[cherdano]

Quite a few posters here wrote a lot of words about their concern that Clinton did not comply with State department email protocols.

Quote

Of the 26 domains [managed by the Executive Office of the President], 18 are not in compliance with a Department of Homeland Security directive to implement that protocol.

https://www.axios.co...ampaign=organic

I am sure that adds a LOT of worry about the current White House for all of you.
Oh, it doesn't? Then, perhaps, just maybe, your attention to Clinton's email management decisions was a tiny bit overblown? Just a tiny bit?

[ldrews]

cherdano, on 2018-April-05, 17:14, said:

Quite a few posters here wrote a lot of words about their concern that Clinton did not comply with State department email protocols.
https://www.axios.co...ampaign=organic

I am sure that adds a LOT of worry about the current White House for all of you.
Oh, it doesn't? Then, perhaps, just maybe, your attention to Clinton's email management decisions was a tiny bit overblown? Just a tiny bit?

Wow! You equate not following a DHS directive with exposing Top Secret info to the world. I guess spitting on the sidewalk is in the same class as homicide to you.

[cherdano]

ldrews, on 2018-April-05, 17:48, said:

Wow! You equate not following a DHS directive with exposing Top Secret info to the world.

No. Try again little Larry.

[y66]

barmar, on 2018-April-05, 08:49, said:

This is historically true, but that's because of the nature of societies of the past. Read Pinker's "Better Angels of Our Nature" and "Enlightenment Now", and you'll learn how much society has progressed in the past few centuries: more tolerant and inclusive, less violent. We don't have to define ourselves by where we've come from.

We still need armed police and military forces to provide the thread of force as deterrents, because things aren't perfect and never will be. But we can be hopeful that progress will continue.

From reviews I just read of "The Better Angels of Our Nature", it looks like Pinker has done his homework and that no one disagrees with his main assertion which is that the era we live in is less violent than every other era in which humans have existed.

I'd be surprised if Ms. Dayal disagrees either or if Pinker disagrees with her assertion (and Weber's) that states are defined by violence for which they claim monopoly power within their borders and that while states may evolve in ways that the capacity for violence which is at the core of their existence becomes less necessary to deploy from day to day and thus less visible, especially after they succeed in wiping out less desirable inhabitants (their Indians for example), it behooves those who still find themselves on the bottom of the totem pole to reckon mindfully with what is keeping them there if they want to change their state which is risky.

Some of us may not get to see how Pinker's thesis holds up in the decades ahead as the world's population increases and the planet becomes more toast-like. If Trump is the preview, it will be a good test.

[Winstonm]

ABC News is reporting that:

Quote

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has obtained evidence that calls into question Congressional testimony given by Trump supporter and Blackwater founder Erik Prince last year, when he described a meeting in Seychelles with a Russian financier close to Vladimir Putin as a casual chance encounter “over a beer,” sources tell ABC News.

Oops there goes another rubber tree plant.

[kenberg]

y66, on 2018-April-05, 18:51, said:

From reviews I just read of "The Better Angels of Our Nature", it looks like Pinker has done his homework and that no one disagrees with his main assertion which is that the era we live in is less violent than every other era in which humans have existed.

I'd be surprised if Ms. Dayal disagrees either or if Pinker disagrees with her assertion (and Weber's) that states are defined by violence for which they claim monopoly power within their borders and that while states may evolve in ways that the capacity for violence which is at the core of their existence becomes less necessary to deploy from day to day and thus less visible, especially after they succeed in wiping out less desirable inhabitants (their Indians for example), it behooves those who still find themselves on the bottom of the totem pole to reckon mindfully with what is keeping them there if they want to change their state which is risky.

Some of us may not get to see how Pinker's thesis holds up in the decades ahead as the world's population increases and the planet becomes more toast-like. If Trump is the preview, it will be a good test.

I think I read a bit of Max Weber and a bit of Thomas Hobbes when I was an undergraduate in the 50s. I hope there will not be a snap quiz. Dayal gives a link to a Weber paper, I might read it. As to Hobbes, I'll dig out some of his joint work with Calvin.

Now to Dayal's article: She begins by introducing herself as a prof in international relations and then says "The first thing I teach most students is Max Weber's definition of the state — the disciplinary way of understanding what in casual speech we call countries.". Clearly she views this definition as the starting point for learning. I don't think I am overstating her view here. So what is the definition she advances? "The state, they learn, is defined by violence — it guards for itself the means of violence; it deems what violence is and isn't legitimate." This is her starting point for discussion. The students are to learn this. They are not to learn that this is Weber's view and that there are other views, they are to learn that this is " the disciplinary way of understanding what in casual speech we call countries". I guess if you have any doubts about this assertion it is best that you drop her class, she does not sound like someone open to alternative views. I took a philosophy course from a strict logical positivist. You could agree with him or you could drop the course. Me being me, I did neither but...

I doubt that she and I would get along very well. But it could be interesting and perhaps, for a student at least, that's good. "Interesting course" and "good grade" do not always go together. The gap is sometimes extreme.

[jjbrr]

cherdano, on 2018-April-05, 17:14, said:

Quite a few posters here wrote a lot of words about their concern that Clinton did not comply with State department email protocols.
https://www.axios.co...ampaign=organic

I am sure that adds a LOT of worry about the current White House for all of you.
Oh, it doesn't? Then, perhaps, just maybe, your attention to Clinton's email management decisions was a tiny bit overblown? Just a tiny bit?

It's all very concerning (especially since Donnie Moscow reportedly doesn't even know how to use emails)

Quote

The Good Morning Britain presenter let slip that the leader of the free world “doesn’t use email himself, so I email his office and they print it out for him”.

And he explained “then he will write a handwritten reply on the email and his office will scan it for him and email it back.”

Quote

"I think the computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole, you know, age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what's going on. We have speed and we have a lot of other things, but I'm not sure you have the kind of security you need," Trump told reporters Thursday evening.

Given that it seems very likely that his cohorts used self-destructing, encrypted emails (which supports Hope Hicks' testimony that she 'no longer has access to the emails'), I strongly suspect that is what formed his opinion of computer security. His lackeys showed him how to beat the system and he boasted about beating the system, as he is wont to do. What do State protocols say about that?

[barmar]

jjbrr, on 2018-April-06, 07:51, said:

It's all very concerning (especially since Donnie Moscow reportedly doesn't even know how to use emails)

He's in his 70's, lots of old people don't use email. And I'll bet there are many corporate executives who have their secretaries transcribe email for them.

The Donald has lots of serious problems, I don't count this among them. In fact, it would be better if he used Twitter the same way; if nothing else, the secretary would fix all his spelling mistakes, so he wouldn't look so illiterate. Of course, if he did that, she would probably act as a gatekeeper, preventing most of his stupid tweets from seeing daylight.

[barmar]

2nd Grader Explains Trade Deficits to Donald Trump

https://youtu.be/SmpfavT-9zI

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2018-April-06, 08:25, said:

He's in his 70's, lots of old people don't use email. And I'll bet there are many corporate executives who have their secretaries transcribe email for them.

The Donald has lots of serious problems, I don't count this among them. In fact, it would be better if he used Twitter the same way; if nothing else, the secretary would fix all his spelling mistakes, so he wouldn't look so illiterate. Of course, if he did that, she would probably act as a gatekeeper, preventing most of his stupid tweets from seeing daylight.

I wanted to upvote this five times at least. I'm 79. Email is very useful. I do not tweet, I am not entirely sure what many of the various apps out there actually do, I don't see that I need them. But email is a great help in life.

Apparently tweeting is an addiction for him, and for others. It seems to be along the following lines: Tweets are not considered to actually be serious. So DT tweets something, people read it and say "What the hell is he thinking?" and then his crew of explainers go to work assuring us that we can safely (?) ignore what he said. The world once paid considerable attention to the exact choice of words used by the President of the US. Not now, why would anyone do so? Now it is just seen as whatever he is thinking about at the moment, badly spelled, badly expressed, not at all thought out. This is seriously not good. I guess the only way it could be worse if he actually meant all of the idiocy that he tweets.

[jjbrr]

barmar, on 2018-April-06, 08:25, said:

He's in his 70's, lots of old people don't use email. And I'll bet there are many corporate executives who have their secretaries transcribe email for them.

The Donald has lots of serious problems, I don't count this among them. In fact, it would be better if he used Twitter the same way; if nothing else, the secretary would fix all his spelling mistakes, so he wouldn't look so illiterate. Of course, if he did that, she would probably act as a gatekeeper, preventing most of his stupid tweets from seeing daylight.

My point is not that he can't use emails -- I'm baffled he can even dress himself in the morning; perhaps he can't -- but rather the hypocrisy of firing up a fanbase about ILLEGAL EMAILS while at the same time participating in something much, much more sinister, potentially.

[barmar]

jjbrr, on 2018-April-06, 09:15, said:

My point is not that he can't use emails -- I'm baffled he can even dress himself in the morning; perhaps he can't -- but rather the hypocrisy of firing up a fanbase about ILLEGAL EMAILS while at the same time participating in something much, much more sinister, potentially.

Since he has steadfastly denied participating in the latter, it's not really hypocritical. His statements are generally consistent: "I'm great, I haven't done anything wrong, Hillary is crooked."

He's probably lying through his ass, though. And unless he finds a way to put a stop to Mueller's investigation, I think the truth will eventually come out. Hypocracy is a natural consequence of lying.

[jjbrr]

kenberg, on 2018-April-06, 09:13, said:

I guess the only way it could be worse if he actually meant all of the idiocy that he tweets.

Hint: he does.

[jjbrr]

barmar, on 2018-April-06, 09:35, said:

Since he has steadfastly denied participating in the latter, it's not really hypocritical. His statements are generally consistent: "I'm great, I haven't done anything wrong, Hillary is crooked."

He's probably lying through his ass, though. And unless he finds a way to put a stop to Mueller's investigation, I think the truth will eventually come out. Hypocracy is a natural consequence of lying.

He denied participating in the latter when? I was only aware of silence on Trump's part on that particular matter, but when you put the pieces together, ie the CA CEO on camera admitting to using them, and

Quote

Hicks allegedly told President Donald Trump on a conference call that the Trump Jr. emails "will never get out," and Corallo plans to share the conversation with special counsel Robert Mueller, the Times reported Wednesday night, citing three people with knowledge of his interview request.

it may not matter whether Trump understands the underlying technology, but it seems pretty obvious that he knew what was going on.

[jjbrr]

Also to further comment on the idea "Trump must have known"

Quote

Internet data shows that last summer, a computer server owned by Russia-based Alfa Bank repeatedly looked up the contact information for a computer server being used by the Trump Organization -- far more than other companies did, representing 80% of all lookups to the Trump server...

From May 4 until September 23, the Russian bank looked up the address to this Trump corporate server 2,820 times -- more lookups than the Trump server received from any other source. As noted, Alfa Bank alone represents 80% of the lookups, according to these leaked internet records. Far back in second place, with 714 such lookups, was a company called Spectrum Health.

Spectrum is a medical facility chain led by Dick DeVos, the husband of Betsy DeVos, who was appointed by Trump as U.S. education secretary.

Together, Alfa and Spectrum accounted for 99% of the lookups.

Alfa is, of course, owned by the father-in-law of the Dutch lawyer who was recently sentenced.

I'm sure little larry will tell us that this just indicates that Alfa Bank is trying to make Trump look bad and is therefore helping democrats, which must be ILLEGAL somehow, but a better explanation is ...

database replication funneled through an iodine DNS tunnel.

It seems plausible that Spectrum was sending medical records or other data sets to Alfa for the purpose of syncing profiles.

Perhaps this was discussed much earlier in the thread, but the picture is becoming pretty clear as the pieces fall into place.

[Winstonm]

jjbrr, on 2018-April-06, 12:35, said:

Also to further comment on the idea "Trump must have known"



Alfa is, of course, owned by the father-in-law of the Dutch lawyer who was recently sentenced.

I'm sure little larry will tell us that this just indicates that Alfa Bank is trying to make Trump look bad and is therefore helping democrats, which must be ILLEGAL somehow, but a better explanation is ...

database replication funneled through an iodine DNS tunnel.

It seems plausible that Spectrum was sending medical records or other data sets to Alfa for the purpose of syncing profiles.

Perhaps this was discussed much earlier in the thread, but the picture is becoming pretty clear as the pieces fall into place.

This is quite over my head as far as tech knowledge goes, but I have read - and don't know what to make of it - that this computer hookup showed signs (???how???) of passing information that was used to target voters. I have only seen this claim once and have never seen it verified so to me I count it as unverified gossip. I have also read that this could have been the result of spam, but that seems a weird explanation.

[jjbrr]

Winstonm, on 2018-April-06, 14:15, said:

This is quite over my head as far as tech knowledge goes, but I have read - and don't know what to make of it - that this computer hookup showed signs (???how???) of passing information that was used to target voters. I have only seen this claim once and have never seen it verified so to me I count it as unverified gossip. I have also read that this could have been the result of spam, but that seems a weird explanation.

I also am not well versed enough to provide a great explanation, but my understanding of DNS tunneling is as follows:

I'm alfa bank's server and I want to see if Trump's server is awake, so I reference its phone number and give it a call. Trump's server picks up and says "Hi, yes this is Trump's server, yes I'm awake, c7b2ab4635fb1285bb2802eb362dc0b5, goodbye"

This is obviously a pretty simple (and probably awful) analogy, but I assume you understand how powerful this conversation potentially is if Spectrum is doing the same thing in the other direction.

This graph, of which I cannot vouch at all for the source for accuracy or reliability shows a pretty interesting pattern of coincidences. Not sure if it's possible to see all of the Y axis or if that's just poor graph design or what. If it is in fact true that these 'phone calls' accounted for 99% of DNS lookups on Trump's server, well, that's interesting too.

This idea is totally just speculation and none has been verified, but the technology is available. The argument that might make this look silly is that Trump's server was used to emit marketing emails, allegedly, and it makes sense that 1) an alfa bank server might want to know the origin of marketing emails and 2) traffic would be higher during certain phases of the campaign. It could be totally harmless.

[barmar]

jjbrr, on 2018-April-06, 09:44, said:

He denied participating in the latter when? I was only aware of silence on Trump's part on that particular matter, but when you put the pieces together, ie the CA CEO on camera admitting to using them, and

Maybe I misconstrued what you were alluding to. I thought "something much, much more sinister" was collusion with Russia, and he has repeatedly said "There was no collusion".

[jjbrr]

barmar, on 2018-April-07, 11:35, said:

Maybe I misconstrued what you were alluding to. I thought "something much, much more sinister" was collusion with Russia, and he has repeatedly said "There was no collusion".

Gotcha. You're right, of course. I meant specifically participating in a program in which emails couldn't be traced and were self-destructing, a technology that is available to anyone.

[RedSpawn]

America's first black billionaire says Trump economy has been good for African-Americans

Quote

BET founder Robert L. Johnson, America's first black billionaire, said during a CNBC appearance Friday that black Americans should be encouraged by the growing economy under President Donald Trump.

"Something is going right," said Johnson, owner and chairman of Bethesda, Maryland-based asset management firm RLJ Companies.

He cited the December jobs report showing that unemployment among black workers was at its lowest since the Labor Department began tracking the data in 1972.

Black unemployment did fall to 6.8 percent in December, before rising and dipping again to 6.9 percent in March, according to the latest jobs numbers released Friday. But black unemployment remains nearly double the white unemployment rate of 3.6 percent, even though the gap has narrowed somewhat.

Johnson, during his appearance on "Squawk Box" on Friday morning before the March jobs report was released, was optimistic about how black Americans will continue to fare economically.
You have to take encouragement from what's happening in the labor force and the job market," Johnson said. "When you look at African-American unemployment, in over 50 years since the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been keeping the numbers, you've never had two things: African-American unemployment this low and the spread between unemployment among whites and African-Americans narrowing.

"That absolutely means the jobs market is soliciting employees who have been out of the labor force, some of it just based on discrimination, some of it based on changes in education, access and technology changes," he continued. "And so when you look at that, you have to say something is going right."

Johnson praised the current U.S. business environment, "if you take into account the Trump tax cut," he said. "I believe the economy is on a strong growth path."

The December tax cuts were the largest one-time reduction in the corporate tax rate in U.S. history. The GOP bill, sold on the promise that it would drive up wages and increase job growth, also lowered taxes for the vast majority of Americans, as well as small-business owners.

While Trump often claims credit for the lower black unemployment rate - touting it in his State of the Union address in January and even tweeting a CNBC story about Johnson's comments Friday - the brightening economic outlook preceded his presidency. The black unemployment rate had steadily declined during Barack Obama's two terms, from nearly 17 percent in 2010, after the recession, down to 7.8 percent by the time Trump entered office in January 2017.

"Most of the programmatic work was set into motion before the last administration was leaving," said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau.

Some economists criticized Johnson's rosy assessment of the economic picture for black Americans.

"A 6.9 percent unemployment is perhaps in a historical sense something to be happy about, but if the white unemployment rate were at 6.9 percent, we would consider this catastrophic and be very alarmed," said Darrick Hamilton, an economics and urban policy professor at The New School.

Hamilton noted that the structural nature of work has changed drastically since the government began tracking employment statistics, with very different implications today in regard to job security, wages and retirement benefits.

"Work is more precarious today than it was in the past, and in particular, black individuals are more likely to be in precarious employment scenarios with jobs that face greater wage and work-hour volatility," Hamilton said. "Bob Johnson's in the billionaire's club with Donald Trump, so it's not surprising that they align in their vision on labor."

Johnson, who's said he's been friendly with Trump through the years, had met with the president at his golf club in New Jersey shortly after his election when Trump offered him a cabinet position.

"I thought I would meet to see if there's common ground with someone most in the black community might call an enemy," Johnson told NBC at the time. "It was clearly based on the respect two businessmen would give each other."

Johnson reiterated Friday that he turned down the cabinet position because he didn't want to work for the government but said he continues to have regular access to top administration officials who he speaks with regularly about improving the economic lives of African-Americans. Among the issues he said he's engaged them on, including Trump himself during a meeting last week in Florida, are encouraging black workers to save for retirement and keeping black-owned banks from going out of business by ensuring they have enough capital to lend and promote community development.

Johnson, a Democrat and supporter of Hillary Clinton, had previously penned an essay on how African-American voters should respond to the "tectonic political rift" resulting in Trump's election.

"Why shouldn't we, as Black voters, reject the notion that we are locked into one party which undoubtedly limits and dilutes our voting power? We should, instead, use the power of our vote to support and elect whichever party that best serves our interests," Johnson wrote.

He went on to quote former representative William Lacy Clay Sr., D-Mo., who formed the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971: "Black people have no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, just permanent interests."

"That was the CBC motto then and Black Americans should embrace it as our rallying cry today," Johnson wrote.

I guess the best way to determine the financial condition of the entire African American community during the Trump era is to ask an African-American billionaire.

Hmmm.

Source: https://www.ajc.com/...GvDNNpa1Nn6cIM/