GA's Unverifiable E-Vote System Passwords, Voter Database, More, Found on Unsecured Server:

In advance of Tuesday's highly contested U.S. House Special Election in Georgia's 6th Congressional District --- the most expensive House race in U.S. history --- Politico Magazine's Kim Zetter offers an absolutely chilling bombshell of a report headlined "Will the Georgia Special Election Get Hacked?" She reports that gigabytes of unsecured data --- including passwords for e-voting system central tabulators, voter registration databases and much more were kept on a wholly unsecured web server, potentially for years, at Kennesaw State University's Center for Election Systems.

The KSU Center, as they describe on their website, was "created and charged with the responsibility of ensuring the integrity of voting systems in Georgia" since the state adopted its statewide, 100% unverifiable Diebold touch-screen voting system in 2002. Those same machines are still used there today, despite their age (they run on a version of Windows 2000) and massive, well-documented vulnerabilities to hacking and insider manipulation. Nonetheless, the Center for Election Systems has long been cited as a model for election administration by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and is responsible for the security and programming of every 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting system, computerized central tabulator, and electronic pollbook used across the state of Georgia.

The unsecured data files at Kennesaw, according to Zetter, were discovered prior to last year's Presidential Election and reported to the Center, but were still available online for download without a password at the beginning of March this year, during the run-up to the April primary election in the GA-06 House race. The data may, in fact, have been available there for years, even as Kennesaw's Executive Director Merle King, who has spent years testifying in court on behalf of Diebold's systems, reportedly failed to inform GA Sec. of State Brian Kemp about the breach last year after he was informed of it. In fact, Zetter notes that he warned the outside computer security researcher who discovered it not to inform the state. GA's former Sec. of State, Karen Handel, is the Republican House candidate in the reportedly very tight GA-06 race against Democrat Jon Ossoff and is said to have repeatedly blocked a security analysis of the Center years earlier while serving as the state's chief election official.

When the results of the House contest are announced on Tuesday night --- whichever party's candidate is declared the winner --- it will be virtually impossible to know if the results are accurate or if even one vote cast on GA's 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems were recorded as per any voter's intent.

While many of the vulnerabilities in GA's terrible voting and tabulation systems have been publicly known for years, the fact that the security at Kennesaw's Center for Elections is even far worse than ever imagined is both new and absolutely chilling in regard to both Georgia elections, and all others across the country, as I explain in detail on today's program.

Download MP3 or listen to complete show online below...

http://bradblog.com/?p=12189

Edited to add:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016185690

Voting Tech Experts to GA SOS Kemp RE FBI criminal probe into cyber attack of GA election systems


On March 3rd it was reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigations is conducting a criminal investigation into an alleged cyber attack of the Kennesaw State University Center for Election Systems. According to the KSU Center for Election Systems’ website, “the Secretary of State authorized KSU to create a Center for Election Systems, dedicated to assisting with the deployment of the Direct Record Electronic (DRE) voting technology and providing ongoing support.” The Center is responsible for ensuring the integrity of the voting systems and developing and implementing security procedures for the election management software installed in all county election offices and voting systems.

Lots more at thread link above.

Rachel just said: Do not underestimate how fast this can get weird and how weird it can get

Talking about many different aspects of the Russiagate investigation.... too much to try to repeat, or even remember. Manafort, grand juries, etc. etc. Federal Grand Jury in Eastern District of VA has issued subpoenas related to Manafort. This is Dana Boente's jurisdiction and he is one of the US Attorneys that Trump kept on when he fired a bunch of them.

As GA SOS, Karen Handel was subject of fed lawsuit by ACLU & DOJ action for voter suppression

This is really important! This is a repost of a thread by Diva77 from Friday that didn't get much attention and is critical info going into Ossoff election.
Karen Handel has a long history of voter suppression and and knows every trick to "win" an election.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029216234

I have copied all info below from Diva77's post as it's too late for this to make latest or greatest:

Handel was the first elected Republican secretary of state in Georgia history.
Soon after taking office as Georgia Secretary of State, Handel began a project to purge voter rolls.

Soon after taking office as Georgia Secretary of State, Handel began a project to purge voter rolls. The voter verification procedure matched five criteria provided by new voter registration applicants with information in the Georgia Department of Driver Services database or the Social Security Administration database. Some eligible voters were told that they were "non-citizens" although in fact they were citizens. Voter suppression allegations were raised and the rule became the subject of a federal lawsuit by the ACLU of Georgia and MALDEF, which accused Handel's office of engaging in a "systematic purging procedure" expressly barred by federal law within 90 days of an elections.

In 2009, the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division (DOJ) ordered a halt to the state's "voter verification" effort (denying it approval under the Voting Rights Act of 1965), determining that "thousands of citizens who are in fact eligible to vote under Georgia law have been flagged" and that the program was "flawed ... frequently subjects a disproportionate number of African-American, Asian and/or Hispanic voters to additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register to vote. This marked the first time since the 1990s that the Justice Department had denied approval to a change in Georgia election practice.

Handel defended her program, asserting that it was appropriate and necessary. A federal judge in Atlanta later dismissed a lawsuit that had accused Handel's successor, Secretary of State Brian Kemp of illegally bumping Georgia voters off the state's rolls ahead of the 2016 presidential election. In the 21-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. said the state had taken a "reasonable and nondiscriminatory" approach in trying to reach voters who had not cast a ballot within the past 7 years to confirm their addresses....snip

So she's like the Katherine Harris of Georgia...we need a LANDSLIDE for Ossoff to win!!!! SERIOUSLY!!! (For anyone who may not know, Katherine Harris was the SOS in FL who engaged in massive voter suppression which is credited in part for helping Bush "win" FL. )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Handel

Rebecca Solnit on the Corrosive Privilege of the Most Mocked Man in the World

This is an extraordinary piece of writing. Long, but well worth the read.

Rebecca Solnit: The Loneliness of Donald Trump
On the Corrosive Privilege of the Most Mocked Man in the World

Once upon a time, a child was born into wealth and wanted for nothing, but he was possessed by bottomless, endless, grating, grasping wanting, and wanted more, and got it, and more after that, and always more. He was a pair of ragged orange claws upon the ocean floor, forever scuttling, pinching, reaching for more, a carrion crab, a lobster and a boiling lobster pot in one, a termite, a tyrant over his own little empires. He got a boost at the beginning from the wealth handed him and then moved among grifters and mobsters who cut him slack as long as he was useful, or maybe there’s slack in arenas where people live by personal loyalty until they betray, and not by rules, and certainly not by the law or the book. So for seven decades, he fed his appetites and exercised his license to lie, cheat, steal, and stiff working people of their wages, made messes, left them behind, grabbed more baubles, and left them in ruin.

He was supposed to be a great maker of things, but he was mostly a breaker. He acquired buildings and women and enterprises and treated them all alike, promoting and deserting them, running into bankruptcies and divorces, treading on lawsuits the way a lumberjack of old walked across the logs floating on their way to the mill, but as long as he moved in his underworld of dealmakers the rules were wobbly and the enforcement was wobblier and he could stay afloat. But his appetite was endless, and he wanted more, and he gambled to become the most powerful man in the world, and won, careless of what he wished for.

Snip

The child who became the most powerful man in the world, or at least occupied the real estate occupied by a series of those men, had run a family business and then starred in an unreality show based on the fiction that he was a stately emperor of enterprise, rather than a buffoon barging along anyhow, and each was a hall of mirrors made to flatter his sense of self, the self that was his one edifice he kept raising higher and higher and never abandoned.

I have often run across men (and rarely, but not never, women) who have become so powerful in their lives that there is no one to tell them when they are cruel, wrong, foolish, absurd, repugnant. In the end there is no one else in their world, because when you are not willing to hear how others feel, what others need, when you do not care, you are not willing to acknowledge others’ existence. That’s how it’s lonely at the top. It is as if these petty tyrants live in a world without honest mirrors, without others, without gravity, and they are buffered from the consequences of their failures.

more:

http://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-the-loneliness-of-donald-trump/

7 cartoons that gleefully needle Jeff Sessions' Russia testimony

OMG. Watch Hatch ask his aide for talking points when McCaskill asks "Will be any hearings on ACA?"

McCaskill asks if there will be hearings. Hatch obviously confused; his aide whispers talking points audibly in his ear! Go Claire...

Schneiderman is gonna be on Lawrence tonight. Turn it on!

Putin trolls Comey: "We would offer political asylum if he's persecuted in US" for leaking to media

Vladimir Putin Trolls James Comey Over ‘Strange’ Memo Leak
“We would be ready to offer political asylum to Comey if he’s persecuted in the U.S.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin took a jab at former FBI Director James Comey Thursday by offering him asylum in Russia should he face political prosecution in the U.S. for leaking information to the media.

Comey told the Senate intelligence committee last week that he shared a copy of a memo describing conversations he had with President Donald Trump with a friend and encouraged him to leak it to the media.

Putin called the move “really strange” and compared Comey to whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has sought asylum in Russia since 2013 after leaking classified documents from the National Security Agency.

“It looks really strange when you memorize your conversation with the commander-in-chief and then you leak it to the press,” Putin said during a televised question-and-answer session with a selected group of Russians. “Does it make him any different to Mr. Snowden?”

“We would be ready to offer political asylum to Comey if he’s persecuted in the U.S.,” he added.



video at link

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/vladimir-putin-trolls-james-comey_us_59427eece4b003d5948d7b79?lwj&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

Did you hear Ari just say on Rachel that Rosenstein can't oversee the Mueller investigation?

At the very end - last MINUTE - Rachel was interviewing Ari (he's one of the MSNBC legal guys) about T being investigated for obstruction- and he said that since Rosenstein was involved in the Comey firing, he will have to recuse himself from that investigation... Rachel basically said wait, what? and then they went to Lawrence. She told Lawrence she wished she had a lot more time with Ari and that this was completely new to her.

10 Most inspiring Commencement Speeches 2017: Kamala Harris, Eliz Warren, Sally Yates, Robt Mueller

Thought we could use something inspiring long about now:

10 of the Best Commencement Speeches of 2017
We’ve put together a list of some of the most inspiring commencement speeches this year.
By Jessica R. Calderón | June 5, 2017

Spring is a time of hope and new beginnings for the thousands of graduates who grace college and university commencement celebrations. This year, artists, politicians, journalists and philanthropists took to the stage to speak not only about new beginnings but about some of the most pressing issues of our time — from women’s rights and civil rights to widening inequality and climate change. A common theme throughout has been of encouraging new graduates to stand up to resist the powers that be and become part of movements fighting those powers. And whether intentional or not, this year’s speakers have sparked not only our sense of hope but also of the critical role of citizens in America’s democracy.

Quotes and video clips from all the above plus noted others.

http://billmoyers.com/story/the-best-commencement-speeches-2017/