U.S. Electile Dementia paralytica 2020

[ewmayer]

o Electronic Voting Machine Debacle Continues in 2019, Setting Dangerous Precedent for 2020 | naked capitalism

As readers know, I’m a strong advocate of hand-marked paper ballots (HMPB), hand-counted in public (HMPB-CP), and we’ve periodically written on this topic at NC; see HMPB-CP in Quebec (2012), paper ballots in India (2016), a review of the literaure (2018), Virginia’s return to paper ballots (2017), “ballot marking devices” and corruption when electronic voting machines are chosen (2019), and problems with the “cyber” approach to elections (2020).

Now a Bloomberg article, “Expensive, Glitchy Voting Machines Expose 2020 Hacking Risks,” gives me the chance to review the condition of our election macninery in 2019. Bloomberg is suitably appalled by the choice of voting machines, but a little wide-eyed and naive about the local officials making those choices, and covers two important players badly: First, the owners of the electronic voting machine compaines, to whom it gives only a passing glance; second, the intelligence community, at which it does not look at all.

See full article for embedded links, which are numerous and not reproduced in my excerpt above.

o Deval Patrick’s Candidacy Is Another Chapter in the Democrats’ 2020 Clown Car Disaster | Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone -- "The entrance of the former Massachusetts governor into the presidential race is more proof the party has no clue where the votes are"
BUT -- some think though this be madness, yet there be method to it (*cough* brokered convention *cough*).

o Elizabeth Warren endorses Trump's economic war on Venezuela, then soft-pedals far-right Bolivia coup | The Grayzone

After praising the US government’s sanctions on Venezuela, which violate international law and have led to the preventable deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, Warren went on whitewash the far-right military coup in Bolivia, where the Trump administration has helped put racist Christian extremists and actual fascists in power.

[kladner]

@ewmayer:
My outrage function is burnt out through prolonged overload.

[ewmayer]

o The only way to watch one of the ridiculous establishment/MSM-rigged Dem "debates" is ... not:

Live Blog: Democrat Presidential Primary Debate #7 in Atlanta, Georgia | naked capitalism

I salute anyone with a sensitive BS detector who, like the yeoman's-work-doing watcher/commenters at the above, managed to sit through appreciable portions of this farce. And on a much-needed lighter note:

o Biden Complains Moderators Keep Giving Him Ample Time To Speak | The Onion

[ewmayer]

o [From last month] The All-Women MSNBC Debate Panel Wasn’t a Feminist Victory — It Was a Right-Wing Disaster | Jacobin Magazine

The fifth Democratic presidential debate received an outpouring of praise for its all-woman cast of moderators: Rachel Maddow and Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC, Ashley Parker of the Washington Post, and Kristen Welker of NBC. Writing in the Nation, Joan Walsh asserted that the event “showed us what American political life would look like if women’s concerns were routinely at the center of the conversation.”

"What American political life would look like" ... Rachel Maddow and Andrea Mitchell ... the modern female MSM-reincarnation of Joe McCarthy and Mrs. Alan Greenspan ... so we'd be trading nuclear salvos with Russia and making sure Wall Street tycoons and their elite-economist enablers were safe inside mountain hideaways?

o Bloomberg: Warren and Sanders Could’ve Been Billionaires, Too, If They’d Worked Hard Enough | Vanity Fair -- NC reader 'Iapetus' has an interesting comment on some of the financial-market historical details in play here:

Ugh. No to disparage Bloomberg’s high quality news, and terminal data, but Mayor Mike is most likely a billionaire because of the SEC’s decision to abolish fixed-rate securities trading commissions in May 1975 (often referred to as ‘May Day’). Prior to this, all trades made on the New York Stock Exchange were executed for the same commission price per share, and brokers regularly took an additional 2% or more for themselves on these trades. The SEC mandate eventually dropped commission prices to pennies per share and led to the creation of discount brokers. What this meant for buy side investment advisors was that they now had a fiduciary responsibility to seek to obtain the best price and execution for their securities transactions, and if they didn’t this might constitute fraud. A loophole was soon created, Section 28(e) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which established a safe harbor for money managers who use client funds to purchase brokerage and research services for their managed accounts. What this meant is that managers could pay higher commissions, or direct lots of commissions to a single broker, if the broker helped them pay for ‘research services’.

Enter the Bloomberg terminal. An investment advisor could now guarantee Goldman Sachs $10 million in trading commissions per year, if Goldman promised to pay for Bloomberg terminals and research services that are say $1 million or 10% of this amount. As a consequence the commission per share paid to investment banks dropped significantly, but their allocated share of trade commissions from the largest investment managers remained relatively unchanged. These Soft Dollar agreements were negotiated with all the major investment banks. This is why Bloomberg was for decades able to charge thousands of dollars per terminal and not have any customers balk at his price. By the time these soft dollar agreements became obsolete, Bloomberg had already established its pricing, its infrastructure, and a low cost way to distribute its data (now online instead of via coaxial cables). The rest is history.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

"What American political life would look like" ... Rachel Maddow and Andrea Mitchell ... the modern female MSM-reincarnation of Joe McCarthy and Mrs. Alan Greenspan ... so we'd be trading nuclear salvos with Russia and making sure Wall Street tycoons and their elite-economist enablers were safe inside mountain hideaways?

Nope. They are not stupid and know that a nuclear exchange would destroy essentially all their wealth even if they survived.

The modern economy is very sensitive to perturbations and the great majority of wealth these days is stored inside computers which are very fragile to EMP, let alone heat, pressure waves and ionizing radiation.

[Dr Sardonicus]

With regard to the very first post to this thread, I note that, one week ago, Kamala Harris ended her run for president. In accord with the characterization of her in that post, there may have been some opportunism in the timing of her bowing out:

Kamala Harris quit the presidential race just in time. Here’s what it means for her future

SAN FRANCISCO — Kamala Harris didn’t do a great many things well in her crash-and-burn campaign for president. But her swift exit from the race was executed perfectly.
By quitting when she did, Harris avoided embarrassing losses in several early contests and, most important, her home state of California, preserving her status as a leading vice presidential prospect and positioning her as a strong candidate for a place in the Cabinet, such as attorney general, in a Democratic administration.
<snip>

Er, ah, what Democratic administration? It seems the folks back home may not have looked kindly on her higher ambitions...

More damaging, Harris was criticized for missing Senate votes and lavishing far more attention on voters in Iowa and South Carolina than her own constituents. When California was ablaze and hundreds of thousands of residents were coping with power outages, she was busily pursuing her political interests elsewhere. One video that circulated on social media showed her shimmying into a Democratic bash in Des Moines as flames whipped through a portion of San Bernardino.

[xilman]

We have been living in interesting times recently here in Airstrip One. The following analysis was written by someone following the events from a position in the Washington embassy.

Will UK provide light bulb moment for US Democrats?

Perhaps some of our native-born Colonial cousins might like to comment.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by xilman

We have been living in interesting times recently here in Airstrip One. The following analysis was written by someone following the events from a position in the Washington embassy.

Will UK provide light bulb moment for US Democrats?

Perhaps some of our native-born Colonial cousins might like to comment.

It is refreshing to see someone giving voters credit for listening to what the candidates and their parties are offering, and voting on that basis. I think that those who dismiss the idea that voters might actually be repelled by progressive policy proposals, are extremely foolish to do so.

I also note that there is a direct correlation of voter turnout to age here in the US. It's one thing to state a political preference on social media or to pollsters. But that preference doesn't count if you don't vote.

(referring to BBC piece linked to above)
Speaking of "woke:" In the recent UK election, Liberal Democratic Party leader Jo Swinson must have had a particularly rude awakening. Before the election, she was predicting substantial gains for her party, and further defections to it from the Conservatives and Labour after the election. Instead, she lost her seat in Parliament, as did all the MP's who defected to the Liberal Democrats during the last session of Parliament.

Here in the good ol' USA, we tend to view people who change party allegiance after being elected to office as "bait and switch" operators.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by xilman

We have been living in interesting times recently here in Airstrip One. The following analysis was written by someone following the events from a position in the Washington embassy.

Will UK provide light bulb moment for US Democrats?

Perhaps some of our native-born Colonial cousins might like to comment.

I refer to the following post in regard to both the UK and US media treatment of candidates.
https://www.mersenneforum.org/showpo...&postcount=585
The same sort of denigration to which Corbyn has been subjected is going on in the US towards Sanders. His standing in polls has been repeatedly distorted and misrepresented. Especially, Maddow is on perpetual jihad against Bernie, and that's on allegedly liberal MSNBC. The self-styled papers of record go out of their way to hide, or downplay Sanders' successes.


As the saying goes, "Follow the money" (and the interests of those with most of the money.)

[xilman]

Originally Posted by kladner

I refer to the following post in regard to both the UK and US media treatment of candidates.
https://www.mersenneforum.org/showpo...&postcount=585
The same sort of denigration to which Corbyn has been subjected is going on in the US towards Sanders. His standing in polls has been repeatedly distorted and misrepresented. Especially, Maddow is on perpetual jihad against Bernie, and that's on allegedly liberal MSNBC. The self-styled papers of record go out of their way to hide, or downplay Sanders' successes.


As the saying goes, "Follow the money" (and the interests of those with most of the money.)

Interesting comment.

I can´t comment on Sanders (well, I can but I shouldn´t because I am thoroughly incompetent in that regard) but Corbyn appears not to have had any successes outside a small coterie of the far left, his Momentum fan club and, elsewhere, a relatively small number of young voters. A significant fraction of his own MPs have stated in public that they despair of his economic policies, his anti-semitism and his approbation of avowedly terrorist organizations (sorry: freedom fighters who believe that the armed struggle is the only way to overthrow their oppressors).

He´s been in parliament for many years. For almost all that time he´s been inside the tent pissing in. Read Hansard for the evidence.

SWMBO, who was a life-long Labour supporter and voted for the saintly JC as deputy leader, returned her bisected membership card in protest.

I´ve sometimes wondered whether JC was a deep sleeper, planted by the Tories to be activated when the time was suitable --- after a period of Tory (and/or LibDem) mediated prolonged austerity for instance. I don´t believe the Conservative party are so efficient and so forward-planning. Devious, certainly, but not that competent.

[kladner]

Perhaps I should not comment on Corbyn, either, as I rely on the knowledge and opinions of others to form my views. However, I think it is important to remember that "mainstream" media are all oligarch-owned and pursue the interests of their owners.