Trump and Conflating of Reporting

From the New York Times:

Another was how Mr. Trump and Mr. Spicer conflated BuzzFeed’s reporting of the Russia story with CNN’s (which omitted the uncorroborated details). This let him conveniently lump two very different Russia-Trump reports into the same manila folder, mislabeled “fake news,” and deposit them in the circular file together.

While true, this misses an important aspect of the matter. While Trump and Spicer may have intentionally conflated Buzzfeed's and CNN's reporting as a way of dismissing both, it's a near certainty that many people were going to conflate the two when assessing Trump and the stories. We had just seen similar where many were conflating Russian meddling in the election, including releasing emails hacked from Podesta and the DNC, with Russia hacking the election-possibly down to the vote tallying itself.

Frankly, most journalists did not do a very good job of pushing back against that conflation.

Why I am skeptical

Let me get this straight. You think that your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands; and your plan, is to *blackmail* this person?

We are supposed to believe that the Russians pulled out all the stops to get Trump compromised. And that a single spook had sources who gave him the goods on it. And that the story was percolating through the press corps for months; a veritable open secret, perhaps sans one or two details. And Putin, rather than protecting this leverage in his own particular fashion, let this spook run it to the one journalistic enterprise with the balls to run with it, Buzzfeed, taking away his ability to blackmail the most powerful man in the world? And you want me to believe that?

Good luck.

On Carrie Fisher.

@GerryDales @CJA1781 @amandacarpenter all of you are horrible assholes

— d.m. (@missumyhappybrd) December 28, 2016

This is how I started my morning.

I am sure she had the best of intentions in chiding me, but she really did miss the point. However, she did not miss the point nearly as badly as did a TV report on Carrie Fisher's death. I think it may have been E! Tonight or some similar show. They lauded her for her triumph over her mental illness of Bipolar Disorder.

No, she had no such triumph. It killed her.

That she was vocal about it, and that she fought it, and that she did a world of good with her efforts does not change the fact that it tormented her. When up, it made her ignore consequences and boundaries. When down, it made her want to bring the consequences on. It led her to self-medicate throughout her life. This self-medication likely led to her dying by age 60.

She had a serious illness, no more shameful than if she had cancer. To say she triumphed over it does a disservice to her efforts to make people understand what dealing with a mental illness is like. What dealing with this mental illness is like.

She was a treasure as a performer and, by all accounts, an all-time personality.

But Bipolar Disorder killed her. Was the damage to hear heart done in her 20s? 40s? Last year? Last week? It does not matter. It killed her. If we gloss over that, then her early passing was truly a waste.

The Daily Mail Story on Platte River Is Misleading. Why?

From The Daily Mail:

EXCLUSIVE: Hillary's email firm was run from a loft apartment with its servers in the BATHROOM, raising new questions over security of sensitive messages she held

Really? From a loft, with servers in the bathroom?

The Daily Mail article continues to quote a former employee, Tera Dadiotis, who described the company as a 'mom-and-pop' shop. Dadiotis said, "At the time I worked for them they wouldn't have been equipped to work for Hilary Clinton because I don't think they had the resources, they were based out of a loft, so [it was] not very high security, we didn't even have an alarm."

The article notes that the last time Dadiotis worked for them was 2010.

I like using the "Wayback Machine", aka The Internet Archive. Let's take a look at some things. I poked around on their website's archive circa 2013 (when the server was migrated to them), and found this description of services, originally posted in 2012 but still applicable through 2014 (or later). Notice what it says:

Offsite/Online/Data Center Backup

• Fully Automated Backups Held on Disk for Rapid File Restoration
• Secure Online Transfer of Fully Encrypted Data to an Offsite Data Center
• 24x7 Live Customer Support
• Immediate Access to Restore Data

Italics and underlining added by me for highlighting.

The company was run out of a loft, but the data center, where the [ETA: backup] information was stored, was elsewhere, not in the bathroom.

A press release from 2013 bragged that Platte River was named by Inc. Magazine as "one of the fastest growing companies in America for 2013." Further, the press release asserted them to be "a national leader in the managed services and cloud industry." That hardly sounds 'mom-and-pop' at that time to me.

All of this leaves me with a few questions. The Daily Mail tracked down "ex-employees" of Platte River, including the aforementioned Dadiotis (who was undoubtedly telling the truth about what the company was like back during her tenure). Why did they track down employees from years earlier, when the company was much smaller? Why weren't they talking to current employees who had been there merely two years ago?

Why are they publishing an article talking about what Platte River was like "At the time [Dadiotis] worked for them", 2010 and earlier, and making it sound like this was how it was when they started their involvement with the Clinton server? Why is this article pushing the false impression of the company, minimizing what they do and what their capabilities and offerings are and were in 2013?

Just sloppy reporting? Or is the false impression being deliberately pushed?

I can't help but remember back to earlier Clinton scandals, when false information would get pushed and then used as evidence of a vast right-wing conspiracy against them.

Probably just a coincidence.

Edited to add: The data center, which is where the servers were (and not just backups), was in New Jersey, as The Daily Caller reported last week.

Edited to add, again: Neil Stevens has convinced me that the Intuition brochure linked above suggests that only the backup services were in the offline data center. As such, I have struck-through the last part of the article. However, The points regarding Dadiotis being employed 3 years earlier, before the company grew to a $6M revenue company, remains as does my estimation that it was hardly 'mom-and-pop' by the time the Clinton server entered the picture.

That said, it is possible that there was a server located in a closet and I retract my confident assertion that it wasn't.

From Where is Trump Getting His Support?

Earlier today, Charles Franklin (Director of the Marquette Law School Poll, co-founder of Pollster.com, proprietor of PollsAndVotes.com, etc.) posted the following:

Pre-post Trump support in Fox CNN & Monmouth polls Change w/in pollster, then averaged h/t @EsotericCD @GerryDales pic.twitter.com/sAbgoBmyv4

— Charles Franklin (@PollsAndVotes) July 15, 2015

Clearly, since Trump entered the race, his numbers have greatly improved while Walker's and Rubio's have declined markedly. I found that counter-intuitive for a moment, until it dawned on me that nearly all of the candidates who showed little change were those who had little support to begin with. Obviously, if one is polling at 2%, it would be pretty difficult to lose more than 2 percentage points. If a candidate shows a sudden surge in the numbers, the most probable losers would be those with a decent amount of support available to lose.

Walker and Rubio fit that bill.

Another GOP candidate that had a pretty decent base of support before Trump joined the fray is Jeb Bush. Jeb announced mid-June and subsequently gained publicity for some eye-popping fundraising numbers. As such, it isn't all that shocking that he saw his support rise during and despite the Trump boomlet.

But is it all as simple as Trump is hurting the other GOP front-runners excepting Bush, who avoided the decline during a honeymoon phase? I am skeptical.

Since Charles was gracious enough to tell everyone which surveys he was using for his graph, I was able to go back to the surveys he used and look at some other numbers. The surveys he used were Monmouth, Fox Opinion Dynamics, and CNN/ORC International. I found the releases for the most recent iteration of each (linked below), each of which helpfully had earlier results included in them. The data from these made me even more skeptical.

In each of the following charts, the most recent iteration of a survey is to the left. For each survey, only the most recent was conducted after Trump announced. These are for the three candidates I would have called the frontrunners a month ago.

In each, the overall support for the triumvirate has been fairly steady. Within the Monmouth poll, the aggregate has varied by all of one percentage point. In the Fox poll, the spread is four percentage points with the most recent being three off of the maximum. In the CNN poll, one might get the impression that the group fell off in the most recent survey, but concurrent with their collective decline in the late June survey was growth in the combined "none of the above" / "no opinion" cohorts of eight percentage points in May. I believe that these three have been stealing share back and forth from each other for the past few months, and The Donald has not impacted them much, if at all.

The following charts compare Trump with all candidates other than Rubio, Walker, and Bush. Notice again how the aggregate totals remain fairly constant, especially when one keeps in mind the margin of error.

Trump is not hurting the presumed front runners. Instead, he's been sucking some of the air away from the candidates that Republican primary voters have been considering as alternatives to the main three; Christie, Carson, Huckabee, and Cruz hit the most. At least, that's the way it appears to me.

The .pdf files for the surveys are here: CNN/ORC, Fox Opinion Dynamics, Monmouth

Edited to add: If one goes by the Monmouth and Fox polls, you could also say that Paul isn't being impacted by Trump one iota. His numbers have been remarkably steady in each of their surveys. CNN, however, has shown him slipping a bit.

Clinton to propose police body cameras

Clinton is going to propose body cameras for every officer nationally at her speech today at Columbia.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 29, 2015

Good idea.

I am wondering about a hypothetical, though. Let's say that something happens, and the video of a certain timevspan is subpoenaed. Further, that the officer had decided to use a personal camera, and when told to turn over all recordings, scrubbed much of them as being personal and unrelated.

How should we handle that?

Put a Stop to Using Police as Revenue Streams

Reform this now. https://t.co/Koo7hIdQ24

— Gerry Daly (@GerryDales) April 10, 2015

There are many reasons to oppose the use of police to generate revenue. It hits the poor the hardest. It leads to abuse. It leads to a disdain for law enforcement. It leads to abuse.

Hopefully, some Republican Presidential candidates will take this up as an issue. Rand Paul seems a natural, but I could see others joining in as well.

I would recommend a simple proposal, such as making states report to the federal government all revenues raised from traffic violations, and using that amount as an offset to the amount given to the state for highway maintenance and similar construction projects. Give the individual states an incentive for discouraging the practice within their own borders, perhaps by doing something similar to their municipalities.

Simple, clean. Have the incentives be towards ticketing the minimum amount required to ensure public safety, which is how things really should be.

Aliens and today's audience

@EdMorrissey When Paul Reiser's character died and everyone in the theater cheered. The. Best.

— KSpetz (@kspetzman) March 22, 2015

I cheered.

Do they do that in theaters today? If so, I haven't seen it.

Audiences of which I was in cheered at Star Wars. They roared in approval when Reiser got his. They were in to it

I've been in quite a few movies of late that the audience clearly loved. Aliens. Avengers. A dozen others across genres, with the most recent being a more modest box-office title, "Kingsman."

It's not that I run out of the theaters early, with a well-practiced "Get off my lawn." No, I wait until the very end (and actually don't need to use the "Get off my lawn" cliche).

Either movies today do not inspire ovations of the kind found on Broadway, or people today aren't inspired to do so in general. I bet it is the former.

In Independence Day, the audience cheered and jumped up into applause when the first titan went down.

When will that happen again? And is the lack of it right now on the studios, or on us?

A Few Questions I Want Answered.

.@HillaryClinton has a lot to explain but 1 thing she is right about: nothing will be good enough for the Clinton haters, incl in the media

— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) March 10, 2015

Mr. Halperin, let's put that to the test. Here are a few questions I have. If these are answered in an acceptable fashion, then I will consider it good enough.

1. Why did you do this?
2. Why did you ignore the state department manual which stated that "sensitive but unclassified information" should not be transmitted through personal e-mail accounts?
3. Do you consider emails sent to or from you in the course of your duties as Secretary of State to be your property, or the property of the United States government?
4. Of the emails turned over so far, why did you have them delivered in printed form, with no metadata and headers?
5. When will you be turning over all of the emails in their original, electronic form including all metadata and the full internet headers?
6. Given that the law requires all emails regarding "the formulation and execution of basic policies and decisions and the taking of necessary actions; records that document important meetings; records that facilitate action by agency officials and their successors in office," why had you not turned these over until you had been requested?
7. What were the complete technical specifications of every part of the email system involved with clintonemail.com? Please include any filtering service (such as MXLogic), any software used, and what hardware was used.
8. Was there automatic, tamper-proof archiving? If not, why?
9. Who chose the specific ISP to use, and what information was used to make that choice?
10. When will you be turning over any and all hardware for forensic analysis?
11. If you have nothing to hide, why are you trying to control what to turnover and what you get to hold on to? Should that not be done by someone completely independent of you?
12. Were there emails regarding the Clinton Foundation sent or received through any of your personal accounts? If so, will you provide those to an independent auditor who can look for potential conflicts of interest that you may have a reason to want withheld?
13. Who was involved in maintaining this system? What security testing was performed? What was the backup schedule? Where are the backups? Which software patches were applied, and when?
14. If there was nothing sensitive nor classified on these emails, why all the redactions when they are being released?

On a few of these, only a few answers are acceptable. For example, all of the "when will" questions need to be answered "within a few days at the latest."

Make Legal What HRC Did

If I were a GOP Congressman, I would introduce bills to do the following:

1. Repeal the Freedom of Information Act
2. Forbid any part of the Executive Branch, excepting for overseas offices, from banning the use of personal emails for the conduct of official government business.

The FOIA has proven itself to be ineffective in producing a transparency when faced with determined resistance. We end up getting sanitized information from the corrupt and the unvarnished truth from the moral; the former get protected and the latter get embarrassed or worse. The cost simply is not worth it.

For the latter, a similar argument can be made. It is unenforceable, and restrains only those whose ethics do not need restraining; the dishonest simply ignore such restrictions.

This is a conversation we should be having. After all, there is nothing wrong with failing to be forthright with FOIA requests, nor in avoiding those inconvenient government email systems. At least, I hear very smart people saying this. And the voters don't care, anyways, they say. Let's get these bills on the calendar, and open the floor for debate.

[Edited to add: On second thought, let's hold up and take time in drafting these bills. The wrong time to debate something is when something is fresh in the news; that leads to rash decisions and poor legislation. No, a better approach would be to take some time and wait until the current furor wanes. Once it is all behind us, when we've moved on, when the current story is old news, then that is when we should engage in this very public debate. I am certain the press will take interest.]

But then, maybe they couldn't afford $0.85 per user per month on their small system

Best part of @PaulBegala meltdown is he admits Hillary used a non-archivable compliant email http://t.co/0lqmkAAFHt pic.twitter.com/PDXQsTlYQS

— The Right Wing M (@TheRightWingM) March 6, 2015

If Begala knows what he's talking about, then this is significant. Why?

Click this link, make sure it is on the DNS records tab, and scroll down to the MX records. Don't worry if you don't know how to read them- this isn't going to be hard. Do you see how the MX records list clintonemail.com.inbound10.mxlogicmx.net and clintonemail.com.inbound10.mxlogic.net? Those records say, "direct emails for this domain (clintonemails.com) to those servers", and those servers are mxlogic.com servers.

The Clitnonemails.com domain is set up to pipe its emails through MXLogic, which is now owned by McAfee. Their service provides email filtering-- spam removal and, more importantly, blocking of malicious email such as phishing attempts and other email-based cyber attacks.

But they also offer archiving services.

What kind of archiving services? This kind. Especially read the section on page 2 under "Document Compliance Made Easy." I screen-grabbed a few excerpts here:

pic.twitter.com/zS4JOX0P2I

— Gerry Daly (@GerryDales) March 6, 2015

Click on each picture to expand- or just read the brochure I linked. [Edited to add: It turns out it is harder to get to the images in an embedded tweet than I would like. The relevant section says, in part:

• Tamperproof read-only storage—Messages and message metadata are protected in their original state
• Dual data centers—Eliminates the threat of a single point of failure, ensuring that no message is ever lost
• Automatic quality verification—Verifies that stored message copies are identical to the originals
• Dual commit message capture—Messages aren’t deleted from your email server until accurate copies have been made and verified
• Auditable message serialization—Adds a unique numeric identifier to each message to comply with SEC requirements that prohibit tampering or deletion of messages
• Transport and storage encryption—Messages are transported securely via TLS or SSL, and are stored using 256-bit encryption

]

While I did not get a price quote from them directly, I did find this, which does have pricing for McAfee's services as an authorized re-seller. You can bet that these are not far from what it would be. The Email Security & Archiving Suite with Multi-Year Retention? $3.67 per user/month. Given the small number of users on the Clintonemail.com domain, it would be an inconsequential amount for the Clintons. The option without archiving? $2.82 per user/month.

If Hillary has a "non-archival compliant" system, it is because they chose not to spend an extra $0.85 per user per month. And as anyone who has ever signed up for one of these services knows, they try to up-sell you when you do; no way they didn't hear all of the benefits of the extra cost.

[Edited to add: Of course, this means there will never be an incriminating email in anything HRC's camp turns over or has turned over. They're long gone. If there was anything bad, the only way it will come out is from anyone on the other end of those emails, or anyone who intercepted one. Such a person would have some leverage, don't you think?]

{Edited again to add: Also note that the archiving service includes transport and storage encryption. This would have prevented things like a system administrator from being able to read the archived emails-- a nice bit of security that they simply chose to not spend a pittance to get.]

Who Summoned the Sharknado?

It’s serendipitous when an old colleague calls one out for teaching him something, and that something is something I had not quite forgotten, but definitely had not been remembering enough of late.

@LibertarianSass Always, always, always ask why the story you're looking at exists. @GerryDales taught me that a decade ago.

— Thomas H. Crown (@ThomasHCrown) February 17, 2015

Thanks, Thomas. Blind squirrel, acorn and all that.

We are on day three of a media full-court press on Rudy Giuliani’s comments on Obama’s love of country. We’re at the point where a few journalists are starting to express amazement at how strident the feeding frenzy has been. And without question, the attacks are veering towards Scott Walker. Mark Halperin is merely the latest example of stretching to make an attack. There have been many before.

So, back to the forgotten lesson.

Why is this story out there?

When I ask, I am not talking about the sharks swarming because they smell blood in the water. Sharks are sharks. All they do is eat, swim, and make baby sharks. Similarly, journalists eat, write, and make baby journalists. They are swarming because that’s their nature.

Instead, I am talking about why this story is out there in the first place?

Somewhere, there is someone who was at that event and immediately went to the press with it. Clearly, whoever it was knew how to get the story out, and is likely savvy (eta: sensing the opportunity for a strike is a sign of it). I find it hard to imagine this was a case where someone made a casual aside not knowing it would end up in the news; a casual aside that had fairly specific quotations. No. Someone with an agenda wanted this out there.

Most likely, that would be someone aligned with a campaign who saw an opportunity. Odds say that would be someone who has a large network with the capability of egging a story on behind the scenes. Maybe in a bar, over drinks, just saying, “I agree. This is important.” Who knows?

But make no mistake. A supporter or surrogate of one of the Presidential candidates wanted this story out there.

That should be a story as well. Who threw the chum?

Updated to add: I note the stories do not include a quotation from whoever went to the press here. Fingerprints were avoided.

Another edit: the original post title was "In the Conservatory, With the Candlestick". I changed it because I had gone with a different allusion in the post and thought of one more fitting for it.

If I Was a GOP Presidential Candidate Asked About Vaccinations

Simple response.

Start with an incredulous blink or two.

Then say, "My kids are vaccinated."

Follow with, "I have not seen this issue on the list of those voters think are important right now, nor have I heard of any major legislation on the matter. So it seems strange to be asking me about it. However, barring a major outbreak or a scientific reason to be concerned that one was imminent, I'd veto anything on the matter in any direction for not being what we need to focus on right now."

ETA this link provided by Maetenloch over at Ace's place.

Full headers

This post is just part of a Twitter conversation, but wouldn't work as 50 tweets (exaggeration).

@kesgardner @Heminator @lizbuddie @michellemalkin ... that can be compared to other emails, or even just checked for sending domain.

— Gerry Daly (@GerryDales) December 11, 2014

(scroll down for the rest)

Let me give an example. Go to Mapquest, and set up some driving directions. Then choose "send" and give an email address to send it to; make it yours.

When you receive the email, find the option to "View full headers". Different mail clients have it in different places, but almost all have it somewhere.

Look in the headers, and you will find something like this:

X-Originating-IP: [55.55.555.555]

Nearly every webform will have an originating IP header. These can be compared to emails sent before. I'll bet even emails from your webform have them. Give it a try- submit something from it to email yourself; check the full internet headers on the received email.

Edited to add: one reason for that header to almost always be there is so you can track back abusive users. If your webserver that processes your forms isn't passing that header, then you should get on whoever coded it to fix that. I bet it is there, though.

"on a track to be the hottest year ever"

2014 is on a track to be the hottest year ever http://t.co/iHNsQXiecA

— Taegan Goddard (@politicalwire) December 6, 2014

"2014 is on a track to be the hottest year ever" according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

That sounds familiar.

• the World Meteorological Organization is predicting 2013 is on track to be the hottest year ever recorded
• according to data from NOAA, 2012 is on track to be the hottest year ever for the contiguous United States.
• According to NASA, 2010 is on track to be the hottest year ever recorded

But what happened?

"the record of satellite measurements of global atmospheric temperatures now shows no warming for at least 17 years and 5 months, from September, 1996 to January, 2014, as shown on the accompanying graphic." Forbes

That time period includes 2013, 2012, 2010. All of which were reported to be on track to be the hottest year ever on record.

Maybe it's different this time.

Quoting something I wrote in 2001

Some (all?) of the links won't work, but if you really want you can Google most of the info to find it again, or you can look for the exact same links on The Internet Archive. But this is an excerpt of something I wrote back in 2001, which has relevance today.

One such sympathizer might be Ramsey Clark, the former Attorney General for the Lyndon Johnson administration. In 1992, Clark founded the International Action Center, which enjoys the continuing support of the ex-Trotskyist, pro-Stalinist Workers World Party. While the original teachings of Karl Marx are decidedly atheistic, Clark sees a natural alliance. "Islam has probably a billion and a half adherents today. And it is probably the most compelling spiritual and moral force on earth today. (source). "Islam is the best chance the poor of the planet have for any hope of decency in their lives. It is the one revolutionary force that cares about humanity..." (source)

The International Action Center is an umbrella group which shares its offices and its telephones with such groups as Iraq Sanctions Challenge, Peace for Cuba, U.S. Out of Korea Committee, Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Mideast, and Millions for Mumia, which works to free cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal who was convicted using evidence obtained under the powers of anti-terrorist legislation. The structure of the groups, including how frequently new ones appear and disappear, and including how much of their funding comes through charitable donations, is very similar to terrorist networks and cells.

There are ties between Clark and Bin Laden. In 1998, two American embassies in Africa (one in Nairobi and one in Dar es Salaam) were bombed. Four men were eventually captured and tried in the United States, and all were convicted. The prosecution established through phone records and wiretap transcripts that Bin Laden had direct contact with the Nairobi cell that carried out the attack.

One of the defendants, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali, signed a confession regarding his involvement in the Nairobi cell. This Saudi national was riding in the truck that carried the bomb to the embassy, but instead of becoming a martyr and dying in the subsequent blast, he fled on foot. He was treated at a hospital nearby, and was arrested. In addition to his confession, he was in possession of keys that fit into a padlock on the rear of the truck bomb. After his conviction, the defense presented Ramsey Clark as a witness as they argued against the death penalty. (More information regarding the trial can be found here).

How has Clark responded to the terrorist attacks of September 11^th? On September 29^th, there will be a demonstration in Washington, D.C. Ramsey Clark is leading the effort.

Shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center, a website called "Beat Back The Bush Attack" (note: they have subsequently changed their name) announced that they would be organizing a demonstration. "Now is the time for all people of conscience, all people who oppose racism and war to come together. If you believe in civil liberties and oppose racism and war, join us on September 29 in front of the White House. We urge all organizations to join together at this critical time" their announcement stated.

The temptation is there to dismiss this group of people as misguided kooks or irrational pacifists. This would be a mistake. The organizers of this protest are hoping for a repeat of the troubles that occurred in Seattle in November, 1999. The site's FAQ makes this clear:

Should I bring a gas mask? A helmet?

Since Seattle, there have been an increasing number of major demonstrations and convergences that have been targeted with a high level of repression by the state. MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT, THE DEMONSTRATIONS IN DC WILL FALL INTO THE SEATTLE CATEGORY. Everyone is advised to take this seriously and take precautions. Basically, this means ensuring that you are protected against the types of maneuvers that the cops have clearly utilized over and over against very large demonstrations. Namely, the types of things to protect yourself against are teargas, pepper spray and projectiles. So, this means you should:

• buy and learn to use a gas mask
• wear a helmet, head guard or a hard hat
• wear protective eyewear

The mainstream media currently is portraying the protesters of the war on terrorism as pacifists. They are not. These are the same folks that terrorized Seattle in 1999 under the umbrella group Mobilization for Global Justice, and who tried to do the same in Washington, DC in April 2000 under the name A16.

The type of protest that occurred in Seattle in 1999 takes months of preparation and organization. Travel plans had to be made for the various anarchists. Staging areas had to be set up [Gerry's note: obviously, things have changed and things can move faster in 2014]. Lodging for those taking place had to be arranged. The logistics behind such an endeavor would make it impossible for such an uprising to be impossible to coordinate on such a short notice.

However, the protest on September 29^th was planned long ago, long before the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The domain beatbackbush.org was registered July 21, 2001. According to their website, they were going to protest the Bush administration's policies regarding the IMF and World Bank, although the phrase "Beat Back The Bush Attack" seems more fitting for the protest of the war against terrorism.

The plans for these protests hit a bit of a snag when the United States reacted with restraint not seen under the Clinton administration. To date, there has been no Bush attack to beat back; unlike Clinton, Bush has said that he has no desire "to send some $2 million missiles at a $10 tent and hit a camel in the butt" to satisfy the desire for quick retaliation. Coupled with the fact that Bush's approval ratings have soared to the 90% level, a change in approach was needed. The group behind beatbackbush.org quickly redesigned their site from leading the charge to "Beat Back The Bush Attack", to "International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism)". They registered a new domain (internationalanswer.org) to front this effort, and both websites currently have essentially the same content.

The shifting focus of this protest shows that the people involved have one goal in mind, and it is not the stated intent, which has shifted from protesting the IMF and World Bank, to protesting President Bush's retaliation to the attacks, to now protesting racism and the coming war on terrorism. The real goal is disruption, as well as to gain publicity, and to put political pressure on the government of the United States to move away from capitalism.

The front page for both of these sites currently shows no link between their efforts and the International Action Center, merely showing Clark as the first of the "initial signers" for their declaration.

One can find who is the primary contact for an internet domain by performing a whois query against the domain names databases. A whois query on beatbackbush.org shows that the organization behind the website is called "World View", and is based in Jersey City, NJ, and lists an administrative contact of Sara Flounders Kramer. The email address given for the administrative contact is gery@riseup.net. A whois query for internationalanswer.org, though, shows the organization to be the IAC, and provides the same email address for the administrative contact. Sara Flounders (sans the Kramer surname) is listed as the administrative and billing contact for the IAC's website. Both internationalanswer.org and beatbackbush.org are hosted on machines running in Boca Raton, Florida. The contact for riseup.net, as found using whois, is Elijah Saxon, who gives his email address as being from the ucsc.edu domain (University of California, Santa Cruz, where he is probably an alumni). Saxon also has registered revolt.org, which says it is part of Global Update, which also has a domain. globalupdate.org, riseup.net, and revolt.org all indicate that they operate out of Seattle, Washington.

What is riseup.net? They provide "Tech support for the revolution" according to their main page. The vanguard, it would seem, has gone high tech. riseup.net also provides hosting for "Direct Action Networks", which function like cells for activities promoting "radical social change" and "social justice", which are the new catchphrases used to hide the true nature of their activities, which is the promotion of Marxism.

Here is how riseup.net describes themselves:

riseup.net is a project of the Red Cursor Collective, a 100% volunteer effort of activists using technology for radical social change. We provide training, web hosting, listservs, email accounts, and any kind of tech support needed by the activist community.

The riseup.net page says that, currently, their "costs greatly exceed the donations we have received". If donations do not currently meet costs, yet they are operating, from where are they currently getting their funding?

Many of the IAC's initiatives are funded by contributions from The People's Rights Fund, a 501c3 tax-exempt, non-profit organization. A google.com search on "Peoples Rights Fund" and Flounders (for Sara Flounders) shows that the contributions have been both frequent and varied in their purpose. Many of the contributions were directly to the IAC. Others were made to other organizations that tie back to the IAC and/or Clark.

Where does the People's Rights Fund get their money? Their website makes no mention. However, at least part of their funding comes from Fidelity Investment's Charitable Gift Fund. One can only wonder how well Fidelity has screened their recipients, if the money from this fund is being funneled to Marxist advocacy groups. One can only wonder who at Fidelity realizes that their fund was used as a conduit to funnel funds for the planning and execution of the massive demonstrations-turned-riots of November 1999 in Seattle, or the similar demonstrations in Washington, DC, of April 16, 2000 that were limited in their destructiveness by police raids the night before. These raids found riot gear, gas masks, staging locations, and involved the arrest of senior IAC members. One can only wonder how Fidelity feels about their fund being used as a conduit to funnel funds for the planning and execution of the coming September 29^th demonstration against the war on terror. One can only wonder how well Fidelity would react to this information becoming widespread public knowledge.

For what it is worth...

Contemporaneous link here.

I could be wrong about things with the heckers mentioned here...

RT @FreeBeacon: That feeling when you do executive amnesty and immigration activists still heckle you at speeches. https://t.co/T3C3btwETl

— WhiteHousePressCorps (@whpresscorps) November 25, 2014

...but it feels to me that there are two main possibilities, and there are not many probable others.

1. The hecklers were planted, to try to make President Obama seem like the pragmatic one, in an attempt to start mitigating the damage done to his and the Democrats brand by his maneuver. Further, that the President was careless and gaffed with the "changed the law" phrase.
2. or the very people Democrats have been stringing along for years may not have been satisfied, and they flustered him into making that gaffe. A constituency, I might add, that the Emerging Democratic Majority depends upon not only supporting this party, but soliciting for and promoting.

I have no idea which one, but it feels to me like it's one or the other.

About PPP...

A friend gave me this. [not mine after this, although I completely agree]:

Here's some fun numbers.

137 PPP polls in the RCP averages across all SEN/GOV races in 2014, excluding PPP's 2-way polls when it also published a 3-way poll in the same race.

Polls In the Field After September 1:

51 polls. 10 underestimated the Democrat (D-), 41 underestimated the Republican (R-).  So, 80% underestimated the R.

In 13 races won by Ds: 6 D-, 7 R-, average error 1.9 points in the 2-party vote.

In 38 races won by Rs (counting LA-SEN): 4 D-, 34 R-, average error 3.1 points in the 2-party vote.

That's not small - an error of 3 points can mean you had the D up 52-48 and the D lost 51-49.

Polls In the Field May-August:

29 polls. 4 D-, 25 R- 86% underestimated the R.

In 8 races won by Ds: 4 D-, 4 R-, average error 3.4 points in the 2-party vote.

In 21 races won by Rs: 0 D-, 21 R-, average error 4.8 points in the 2-party vote.

Polls In the Field Between 2012 and April 2014:

57 polls. 12 D-, 45 R- 79% underestimated the R.

In 16 races won by Ds: 4 D-, 12 R-, average error 4.7 points in the 2-party vote.

In 21 races won by Rs: 8 D-, 33 R-, average error 5.1 points in the 2-party vote.

Overall, PPP conducted 100 polls of races that Republicans ended up winning.  12 out of 100 fell on the side of underestimating the Democrat.  88 out of 100 fell on the side of underestimating the Republican.  PPP polled NC-SEN seven times and showed Hagan with a lead every time.  It polled FL-GOV eight times and showed two ties and six Crist leads, three of them by double digits.  In five KS-GOV polls and four KS-SEN polls, it had Orman and Davis leading every time.  Its only OH-GOV poll in the averages had FitzGerald winning.

And that's before you look at the races they chose to poll.

-PPP polled McConnell's race 3 times in 2012-13, when a small Mitch lead would be bad news for Mitch.  It polled the race once in August, found him up 5, and didn't poll it again until it was painting the tape the last week of the race, when it had Mitch up 8 (still well under his final margin).

-PPP polled the Maine Governor's race three times in 2013, finding Michaud up twice, but never polled it once in 2014.  It showed two double-digit Martha Coakley leads in 2013, then came back and only polled MA-GOV the last week when Baker was putting it away.

-PPP polled Thad Cochran's race twice, the last time in July 2014 when it had him leading 41-26.

-PPP polled TX-GOV four times but stopped after April.

-Its last poll in WI-GOV was also in April.

-PPP didn't poll the Iowa, Alaska, Arkansas or Louisiana Senate races in October, and didn't have a single poll in the field in any race between October 20-29.

A Letter to "My Side", Regarding Gruber

Yes, note how much of the 'mainstream' media is downplaying the Gruber tapes.

However, it would be a mistake to make the story about that. They've weathered such embarrassments before, and they will this time- without changing.

We have two years to educate, with the assistance of some wonderful videotapes courtesy of an Obamacare insider.

Two years. That's a long time.

It's on us to do it.

Let Me Add A Fourth Theory

Mark Blumenthal and Ariel Edwards-Levy have an article up over at Huffpost Pollster wherein they discuss three theories for why polls underestimated the GOP. It’s worthy of reading.

You had to know a “however” was coming, did you not?

I have another theory to throw into the mix, and it is a theory I feel really good about believing is true. Without further ado, let me throw it out there.

The theory is that polls, at any point in time, are not measurements of what will happen, but rather are measurements of what the parties have to work with.

The parties spend a good amount of money on “get out the vote” (GOTV) activities. Some of these activities (voter contacts to spur interest, drives to register voters and/or request absentee ballots) start weeks before the election, and to some extent will get reflected in polls as they are ongoing. However, the late pushes to ensure the absentee ballots yet to be returned, and the Election Day efforts to get people to the polls, happen after most polls have been conducted.

It seems obvious to me that these operations must be capable of "moving the needle", or else the campaigns would not spend time, effort, and money on them.

Further, there is nothing that says that the parties will perform equally well in their respective efforts. In fact, it seems to me to be patently obvious that there will be times where, through skill of leadership and especially through advances in information technology, one party will improve from one election to another more than the other, that at times a party will develop an edge in this regard that can last a cycle or two, and that when that has happened it is inevitable that the other party will eventually catch up.

That dynamic, if my theory is correct, would play out such that in some years, we would see the Democrats outperform the polls, being better at converting their potential voters into actual voters at the end of the campaign than the likely voter screens in polls ‘assumed’ due to the methodology involved. In other years, the same would be true with Republicans. We might even see, for a few years in a row, the same party outperforming the polls, until such a time as the other “ups their game” - and if pollsters had adjusted their models and/or methodologies to try and rectify widespread misses, a party just drawing even would subsequently outperform the polls in a widespread fashion.

We might even see it look like it does in the chart Nate Silver presented here.

We also might see the effects be really big in some states, where field operations had changed more from election to election than in other states. As happened this year.

That the Democrats had developed an edge in micro-targeting and GOTV over several election cycles is broadly assumed to be true. Republicans spent a lot on ORCA, a software system designed to close that gap, but it failed to function on Election Day in 2012. This year, there were instead stories about how the GOP had developed a much improved system.

As Silver wrote in the article linked above, “The polls may be biased again in 2016; we just won’t know much about the direction of it until votes have been cast and counted.” I agree wholeheartedly. However, I suspect this has a lot to do with the fact that polls are measuring attitudes and opinions of people, and can never measure the relative efficiency of the respective ground games at the end. That plays out, to a large extent, after the polling is done. If all of the effects of the relative strengths of voter mobilization efforts will be captured in pre-election polling, then my theory is bunk. However, it seems clear to me, since those efforts continue until the balloting stops, and are actually quite different in mechanics at the very end, that pre-election polls cannot ever truly measure it.