The Trump administration is mandating that any studies or data from scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency undergo review by political appointees before they can be released to the public.

The communications director for Donald Trump’s transition team at the EPA, Doug Ericksen, said on Wednesday the review also extends to content on the federal agency’s website, including details of scientific evidence showing that the Earth’s climate is warming and manmade carbon emissions are to blame.

Former EPA staffers said on Wednesday the restrictions imposed under Trump far exceed the practices of past administrations.

Ericksen said no orders have been given to strip mention of climate change from www.epa.gov, adding no decisions have yet been made.

read more: 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/25/donald-trump-epa-gag...

US President Donald Trump has called for a national investigation into voter fraud, including people who registered to vote in two states - even though one of his daughters and his campaign chief have done so.

Tiffany Trump is registered to vote in two states, New York and Pennsylvania, The Washington Post reported.

read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/donald-trump-calls-voter-fraud-probe-but-dau...

Trump can't hide his feelings. So we know he is consumed by the fact that election loser Hillary Clinton beat him by almost three million in the popular vote. How dare the people let him down in such fashion? No coincidence either that in his latest telling of this insult, in which he claims that but for fraud he could have won the popular vote, the guilty number three to five million.

So there he was, the most powerful man in the world, wandering the corridors of the White House in the middle of the night, at 4.10am no less, firing off indignant tweets to soothe his injured ego: "I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and ... even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!"

read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/donald-trumps-voter-fraud-investigation-leav...

Hillary Clinton garnered more than 800,000 votes from noncitizens on Nov. 8, an approximation far short of President Trump’s estimate of up to 5 million illegal voters but supportive of his charges of fraud.

Political scientist Jesse Richman of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, has worked with colleagues to produce groundbreaking research on noncitizen voting, and this week he posted a blog in response to Mr. Trump’s assertion.

Based on national polling by a consortium of universities, a report by Mr. Richman said 6.4 percent of the estimated 20 million adult noncitizens in the U.S. voted in November. He extrapolated that that percentage would have added 834,381 net votes for Mrs. Clinton, who received about 2.8 million more votes than Mr. Trump.

Mr. Richman calculated that Mrs. Clinton would have collected 81 percent of noncitizen votes.

“Is it plausible that non-citizen votes added to Clinton’s margin? Yes,” Mr. Richman wrote. “Is it plausible that non-citizen votes account for the entire nation-wide popular vote margin held by Clinton? Not at all.”

read more:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/26/hillary-clinton-received...

We all know what to do with political stats...

A woman impersonated the wife of a GOP lawmaker and snuck into the congressional Republican retreat in Philadelphia Thursday, the same day President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence appeared, retreat organizers told lawmakers late Saturday.

The revelation came as the nonprofit Congressional Institute that organizes the retreat investigates how audio of the gathering leaked. In an email to GOP lawmakers, institute president Mark Strand did not directly say that the impersonator was the same person who leaked the audio, but that was the implication.

"The Congressional Institute is continuing to investigate this breach in order to fully understand how it happened and to ensure it does not happen again," said Strand's email, which was obtained by The Associated Press.

The audio was leaked to several news outlets and first reported by The Washington Post. It reveals lawmakers airing concerns about the practical difficulties and political risks of repealing and replacing President Barack Obama's health care law, among other things.

read more:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/29/woman-impersonated-lawmakers-...

 

Surprisingly, "she" has not been labelled as a Russian spy so far by the liberal press... It proves that the best security in the world is as crappy as the well-fed guard dog that looks at a fake id card... Time to revisit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdnAaQ0n5-8

 

President Trump’s repeated claim that “millions” of noncitizens voted illegally in the 2016 election has always been transparently self-serving — a desperate attempt to soothe his damaged ego and explain how he could have lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost three million votes.

It also lined up nicely with a yearslong crusade by Republican officials to convince Americans that “voter fraud” is an actual problem. As Mr. Trump’s own lawyers have pointed out, it’s not. But that hasn’t stopped the president from trying, as he so often does, to commandeer the machinery of the federal government to justify his own falsehoods. The most recent example was his creation last week of an advisory commission whose ostensible goal is to “enhance the American people’s confidence in the integrity of the voting processes,” with an emphasis on weeding out “improper” or “fraudulent” registration and voting.

To state the obvious, this isn’t a commission. It’s a self-driving vehicle preprogrammed to arrive at only one destination: that strange, fact-free land in which, according to Mr. Trump and many conservatives, hordes of foreigners and people without valid photo identification flood the polls, threatening the nation’s electoral integrity. The right-wing politicians and anti-voter activists who appear to believe this never trouble themselves with the actual data.

So here it is: Voting fraud is extremely rare, and in-person fraud — the only kind that would be caught by voter ID laws — is essentially nonexistent, as study after study has shown. And as for those foreigners, a new survey of local election officials in 42 jurisdictions turned up a total of about 30 cases of suspected noncitizen voting last November — out of more than 23 million votes.

 

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/opinion/trump-voter-fraud-commission.html?_r=0

 

See toon at top... AND PLEASE NEWSPAPERS TELL US HOW THE RUSSIANS INFLUENCED THE RESULT... Fake news? Real news? Voting machine tempering? Influencing voters in their sleep? Ransom?

 

 

 

For the next two days, the titans of social media will explain to stony-faced members of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Panel on Crime and Terrorism exactly how Russia purchased the 45th President of the United States for just pennies on the dollar.  

Although Russia jumped on the democratic bandwagon rather late in the game, it appears that Russian political technologists are already light-years ahead of the wolf pack when it comes to the election process, which - let’s be honest - has always been a tainted affair, even in fairy-tale Western capitals.

While US lobbyists are cunning enough to hedge their bets on both horses in every race, or join some shady Super PACs to get maximum bang for the buck, nobody has been able to determine - with absolute, rock-solid certainty - the outcome of any political contest.

That is, until now.

At this point, the more incredulous readers may wish to have a seat because the following news will send spasms of shock and awe to the very core of your democratic being.

Russia, the erstwhile ‘evil empire’ that only recently shook off the dusty cobwebs of communism, has mastered the democratic game of thrones with such impeccable precision that it is now able to buy any political candidate for about the going price of a German sports car, or a Spanish villa - take your choice, it's a consumer paradise. Despite considerable efforts to conceal the secret from annoying interlopers, the proverbial cat is out of the bag.

Consider Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, a veritable global warehouse of friends, photos and likes that the free world apparently can’t live without. After all, how else would we know what our friends had for dinner last night? But more to the point. Beginning on October 31 - apparently to achieve maximum Boo! effect - company executives will have to explain, with perfectly straight faces, that 'Russia-linked' election-related posts (whatever that means) comprise less than one percent of all such posts.

In other words, out of Facebook's massive influx of ad content, ‘Russia-linked’ election posts amount to one in 23,000 posts, or some 0.004 percent of overall content. It's difficult to fathom that such a negligible influence could have the slightest impact on the billion-dollar, barnstorming US elections. This should teach them to never underestimate Russian resourcefulness! 

The Nobel literature prize should go to Russian Twitter accounts because apparently they have superhuman writing skills that control minds.

— Karl Sharro (@KarlreMarks) October 31, 2017

Russia’s ability to steer the outcome of the 2016 US election becomes even more fantastic when we realize that more than half of the ads were posted on the social media platform after the election was over. Yes, that's right, when the legendary fat woman was already singing. The social media giant also admitted that “25 percent of the ads were never shown to anyone.” 

Needless to say, Russia is now the envy of every lobbyist and campaign manager on K Street, and that may explain why the US refuses to provide a shred of evidence that pulls back the curtain on this “Russian collusion.” This information is just too damn valuable and could wreck the billion-dollar lobbying industry overnight. Eureka! Russia has found a way to take the unpredictability out of US elections, and save a lot of corporate dollars at the same time!

In an effort to deny Russia its victory parade, however, Facebook would only say the accounts were “likely operated out of Russia.” That statement is lamentable. After all, having spent so much time and effort devising such dirt-cheap and ingenious methods of manipulating the electoral process, would it be expecting too much to come out and acknowledge Russia’s rightful place in the rogue’s gallery of political chicanery? Alas, this appears to be the case.

Remember that last month, Twitter said they'd only discovered 201 Russian-linked accounts.https://t.co/w2UKVAuR08

— Caroline O. (@RVAwonk) October 31, 2017

With disturbing predictability, Russia is written off as a basket case every time it tries to do something remotely positive - from hosting the Olympics, to intervening against terrorists. But now that Russia has finally found its true calling – buying Western leaders for a fraction of the going price - nobody wants to acknowledge the debt! To paraphrase the journalist Greg Palast, 'is this the best democracy money can buy?' Certainly not! 

Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch called Russia’s drop in the proverbial bucket a "new threat,” which, to be perfectly honest and humble, is probably about the same paltry amount one would expect to find from Lithuania, Libya or Latvia, although nobody ventured to study the cash flow emanating from those countries into the lily-white US political system, nor many others. The obvious question is: why?

Because quite simply we are talking about ‘Russian influence’ and who could deny the dark and dangerous connotations that delicious-sounding phrase conjures up? ‘Russian influence.’ Ah, yes, the way it rolls off the tongue has an almost hypnotic effect and is enough to make an American Neocon want to bomb something, anything. Indeed, as far as a political marketing tool, ‘Russian influence’ is second to none.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

There is also the question of Russia’s minuscule yet muscular presence on Twitter, which Donald Trump used with tremendous effect during his presidential campaign. In fact, he admitted he would not have ascended to the Oval Office without it.

“Tweeting is like a typewriter – when I put it out, you put it immediately on your show,” he told the Fox Business Network channel. “When somebody says something about me, I am able to go bing, bing, bing and I take care of it. The other way, I would never get the word out.”

 

And millions of other Twitterati feel exactly the same way. Bing, bing, bing! Yet somehow only Russia had the brains to steal an entire presidential election with the help of the platform. Again, at unbelievably low prices.

Twitter probably won’t relieve the jittery nerves of the Russian inquisition any time soon, despite a September report that stated:“Based on our findings thus far, RT spent $274,100 on US ads in 2016. In that year, the @RT_com, @RT_America, and @ActualidadRT accounts promoted 1,823 Tweets that definitely or potentially targeted the US market."

Donald Trump probably tweets that many messages before lunch.

In any case, despite these very slim findings, which is nothing more suspicious than the free market at work, Twitterbanned all ads from RT and Sputnik, citing "election interference." While doing so, however, it failed to inform US lawmakers of its own multi-million dollar sales pitch for RT to buy ads during the election in question. Ah, those annoying details. 

Google, meanwhile, said it found no evidence RT manipulated video hosting platform YouTube or violated its policies during the 2016 US election campaign. That is certainly not the Russian-made smoking gun that so many had been hoping for.

RT, which is the most-viewed global news network on the platform, actually won rave reviews: “Some have raised questions about the use of YouTube by RT, a media service funded by the Russian government,” the document said.“Our investigation found no evidence of manipulation of our platform or policy violations; RT—and all other state-sponsored media outlets— remains subject to our standard rules.”

Neverthless, many US politicians will be watching the McCarthy-like show trials with great interest, determined to learn how Russia was able to serve as the American ‘king-maker’ in the US political system, placing the crown on the head of a very unlikely candidate, Donald Trump, a real estate developer, for crying out loud.

In any case, it is very doubtful that the assembled US Senators, brought together by a whirlwind of suspicion created out of thin air, will learn anything at all from the deliberations, aside from whatever their vivid imaginations may conjure up. 

After all, what else can we expect on Halloween besides more Russophobic-inspired phantoms?

read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/408361-russia-trump-elections-social-media/

 

See toon at top...

Meanwhile:

UPDATE: It didn’t take long for Twitter to figure out what happened. A customer support employee deactivated President Trump’s account on his or her last day. It’s unclear whether this was a deliberate act, though Twitter pledges to conduct “a full internal review.”

read more:

http://deadline.com/2017/11/twitter-inadvertently-deactivated-trumps-acc...

Microsoft & Pentagon are quietly hijacking US elections (by Lee Camp)

Good news, folks! We have found the answer to the American rigged and rotten election system.

The most trustworthy of corporations recently announced it is going to selflessly and patriotically secure our elections. It’s a small company run by vegans and powered by love. It goes by the name “Microsoft.” (You’re forgiven for never having heard of it.)

The recent headlines were grandiose and thrilling:

“Microsoft offers software tools to secure elections.”

“Microsoft aims to modernize and secure voting with ElectionGuard.”

Could anything be safer than software christened “ElectionGuard™”?! It has “guard” right there in the name. It’s as strong and trustworthy as the little-known Crotch Guard™ – an actual oil meant to be sprayed on one’s junk. I’m unclear as to why one sprays it on one’s junk, but perhaps it’s to secure your erections? (Because they’ve been micro-soft?)

Anyway, Microsoft is foisting its ElectionGuard™ software on us, but worry not that we Americans will be tied down by laborious public debate as to the effectiveness, efficiency and accountability of said software. According to MintPress, “The election technology is already set to be adopted by half of voting machine manufacturers and some state governments for the 2020 general election.” Hardly any public discussion will plague our media or tax our community discourse.

Microsoft describes ElectionGuard™ as “a free open-source software development kit” that “will make voting secure, more accessible, and more efficient anywhere it’s used.” Wow, those are genuinely great words to hear – free and open source. The only words I like more than “open source” are “open bar,” but my dream of an open bar at every polling location remains elusive.

MintPress News’ Whitney Webb recently reported on ElectionGuard™ (and in fact much of the information in this column is coming from her impressive expose). She spoke to journalist Yasha Levine, who said: “What open source does is give a veneer of openness that leads one to think that thousands of people have vetted the code and flagged any bugs. But, actually very few people have the time and ability to look at this code. So, this idea that open source code is more transparent isn’t really true.”

And as WikiLeaks proved when it revealed the CIA’s Vault 7, whenever the CIA discovers holes in important code, they don’t reveal it to the American people. They keep it to themselves to exploit secretly, which is what could be done with ElectionGuard™, resulting in America’s continued descent into Banana Republic™ (in both senses of the phrase).

So, while open source is better than not open source, it’s also not a silver bullet. It’s like saying that having 90 zombies chasing you is better than 100 zombies chasing you. Sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to sit down and have a cold beer.

The press releases on ElectionGuard™ also touted a dizzying array of election security measures. I’ve reprinted the list of security measures, beginning with the most powerful measure and ending with the least powerful.

1. Homomorphic encryption

2. Waterproof keyboards

I imagine some of you are a bit overwhelmed by such an extensive and confusing list. Feel free to take a mental breather now and rejoin this column in a few minutes. Also, I made up number two.

I do acknowledge that “homomorphic encryption” sounds pretty freaking awesome. “Homomorphic” makes you think there might be a gay member of the X-Men. But in fact, it’s a malleable form of encryption, which apparently is not the most secure nor most sought-after form of encryption according to nerds who study the Crypto-verse (a term I conjured up just now to sound smarter). I won’t get into the details, but the experts seem to agree that homomorphic encryption will not turn our elections into an impenetrable wall of democracy, renowned the world over.

On top of that, as Webb stated: “…there is an added layer of concern given Microsoft’s past, particularly their history of working with US government agencies to bypass encryption.”

So, the company setting up the encryption for our elections is a company with a resume of helping the US government break encryption. This is like setting up a system to test for steroids in baseball and asking Sammy Sosa to help you do it.

Yet, the Microsoft takeover gets even worse because it’s not only Microsoft. They’re doing it in partnership with a cyber security firm called Galois. Whitney Webb again:

“Though it describes itself as ‘a privately held US-owned and -operated company,’ public records indicate that Galois’ only investors are DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the Office of Naval Research, both of which are divisions of the Department of Defense.”

Did you catch that? Galois claims to be a private company, but its only investor is the f**king Pentagon. To rephrase something you already understood in another way so that you get mildly annoyed with me: Microsoft and our war machine are taking over the American election system.

Honestly, who would put election software in the hands of DARPA? DARPA’s the department that tries to put microchips in soldiers’ brains to create Terminators or Robocops or other dystopian hounds of hell. If your first response upon hearing about an invention is, “That’s f**king awful!” – DARPA came up with that.

I wouldn’t even let someone from DARPA look after my cat for the weekend. We all know I’d come home, the cat would have half a head and a Game Boy duct-taped to its ass. “F**k you, DARPA! I don’t care if the Mario Kart theme song plays when it s**ts. Get out of my apartment!”

Now, imagine that scenario but replace the cat with our entire election system.

MintPress further revealed Galois has a spin-off company called “Free & Fair” that creates technology for elections and worked with Microsoft to make ElectionGuard™.

Unfortunately, Free & Fair is connected to every form of neocon think tank, government agency and large corporation. They’re especially in bed with the Department of Homeland Security.

So what’s wrong with that, you might ask.

As Webb details, “before, during and after the 2016 election, the Department of Homeland Security was caught attempting to hack into state electoral systems in at least three states – Georgia, Indiana, and Idaho – with similar accusations also made by Kentucky and West Virginia… DHS, which initially denied it, later responded that the attempted breach was ‘legitimate business.’”

Legitimate business? Anytime someone from DHS says they’re involved in legitimate business, immediately duck and put your head between your knees.

Plus, the fact that Microsoft wants to introduce this software to us for free should set off an alarm bell the size of Lake Michigan. Microsoft doesn’t do anything for free. Microsoft execs don’t say hello to their grandmas for free. Microsoft is one of the most powerful companies in America because of its predatory practices. If the Mafia offered you something for free, would you just say “Thanks!” and wander off? Or would you start appreciating your final days with knees that bend?

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/462041-microsoft-pentagon-hijacking-elections/

 

 

Read from top.