That video display with PacMan on it is supposed to look like this:
Yes, that is a voting machine. A voting machine that can be hacked to load PacMan without so much as a whisper of tampering.
Via BradBlog:
Sequoia's voting machines, used in some 20% of U.S. elections, employ Intellectual Property (IP) still owned by a Venezuelan firm tied to Hugo Chavez. Sequoia itself is now owned by a Canadian firm called Dominion. (Though Dominion, like Sequoia itself before them, lied about the continuing Venezuelan/Chavez ties in their recent announcement of the acquisition, as detailed exclusively by The BRAD BLOG, to little notice, in June.)
The Pac-Man hack onto the Sequoia/Dominion voting machine was revealed this week. It was accomplished without breaking any of the "tamper-evident" seals that voting machine companies and election officials claim are used to ensure nobody can physically hack into them without being discovered.
Can someone tell me how this country can claim to be the keeper of democracy with these ridiculous machines in use? And if they're going to be hacked, at least hack them with something worth playing.
Best. game. ever. It distracts me from the anxiety of knowing our democracy is in the hands of utterly hackable, unreliable crummy voting machines.
As many of you know, conservatives hate government because it interferes with their precious free market 'GOD', so when they actually control the government they hire unqualified sycophants, who by their very nature undermine the posts they are given because of their incompetence and hatred for the government they draw a paycheck from. They then will use their position like an ideological club as much as possible. This comes in very handy when the administration changes hands, because then they can work to get rid of everything Democratic.
Monica Goodling was a powerful symbol of of the Bush administration. She was given a very powerful position with none of the basic qualifications for the job, just like Heckvuajob Brownie. In her case, she graduated from Pat Robertson's Regent University, and because she's a right-wing conservative hack, she got hired to assist Alberto Gonzalez at the DOJ with the power to hire and fire people. How is that possible, you say?
About a week ago, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick noted a tidbit that the rest of us missed: TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Regent University boasts that 150 of its graduates, including former top DoJ aide Monica Goodling, are serving in some capacity in the Bush administration. Lithwick noted that this is “a huge number for a 29-year-old school.” That’s certainly true; it’s also a huge number for a small right-wing college led by a radical televangelist who believes Americans brought 9/11 upon themselves.
If McCain had won the election, he would have continued hiring incompetents throughout his administration because having a jackass fail in a key job only helps push the conservative meme that the government is useless and should not be involved in the actual job of governing. I was wondering if David Axelrod and his crew have made a real effort to purge these Heritage/Robertson imbeciles from their ranks?
Here's an example of what conservative governance is all about and what can happen if you don't clean house.
During the US Attorney scandal many of us wondered if it would result in a bunch of GOP operatives remaining burrowed in the Justice Department because the Democrats would fear being criticized for "politicizing" the department if they tried to fire them. Republicans, having fully mastered "I know you are but what am I" politics can always be counted upon to cry victim even when the turned tables are of a completely different type and the hapless Democrats end up chasing their tails because they can't figure out how to parry it. It was predictable that, perversely, there would be quite a few wingnut holdovers after the scandal completely safe in their jobs.
It turns out there are burrowers and one of them has left the department and immediately gone to the press to spill breathless tales of racism in the Obama/Holder DOJ -- toward white people, naturally:
It's a face palm moment. Republican (naturally!) Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, also the chair of the Republican Governors Association and a name floated as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012, wants us to know that worse that the oil spill currently gushing tens of thousands of oil every day into the fragile eco-system of the Gulf of Mexico and wetlands of the Gulf Coast is the mean ol' Obama administration's moratorium on further gulf oil drilling
How do you reason with someone who thinks it's his God-given right to have cheap gas? I honestly don't know if Barbour is just being a partisan hack or if he is really just so naively stupid as to the impact that he doesn't get that cheap gas is really the least of his worries now. How does he think the whole country be impacted by this?
Why would an undersea spill be worse? One outcome could be the expansion in size and extension in time of a seasonal "dead zone" that already plagues the Gulf of Mexico as a result of industrial pollutants and agricultural run-off from the Mississippi River. While huge Gulf of Mexico algae blooms help to naturally clean up the Midwest's factory emissions and wasted fertilizer, such a process doesn't come without a cost to the ecosystem. Every spring, in a condition known as hypoxia, this fast growing algae depletes large sections of the Gulf's water column of the oxygen crucial for other life forms to survive there. The BP oil spill is likely to exacerbate this problem, as natural oil-eating microbes swarming over undersea oil plumes could cause or add to hypoxic conditions in otherwise teeming swaths of the Gulf.
According to NOAA researcher Samantha Joye, the undersea oil poses a direct threat to large marine wildlife, such as fish, sharks and cetaceans, and also to the tiny stuff, including zooplankton, shrimp, corals, crabs and worms. By endangering these latter populations, the foundation of the marine food chain, the oil could have chronic long-term effects on the wider Gulf ecosystem, including the industries -- more shrimp and oysters come from the Gulf than anywhere else in the world -- that rely on them.
Another worry is how the chemical dispersants being used to break up the undersea oil will impact the Gulf's ecosystems and inhabitants. The dispersant's ingredients are a trade secret closely held by the company that makes it, and therefore have not been vetted by marine biologists to determine their safety for use in such a large application. It also remains to be seen what impact the tiny oil droplets left in the dispersant's wake will have. It could actually be worse for the undersea environment to break the oil up into tiny droplets (which is done to try to make it easier for microbes to digest them).
Beyond all these undersea environmental effects, the oil is also starting to wash up into coastal wetlands already besieged by overdevelopment, pollution and the lingering effects of Hurricane Katrina.
Simply put, we have no idea the long term effects on the wetlands. I've read some reports that even if the oil only penetrates 15% of the wetlands, that number equates to the coastline and while it's a relatively small percentage overall of the ecosystem, it could mean as much as 80% of the wildlife that makes the wetlands their home.
When we've killed off the bottom of the food chain, it endangers those higher up on the food chain. How important is that $3.00/gallon gas gonna be when all that destruction works up the food chain to us?
Because Rand Paul decided that he didn't want to answer questions about his extreme and misbegotten political philosophy, it was left to professional partisan hack Sen. John Cornyn to defend him, while simultaneously distancing him and his party from the aforementioned extremist views. The result was a spectacular balancing act, made only that much more partisan by contrasting Cornyn's words this week on Connecticut Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal.
Note that Paul--who advocated on multiple outlets that privately-owned businesses should be allowed to discriminate and that the Americans with Disabilities Act was "over-reaching" on the part of the federal government was simply a stumble by a novice candidate.
Well, Dr. Paul’s new to running for public office, and I think it’s Bob’s experience, I’m sure my experience, that you see novice candidates occasionally stumble on questions. I think he’s clarified his position. But I think he’s done the right thing.
Isn't that generous and understanding of Cornyn? So Cornyn believes the same "stumble" multiple times with different outlets should be considered excusable? Especially since Rand walked back from his statements after a day's news cycle of being stung by
various outlets pointing out that at the very least, Rand supports policies that enable racism.
However, Cornyn exhibits no similar generosity of spirit when it comes to Richard Blumenthal.
Really? Yes, Really. For reasons unknown, Time Magazine's Mark Halperin decided to post a photoshopped picture of Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu with semen in her hair, ala Cameron Diaz in the movie There's Something About Mary. One would think he could have come up with something a little more appropriate. Jason Linkins has more at HuffPo:
...There are lots of ways to serve up this news story! And there are lots of creative ways to put it together for web trawlers. How about, "Mary, Mary, quite contrary?" or, if you're old-school retro, "Mary, Mary, why you buggin'?" Or you could just decide that the best thing to do is be straight about it. Not Halperin, though! Here's the imaginative Photoshop that went along with his "story." Read on...
My thoughts exactly. Halperin is a hack, with little to no journalistic integrity, but this is low even by his standards. While I don't agree with Senator Landrieu on all her votes, the health care bill in particular, I think she has an apology coming from both Mark Halperin and Time.
(T)o show you the lengths Ziegler will go for his point, check out this convoluted logic in explaining the hypocrisy of going after Letterman and not other media figures. When asked why the protest took a week to happen, Ziegler asked, "Why did David Letterman take a week to apologize?" When Air America, in more of an accusation that a question, remarked that Sarah Palin went on Saturday Night Live in 2008 a week after they had aired a skit which said that Tod (sic) Palin had slept with his daughter, Ziegler pointed out that skit was set in a New York Times staff meeting where the paper's staff was considering topics to write, so it was essentially a satire on what the Times might publish to discredit her, not Saturday Night Live saying this directly of Gov. Palin.
So this was more about attacking David Letterman and CBS than in some crusade to go after "perverts." And as Keith Olbermann pointed out, the amount of time for Letterman's apology was a matter of 3 or so hours, not a week. It sounds like Ziegler graduated magna cum laude from the Palin school of upholding responsibility.
Ahhhh...so the real agenda comes out. Well, Ziegler, Freedom of Speech is a wonderful thing. You're free to make an ass out of yourself and others are free to start a FireJohnZiegler.com site to show you for the ass you are.
Attytood: This AP hack wrote his 'analysis' of Obama's speech before the candidate had finished delivering it.
The Trail: There are still plenty of free tix available for McCain's stadium rallies this weekend, the sites chosen based on the absence of elitist columns.
Although FOX News is crawling with them, it's pretty hard to find a bigger right-wing hack than Fred Barnes. Thursday on FOX News' "Special Report," Barnes called Gramm's insensitive and bone-headed remarks about struggling Americans "straight-talk," and reiterated Gramm's view that Americans are whiners because they acknowledge how poorly the economy is doing.
BARNES: He wasn’t wrong to say that. You know what this was? This was straight talk that McCain always says he’s giving it, and this is exactly what Phil Gramm did. He gave straight talk…They claim about how bad the economy is–and it’s weak, no question about that. …They’re whining all the way through it.
Although FOX News is crawling with them, it's pretty hard to find a bigger right-wing hack than 
