The Unbelievable Trump

Fox Host Laura Ingraham Announces ‘Vacation’ Amid Growing Backlash

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/laura-ingraham-announces-vacation-insulting-high-schooler-article-1.3905220

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-host-laura-ingraham-announces-vacation-amid-growing-backlash

Most Americans think Trump will lose in 2020

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/cnn-poll-most-americans-think-trump-will-lose-in-2020/ar-AAvfV88

A racist White House doesn't want to talk about police shootings, because of course not

By Hunter 

This is my I'm not talking to you face.

On Wednesday the Baghdad Bob of the White House, played at the moment by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, until Donald Trump realizes that she, like Sean Spicer, does not actually possess the power to bend reality itself to fit his daily whims, was asked about the latest public developments in the ongoing series of police shootings of unarmed black American men.

Her answer was, ahem, widely noted.

“Certainly, a terrible incident. This is something that is a local matter. And that's something that we feel should be left up to the local authorities at this point in time,” Sanders replied.

Then Ryan asked Sanders about the lingering case of Eric Garner, the New York man who cried out “I can't breathe” in 2014 while in a chokehold administered by New York City police despite the department prohibiting the practice. [...]

“I'm not aware of any specific action. Once again, these will be local matters that should be left up to the local authorities,” Sanders said.

While this notion, that the videotaped nationwide evidence of black American men and boys facing death at the hands of police departments in situations and with a frequency that are not even remotely matched by similar incidents against white Americans, is a "local matter" for each police department and not worthy of the attention of the resident—while that is a roundly offensive notion, to be sure, you may take some comfort in remembering that everything Sarah Huckabee Sanders says is a lie to begin with. Her statements are not policy; her statements are merely the daily whistling of the wind.

To be sure, what Sanders means is that the administration is going to continue to refuse all meaningful comment on such police violence. This is to be expected.

First, Donald is a racist whose own history of demonizing non-white persons as “rapists” or guilty-no-matter-what-investigators-say is well known.

Second, his administration is a shipwreck of old, lower-tier Republican racists elevated into unexpected positions of power; each of them, like Jeff Sessions, has worked to expand police power and reduce police accountability as matter of actual policy.

Third, Donald does not want to talk about police shootings because saying anything even the slightest bit reasonable would give his core base of very shouty and distinctly white-nationalist infused supporters an election-year tummyache; the White House garbage fire faces a choice of saying what those supporters want Donald to say, which is that police should be executing more Americans for cheaper reasons, or shutting the hell up.

And Sarah Huckabee Sanders and anyone else still hoping for a career after Team Garbage Fire is very, very, very much of the hope that Donald will keep his mouth shut.

Trump’s Lawyer Raised Prospect Of Pardons For Flynn And Manafort

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/us/politics/trump-pardon-michael-flynn-paul-manafort-john-dowd.html

Trump ends a temporary immigrant status for several thousand Liberians

By Michael D. Shear

The New York Times

WASHINGTON — resident Donald Trump said Tuesday that several thousand Liberians who have been living in the United States under a temporary immigrant status will have one year to return to their country or they will face deportation.

The resident said in a memo to the secretary of state that he was formally ending a program that has allowed Liberian immigrants to remain in the United States and work legally since 1999, when then-President Bill Clinton established it in response to conditions in the country after a civil war.

More than 800,000 Liberians were displaced by the war and fled the country. Some sought refuge in the United States.

The program, known as Deferred Enforced Departure, has been renewed for Liberians since, giving the immigrants the ability to remain in the United States without fear of deportation. But in the memo, Trump cited the improved conditions in Liberia as evidence that the program was no longer needed.

“Liberia is no longer experiencing armed conflict and has made significant progress in restoring stability and democratic governance,” Trump wrote. “Liberia has also concluded reconstruction from prior conflicts, which has contributed significantly to an environment that is able to handle adequately the return of its nationals.”

Advocates for Liberians in the United States had urged Trump to simply extend the protections.

Members of Congress from Minnesota, which has the largest Liberian population in the country, wrote a letter to Trump this month to echo those requests.

“Many of these people have been in our state for decades, and they are an important part of our communities, where they serve as business owners, teachers and health care workers,” the lawmakers wrote, asking for an extension of the program.

On Tuesday, Emira Woods, a Liberian-American advocate for immigrants, described the resident’s decision as a mixed bag. She noted the year that Liberians have before facing deportation, but said ending the program would force them to abandon lives in the United States. “Many of these Liberians had children in the United States,” she said.

The Deferred Enforced Departure program for Liberians was scheduled to expire Saturday. Though he declined to renew the program, Trump ordered what he called an “orderly transition” so that Liberians living in the United States could get their affairs in order before returning to Liberia. That period will extend for 12 months, Trump wrote.

The decision about the Liberian program mirrors the actions the Trump administration has taken toward other, larger groups of immigrants in the United States. Since taking office, the resident has ended temporary protected status for certain immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan, arguing that conditions have improved significantly in those countries.

The Black Hole

Here Are Some Of The Best Signs From The March For Our Lives Demonstrations

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/march-for-our-lives-here-are-some-of-the-best-signs-from-the-demonstrations.html

Maxine Waters On Impeachment: We Can't Wait For 2020

"We cannot wait" for the 2020 elections to do something about Donald Trump, says Rep. Maxine Waters. "It is too dangerous."

Fucking Hell, John Bolton Again?

Posted by Rude One

Now that our goddamn resident, Donald Trump, has appointed John Bolton, one of the most war-mongering, cruelest, dumbest dick holes, to be National Security Adviser, I ought to write something about his terrible career.

Except I already fucking did that back in 2005, when Undersecretary of State Bolton was nominated to be ambassador to the United Nations, a position he got a recess appointment for until he was whipped out of public service and became that fuckin' guy with the stupid mustache polluting the airwaves with violent and hateful rhetoric.

So here ya go, gathered for your clicking convenience.

John Bolton, Another Motherfucker for America, where you can read about Bolton's belief that presidents should not have to respond to subpoenas, something you know Trump loves about him, as well as his attempt to get a woman fired from the DOJ for taking a leave while pregnant.

Part 2: John Bolton, Another Motherfucker for America, where you can read how Bolton was fiending for war with Iraq during the mid-1990s.

John Bolton Acid Flashback - The Age of Not Giving a Shit, where you can read a 1999 interview where Bolton out-crazied Bill O'Reilly by saying that the United States shouldn't intervene to stop the Serbs from committing genocide in Kosovo.

John Bolton, Crazy Man, where you can read what a total shitheel Bolton was to people working for him.

Here we are, 13 years later, and it's not like he's fuckin' mellowed since getting paid almost exclusively from Fox "news" and nutzoid think tanks. So, of course, Trump chose him. He saw Bolton on the TV.

Crazy meets crazy, and we're all fucked.

No Requiems For A Terrorist In Austin

Posted by Rude One

When Anthony Stephan House picked up the package that was left on his front porch in Austin, Texas, on March 2, he pulled away some paper that allowed for an electric circuit to be completed, and the current caused the bomb inside to explode. House likely lost his hands immediately from the shockwave while the shrapnel that was packed into the bomb tore through him, severing arteries, embedding in bone, slicing organs. This is not to mention the additional fragments of broken windows and pieces of the porch. Just before picking up the bomb, House had sent his 8 year-old daughter back into their home to brush her teeth. Had he not done that, had he not been being a good dad, the girl would have been ripped up, too, probably dead.

I think about Draylen Mason, the 17 year old musician and student who leaped in front of his mom after she opened the package in her kitchen with a knife. Mason must have known that something was wrong with the box on the table, and he protected her, getting the full impact of the bomb in a contained area. It would have torn him to pieces, and he died instantly. His mom is in the hospital. Imagine what she saw. Imagine her helplessness.

And I think about the three other victims, all severely wounded, probably from the nails that the terrorist packed into the bombs to achieve maximum pain and destruction.

Let's be absolutely clear:

Mark Conditt, the bomber, is a fucking terrorist, as surely as anyone from al Qaeda or ISIS or whatever spooky Muslim group you want to invoke is. When I hear Austin's Chief of Police describe Conditt's video confession as "the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his personal life that led him to this point," I don't give a fuck because he's a fucking terrorist. The deranged shit blew himself up at the end. You know what we'd call him in other circumstances? A suicide bomber. Fuck him. Fuck his pain. Fuck his personal life. Fuck his challenges. Fuck his outcry.

Now we're treated to descriptions of Conditt as "the quiet, socially awkward oldest child of a devout Christian family that held Bible study groups in their white clapboard house, where an American flag hangs from the front porch." Oh, so he was a Christian terrorist, right? Shouldn't we be asking every Christian if they condemn Conditt? 'Cause "devout Christian" can mean crazy-ass fundamentalist, especially if they belonged to a sect that held secret meetings in a private home. Fuckin' hell, that's just a sleeper cell, and Conditt got activated. He was home-schooled, and that's suspicious as hell, isn't it? Maybe we should be dragging in his parents and ask them what the connection with Amway is. Is Amway really just a cover organization for a cult of Christian terrorists? Is their Ponzi-scheme of shitty personal care products covering up for a coming coordinated attack on others in this country? What about the town of Pflugerville? It sure seems like we should be raiding all the churches there to see what they might be hiding, especially Conditt's Austin Stone Community Church.

Another home-schooled student described the pasty terrorist as someone who "loved to think and argue and turn things over and figure out what was really going on." Have they questioned him and other home-schoolers about what they figured out? Have they rounded them up and beaten them until they gave up information on other terrorists?

Or maybe, just maybe, we should think about humanizing all terrorists in order to understand what drove them to violence. Maybe that would actually do more to make us mitigate terrorism, no matter where it comes from. Every terrorist is troubled. Every terrorist is challenged. Every terrorist has to go through a personal journey to get to the point where they want to kill others. We should try to figure all this out without demonizing the demographic group the terrorist comes from.

But we should never forget that, no matter who they are, they are still fucking terrorists, and we should call them as such, whether they're named Nidal Hassan or Dylan Roof or Nikolas Cruz or this fucking Conditt.

Face it, people...a Russian spy traitor is in the White House!

Former CIA Director John Brennan says it is possible the Russians 'have something' on the resident, and he also believes the country's future is in jeopardy as Trump 'continues his antics.'



Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., discusses the resident's phone call with Vladimir Putin and says there is no good reason why Trump won't confront Putin.



Donald Trump was infuriated after it quickly leaked that he had been directly instructed by his national security advisers in briefing materials not to congratulate Russian President Vladimir Putin on his recent election victory during their call, a source familiar with the resident's thinking said.

Dear God, I Hate This Stupid Mother Fucker.

By Franz

I hate his constant infantile need for attention—like a baby shitting himself and flinging it at the walls, rejoicing in his ability to make others suffer for his actions.

 

I hate how transparently and debilitatingly narcissistic he is, exhibiting a lack of empathy most associated with bona fide sociopaths.

 

I hate that he can’t talk without his mouth forming the shape of a distended prolapsed asshole.

 

I hate that the fucking resident of the United States spells like a 3rd grader who got hit in the head with the goddamn shovel.

 

I hate that millions of Americans have to suffer because his transparent compensation for his micro-penis is more important to him than actual leadership.

 

I hate the constant, tedious, immature bragging—like a 71 year old slob who won’t stop reminding you he once fucked the prom queen in his Trans Am, as if we give a shit.

 

I hate the way he constantly holds his stupid face with his chin raised like he ordered the “Mussolini for Douchebags” home kit.

 

I hate the way he crosses his arms in meetings with the body language of a four-year-old in time out.

 

I hate his fake teeth, fake hair, fake tan, fake marriage, fake life, and fake residency.

 

I hate his complete lack of chivalry or affection as he walks ahead of his wife and kid—a kid that he’s likely unfortunately turning into the same kind of broken, unloved piece of shit he is.

 

I hate that he’s a chauvinist, racist, homophobic, bigot, and isn’t remotely ashamed of it.

 

I hate his stupid long red ties that don’t make his Christmas twinkle light penis any bigger.

 

I hate his insipid, intrusive alpha male handshake, like a fucking baby orangutan beating its chest in the zoo.

 

I hate that he constantly blathers "no collusion, no collusion" like a macaw with Tourettes.  

 

I hate that he clearly can’t fucking read. Watching him mumble his way through a teleprompter is like watching a bulldog on Quaaludes try to do math.

 

I hate that he could dick whip the statue of the Virgin Mary in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and the “religious right” would still make excuses for him.

 

I hate that he’s turned the West Wing into a glorified Klan rally.

 

I hate that he has the verbal finesse of a used car salesman with a fake GED.

 

I hate that he has admitted to grabbing pussies, defamed a Gold Star family, demeaned a war hero, praised Nazis as “very fine people,” extra-maritally banged a porn star and paid her off to keep her mouth shut, made fun of the physically handicapped, admitted to obstruction of justice, became a blatant puppet of the Kremlin—all on television—and this idiocratic country still saw fit to reward him with the high office once held by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Barack Obama.

 

I hate that he’s nothing but an over-glorified psychologically handicapped Internet troll—and not even a good one.

 

I hate that he couldn’t pass a junior high quiz about what the ADA actually is, or does.

 

I hate that he lies like most people breathe.

 

I hate that his dead bird’s nest of ridiculous hair has no actual origin point—it just sits there like an embarrassed and confused tumbleweed.

 

I hate that his ascendance revealed without any reasonable question that nearly 40% of this country is still virulently racist.

 

I hate that he thinks a vainglorious $50 million parade is a better way to honor the troops than by increasing the VA budget by $50 million.

 

I hate that he takes credit for everything good Barack Obama did for this country, but takes responsibility for nothing bad.

 

I hate that if (not when) he meets with Kim Jong Un, Trump will be the one with the more ridiculous hairdo.

 

I hate his fucking face.

 

I hate his fucking voice.

 

I hate that he’ll be long dead and gone when this country finally purges itself of his existence the way Germany shits on the memory of Adolf Hitler.

 

I hate that he’s too deranged and ignorant to ever understand how truly reviled, hated, embarrassing, and disgusting morally upright and sane people know he is.

 

I hate that he has turned the residency of the United States of America into a Fox News reality show.

 

I hate that he fucking exists.

 

Cross posted at The Rogue Left

Space Captain Trump

Russia and Putin are fiercely dangerous to our democracy. Putin has something very big on Trump, which has rendered him an impotent toady. These two facts are obvious. This is the biggest, scariest story in the world. Let’s stop pretending it isn’t.

Tweet, minutes ago, from Tony Schwartz, who wrote The Art of the Deal for Trump:

Russia and Putin are fiercely dangerous to our democracy. Putin has something very big on Trump, which has rendered him an impotent toady. These two facts are obvious. This is the biggest, scariest story in the world. Let’s stop pretending it isn’t.

— Tony Schwartz (@tonyschwartz) March 15, 2018

Trump fires Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State

Trump has ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and plans to nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him as the nation’s top diplomat, orchestrating a major change to his national security team amid delicate negotiations with North Korea, White House officials said Tuesday.

Trump last Friday asked Tillerson to step aside, and the embattled diplomat cut short a trip to Africa on Monday to return to Washington.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-ousts-tillerson-will-replace-him-as-secretary-of-state-with-cia-chief-pompeo/ar-BBKaaqF

The thing that ate America's brain

Melania Knew -- Charles Blow NYT

Dear America: Come on, you can’t be serious.

The ongoing saga over a president, a porn star and a payoff is so lewd and tawdry that it can’t simply be added to the ever-expanding list of horrible misbehaviors of a womanizing misogynist.

It’s not even the infidelity that most bothers me. I view that as an issue between spouses and with the other person involved. I contend that we on the outside never really know what understandings may exist in a marriage, unless the two parties within reveal it.

In this case, Melania knew exactly the kind of man she was getting.

When Donald first meets Melania, they are at a New York Fashion Week party to which Donald has been invited by the wealthy Italian businessman who brought Melania to America on a modeling contract and work visa. According to GQ, sometimes, to promote his models, the businessman “would send a few girls to an event and invite photographers, producers, and rich playboys.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/11/opinion/melania-trump-stormy.html

Former Assoc. Dir. of National Intelligence: "it was entirely possible votes were tampered with."

Mar 09, 2018 10:59am EST by ian douglas rushlau

There has been extensive discussion of Russian efforts to hack into US voting systems (for example, see the report of the Director of National Intelligence from January of last year), and it is no longer in dispute that Russia was successful in ‘compromising’ a number of voting systems. Nor is it in dispute that many elements of our voting system (not just the voting machines themselves) are vulnerable to cyberattacks, and old-fashioned tampering, as explained in the excellent diary from yesterday by DKos contributor Leslie Sazillo, which highlights the work of Dr. Barbara Simons, an expert in computer security and voting systems.

For all the efforts Russia engaged in over the course of years to attempt to determine the outcome of the 2016 election, and install their preferred candidate, and all that is publicly known of their multifaceted operations to penetrate our voting systems, there are still many here and elsewhere who hold onto the contention there is no direct evidence that any votes, or vote totals, were changed.

That contention relies on the notion that Russia did everything in its capability to capture the election, from hijacking social media platforms to recruiting Americans to assist them, and they breached various voting systems in dozens of states, but the one the one thing they held back from doing, was change votes themselves (even though, as the work of Dr. Simons and other experts show, they could do so ‘invisibly’). Why would Putin hold back in this one instance, when he has shown no such restraint in any other way?

The answer is, in all likelihood: he didn’t hold back. Claims that votes were not changed to ensure the election of Putin’s tool, are looking less plausible by the day.

An article by Dr. Eric Haseltine (in, of all places, Psychology Today) from last month, explicates why this is the case.

First, who is Dr. Haseltine? From his website:

Eric joined the National Security Agency to run its Research Directorate. Three years later, he was promoted to associate of director of National Intelligence, where he oversaw all science and technology efforts within the United States Intelligence Community as well as fostering development innovative new technologies for countering cyber threats and terrorism. For his work on counter-terrorism technologies, he received the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal in 2007.

A little more background on him, from Wikipedia:

Haseltine spent 13 years at Hughes Aircraft, where he rose to the position of Director of Engineering. He then left for Walt Disney Imagineering in 1992, where he joined the research and development group, working on large-scale virtual-reality projects. In 1998, he was promoted to senior vice president responsible for all technology projects.^[1] In 2000, he was made Executive Vice President. Haseltine was head of research and development for Walt Disney Imagineering^[2] by the time he left in 2002 to join the National Security Agency as Director of Research. From 2005 to 2007, Haseltine was Associate Director for Science and Technology, Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)—that organization's first—a position he described in a 2006 US News and World Report interview by stating: "You can think of me as the CTO [chief technology officer] of the intelligence community"…
Eric has 23 patents in optics, special effects and electronic media, and more than 150 publications in science and technical journals, the web, and Discover Magazine.

Seems reasonably qualified, and from his years at NSA, reasonably informed.
Here’s his take on tampering with vote totals:

HOW TO HACK AN ELECTION: AN INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS.

After the last presidential election, I heard one expert after another reassure voters that the Russians could not have hacked voting machines or state vote tallying systems on a scale large enough to tip the presidential election…

As much as we’d all like to believe such confident pronouncements, my experience in the intelligence world, where I served as Associate Director of National Intelligence, has lead me to one inescapable conclusion—the optimistic “experts” are probably wrong, and all of us should acknowledge that our unconscious (or not-so-unconscious) need to believe that our democracy can’t be subverted by foreigners, blinds us to powerful evidence to the contrary. And, after embracing this scary possibility, we should do a lot more to secure our voting systems than we are doing now…

The case for Russian tampering with the vote

Let me start by explaining the way intelligence professionals would approach the question of whether the Russians, or other skilled actors, could change the outcome of a U.S. election by tampering with voting. Then I’ll show why intelligence-style analysis leads to uncomfortable conclusions.

In making assessments about a state actor, such as the Russians, intelligence analysts ask two questions: what are the intentions of this actor and what are their capabilities?…

So, do the Russians intend to elect American candidates they prefer over those that we, the voters, prefer?

In a word, yes. In a rare display of unanimity, last year the U.S. Intelligence Community assessed that Putin, acting through his intelligence services, had indeed tried to tip the presidential election. One of the Russian Intelligence’s scariest accomplishments was to break into voter databases in 21 states (up to 50 states if you believe some sources). This success alone could have influenced the election by dictating who could and could not vote. In one target of Russian hacking, North Carolina for instance, some legitimate voters (in a “blue” precinct, as it turns out,) could not vote because the e-poll registration system used to allow voters to vote erroneously asserted that some legitimate voters weren’t registered…

One more thing. You might be wondering whether, despite their motivation to subvert our national elections, Russian leadership might still hesitate to alter vote tallies out of fear of getting caught. Whereas the U.S. Congress responded to voter registration hacks and email leaks from the Clinton campaign with sanctions—a mere slap on the wrist—the U.S. just might view outright alteration of vote counts an act of war and respond accordingly.

Sadly, I think the Kremlin views getting caught as more of a good thing, than a bad thing, because the net result would be favorable to Russia. Based on the way we responded to Russian behavior in 2016, Putin knows that a sizable portion of America—members of whichever major party the Kremlin favored—would, by and large, accept the inevitable Russian denials about vote tampering because we all believe what we want to believe, particularly when believing Russia committed an act of war could lead to armed conflict with a superpower…

In other words, if Russia were caught changing vote counts, America would be even more divided than today: exactly what the Kremlin wants. And the national will to respond to Russia’s provocation as an act of war simply wouldn’t be there.

Russia wins if they don’t get caught and Russia wins if they do get caught; what’s not to like? (emphasis added)

Note that Dr. Haseltine makes reference to information that, rather than the 39 states we know were in some way compromised, it may be the voting systems in all 50 states the Russians accessed.

Dr. Haseltine goes into detail about the vulnerabilities of voting systems, covering much of the same territory as Leslie’s review of Dr. Simon’s work, so I won’t go through it here, but Dr. Haseltine’s summary is well worth the read.

For our discussion, it’s his ultimate conclusion that warrants attention:

Adding up what we know about Russian intentions and capabilities, and factoring in the vulnerabilities just listed, I believe that it was entirely possible votes in the 2016 election were tampered with, and that attempts could be made to compromise future elections.

Why hold onto the notion that Russia didn’t try to change votes? (And if they tried, there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t be ‘invisibly’ successful.)

Dr. Haseltine suggests it is simply not wanting to believe it to be true: “the optimistic “experts” are probably wrong, and all of us should acknowledge that our unconscious (or not-so-unconscious) need to believe that our democracy can’t be subverted by foreigners”.
Charles Pierce, at Esquire, echoes this view:

The last outpost of moderate opinion on the subject of the Russian ratfucking during the 2016 presidential election seems to be that, yes, there was mischief done and steps should be taken both to reveal its extent and to prevent it from happening again in the future, but that the ratfucking, thank baby Jesus, did not materially affect the vote totals anywhere in the country. This is a calm, measured, evidence-based judgment. It is also a kind of prayer. If the Russian cyber-assault managed to change the vote totals anywhere, then the 2016 presidential election is wholly illegitimate. That rocks too many comfort zones in too many places.

Putin isn’t playing.

Saturday, Mar 10, 2018 · 8:21:45 AM EST · ian douglas rushlau
DKos member Hudson Valley Mark in a comment stressed the importance of communicating clear policy goals to address the vulnerabilities of our voting systems, and his point is well-taken.

The Verified Voting Foundation has created principles for making voting as secure as possible, which are as follows:

Any new voting system should conform to the following principles:
1. It should use human-readable marks on paper as the official record of voter preferences and as the official medium to store votes.¹
2. It should be usable by all voters; accessible to all voters, including those with disabilities; and available in all mandated languages.²
3. It should provide voters the means and opportunity to verify that the human-readable marks correctly represent their intended selections, before casting the ballot.³
4. It should preserve vote anonymity: it should not be possible to link any voter to his or her selections, when the system is used appropriately. It should be difficult or impossible to compromise or waive voter anonymity accidentally or deliberately.⁴ No voter should be able to prove how he or she voted.⁵
5. It should export contest results in a standard, open, machine-readable format.⁶
6. It should be easily and transparently auditable at the ballot level. It should:
export a cast vote record (CVR) for every ballot,
in a standard, open, machine-readable format,
in a way that the original paper ballot corresponding to any CVR can be quickly and unambiguously identified, andvice versa.⁷
7. It should use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware components and open-source software (OSS) in preference to proprietary hardware and proprietary software, especially when doing so will reduce costs, facilitate maintenance and customization, facilitate replacing failed or obsolete equipment, improve security or reliability, or facilitate adopting technological improvements quickly and affordably.⁸
8. It should be able to create CVRs from ballots designed for currently deployed systems⁹ and it should be readily configurable to create CVRs for new ballot designs.¹⁰
9. It should be sufficiently open¹¹ to allow a competitive market for support, including configuration, maintenance, integration, and customization.
10.It should be usable by election officials: they should be able to configure, operate, and maintain the system, create ballots, tabulate votes, and audit the accuracy of the results without relying on external expertise or labor, even in small jurisdictions with limited staff.

Charles Koch all of a sudden has a problem with corporate influence in politics

By Joan McCarter

Yes, you read that right. Charles Koch, in an op-ed in The Washington Post, complains that there's too much corporate influence in policy-making. Charles Koch, the guy who with his brother has bought the whole Republican House conference and about a third of the Senate's, says this:

When large companies can pressure politicians to force everyday Americans to fork over unearned millions, we should all question the fairness of the system. […] To include millions more of our people in true economic progress, our lawmakers must act on behalf of all Americans—not just the privileged few.

For reals. What brought this sudden realization upon him? He doesn't like Trump's tariffs, which show, he says, that "Our entire economy is rife with cronyism."

Uh-huh. He really, really wrote that, after the Kochs spent more than $20 million on the Republican tax scam that will net them more than $1 billion in tax cuts. They gave a fund-raising committee that supports Paul Ryan, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and a pro-Ryan PAC $500,000 to get that tax law, a law that's going to cause plenty of everyday Americans to "fork over unearned millions when the few provisions benefiting them expire in a few years.

And he has the gall to say "We only support policies that are based on equality under the law and that help people improve their lives." His evidence of that? The Kochs lobbied for the end of ethanol subsidies. Because that really helps the great unwashed in their everyday lives.

The incredible thing is, he really believes he's been treated unfairly here.