 225,000 cast;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/muckraker\/tom-wolf-pennsylvania-republicans-undemocratic-trying-impeach-justices-gerrymandering-ruling\">Republicans<\/a> in the PA House of Representatives <a href=\"http:\/\/www.philly.com\/philly\/news\/politics\/state\/pennsylvania-congressional-map-impeachment-supreme-court-justices-20180320.html\">file articles of impeachment<\/a> against four Democratic state Supreme Court Justices who mandated a new U.S. House district map before the 2018 mid-term elections, after finding the one drawn by Republicans in 2011 was an unlawful partisan gerrymander resulting in a 13 to 5 advantage in PA&#8217;s U.S. House delegation over the last three elections (in an otherwise 50\/50, slightly Dem-leaning swingstate);<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Finally, just after the breaking news of McMaster out and Bolton in arrives&#8230;Desi Doyen joins us for the latest <a href=\"https:\/\/GreenNews.BradBlog.com\"><i>Green News Report<\/i><\/a>, with some good news for the EPA, some disturbing news about bottled water, and some heartbreaking news for mankind&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\".\/Images\/Speaker_Icon_24.png\" style=\"width: 24px; float: none; vertical-align: middle;\"><span style=\"font-size: 18px; line-height: 18px;\"> <b><i><a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_JohnDowdOut_OmnibusBill_USElectionCyberMadness_PASupremeImpeachment_032218.mp3\">CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!&#8230;<\/a><\/i><\/b><br \/>\n[audio:http:\/\/bradblog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_JohnDowdOut_OmnibusBill_USElectionCyberMadness_PASupremeImpeachment_032218.mp3]<\/blockquote>\n<p><center><b>* * *<\/b><\/center><i>While we post <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><\/i>The BradCast<i><\/a> here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they&#8217;re available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-bradcast-w-brad-friedman\/id803467610\">iTunes<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/stitcher.com\/s\/player.php?fid=25838&#038;src=psl\">Stitcher<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/tunein.com\/radio\/The-BradCast-with-Brad-Friedman-p477565\/\">TuneIn<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/podcastgen\/bradcast\/feed.xml\">our native RSS feed<\/a>!<\/i><\/p>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-START--><\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f5f0e0; border:2px solid #6b5a2e; border-radius:6px; padding:10px 14px; text-align:center; font-family:Georgia,serif;\"><span style=\"display:block; margin:0 0 8px 0; color:#3a2e0e; font-size:0.95em; line-height:1.5;\"><strong>The BRAD BLOG<\/strong>, <em>The BradCast<\/em> and <em>Green News Report<\/em> are all 100% independent and 100% listener and reader supported!<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/Donate\" style=\"display:inline-block; background:#6b5a2e; color:#ffffff; padding:6px 18px; border-radius:4px; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:0.9em;\">Please CLICK HERE to help support our work today!<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-END--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before Thursday&#8217;s late bombshell news that Trump&#8217;s National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster is being replaced by hard-right Fox &#8220;News&#8221; neo-con wingnut John Bolton, we covered a number of stories on today&#8217;s &#8212; at times maddening, sad, frightening (and occasionally humorous and encouraging) &#8212; BradCast. Among them&#8230; The Dow plunges more than 700 points after Trump [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,89,675,598,1127,479,390,930,106,28,200,451,1110,942,261,178,1140,185,1141,477,147,48,1128,534,523,198,233,736,143],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-12519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountability","category-media-appearance","category-bradcast","category-china","category-conor-lamb","category-donald-trump","category-economy","category-election-2018","category-election-fraud","category-election-reform","category-environment","category-epa","category-gerrymandering","category-hr-mcmaster","category-immigration","category-impeachment","category-joe-digenova","category-john-bolton","category-john-dowd","category-kpfk","category-lava","category-pennsylvania","category-rick-saccone","category-russia","category-scott-walker","category-us-house","category-us-senate","category-water","category-wisconsin","bb-type-bradcast"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12519"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=12519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}