2016 US Presidential Election

[elasto]

Democrats certainly aren't an atheist front, but Clinton ran a campaign that didn't even try to aim at the Religious voters. The fact remains that Evangelicals were more willing to vote for Obama than they were for Clinton.

When put like that it definitely seems like a mistake. But that's with the benefit of hindsight.

Prior to the vote, it seemed inconceivable that evangelicals would turn out in such large numbers for someone who enjoyed walking in on naked teenage girls and professed grabbing women's pussies against their will etc. etc. Sexual crimes are normally the death knell for political campaigns. It would have been hard to predict ahead of time that evangelicals would turn such a blind eye.

I assume that in future politicians of all stripes will take note of the extreme cognitive dissonance that today's Christian voters are capable of. I assume they will also take note of just how easily people believe what they want to believe despite all evidence to the contrary.

[morriswalters]

Or maybe Clinton could have held at least one Religious rally or held at least one interview with a religious outlet.

I objected to your framing, not the issue of trying to bring on board evangelical voters. I spent a large part of my career obfuscating my beliefs to avoid blow back from them and their fellow travelers. So I have trust issues with them. But on your point, I suspect Evangelicals would have seen any move by Clinton in that direction as self serving. I always thought that Clinton herself was a damaged candidate from the day she started her run. She had baggage. But that avoids the question of the quid pro quo of a relationship with Evangelicals? What could you give them that a Democrat is prepared to give up?

[Tyndmyr]

Democrats certainly aren't an atheist front, but Clinton ran a campaign that didn't even try to aim at the Religious voters. The fact remains that Evangelicals were more willing to vote for Obama than they were for Clinton.

When put like that it definitely seems like a mistake. But that's with the benefit of hindsight.

Prior to the vote, it seemed inconceivable that evangelicals would turn out in such large numbers for someone who enjoyed walking in on naked teenage girls and professed grabbing women's pussies against their will etc. etc. Sexual crimes are normally the death knell for political campaigns. It would have been hard to predict ahead of time that evangelicals would turn such a blind eye.

I assume that in future politicians of all stripes will take note of the extreme cognitive dissonance that today's Christian voters are capable of. I assume they will also take note of just how easily people believe what they want to believe despite all evidence to the contrary.

...seriously, Evangelicals have *long* been a major force in the US, and scandals of one religious leader or another being found in some moral quandary are not new. Shit, sexual scandals for religious leaders themselves is hardly new, let alone for the politicians they support.

The idea that the opposition somehow owes it to you to fall in line to a specific line of attack is severely misguided. Evangelicals have traditionally leaned conservative. It's borderline insane to think that they could be discounted without even a token effort at wooing them simply because of a particular set of allegations, rather than choosing to write them off as a partisan attack. Which, given the timing, they obviously were, regardless of any validity to them.

This is really, really cocky/entitled. Which people have been saying about Clinton since the 2012 election, when she came off the same way, whereas Obama seemed far, far less entitled. So, a *lot* of people saw the essential problem, quite some time ago. Yeah, perhaps she could have won despite that, with a different map, but if she can't beat *Trump* when it comes to appearing entitled, I don't think you can say that her problems were unpredictable.

This is a country where being an atheist is a really, really big strike against you being elected, and which is largely at least nominally religious. You can't really ignore religion.

[sardia]

Pandering to evangelicals seems like a dead end. What about pandering to evangelicals as people? They can't all be single issue voters. Like if we combine god and social spending? Like we do with Catholics hospitals.

[Tyndmyr]

Pandering to evangelicals seems like a dead end. What about pandering to evangelicals as people? They can't all be single issue voters. Like if we combine god and social spending? Like we do with Catholics hospitals.

They're not *all* single issue voters, but there's a huge overlap between the abortion issue and evangelicals, and the abortion issue is by far the #1 biggest single issue thing. So, they are probably the toughest sector to actually win.

That said, there are degrees of losing. The seven degree spread of appeal between Obama and Clinton is still significant, I think. There's value in aiming to lose less, rather than merely writing them off.

You *do* have the essentially anti-libertarian strategy, though. A good bit of Christian morals involve lots of giving to the needy and what not. So, yeah, you can cast social spending in that light, depending on what it is, and how you appeal to other biases. You point out that the VA is a dumpster fire, and we need to spend more on taking care of vets, and well, the right can't very well oppose you on that. They have to chase your position, not oppose it. I don't think this will overcome issues where say, it's head to head with abortion rights, front and center, but it can certainly work in a race where abortion is downplayed as an issue.

[KnightExemplar]

Or maybe Clinton could have held at least one Religious rally or held at least one interview with a religious outlet.

I objected to your framing, not the issue of trying to bring on board evangelical voters. I spent a large part of my career obfuscating my beliefs to avoid blow back from them and their fellow travelers. So I have trust issues with them. But on your point, I suspect Evangelicals would have seen any move by Clinton in that direction as self serving. I always thought that Clinton herself was a damaged candidate from the day she started her run. She had baggage. But that avoids the question of the quid pro quo of a relationship with Evangelicals? What could you give them that a Democrat is prepared to give up?

I'm not even saying enter "quid pro quo" yet. All I'm saying is that Clinton should have said the Beatitudes once or twice as she advocated for Health Care and other social programs. Seriously: Blessed are the sick for theirs is the Kingdom of God. Also, lets try to give the sick some Health Care. wooooooooooot.

Its the absolute bare basics of pandering. Just change your message to be slightly more inclusive of Religious points of view to capture democrat-leaning Evangelicals better.

Get the low-hanging fruit before attempting to get the hard core supporters. Democrats will never get the anti-abortion lobby or the anti-gay marriage people. That's a fact. But for those Evangelicals who see alms giving as their #1 religious issue, Democrats have a major advantage on Republicans.

I bet you Obama won that group of religious voters, while Clinton seems to have lost them to Trump of all people.

Besides, people don't care about issues. 99% of politics is managing identity. Clinton literally had ZERO outreach towards Christians... even Democrat-leaning Christians like Catholics. I'm frankly shocked that she didn't even attempt to bring in these people to her side throughout the campaign.

[Tyndmyr]

I honestly don't think that Clinton even had enough trust to arrange a quid pro quo. Nobody would have believed her promises. Just zero credibility with evangelicals, and much of that was cultivated over a long period of time.

It's one of those things you have to work on for a while. You can't bash religious folks until mid 2018, then suddenly promise them the world. They don't have to love you, but it helps if you're starting from a point where they don't already hate you.

[Mambrino]

Is this still the general US politics thread, too? Though this could go to the "future" thread:

BBC: Republicans drop a proposal to gut a congressional ethics watchdog after a critical Donald Trump tweet

That is the unaltered sub-headline. Welcome to 2017.

[Tyndmyr]

Which phone did that tweet come from, I wonder? I haven't been keeping up on that, but if the campaign trail split in tweet origins continues, that role might be of increasing significance.

[commodorejohn]

It's one of those things you have to work on for a while. You can't bash religious folks until mid 2018, then suddenly promise them the world. They don't have to love you, but it helps if you're starting from a point where they don't already hate you.

This is pretty key. The left has alienated evangelicals so consistently for so long (whether or not you think that's a good thing) that even a lot of the ones who object to Trump's amoral hedonism voted for him anyway because they were sure the alternative would be worse in their view. I don't know if it's possible for the Democrats to mend that break, even if they were inclined to try.

[ucim]

But you can get around that judgmentalness because evangelicals know how to do political math.

My point wasn't that it was "impossible to get around". Just that the thing that aligns people left/right doesn't seem to be religion, but judgmentalism. Religion merely happens to mirror it to enough of an extent to be (mis)used as a proxy.

Jose

[Tyndmyr]

But you can get around that judgmentalness because evangelicals know how to do political math.

My point wasn't that it was "impossible to get around". Just that the thing that aligns people left/right doesn't seem to be religion, but judgmentalism. Religion merely happens to mirror it to enough of an extent to be (mis)used as a proxy.

Jose

Nah. People on the left are awfully judgmental about some things. Just different things. Consider, if you will, the general coastal viewpoint on rural/deep south accents.

I tried to look up actual stats, but the results for anything about being judgmental are filled with religious sites. They're warning against it. Now, I do think they engage in it anyways, but it is difficult to find a similar level of caution on the left.

[Lazar]

Well, there was this survey on political polarization done by Pew in 2014. Among its findings: of consistently conservative Facebook users, the number who had "hidden, blocked, defriended or stopped following someone because they disagreed with something that person posted about politics" was 31%; for consistently liberal users, it was 44%. And of consistently conservative respondents, the number who had "stopped talking to/being friends with someone because of politics" was 16%; for consistently liberal respondents, it was 24%. Confounding this, though, was the finding that consistent liberals were more likely than consistent conservatives to have friends who didn't share their political views.

Anecdotally, too, I've often encountered the meme that liberals are less tolerant of political dissension in an interpersonal context. (For example, this fora posting from 2014: "I often feel that I receive the harshest, most critical and disapproving responses from liberals, rather than conservatives, even though I think I'm disagreeing with liberals far less than I am with conservatives.") Underlying this, I think, is the perception that liberalism has come to dominate the polite consensus (at least on social issues), and that conservatives, as beleaguered underdogs, are more likely to "take what they can get" in terms of interpersonal agreement, while liberals can afford to be more exclusionary.

Now this seems counterintuitive, given that conservatism is associated with more stringent and traditional moral codes, and liberalism with the rejection of those codes. But perhaps we could draw a distinction between the object and meta levels: conservatism may favor more stringent codes, but liberalism – at least at present – may favor more stringent "codes about codes". See the rise of free speech as a conservative value in culture war discourse: this definitely wasn't always the case.

[LaserGuy]

Or maybe Clinton could have held at least one Religious rally or held at least one interview with a religious outlet.

I objected to your framing, not the issue of trying to bring on board evangelical voters. I spent a large part of my career obfuscating my beliefs to avoid blow back from them and their fellow travelers. So I have trust issues with them. But on your point, I suspect Evangelicals would have seen any move by Clinton in that direction as self serving. I always thought that Clinton herself was a damaged candidate from the day she started her run. She had baggage. But that avoids the question of the quid pro quo of a relationship with Evangelicals? What could you give them that a Democrat is prepared to give up?

I'm not even saying enter "quid pro quo" yet. All I'm saying is that Clinton should have said the Beatitudes once or twice as she advocated for Health Care and other social programs. Seriously: Blessed are the sick for theirs is the Kingdom of God. Also, lets try to give the sick some Health Care. wooooooooooot.

Its the absolute bare basics of pandering. Just change your message to be slightly more inclusive of Religious points of view to capture democrat-leaning Evangelicals better.

I'd say that the Democrats probably could have done more to capture the vote of Christians; I'm less convinced that there is much that they could have done to capture the vote of evangelicals, in the political sense, without seriously compromising other parts of their coalition. There just isn't much common ground there. What the Democrats seem to have settled on is largely focusing on the irreligious and secular Christian vote among whites, and getting a bulk of the religious vote among black and Latino voters by betting that racial identity would be a stronger pull factor than religious identity.

I had mentioned earlier that Trump was one of the least religious Republican candidates in a great many years, but now that you mention it, it is actually quite notable that neither candidate had a particularly significant focus on religion one way or other other.

In fact, the White House did approach numerous faith-based groups to try to drum up support for the Affordable Care Act.

[sardia]

Or maybe Clinton could have held at least one Religious rally or held at least one interview with a religious outlet.

I objected to your framing, not the issue of trying to bring on board evangelical voters. I spent a large part of my career obfuscating my beliefs to avoid blow back from them and their fellow travelers. So I have trust issues with them. But on your point, I suspect Evangelicals would have seen any move by Clinton in that direction as self serving. I always thought that Clinton herself was a damaged candidate from the day she started her run. She had baggage. But that avoids the question of the quid pro quo of a relationship with Evangelicals? What could you give them that a Democrat is prepared to give up?

I'm not even saying enter "quid pro quo" yet. All I'm saying is that Clinton should have said the Beatitudes once or twice as she advocated for Health Care and other social programs. Seriously: Blessed are the sick for theirs is the Kingdom of God. Also, lets try to give the sick some Health Care. wooooooooooot.
Its the absolute bare basics of pandering. Just change your message to be slightly more inclusive of Religious points of view to capture democrat-leaning Evangelicals better.

I'd say that the Democrats probably could have done more to capture the vote of Christians; I'm less convinced that there is much that they could have done to capture the vote of evangelicals, in the political sense, without seriously compromising other parts of their coalition. There just isn't much common ground there. What the Democrats seem to have settled on is largely focusing on the irreligious and secular Christian vote among whites, and getting a bulk of the religious vote among black and Latino voters by betting that racial identity would be a stronger pull factor than religious identity.
I had mentioned earlier that Trump was one of the least religious Republican candidates in a great many years, but now that you mention it, it is actually quite notable that neither candidate had a particularly significant focus on religion one way or other other.
In fact, the White House did approach numerous faith-based groups to try to drum up support for the Affordable Care Act.

Why would you want to talk at people who don't vote? The whole point is to gain power, not to pick up more baggage that has to be carried around. We already do that with minorities and the poor. More to your point, how would a christian message differ from a evangelical outreach?

[Tyndmyr]

It's broader/easier, I think. But not much. The evangelicals are a subset that care more about specific issues. I mean, now they're super associated with the pro-life movement, but that wasn't always the case. Pre-70s, the battle lines were drawn quite differently. At that point, some liberals were associated with the pro-life thing, and posited that the answer was increased social support networks for women. Nowadays, the abortion issue has become pretty strictly partisan, and very much a religious issue. I mean, these trends have always been there, but they've solidified a lot and become more extreme(like many partisan things).

That said, it's not entirely an evangelical thing. Catholics also have had their quibbles with abortion. There are rather a lot of Catholics. I think pretty much any outreach to religious sorts at least involves a de-emphasizing of that battle. Actual position changes are bad, but the less it's brought up, the better, strategically speaking. Many catholics are otherwise reasonably liberal, and so long as they're not being pitted directly against their faith, you can appeal to them on other issues. There is a tendency on the left to refer to any pro-life attitudes as a "war on women" or similar, and this is probably horribly offputting to many. Being super eager to kick people out of the tent and describe them as the enemy makes it very hard to attract their vote.

Of course, you don't have to *be* an evangelical, religious sort to appeal to them. Trump demonstrates that quite effectively. Nobody really believes he's a born again, god-fearing sort. They just happen to believe he's the better option/useful to advance their goals. Evangelicals might be more right-leaning as a subset, but their interests are not so different from religious folks as a whole, they just place more priority on some of these.

59% of registered voters think Trump has respect for evangelicals
51% think Clinton respects evangelicals

Not a huge gap there...there's little love lost on Trump, but there's still an edge, where Trump is described as more respectful. A low bar, that.

Still, it isn't enough to explain the difference. A great many religious people voted for Trump, while greatly disliking Trump. From the same survey, "41% of all white evangelicals say Trump is “a good role model”. Obviously, it was much lower for minorities.

So, it comes back to the issues. For a lot of people, they pragmatically saw Trump as the better option to get friendly SC justices to their beliefs, even if they hated the guy.

[LaserGuy]

Why would you want to talk at people who don't vote?

Well, yes, that is a large part of the Democrat's current problem.

The whole point is to gain power, not to pick up more baggage that has to be carried around. We already do that with minorities and the poor. More to your point, how would a christian message differ from a evangelical outreach?

The evangelical movement (in the sense of "The Christian Right") has been specifically cultivated for almost four decades to elect Republicans using social issues that are anathema to liberal values. Yes, they vote, and yes, there's a lot of them, but there is literally nothing that Democrats can offer them that Republicans can't give, and more.

Incidentally, analysis data from Pew on religious affiliation:

[Soupspoon]

Confounding [liberals more likely to reject conservatives than vice-versa], though, was the finding that consistent liberals were more likely than consistent conservatives to have friends who didn't share their political views.

Without having yet read the linked study for detail, my theory (possibly biased in its very conception!) is that this deals with the uncoupling of socialisations, in various forms. Those of a liberal spin might already be more likely to initially move to enfriend/be in contact with potentially disagreeable conservatives, thus raising their non-partisan contact tallies from which a lesser counter-rate of "sod this for a game of soldiers" re-withdrawal can then be maintained while still maintaining more absolute contacts outside their personal ideology than their remaining co-respondants...


(Alternatively, liberals are simply outnumbered in the survey sample, such that they are ones with more people from the opposition to connect and disconnect with, the conservatives having a much sparser population to be-/de-friend. But I'm sure that was already allowed for and/or mitigated against.)

[KnightExemplar]

Or maybe Clinton could have held at least one Religious rally or held at least one interview with a religious outlet.

I objected to your framing, not the issue of trying to bring on board evangelical voters. I spent a large part of my career obfuscating my beliefs to avoid blow back from them and their fellow travelers. So I have trust issues with them. But on your point, I suspect Evangelicals would have seen any move by Clinton in that direction as self serving. I always thought that Clinton herself was a damaged candidate from the day she started her run. She had baggage. But that avoids the question of the quid pro quo of a relationship with Evangelicals? What could you give them that a Democrat is prepared to give up?

I'm not even saying enter "quid pro quo" yet. All I'm saying is that Clinton should have said the Beatitudes once or twice as she advocated for Health Care and other social programs. Seriously: Blessed are the sick for theirs is the Kingdom of God. Also, lets try to give the sick some Health Care. wooooooooooot.
Its the absolute bare basics of pandering. Just change your message to be slightly more inclusive of Religious points of view to capture democrat-leaning Evangelicals better.

I'd say that the Democrats probably could have done more to capture the vote of Christians; I'm less convinced that there is much that they could have done to capture the vote of evangelicals, in the political sense, without seriously compromising other parts of their coalition. There just isn't much common ground there. What the Democrats seem to have settled on is largely focusing on the irreligious and secular Christian vote among whites, and getting a bulk of the religious vote among black and Latino voters by betting that racial identity would be a stronger pull factor than religious identity.
I had mentioned earlier that Trump was one of the least religious Republican candidates in a great many years, but now that you mention it, it is actually quite notable that neither candidate had a particularly significant focus on religion one way or other other.
In fact, the White House did approach numerous faith-based groups to try to drum up support for the Affordable Care Act.

Why would you want to talk at people who don't vote? The whole point is to gain power, not to pick up more baggage that has to be carried around. We already do that with minorities and the poor. More to your point, how would a christian message differ from a evangelical outreach?

Except Evangelicals were roughly a quarter of the electorate in this past election. They definitely vote, just not as Democrats right now.

[sardia]

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/04/508151142 ... nc-hacking
Evidence of Russian hacking explained.

Matt Tait is CEO of Capital Alpha Security, a British cybersecurity firm. I asked him why he was skeptical.

MATT TAIT: Well, it just seems too fantastical to be true. Russia has very good hackers. You know, this is a government agency. So initially what I did was I decided I'm going to go and prove Crowdstrike wrong.

GREENE: They were hired by the Democratic National Committee, we should say, to look into this.

TAIT: Absolutely, and so I basically went through all of the technical evidence that had been published by them. I looked through the malware signatures that they had come up with. And eventually, what you start to discover is that there's a very large number of little pieces of information, some of which point towards Russia. Some of them point towards Russia very, very strongly. And eventually, I came to the conclusion that there's no other reasonable conclusion that you can make.

Most of the evidence stems from lazier or efficient hackers making mistakes or repeating tactics/code. For example it's easier to use one login to use a URL redirect service then it is to have hundreds of accounts. It's used for spear fishing malicious links.

Tldr a Russian server owned and operated by Russian government sanctioned hackers that previously hacked others was the source of the attack.
Either the Russians hacked us, or the Russians themselves got hacked and attacked us. Trump's evidence is that Julian assange did it.

[Dauric]

Trump's evidence is that Julian assange did it.

Actually it's 'better' than that, Trump's evidence against a Russian hack is essentially "Julian Assange says that's not how we got it."

[elasto]

Personally I'm not that bothered if it was a government sanctioned hack or not in the sense that the West is hardly shy of hacking their enemies or their friends, and would quite happily seek to influence foreign elections. So any official complaints would be pretty hypocritical.

What it points to is how arrogant and short-sighted our governments are: Instead of whining about end-to-end message encryption, heavily encrypted phones etc. making their life harder, they should be encouraging firms to roll out such protections more quickly.

It's my understanding that something as simple as 2-factor authentication would have prevented the DNC leaks occurring in the way they did. Our governments should be educating or even regulating such tech for critical industries.

When malevolent agents can command a botnet of millions of webcams to DDOS at will, this is not something the free market will deal with; No manufacturer of smart lightbulbs or whatever is going to go to the trouble of including elaborate security, because people won't want to pay the extra for no benefit to themselves.

Government needs to act for the greater good and encourage (or force) better security all around, even if it makes their own life more difficult. This is just a particularly dramatic example of the price paid for not doing so...

[KnightExemplar]

It's my understanding that something as simple as 2-factor authentication would have prevented the DNC leaks occurring in the way they did. Our governments should be educating or even regulating such tech for critical industries.

Do you know why every fucking banking site asks you "secret questions" like "What is your pet's name"??

Because it technically counts as two-factor authentication. This is a strongly regulated field as it is. Unfortunately, people don't actually understand what a security posture really is.

Step 1: Come up with good fucking standards for password protection, two-factor authentication, and security tokens. NIST is doing some good work here, but even if NIST comes up with these standards... it isn't a regulation agency so it has no power to force other agencies to adopt its rules.

There's a lot of fundamental cultural change that needs to happen while these hypothetical regulations happen. I can say for sure 100% that the current regulations enforced on banks (PCI compliance) is utter shit... and more widespread adoption of our shitty standards won't do any good.

"Regulating" passwords or other such security measures needs to wait until good, sane, publicly commented and publicly tested rules are developed. The US Government isn't even at Step 1 yet, NIST only has a draft page being shared on github right now. So hold your horses, good rules are coming. Just... we gotta wait for the process to unfold.

[Liri]

Do you mean... updating my passwords by adding an exclamation point isn't secure???

[sardia]

Do you mean... updating my passwords by adding an exclamation point isn't secure???

I'd rather you have a single password per site that you didn't change, period. Sure it's slightly easier to guess, but nobody does brute force anymore. All the biggest hacks for the juicy shit is asking for your password via deception. Your password would only matter when hackers get into databases outside of your control. Then it's a matter of you changing all the websites with the same password, which is the real weakness of single passwords. You probably already knew this, but FYI for everyone else.

[Liri]

My Runescape password is the most secure, which is all that matters.

[Soupspoon]

My Gmail password (for my once coveted "firstname.lastname@…" address) is very secure. A total of zero people know what it is. Including me, especially given that I've changed/lost various alternate contact details since any time that I actually used it.

(And excluding any hackers who have ever decrypted any stolen rips of the Google servers. But as it's nothing like any of my other passwords, and neither do I use similar account-names anywhere else, it's of very limited onward use.)

And yet I can remember (medium-strong) passwords I used as far back as '93, to accounts long since gone on machines doubtless decomissioned two decades ago. It is my most underutilised (and sporadic) superpower!


But, back on subject, does this make it less problematic?

[Sableagle]

A website for an organisation that sometimes issues the title of bachelor of mathematics requires passwords between 8 and 12 characters long and containing at least 1 lower-case letter, at least 1 upper-case letter and at least 1 numeral, without punctuation marks. No little Bobby Tables attacks for them, but wouldn't it be better to require the password to be at least 24 characters long?
"ForheisourchildhoodsmodelwhoisGodandLordofall" Slightly harder to guess than "Tromb0ne" I think.

[sardia]

My Gmail password (for my once coveted "firstname.lastname@…" address) is very secure. A total of zero people know what it is. Including me, especially given that I've changed/lost various alternate contact details since any time that I actually used it.

(And excluding any hackers who have ever decrypted any stolen rips of the Google servers. But as it's nothing like any of my other passwords, and neither do I use similar account-names anywhere else, it's of very limited onward use.)

And yet I can remember (medium-strong) passwords I used as far back as '93, to accounts long since gone on machines doubtless decomissioned two decades ago. It is my most underutilised (and sporadic) superpower!


But, back on subject, does this make it less problematic?

In the same way bailing out the titanic would, yes. Trump is signaling that he wants to restore ties to Russia, and end sanctions. The only question is if Congress lets him. Maybe they make Trump lose face by grilling Rex, or even forcing him to pick someone else.(very unlikely, since it undercuts Republicans too). We'll see what happens with this Russia hacking meeting first.

Sable, schools and corporations have this terrible policy where they demand new passwords with all that dumb shit, and all everyone does is add "-!1" to their standard password. It's shoddy security, and worse, provides the illusions of competence.

SurveyMonkey shows that the registered voters who stayed home were a tad more Democratic than usual. Or at least that's what I think that means. Either way, Democratic voters aren't blameless here. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/reg ... -election/
Part of me is annoyed by this analysis, because when the margins are so tight, anything could cost Clinton the election. What it doesn't say is if the turnout was lower than usual or if it's compared against Obama's unusually high margins.

[Trebla]

Do you know why every fucking banking site asks you "secret questions" like "What is your pet's name"??

Because it technically counts as two-factor authentication. This is a strongly regulated field as it is. Unfortunately, people don't actually understand what a security posture really is.

Just to correct this, that does not technically count as two-factor authentication... Two-factor authentication means you have two different methods of authentication. Commonly "something you know" (a password), "something you have" (an authentication token) or "something you are" (fingerprint). "Something you know" and "something else you know" is what I've heard referred to as "wish-it-was-two-factor authentication" though I think that was just some remark someone made and not an actual term.

[Gwydion]

SurveyMonkey shows that the registered voters who stayed home were a tad more Democratic than usual. Or at least that's what I think that means. Either way, Democratic voters aren't blameless here. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/reg ... -election/
Part of me is annoyed by this analysis, because when the margins are so tight, anything could cost Clinton the election. What it doesn't say is if the turnout was lower than usual or if it's compared against Obama's unusually high margins.

It also doesn't say where that differential comes from - if most of the Dem voters who stayed home live in California or New York, then it's meaningless, but if they live in the Rust Belt (or Texas!) it could have been a big deal.

[KnightExemplar]

Do you know why every fucking banking site asks you "secret questions" like "What is your pet's name"??

Because it technically counts as two-factor authentication. This is a strongly regulated field as it is. Unfortunately, people don't actually understand what a security posture really is.

Just to correct this, that does not technically count as two-factor authentication... Two-factor authentication means you have two different methods of authentication. Commonly "something you know" (a password), "something you have" (an authentication token) or "something you are" (fingerprint). "Something you know" and "something else you know" is what I've heard referred to as "wish-it-was-two-factor authentication" though I think that was just some remark someone made and not an actual term.

I know what "Two Factor Authentication" is supposed to mean.

The fact remains: "wish it was two-factor authentication" is good enough to pass PCI compliance. That's why the practice is widespread, despite being utterly awful from a computer-security perspective. The problem is not the lack of regulation (everyone is aiming at PCI compliance). The problem is that the current regulatory standard sucks ass.

Enjoy reading those crappy password requirements. And I guess you're right, PCI is not a government regulation or standard... its an industry self-regulation standard. Its what credit-card companies force on anybody who wants to transmit credit-card data. So maybe this fake-regulation should just turn into "real regulation" by the US Government.

The US Government is better at regulating things after all. That's what they're good at.

[Soupspoon]

I've heard it (i.e. not-really-two-factor) called "1.5 factor". Especially where the .5 element is something like "can you give us the fifth and seventh characters of your supplementary password?" (Which is ironically more secure than any entire entire password/PIN, from the perspective of any typical form of replay-attack scenario.)

Meanwhile, the CVC/CSC/CVD/whatever code ("the three numbers on the back of the card") has proven to be effecitively useless against many typical forms of fraud or misuse; it barely does its job of further proving the "what you have" of the card itself, which is also previously alleged by all the other on-card details you'll have already given by that point. (Your address, or at least Post Code (US: ZIP) and house number, half-heartedly fulfils a "what you know", making any telephonic/online payment already 2x(<1) factor, the final effective 'sum' of which is arguable.)

And when I recently requested a replacement debit card, I specifically requested that it not be contactless, for fairly obvious reasons.

[elasto]

The fact remains: "wish it was two-factor authentication" is good enough to pass PCI compliance. That's why the practice is widespread, despite being utterly awful from a computer-security perspective. The problem is not the lack of regulation (everyone is aiming at PCI compliance). The problem is that the current regulatory standard sucks ass.

Enjoy reading those crappy password requirements. And I guess you're right, PCI is not a government regulation or standard... its an industry self-regulation standard. Its what credit-card companies force on anybody who wants to transmit credit-card data. So maybe this fake-regulation should just turn into "real regulation" by the US Government.

The US Government is better at regulating things after all. That's what they're good at.

Well, yes, this was exactly my point: The government should be insisting on good standards of security - eg. genuine 2FA - instead of whining when companies themselves bring in strong security measures like E2EE.

This type of stuff is not something the free market is good at, because people don't generally choose the more inconvenient/expensive option if the benefit for doing so is collective and diffuse. A weak parallel might be vaccination where the benefit is, at least in part, collective.

(Yes, you'd think that an organisation like the DNC would realise the critical importance of platinum levels of security, but clearly they didn't, and, by extension, many other organisations also won't, which makes it the government's job to step in and improve things by whatever means are most appropriate...)

[Vahir]

Mitch McConnell Says Voters Won’t Tolerate the Obstruction of Supreme Court Nominees

I wish I felt surprise. It's just rage instead.

This is how compromise and reaching out to the opposition ends? Where's Justice? Where's Karma?

[sardia]

Mitch McConnell Says Voters Won’t Tolerate the Obstruction of Supreme Court Nominees

I wish I felt surprise. It's just rage instead.

This is how compromise and reaching out to the opposition ends? Where's Justice? Where's Karma?

McConnell is correct. Democrats don't vote harder just because of the Supreme Court, Republicans do. When Republicans stall the court to advanced their agendas, they are doing so because they know that moderates and Liberals aren't going to punish them for it. In additions, McConnell is correct that his head would be on a platter if he DIDN'T get a Conservative justice to the court asap.

[Chen]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-mexi ... -1.3924047

Is making Mexico somehow pay for this wall, really the thing to be doubling down on here?

[sardia]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-mexico-wall-1.3924047

Is making Mexico somehow pay for this wall, really the thing to be doubling down on here?

At this point, the illegalities of making a foreign country pay for security measures is the least of our worries.

[SlyReaper]

Mitch McConnell Says Voters Won’t Tolerate the Obstruction of Supreme Court Nominees

I wish I felt surprise. It's just rage instead.

This is how compromise and reaching out to the opposition ends? Where's Justice? Where's Karma?

Mitch McConnell complaining about obstruction. Does this gentleman not have one iota of self-awareness?

[Thesh]

Plenty of awareness, zero integrity.