#olitics

[mysharona1987]

[shakespearenews]

Following the Action: Some Thoughts on Shakespeare and Politics

How I read Shakespeare, and what I’ve discovered about the politics of his plays by doing so.

The second problem — and this one is a doozy — is that dramatic action is a term with no consensus definition...There’s been debates and symposia and panels on what the term might mean for hundreds of years. If you read, say, the great drama critic Eric Bentley’s essay on dramatic action, you can actually watch his brain melt out of his ears in real time as he tries to figure it out...

It was this triangulation that was most important for me in making Lend Me Your Ears. That podcast really grew out of a failure on my part. I was teaching Shakespeare the day after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. And it was, for me and my students, a kind of traumatic event. We thought the world was headed in one direction, and it instead was headed in another, far more dangerous one, one we probably should have seen coming. This is the kind of event that Shakespeare wrote about all the time, of course. And yet that day, as I tried to talk to my students, I had nothing of Shakespeare’s to give them. I had no idea what to say.

[reasonandempathy]

Frozen machines, 243-percent turnout, and other woes in Georgia voting

A federal lawsuit alleges significant problems with voting in the Peach state.

With worn-out clichés about the dead voting, Chicago used to be the poster child for voter fraud. But if any state is a poster child for terrible election practices, it is surely Georgia. Bold claims demand bold evidence, and unfortunately there's plenty; on Monday, McClatchy reported a string of irregularities from the state's primary election in May, including one precinct with a 243-percent turnout.

McClatchy's data comes from a federal lawsuit filed against the state. In addition to the problem in Habersham County's Mud Creek precinct, where it appeared that 276 registered voters managed to cast 670 ballots, the piece describes numerous other issues with both voter registration and electronic voting machines. (In fact it was later corrected to show 3,704 registered voters in the precinct.)

Multiple sworn statements from voters describe how they turned up at their polling stations only to be turned away or directed to other precincts. Even more statements allege incorrect ballots, frozen voting machines, and other issues.

We've looked at poor voting security in the state previously. In 2017, a report by a Georgian security researcher revealed a shocking lack of security throughout the state's voting system. Later that year, we discovered that servers that were thought to be key evidence for the same federal lawsuit that has led to this week's news were wiped, then repeatedly degaussed.

Let’s combine this with multiple reports ofhow ridiculously easy it is to hack into American voting booths

A voting machine hacked to play Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” might seem amusing – but it has a sinister sting in the tale. At security conference DEF CON in Las Vegas last week, security researchers proved that it is possible to access and change votes on the same voting machines used in US elections in the time it takes to watch a movie. Some of the hacks were even carried out wirelessly.

DEF CON purchased thirty voting machines from eBay and government auctions for the event. Ninety minutes after participants were let loose the first machines started to fall, with vote rigging and Rickrolling coming soon afterwards.

One of the machines was still using Windows XP, and so an exploit that has been known since 2003 allowed people to get remote access through its Wi-Fi system. This meant that the votes could be changed from anywhere.

Other exploits involved prying open mechanical locks covering USB ports or spotting the uncovered USB ports on the back. One team then simply plugged in a mouse and keyboard to gain control of the machine.

Well documented foreign attempts to hack into those voting booths, like China and Russia.

U.S. investigators believe Chinese hackers are responsible for the massive security breach at nearly every federal government agency, a law enforcement source and another US official told CNN on Thursday. The national security community is now working under the assumption that the Chinese have hundreds of thousands of security clearance forms.

After weeks of news stories describing Russian intelligence operations to hack into the U.S. political system, many Americans may be wondering what the Obama administration intends to do about it.

The answer: Not very much, at least in the short term, current and former U.S. national security officials say.

While officials have said privately they have solid evidence that Russia is behind a series of intrusions that could amount to interference in the U.S. presidential election, several tell NBC News Obama is unlikely to “name and shame” Russia before the November vote.

(as a brief aside, I explicitly picked news articles from before the Trump election in 2016 just to demonstrate that this is a long-standing and well-known fact and not something partisan)

It is a matter of national security and well-being that we update and protect our votes and our government.

Oh Right. (July 2018)

Republicans don’t want to do anything about this

Because they genuinely don’t care.

They’re actively making it easier (February 2017).

They’ve been doing this shit for a decade.

Patriotism my ass.  Love of America my ass.  National security my ass.

[iocheaira]

i mean obviously the two party system is so broken but like. the republican party has publicly fractured in the past like. almost decade (lmao!) over allegiance to trump and the democratic party watched all that (and benefitted in the subsequent election) and said “hold up. we can do this worse”

[x-h3kk3ning-x]

You've heard of:

"two wrongs don't make a right"

now get ready for:

"two opposing sides, don't make a majority rules"

[x-h3kk3ning-x]

Why does America always act like we are at war? Like the news keeps saying "our adversaries" "those who would oppose us" like......where are the bombs? Who is shooting us? There is no war? We are MAKING THE WAR! Literally no one cares, the rest of the world would like us to stop making fights, can we please???

[joegrund]

What the last 48 hours told us about Trump's next 4 years - CNN

[politicalpaints]

Nicola Sturgeon sitting on a huge haggis suggested on facebook