Category: Daily Escape

Hackers Break Into Our Voting Machines

The Daily Escape:

London, England

Nobody knows whether the Russians hacked the 2016 presidential election. One thing on which there seems to be broad agreement is that no foreign power was able to change the actual vote totals, since we have 192,480 precincts in the US. And we use so many different vote collection and vote processing technologies throughout the country, hacking would be very difficult.

Over the weekend at Def Con, a convention of hackers held in Las Vegas, hackers managed to break into many different US electronic voting systems, taking control of some of them in less than 90 minutes. The hackers successfully broke in through the voting system hardware, or through wireless communication. From The Hill:

…[the hackers] at the annual DEF CON in Las Vegas were given physical voting machines and remote access…[and] within minutes, hackers exposed glaring physical and software vulnerabilities across multiple US voting machine companies’ products. Some devices were found to have physical ports that could be used to attach devices containing malicious software. Others had insecure Wi-Fi connections, or were running outdated software with security vulnerabilities like Windows XP.

By the end of the weekend, every one of the 30 machines, including those used to tabulate votes and to check voters in when they go to the polls, had been hacked. The Telegraph reported that:

They purchased 30 different election machines from a US Government auction…

Who knew you can buy these voting machines at a US government auction? Is there a legitimate purpose for them after they’ve been decommissioned? Isn’t this a way for hackers to study the weaknesses in these machines, and maybe figure out a way to hack ones that are currently in use? This is where penetration testing becomes so important. Ethical hackers (penetration testers) carry out scans to filter out potentially exploitable vulnerabilities. They attempt to exploit the vulnerabilities in a system to determine whether it is possible to hack in to get unauthorized access. Find out more at https://www.synack.com/blog/penetration-testing-vs-vulnerability-scanning/. This could have been used with these decommissioned voting machines, although perhaps just not selling them would have been easier.

The idea that electronic voting machines could be hacked has been around for a while. Computer programmer Harri Hursti, hacked into Diebold voting machines in 2005. That hack is now known as the “Hursti Hack“. Electronic voting machines require regular software security updates. Updates lead to a re-do of each state’s voter machine certification process, which can cost over $1 million to complete.

Gizmodo reports that even though the most recent election security standards were released in 2015, most state’s machines are only compliant with standards from 2002 because of the costs of updates. That cost breaks down to about $30-$40 per voter, and most states just don’t have the money.

OTOH, a hack of the last presidential election would have only needed to change the votes in three states (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) to be successful in changing the result. And the absolute margin of victory in each of those states was small enough that it could have been accomplished without accessing all polling places. Still, no credible group is saying hacking on that scale occurred in 2016.

It is glib to suggest that the answer is to use paper ballots. With upwards of 150 million votes to count, that would require a huge number of volunteers. It begs the question of what method of “auditing” the count will be used, and who will perform it.

If we persist in electronic voting, those states would need to adopt a comprehensive sampling methodology for the machines before results can be certified. This would mean that we simply can’t accept using machines that don’t provide a paper trail, or a way to audit their vote tally.

We need to remember that we call the winners based on initial uncertified vote tallies. Before we know it, someone has conceded while we’re still counting votes. Hillary Clinton’s popular vote margin grew for about a month after the 2016 election as more and more votes were counted, even though it had no bearing on the Electoral College.

For the presidency, the federal government could specify that states that can’t certify their results up to a pre-set federal standard of accuracy, using a pre-set methodology, wouldn’t be allowed to cast votes in the Electoral College. This would pressure the states to put in better protections against hacking.

Finally, the federal government should pay for any required upgrades.

Continuing Wrongo’s tour of music by old guys, here is “Why Worry” from a 1986 PBS recording by Chet Atkins, the Everly Brothers, Mark Knopfler, and Michael McDonald. This song was written by Mark Knopfler for The Everly Brothers, and it beautifully demonstrates their unique harmony:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkFcQRiFL68

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Monday Wake Up Call – July 31, 2017

The Daily Escape:

Mont Saint-Michel, France – photo by Stephane L’olliver

We start this week like all the others in the past six months, staring at the latest shiny thing that the Trump-obsessed media produced for our inspection. But we need to shift our focus to what Der Donald is doing with his nominations to the federal judiciary. From the Fiscal Times:

When it comes to nominating judges to the federal bench, Trump is moving at a breakneck pace. And the number of nominees for vacant US attorney positions, a crucial area, is dwarfing that of the past administration this early on.

The media tells us that Trump isn’t getting his nominations for key posts either submitted or approved, but that’s not true for the federal bench. Here, Trump is rushing to fill what are lifetime appointments.

More from the Fiscal Times:

Through July 14…he had nominated 18 people for district judgeship vacancies, 14 for circuit courts and the Court of Federal Claims, and 23 for US attorney slots. During that same time frame in President Barack Obama’s first term, Obama had nominated just four district judges, five appeals court judges, and 13 US attorneys. In total, Trump nominated 55 people, and Obama just 22.

Of those 55 nominees, 45 are from, or are nominated for, jobs in states Trump won outright in the election. If you remove the positions based in Washington, DC, that number becomes 45 of 48, a remarkably high 94%. Just 64% of Obama’s initial nominees hailed from states he carried in the 2008 presidential election. And there’s a reason for that:

It’s known as the “blue slip,” or the consent of both home-state senators. And it’s a Senate tradition to not advance any judicial or US attorney nominee without having the blue slip.

In states with two Republican senators, Trump has made 30 of the total 55 nominations. In states with two Democratic senators, he has nominated just five.

Trump has an impressive number of vacancies to fill. The federal bench has 136 vacancies. Trump fired half of the 93 US attorneys in March, creating a need for nominations, though seeking to quickly replace US attorneys is not uncommon at the start of a new administration. In August 2009, Obama faced 85 vacancies on the federal bench.

One of Trump’s most controversial nominees, John Bush, was confirmed last week to the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals. Bush, a Kentucky lawyer, cleared the Senate with unanimous Republican support and unanimous Democratic opposition. Bush came under fire for his past blog posts, written under a pseudonym that compared abortion and slavery and called them “the two greatest tragedies in our country.” Bush had also promoted the Obama birther conspiracy.

Trump’s targeting the low-hanging fruit first, but ultimately he will need support from the Democratic side of the aisle to fill appointments where Dems might put a “hold” on a nomination.

Maybe the partisan chickens will come home to roost when that happens.

So, time to wake up America! Stop browsing just the mainstream media and work a little harder to get educated about what’s going on in the background. To help you wake up, here is Mick Jagger.

You are saying “Wrongo, why music from another old guy?”

But, just when you think Mick Jagger has become old and irrelevant, he writes two new things with overtly political messaging. Could he become relevant again? Today, listen to “Gotta Get a Grip”. He released this as a straight video, with great production value, but it was boring. Luckily, he also worked with young artists to make a series of cool remixes of the songs, all with the same crummy video, but all are compelling listening. Here is “Gotta Get a Grip”, the Seeb remix:

 

Gotta Get A Grip (Seeb Remix) by Mick Jagger & on VEVO.

Takeaway Lyrics:
Everybody’s stuffing their pockets
Everybody’s on the take
The news is all fake
Let ’em eat chicken and let ’em eat steak
Let ’em eat shit, let ’em eat cake

I tried diversion and I tried coercion
Mediation and medication
LA culture and acupuncture
Overeating and sex in meetings
Induced insanity, Christianity
Long walks and fast drives
And wild clubs and low dives
I pushed and I strived
But I can’t get you, can’t get you
Can’t get you out of my mind

Immigrants are pouring in
Refugees under your skin
Keep ’em under, keep ’em out
Intellectual, shut your mouth

Chaos crisis instability, ISIS
Lies and scandals, wars and vandals
Metadata scams and policy shams
Put ’em in a slammer

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Saturday Soother – July 29, 2017

The Daily Escape:

Old Harry Rocks, Dorset England – drone photo by Ryan Howell

Wrongo has, like so many others, spent the last eight months in disbelief. Every day, more stupid tweets, more stupid legislation proposed, more threats to the American people.

He went to bed last night expecting to wake up this morning to the GOP celebrating the thinnest of wins, another blow to our health insurance. But, there was a small victory in the dead of night. Now we gear up for the next battle. The Republicans are not defeated, and cannot give up on what they promised their base for the past seven years, so we should expect to see another attempt on this soon.

A great letter to the editor in the NYT accurately captures GOP dysfunction: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Republican attempts to overturn the Affordable Care Act by flinging irresponsible alternatives that would wreak havoc with the health of millions of citizens have set a new low in legislative responsibility.

The outcome of many of these votes was a foregone conclusion. That the Republican leaders are comfortable putting on a show rather than seriously addressing the problems of access to and cost of health care is an embarrassment.

Their actions are not worthy of the salaries that they are paid.

In the past six months, we’ve come to expect the bizarre from Trump and his GOP Trumpets.

This week was no exception. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke threatened both Alaska Senators with withholding of federal funds for their state because Sen. Lisa Murkowski planned to vote against the Republican health care bill. These Sopranos-like threats happen all the time in DC. Murkowski gets extra credit for telling Trump to go to hell by putting a few of his nominees on hold before voting against the GOP bill.

But, the strangest of strange this week was Trump’s speech to the Boy Scouts: Trump crowed about his election victory, attacked the news media and criticized Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama. Now, the Scouts are non-political, and few of them are old enough to vote. The speech resulted in the Scouts’ sending a letter of apology to the American people.

Then there was Trump’s new hired gun, Scaramucci, who said to the New Yorker:

I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock.

In less than a year we’ve gone from “Grab ‘em in the pussy” to “I’m not trying to suck my own cock.”

It’s demeaning. Wrongo is not offended by the language. He has heard, and in the remote past used those words, if not in that precise order. But Wrongo doesn’t work in the White House. Trump and his team represent all of us, and we deserve better.

It’s Saturday, and you expect better, too. Time to brush off the trail dust, let go of the shenanigans and vote to repeal and replace this entire week. Here is Debussy’s “Arabesque No. 1 and No. 2”. He wrote them between 1888 and 1891. Debussy said of these arabesques:

That was the age of the ‘wonderful arabesque’, when music was subject to the laws of beauty inscribed in the movements of Nature herself.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Book Review: “The First Congress” by Fergus M. Bordewich

The Daily Escape:

251 1st Street, Brooklyn, NYC – photo by Miguel de Guzman

It is time to review “The First Congress – How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government” by Fergus M. Bordewich, which has been on Wrongo’s reading list since winter.

Bordewich says that the First Congress was the most important in US history, because it established in some detail how our government would actually function. Had it failed − as it nearly did − it’s possible that the US would exist in a different form today.

Congress began its work in New York City, then a fast-growing and chaotic shipping port of 30,000. Its first meeting was hardly auspicious: On March 4, 1789 they met as the new government after ratification by 11 of the 13 original states. But, there was no quorum to do business in either house. Bordewich outlines how difficult it was to make overland journeys: Boston to New York required six days, trips from the South were much longer. The House achieved a quorum of 29 members on April 1st, and the Senate followed on April 5th, but some members did not arrive until late summer.

Bordewich states that the need to accomplish something quickly was pressing:

Confidence in government was abysmally low
contempt for politicians was rife
and many political men held an equally low opinion of the voting public.

Sounds just like today.

The members were sharply divided, with huge differences of philosophy and opinion. The anti-federalists were opposed to a strong federal government, and had largely been against the ratification of the Constitution, preferring that power remain in the hands of the states. The Federalists wanted a stronger national government and supported the new Constitution.

Underlying everything were issues of North vs. South, rural agrarian vs. urban manufacturing economies, and pro-slave and anti-slave views.

During two years of political struggle, they passed the first ten amendments to the Constitution; they resolved regional rivalries to choose the location for a new national capital; they set in place the procedure for admitting new states to the union; they created the Supreme Court, and worked through the respective roles of the federal and state judiciaries. They established a national bank that was later dissolved by Andrew Jackson in 1832.

But the First Congress also confronted issues that are still with us: the appropriate balance between states’ rights and the powers of national government, and the proper balance between legislative and executive power. The issue of slavery would fester for almost seven decades before being resolved.

The reason that the First Congress succeeded was that they compromised. Without a willingness to compromise, all might have been lost. The great motivator behind their willingness to compromise was the fear that the anti-Federalists would walk away from the new Constitution. There was real reason to fear secession, and it was threatened many times by both the slave-holding South, as well as by the New England states.

Bordewich shows the regional splits that played out in the effort to create a national bank:

The balloting also had a disturbing subtext: all but one of the twenty votes against the bank hailed from the South…Of the thirty-nine votes in favor of the bank, all but five were from the North – yet another omen of the embryonic divide that would dominate the nation’s politics for years to come.

There are wonderful nuggets like this: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

The First Amendment…became so only by default, when the two preceding amendments – on congressional apportionment and compensation for members – failed to achieve ratification by enough states…Three states – Massachusetts, Connecticut and Georgia – would not officially ratify even the ten amendments until…1939. (pg. 140)

In all, 39 amendments received meaningful debate. As important as passing the 10 we know about, was the rejection of others that would have imperiled a strong federal government, including one that gave voters the right to give legislators binding instructions on how to vote.

There was nothing inevitable about the survival and success of the new government. It came about by men from all sections of the country, each with an agenda, who overlooked their prejudices to create a government. The result of their spirit of compromise was the successful launch of our government.

Sharp divisions, rural vs. urban, states’ rights vs. federal authority: We face many of the same issues today that the First Congress had to face in 1789.

But, they had Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton.

Who do we have?

Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.

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Trump Suggests Active Duty Military Do Something Illegal

The Daily Escape:

Assateague Island, July 25, 2017 – photo by Kendall Lavoie

Donald Trump’s visit to Norfolk VA last Saturday probably went mostly unnoticed, because of the Senate’s attempt at three-dimensional chess with their health care legislation. When Trump spoke at the commissioning for USS Gerald R. Ford, the US Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, he urged the audience to lobby their lawmakers to pass a budget that contains an additional $54 billion in Defense Department funding for fiscal year 2018: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)

And you will get — believe me, President Trump, I will tell you — you will get it [the defense money]. Don’t worry about it. But I don’t mind getting a little hand. So call that congressman, and call that senator and make sure you get it…And by the way, you can also call those senators to make sure that you get healthcare.

The audience was active duty military. There are at least two things wrong here. First, why would the military lobby Congress for health care? They already have a single payer system called Tricare. They are automatically enrolled, and it’s free for most in the military while their dependents and retirees pay premiums, just like civilians do. Does Trump even know how health insurance works in the military?

Second, by asking them to lobby Congress for more defense money, they would be crossing an important line. It is illegal for officers on active duty to be involved in any partisan political activity. Federal Law (Titles 10, 2, and 18, US Code), Department of Defense (DOD) Directives, and specific military regulations strictly limit a military active duty person’s participation in partisan political activities, including lobbying.

Current and former US military officers take great pride in the way that the active-duty officer corps is seen as being above politics. From the Atlantic:

Contemporary military officers, as Samuel Huntington famously observed, belong to a profession. They are professional managers of violence. We arm, train, and equip uniformed military officers to do frankly horrific things—killing, maiming, and intimidating people with force—in order to achieve favorable political outcomes.

So, many US military officers were appalled when Der Donald encouraged his uniformed audience to call their representatives to lobby for the president’s policies—including his budget increasing defense spending at the expense of other domestic priorities.

It is clear that members of the military have political views. It is also clear that they tilt Republican. In “The Role of the Military in Presidential Politics”, Steve Corbett and Michael Davidson say:

Despite the military’s official position, there has been a growing concern that the officer corps is becoming increasingly politicized. The current officer corps regularly votes and “identif[ies] with a political philosophy and party,” usually Republican. Indeed, military voting patterns indicate that members of the armed forces vote “in greater percentages than that of the general population.”

We treat our military as a privileged class—men and women who by their willingness to serve and risk all, are first among equals, slightly above the citizens they are sworn to defend. They have a credibility based on their military service. Trump risks that by attempting to politicize them. He also risks the public’s trust in our professional military as a politically neutral institution, something that has been a fundamental principle of our Nation. What Trump suggested is illegal, and against centuries of policy and practice.

That is what Trump and his speech writers failed to understand when he asked active duty military to lobby on behalf of his agenda.

We all accept that high level retired military will serve in government, or in high-ranking positions in lobbying, cable news punditry, or in corporate positions. We accept that retired military often express political opinions that they keep under wraps while on active duty.

Citizens have to trust that active duty military officers will never use their power to bring about a political result here in the US, the way it has happened so often abroad.

Here is music to take us away from this nonsense, Richard Thompson’s “Vincent Black Lightening 1952”:

Saw him last summer, still in great voice.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Do Trump’s Poor Approval Ratings Mean Much?

The Daily Escape:

Lake Louise Sunrise, Alberta, Canada

On Monday, Gallup released Trump’s job approval rating in all 50 states, based on a collection of over 81,000 survey results gathered in the six months between the president’s inauguration on January 20 and June 30. The results show an interesting trend, particularly if you divide them into three categories: states where Trump is above 50%, states where Trump is in the 40%’s, and states where Trump is under 40%:

The dark green states where Trump is above 50% are states Trump carried in 2016. The yellow states, where Trump is under 40%, are all states that Clinton carried in 2016. The light green states are 2016’s swing states: New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Nevada. From Gallup:

Trump largely owed his victory in the 2016 presidential election to his wins in three key Rust Belt states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that had not backed a Republican for president since the 1980s. In these states, his January-June approval ratings were just slightly above his overall average of 40%, including 43% in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and 42% in Michigan.

So those three states that put him over the top in the 2016 Electoral College could now be in play. Other interesting data:

  • In the 2016 election, Trump won all 17 of the states where Gallup now shows him with an approval rating of at least 50%.
  • During the six-month survey period, residents in West Virginia (60%), North Dakota (59%) and South Dakota (57%) gave Trump his highest approval ratings. Montana, Wyoming and Alabama all had average approval ratings of 55% or higher.

This is consistent with the geographic patterns of Republican strength nationally. Trump’s highest approval ratings tend to be in Southern, Plains and Mountain West states. His lowest ratings are in Northeast and West Coast states.

Maine, Georgia, Missouri, Indiana, Mississippi, Arizona and Texas are now in the minority-favorable category. Clinton carried Maine and Nevada, but the rest are states that voted for Trump.

In Michigan, North Carolina, Florida and Texas, Trump is at 42% and at least nine points underwater with majority disapproval. Majority disapproval in Texas could help Dems in 2020.

This means that Trump is solidly under 50% in 33 states, including every swing state.

Gallup has been running this daily tracking poll for about 70 years. It showed Trump’s approval at 46% at inauguration. Now the same Gallup poll, done with the same protocol, shows Trump’s approval at 36%.

But this doesn’t mean that Trump is toast in 2020, or that the Democrats have a path to control either the House or Senate in 2018. Peter Hessler had an interesting article in The New Yorker about how Trump has a deeper influence on his voters than we previously thought:

If anything, investigations into the Trump campaign’s connections with Russia have made supporters only more faithful. “I’m loving it – I hope they keep going down the Russia rabbit hole,” Matt Peterson told me, in June. He believes that Democrats are banking on impeachment instead of doing the hard work of trying to connect with voters. “They didn’t even get rid of their leadership after the election…”

Trump is drawn to making silly statements on the Twitter machine like a moth to flame, and it is scorching him enough to reflect in his approval numbers. But Russia alone won’t be a winning hand for Democrats, as the New Yorker article shows. These Russia investigations may not amount to anything, or they may be something that takes until Trump’s second term to fully flower.

In the meantime, the Dems issued a new manifesto, “A Better Deal”, a re-branding of their greatest hits: more and better-paying jobs, lower health care costs, and cracking down on the abuses of big business.

But this time, they really mean it.

It is doubtful that the new slogan or its underlying policies will have Republicans quaking in their Ferragamos.

If there is one lesson Democrats should have learned from 2016, it is that opposition to Trump is not enough to win elections. They need new leadership and a better message.

Otherwise, despite the rosy (for Democrats) poll results on Trump favorability, Democrats will be explaining what went wrong again when the 2018 midterms roll around.

On to today’s tune. Here is Aretha Franklin doing “It Ain’t Necessarily So“, with lyrics and music by George and Ira Gershwin. It is from their opera, “Porgy and Bess”:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Monday Wake Up Call – July 24, 2017

The Daily Escape:

Toronto Canada – photo by Carlos D. Ramirez

We sometimes forget what the Amendments to the Constitution are about. We remember the 1st Amendment and these days, with several in the Trump administration about to testify before Congress, we have renewed interest in the 5th, but who knows anything about the 17th Amendment?

It provides that Senators are directly elected by citizens.

The idea that we directly elect our senators seems uncontroversial, but the Tea Party and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), want to change that. ALEC has proposed new “model legislation” to do away with an elected Senate.

The idea of reversing 104 years of representative democracy and returning to the days when senators were chosen via backroom deals, is not new. The John Birch Society peddled the proposal decades ago. But with the rise of the Tea Party, the notion moved into the conservative mainstream.

In 2010, the Tea Party called for revision or repeal of three Constitutional amendments: the 14th (which is the basis for federal protection of civil rights), the 16th (the income tax) and the 17th. Some Tea Partiers even linked evangelical Christianity and Libertarian economics to argue that the original 1789 Constitution and the Bill of Rights were divinely inspired, but all subsequent amendments were of human origin and the 14th, 16th and 17th in particular had been Satanic perversions of the divine plan.

From The Nation:

Let’s focus on the 32 legislatures where Republicans have control: If Republicans were to maintain their current advantage, and if they were empowered to replace all sitting Democratic senators at the end of their current terms, they could shape a Senate with at least 64 Republican members.

There is already a political imbalance in states with large urban populations. In 2016, for instance, 51,496,682 Americans cast ballots for Democratic Senate candidates, while 40,402,790 cast Republican ballots, yet the Republicans took 22 seats to 12 for the Democrats.

If the resolution is approved by ALEC’s members, it will become part of ALEC’s agenda for the states—advanced in each by legislators who have a long-established pattern of rubber-stamping ALEC’s “model legislation.”

But, it is a long distance from model legislation to an amendment to the Constitution. ALEC controls some states, but it doesn’t control 38 states to the extent that they are capable of repealing one of the nation’s core political reforms. OTOH, if they were successful, it would reverse one of the great strides toward democracy in American history: the 1913 decision to end the corrupt practice of letting state legislators barter off Senate seats in backroom deals with campaign donors and lobbyists.

People in the 19th century knew that votes for state representatives were proxy votes for electing their Senators. The Lincoln-Douglass debates involved two Senate candidates trying to sway the elections of state legislators in order to get one of them elected to the Senate.

But, in 2017, returning the nation to direct election of Senators by state legislators is just one of the many ideas Republicans have for revamping the American system into a one-party state, including extreme gerrymandering of Congressional and state legislative districts, restrictive voter-ID laws, ending early voting, and other tricks designed to make sure that people unlikely to vote Republican have difficulty voting at all.

It’s amazing, and downright scary that the American Right looks at the structure and apportionment of the Senate and decides it’s not yet tilted enough in their favor. The Senate is already an undemocratic, unrepresentative institution that overweights small states at the expense of large ones.

The idea of a 17th amendment repeal is a classic example of “we had a serious problem, and then we fixed it, but so much time has passed, people have forgotten what the problem was”.

They want to undo the fix without bothering to check history.

America! It’s time to wake up and learn your history. It’s crucially important to you, your kids and grandkids. We don’t want to repeat past mistakes. To help you wake up, here is “Non-Stop” from the play “Hamilton”. It reprises the time of writing The Federalist papers, and the establishment of our Constitution, in hip-hop format:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Saturday Soother – July 22, 2017

The Daily Escape:

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Things that are seen cannot be unseen, and so it is with OJ Simpson. Wrongo and Ms. Right watched the white Bronco chase across Southern California in June 1994 when we lived in Boston. Wrongo watched the verdict live in October 1995 in Northern Virginia. At that time, Wrongo’s outsourcing career included having DirecTV as a client, so our tech support call center had a TV monitor in each row of seats, all tuned to the OJ verdict. The demographics of the call center skewed very heavily black and Hispanic, while the supervisory team was predominantly white. The emotional disconnect at the “not guilty” verdict was palpable, with the call center staff cheering, while the supervisors were silently stunned.

OJ remains a lightning rod in our society and in our media. Guilty of armed robbery, but not guilty of murder. His parole this week caused many Americans to again debate OJ’s guilt in the Nicole Simpson murder.

No one knows how OJ will conduct himself over the remaining years he has left.

John McCain is also someone who cannot ever be unseen. From war hero and POW to Senator, presidential candidate and his enduring role as the maverick we love to hate, McCain is never far from a TV camera. And we are never far from an eye roll or two about the things he says about domestic and foreign affairs. He is after all, the guy who made Sarah Palin a household name, and that will forever be a stain on his credibility.

His diagnosis of an aggressive form of brain cancer has made even his enemies stop to offer good wishes for his immediate future. When McCain leaves Congress, we will cross a generational bridge: Politicians who thought about the country ahead of their state or district, are leaving the stage, replaced by ideologues who have no interest in country, or their state, first.

We will be the worst for the passing of that generation.

It is Saturday and we need something soothing to get us through the end of another week of Trump theatrics.

Let’s listen to music from Henry Eccles, an English composer who died in 1742. He did not feel appreciated in England, and moved to France, where he became one of Louis XIV’s musicians. In France, he published 12 sonatas of which the Sonata in G Minor is his most famous. Here is the Sonata in G Minor for Violoncello and Continuo played by Simca Heled,on violoncello, and Edward Brewer on harpsichord. Wrongo and Ms. Right heard this on Friday night with the wonderful Samuel Magill on Violoncello at the Washington CT Meeting House’s Summer Baroque Concert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI5NYRz7EQw

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Tribalism Trumps Reality

The Daily Escape:

Florence Italy – photo by Daniel Kordan

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction…and the distinction between true and false…no longer exist. ― Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism”

Public Policy Polling (PPP) has a new poll that among other issues, shows how Trump voters feel about the Donald Trump Jr.’s participation in the Trump/Russia election thingy: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Only 45% of Trump voters believe Donald Trump Jr. had a meeting with Russians about information that might be harmful to Hillary Clinton…even though Trump Jr. admitted it. 32% say the meeting didn’t happen and 24% say they’re not sure.

And, just as many Republicans believed Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of a DC pizza parlor.

If you look at the percentage of Americans who believe in things like creationism, ghosts and angels, you’ll wonder why these Republicans are allowed to cut their own meat.

A decent number of the people who said they didn’t believe Jr. met with the Russians must know the truth. Since Jr. admitted to the meeting, and even Fox News covered it, how could a third of Republicans surveyed think the meeting didn’t happen? Maybe they think a Russian lawyer and a few other Russians attending a meeting in Trump Tower doesn’t equal “The Russians“.

And broadening the context, the PPP survey question answers are similar to when pollsters asked Republicans whether Obama was born in the US. Pollsters continued to ask that well after his birth certificate was released. After the release, birther belief among Republicans dropped from the mid-40%s to the mid-30%s, but, a year later is returned to the mid-40%s.

One of the central challenges of understanding the Republican mind is that when they answer questions like the Don Jr. in a non-factual way, they exist in at least two camps. First, the true believers, who won’t believe their lying eyes, and will just trust their guy through thick or thin.

The second group sees politics and political discourse as a game played mostly to annoy Democrats. This second category isn’t even necessarily any more informed or self-aware than the first, but they pay more attention to learning what will make Democrats angry. Then they go there.

We can’t discount the extent that conservative media obfuscates things that are generally admitted elsewhere. There probably is a certain segment of Republicans who really don’t believe Jr. met with Russians, because they’ve heard the disinformation frequently enough to allow them to reach that conclusion.

And some people simply believe ridiculous things.

The PPP poll question indicates to us the lower limit of partisan reasoning. No one contests that this meeting took place, but 32% of respondents say it didn’t happen. Poll questions are normally more opinion-based, and may not have a demonstrably “correct” answer. So it’s worth seeing the extent of motivated answering on this question.

The nice thing about false facts is they can be designed for maximum effect. They can be more self-reinforcing and convincing than actual facts. The world is a messy place, so if you present a picture that is artificially clarified and internally consistent, a big subset of humanity will buy it whole-heartedly.

Public Policy Polling’s disclosure about the survey:

PPP surveyed 836 registered voters from July 14th to 17th. The margin of error is +/- 3.4%. While 80% of participants, selected through a list based sample, responded via the phone, 20% of respondents who did not have landlines conducted the survey over the internet through an opt-in internet panel.

On to music. Here is Icelandic indie folk/indie pop rock band, Of Monsters and Men, performing “Little Talks” live at the KEX Hostel in Reykjavik during Iceland Airwaves, recorded in October 2011:

Takeaway Lyric:

Some days I don’t know if I am wrong or right.
Your mind is playing tricks on you my dear

‘Cause though the truth may vary
This ship will carry our bodies safe to shore

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Our Election System Is Under Threat

The Daily Escape:

The Dark Hedges near Ballymoney, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. (Featured in the Game of Thrones as the King’s Road) – photo by Colin Park

America is also walking down a dark path. We need to work on the integrity of our election process. From the WSJ:

To understand the scale of the hacking attempts against election systems in the 2016 presidential election, consider South Carolina. On Election Day alone, there were nearly 150,000 attempts to penetrate the state’s voter-registration system, according to a postelection report by the South Carolina State Election Commission.

If hackers were that persistent against a state that President Donald Trump won with 54.9% of the vote, what did they try to do in the states that were in play? Quite a bit, it turns out. More from the WSJ: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

In harder-fought Illinois, for instance, hackers were hitting the State Board of Elections “5 times per second, 24 hours per day” from late June until Aug. 12, 2016, when the attacks ceased for unknown reasons, according to an Aug. 26, 2016, report by the state’s computer staff. Hackers ultimately accessed approximately 90,000 voter records, the State Board of Elections said.

The next day, Illinois temporarily took its voter-registration database and public-facing website offline. No records were altered, according to the state, and the issue was resolved before Election Day. The hackers haven’t been identified.

Many hackers, including state-sponsored ones, use automated programs to target hundreds or even thousands of computers to check for vulnerabilities. All of this is done by bots. This happens to ALL websites, (including Wrongo’s) not just to election systems. Confirming intrusions can be difficult, even if intrusion detection technology is deployed. But many municipalities and counties have not deployed it, since it can be very expensive.

Time Magazine reported that the number of actual successful intrusions in the 2016 election cycle, where hackers gained sufficient access to attempt to alter, delete or download any information, was “fewer than a dozen”.

The tally of hacking (or attempted hacking) into state election databases was widespread in the 2016 election. Jeanette Manfra, acting deputy undersecretary for cyber-security and communications at the Department of Homeland Security, said at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last month:

There is evidence that 21 states were targeted by hackers

From the NYT:

By 2020, cyberattacks could try to alter or erase voter registration databases…or do something else to interfere with actual voting on Election Day…public confidence in the fairness of our electoral process could decrease further, even if the hacks are unsuccessful, as incendiary and unsupported claims about voter fraud, cheating and altered vote totals spread via social media.

America needs to start from the premise that one state’s (any state’s) insufficient protections against hacking in presidential elections affects us all. From mobile device management to company firewalls, companies like Fleetsmith can provide cybersecurity to numerous companies, protecting them from hackings and it’s time for the US government to follow in their footsteps and do the same, otherwise, there may be detrimental impacts. Protecting government databases is critical and needs to be done yesterday. From Wrongo’s experience as a former provider of outsourced services to both state and federal governments, it is clear that the IT staff at many government agencies lack the expertise or budgets to harden the electoral system against attacks.

We have been discussing the hacking of the voter databases, not vote results. These databases have little to do with the actual vote tallies in a given election. But if the US developed one giant database that recorded everyone’s votes along with names, addresses, and SSNs, people’s identities could be stolen.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity plans to build. Nearly all states have said that they will not comply with the commission’s request for voter data. When the winners of one election cycle try to pick the rules, referees and judges for the next cycle, it’s clearly a system at risk of shutting out true democratic input.

The story of possible Russian hacking in our 2016 election, and the possible Trump family involvement in the Russian efforts diverts our attention from the real story, which is that cyber security in the US is a gaping vulnerability.

It threatens our security, our economy and our democracy.

We need a musical break. Over the weekend, there was a two-day Rock concert at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles called “Classic West”. Many old groups performed over two days. Here, we focus on the Eagles, who played with the son of the late Eagle, Glenn Frey. His 23 year-old son Deacon Frey stood in for his legend of a father, in front of 50k fans, who accepted him as part of the family. It was a fitting tribute. The Eagles also added Vince Gill, who sang “Take It to the Limit“, and “Lyin’ Eyes“. But here is Deacon Frey delivering an emotional moment on “Take It Easy“:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQCFwL3uoPE

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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