Wednesday, September 28, 2016

What Did You Know and When Did You Know It?



Remember when people thought the FBI was competent?

Or believed it was non-partisan?

What do you think now?



Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Who Won the First Debate?

Here are some online polls that are tracking opinions on the winner:

Drudge - at the time of this posting it shows Trump at 81.5% to Clinton's 18.5%


NJ.com - which also offers "neither" and "I don't know" as options. It has Trump at 53.99% and Clinton at 41.31%


Time.com - Trump is currently at 58% and Clinton is at 42%


Fortune.com - they're tied at 50% each over all, Trump at 54% to Clinton's 46% on the economy, his 53% to her 47% on national security, and 50% each on clearest vision for America. Most people who responded (80%) didn't have their minds changed by the debate.

Las Vegas Sun readers think that Trump was the winner.

CNBC - finally there's one with Clinton in the lead 52% to Trump's 48%.

Update: The CNBC has reversed (and then some). Trump is at 56% and Clinton at 44%. He's also pulled ahead in the Fortune.com poll and has increased his lead in the others.


Monday, September 26, 2016

First Presidential Debate 9/26/2016

Watch the debate  live on C-SPAN. They're doing a split screen so you  can watch both candidates the whole time.

HRC goes first. She says we need jobs. Wants to raise minimum wage and, finally, equal pay for women. Wealthy will pay their fair share.

DJT sounds a little subdued compared to what we're used to. He talks about Ford leaving the U.S. and losing manufacturing/jobs to other countries.

He points out Clinton has been working in government 30 years and still hasn't done anything about improving jobs here.

He describes the disadvantage we have in trade with Mexico since they have a VAT and everything we sell there is automatically taxed. We don't have that tax so they don't have to pay it here.

She accuses him of saying climate change is a hoax, he denies it.

Holt allows HRC to continue to talk even though he said they were taking a break.

Trump says he'll release his taxes as soon as she releases her emails. Someone in the audience cheered. Holt reminds them that they promised to stay silent.

Hillary needs to shut up about her father. I hope none of the debate drinking games have people doing a shot every time she says "my father". They'd be halfway to done in by now.

DJT - under budget, ahead of schedule.

The next section is on race.

HRC wants police to stop killing people unnecessarily like they're doing it for the lulz now.
We have to restore trust between communities and police. We have to make sure police are using the best techniques and training, and are well-prepared to use force only when necessary.
Holt intervenes to "correct" Trump. Trump responds that Holt is mischaracterizing the "stop and frisk" decision.

She talks about systemic racism and how young black men are more likely to be arrested and jailed for the same thing a white man could do. I hope he points out how she called them super-predators.

She wants people on the no-fly list to be prohibited from buying a gun. (Is she against due process?)

He called her on the super-predator thing. Good job.

He's not much for due process before taking gun rights either.

HRC
I think Donald just criticized me for preparing for this debate... and yes, I did.
He did?

DJT talks about Sidney Blumenthal being one of the ones that started the thing with asking about Obama's birth certificate. I doubt many listeners know who Blumenthal is.

HRC says cyberwarfare will be one of the biggest challenges. She's deeply concerned about attacks by Russia.

She's the last person I would want to take cybersecurity advice from.

She says "Donald" invited Russians to hack Americans.

He points out that we really don't know who the hackers were but agrees that we need to be concerned about computer security.


The tops of their heads are even but compare their shoulder height. Would they have zoomed in more on a man to make him look equally tall they way they've done for Clinton?

Where are the questions about her private server?

They are giving Trump a good chance to counter her claims that he supported the war in Iraq.

Trump throughout calls her "Secretary Clinton", she keeps calling him "Donald".

DJT has attacked her political decisions. She's attacked him personally. Now they're arguing about who has better temperament.

She accused him of not caring if Japan, South Korea or Saudi Arabia get nuclear weapons. Why didn't he bring up the hundreds of millions the Clinton Foundation got from Saudi Arabia? It seems like it would have been a good chance for him to work it in.

He says Hillary has experience, but it's bad experience.

Final question, or it would be but Hillary keeps talking and Holt doesn't stop her.

HRC talks about a female beauty pageant contestant that has become an American citizen and is going to vote this November. It seems glaring that she doesn't say, "is going to vote for me".

Will you support the outcome of the election, regardless of who wins.

Both say yes along with a lot of other blather.

First Presidential Debate 9/26/2016

Watch the debate  live on C-SPAN. They're doing a split screen so you  can watch both candidates the whole time.

HRC goes first. She says we need jobs. Wants to raise minimum wage and, finally, equal pay for women. Wealthy will pay their fair share.

DJT sounds a little subdued compared to what we're used to. He talks about Ford leaving the U.S. and losing manufacturing/jobs to other countries.

He points out Clinton has been working in government 30 years and still hasn't done anything about improving jobs here.

He describes the disadvantage we have in trade with Mexico since they have a VAT and everything we sell there is automatically taxed. We don't have that tax so they don't have to pay it here.

She accuses him of saying climate change is a hoax, he denies it.

Holt allows HRC to continue to talk even though he said they were taking a break.

Trump says he'll release his taxes as soon as she releases her emails. Someone in the audience cheered. Holt reminds them that they promised to stay silent.

HRC hypothesizes why DJT won't release his taxes. He's not as rich as he says, not as charitable as he says, that he has debt to foreign banks, or that he doesn't pay federal taxes.

Someone cheered a comment by Clinton. Let's see if Holt admonishes them too.

Melania Monday


Sunday, September 25, 2016

Sunday's Rare Donald


Front Row

Hillary Clinton invited Mark Cuban to sit in the first row at Monday's debate.
"Just got a front row seat to watch @HillaryClinton overwhelm @realDonaldTrump at the "Humbling at Hofstra" on Monday," Cuban tweeted. "It Is On!" 
Cuban has tried to publicly shame Trump throughout the 2016 campaign, regularly slamming the Republican nominee for not releasing his taxes. The attacks have been particularly effective, given Cuban's status as a fellow billionaire and his public persona as a similarly brash businessman.
If the goal was to make Trump uncomfortable with some trolling by Cuban, they didn't think this out very well. Now, as a response, Trump has invited Gennifer Flowers to attend the debate. Who will make whom more uncomfortable?

Invite Monica too...

Saturday, September 24, 2016

What's Aleppo?

Even fewer people are going to be asking that after Friday.
Syrian and Russian warplanes launched a ferocious assault against rebel-held Aleppo on Friday, burying any hopes that a U.S.-backed cease-fire could be salvaged and calling into question whether the deal would ever have worked.

Monday, September 19, 2016

Does This Show Intent? (Yes)

A reddit thread from 2014 shows a redditor called stonetear asking:
Hello all- I may be facing a very interesting situation where I need to strip out a VIP's (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email that I have both in a live Exchange mailbox, as well as a PST file. Basically, they don't want the VIP's email address exposed to anyone, and want to be able to either strip out or replace the email address in the to/from fields in all of the emails we want to send out.
I am not sure if something like this is possible with PowerShell, or exporting all of the emails to MSG and doing find/replaces with a batch processing program of some sort.
Does anyone have experience with something like this, and/or suggestions on how this might be accomplished?
Stonetear is likely Paul Combetta's username. He's used the same name for email, imgur, etsy, and other accounts.



The FBI couldn't prove intent but the reddit army seems to have found it.

Melania Monday


Sunday, September 18, 2016

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Basket of Deplorables

To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables'. Unfortunately there are people like that, and he has lifted them up.
Hillary Clinton said this at a LGBT fundraiser in NYC where tickets were reported to start at $1,200 and go up to $250,000. The event was announced by an email saying "We will come together on Friday evening September 9 in New York to celebrate equality, build support for our campaign for a stronger America and aim our focus squarely on continued progress by sending Hillary to the White House."

We want to celebrate equality...except for those deplorables.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

The Trump Family That I Know



You can read more about the speaker, Lynne Patton, in this Daily Mail article that was published after the video went viral.

(Side note: I just have to add that I love this photo she took of three of the Trump kids and their spouses. Silly paper hats!)


Does News Coverage Affect Perception?

The most recent CNN poll says:

Among the four major tickets (Clinton, Trump, Johnson, and Stein), 43% of likely voters plan on voting Clinton/Kaine and 45% of likely voters plan on voting for Trump/Pence.

If they had to choose between just Clinton/Kaine and Trump/Pence, 48% would pick Clinton and 49% would pick Trump.

Then they asked, "Regardless of who you support and trying to be as objective as possible, who do you think will win the presidential election this November?" (Note, it's not asking who they want to win, but who they think will win.)

59% said Clinton and 34% said Trump. In spite of Trump having a slight majority, people still think that others are going to vote for Clinton.

The poll also asks whether people have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of each candidate. Trump's favorable rating is higher than Clinton's. Also, more people have an unfavorable opinion of her than of him.

Not only are Trump's numbers getting better, Clinton's are steadily falling. The more people see her, the more they dislike her. (That bodes well for a Clinton presidency, doesn't it?) Yet if you look at headlines for campaign-related news on major news sites, it seems as if Clinton is the most popular candidate ever! (And that she farts fairy dust that will make all of your dreams come true while Trump is a big meany. And he has cooties.) She doesn't, he doesn't, but who are you going to believe - me or your lying eyes?

Monday, September 5, 2016

Fuck America



He was arrested for public benefits (food stamp) fraud and burglary, but, somehow, it's America's fault. How entitled do you have to feel in order to come to that conclusion?

The family just likes giving people the finger. Ahmed Alshami, the man who was arrested, posted a Facebook rant last year where he accused others of trying to shut down his store. He included a photo of himself giving the finger along with his rant.

His 'they're all drug users' rant must come under "it takes one to know one" because Alshami was also arrested in 2015 for criminal possession of a controlled substance (crack cocaine).

Melania Monday


Sunday, September 4, 2016

Is Telford the New Rotherham?

Horrific reports of widescale grooming and abuse in town dubbed Britain's 'child sex capital'.
[R]eports of grooming in Telford were inputted into police computers wrongly and played down despite an earlier probe that led to seven men being jailed in 2012.
The people arrested in 2012 were seven men of Pakistani descent:

  • Ahdel Ali
  • Mubarek Ali
  • Mohammed Ali Sultan
  • Tanveer Ahmed
  • Mohammed Islam Choudhrey
  • Mahroof Khan
  • Mohammed Younis

According to Wikipedia:
There were accounts concerning men who would ejaculate and then urinate in children's mouths, violating them in every orifice, as well as gang-rape by queues of men while girls were held hostage for hours, sometimes days – all the while being forced to listen to the screams of girls in other rooms with other men.

Sunday's Rare Donald


Saturday, September 3, 2016

Shut It Down!



Reuters shuts down the video feed while Trump is receiving a blessing from Bishop Wayne T. Jackson.


Trump's speech was over, was the rest just going on too long or was there another reason for shutting it down? Too much God business? Too pro-Trump? It's a shame (for the reporters) that all news events can't be as scripted as Hillary's are.

Friday, September 2, 2016

I Am Not a Crook

40 times Hillary Clinton told the FBI she couldn't remember.

It includes not remembering any briefing or training about handling federal records. Her excuse is that she has brain damage (no, really) from the stroke she had around that time. Didn't she receive any briefing about how to handle classified information when she was a senator on the Armed Services Committee? Did she forget all of that too?

Part of the whole "Hillary's got experience" propaganda is that she has been in the White House and has the benefit of having learned about the presidency through her husband's two terms in office yet she couldn't manage to learn that Top Secret information needs to be handled in a way that protects it from foreign agents. Keeping it on a relatively insecure server and using her email (and that server) when in foreign countries isn't indicative of someone who has experience...or an IQ higher than room temperature.

If anyone else had treated secure information the way she has, they wouldn't be running for president, they'd be doing time in a federal penitentiary.

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Celebrate America

We will stop apologizing for America and we will start celebrating America.

We will be united by our common culture, values, and principles, becoming one American nation. One country, under one Constitution, saluting one American flag, and always saluting it. The flag all of you helped protect and preserve. That flag deserves respect and I will work with the American Legion to help to strengthen respect for our flag. You see what's happening? It's very, very sad.

We Begin Bombing (Russia) in 5 Minutes

The title of the post refers to a joke President Reagan made during a sound check before a radio address when he was running for re-election. What was once a joke is now a serious suggestion made by another candidate.
As president, I will make it clear that the United States will treat cyberattacks just like any other attack,” the Democratic presidential nominee said. “We will be ready with serious political, economic and military responses.
That's right, Hillary Clinton wants to use the US military to get revenge because she believes they hacked the DNC. The woman who cared so little about cyber-security when she was Secretary of State now wants people to die because someone in Russia may have done something. Note that our government has not officially accused anyone of the hacking, all the accusations have come from the Clinton team.