Category Archives: politics

Who Was Audited?

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Recall the hoo-raw over the Dominion Voting Systems machines in Georgia. Georgia’s Secretary of State  Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, authorized an audit of those machines and last month announced the audit’s results: “no evidence of the machines being tampered.”

Pro V&V, “a US Election Assistance Commission certified testing laboratory,” was the company Raffensperger hired to do the audit. The company, according to its Web site,

was founded in 2011 by individuals possessing a combined testing experience of over 30 years[]

and it was accredited by the US Election Assistance Commission in 2015.

The company doesn’t identify its founders, or how many of them there are, so it’s impossible to assess the value of those combined 30 years of experience. Two guys, averaging 15 years each, which would be serious experience?

Five guys, averaging 6 years each?

Software (and hardware) testing is what I did, as Test Director for a defense contractor, in another life. Six years of testing software isn’t all that, not when the tester needs to have a clear and extensive level of understanding of the nature of the software being tested. Software driving a fighter aircraft simulator is vastly different from software driving Windows Word™ software is vastly different from software driving your laptop’s firewall…is vastly different from software that drives voting systems computers. How qualified are these guys, really? Maybe thoroughly qualified, maybe not so much.

But here’s the thing, folks. Pro V&V has a several-years-long relationship with Dominion, which Raffensperger plainly knows, or should have known.

[Pro V&V] has for several years overseen testing of Dominion’s voting software, federal records indicate.

And

US Election Assistance Commission records show that Pro V&V has for multiple years served as the “testing lab” for Dominion’s Democracy Suite voting software. Records from 2020, 2019 2018 and 2017 all list Pro V&V as the tester for several successive iterations of Democracy Suite.

Who, indeed, was it being audited?

Hmm….

Blatant

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Racism and sexism, that is, and they’re rampant in the Progressive-Democratic Party. Here’s Congresswoman Karen Bass (D, CA) during a FOX 11 interview last Friday on who California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) should pick to replace Senator Kamala Harris (D) in the Senate:

I will tell you that I do believe that there should be an African American woman in the Congress[.]

On the other hand, when asked whether should select an Hispanic to replace Kamala Harris, Bass said,

I agree with that 100%. I think that is absolutely correct, and I think that that should happen[.]

Once again, for the Progressive-Democratic Party qualification for a position matters very little, if at all. The primary criterion, according to Party, is the “candidate’s” race, and the close second criterion is the individual’s sex.

Qualification is far down the list.

Wrong Resolution

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Recall that Huawei Technologies Co’s Deputy Chair and CFO Meng Wanzhou is facing US criminal wire and bank fraud charges related to her alleged violations of US sanctions on Iran, which she did on Huawei’s behalf. She’s in the middle of extradition proceedings in Canada en route to getting her here.

Now there’s a resolution in the works: DoJ officials are talking about a “deferred prosecution agreement,” in which Meng would admit her wrongdoing in those cases and then be allowed to return to the People’s Republic of China directly from Canada.

This is the wrong resolution. The case should be resolved by bringing her into the US and letting a trial court resolve the matter.

More EU Bad Faith

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Finance operations, a key industry for Great Britain but not so much for the European Union, is being excluded from existing Brexit transition negotiations. That much is on the Brits as well as the EU, but the EU is abusing the mutual error.

In anticipation,

European regulators have demanded banks base certain operations currently conducted in London in the EU post-Brexit. … The EU last week committed to rules governing derivatives that will prevent London-based traders at EU banks from continuing business seamlessly after Brexit is completed on New Year’s Eve.

Derivatives trading is a significant fraction of the Brits’ financial industry, and the new rules prevent even London-based branches of EU banks from trading with UK-regulated firms unless those transactions occur in other jurisdictions recognized by both sides.

As Tim Cant, a London-based Partner at Ashurst Group, notes,

This is part of a wider strategy of moving finance into the EU[.]

It’s also part of the EU’s wider strategy of punishing Great Britain for its effrontery and of warning the more uppity remaining member nations to not even think about doing such a dastardly thing as leaving their Betters in Brussels.

“Bias”

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In quotes because it’s far more than that. Recall that Project Veritas has been releasing recordings of CNN’s routine 9am editorial conference calls. In one of those recordings, Cynthia Hudson, CNN‘s Senior Vice President and Managing Director of CNN en Español and Hispanic Strategy, had this:

The Cubans are gonna vote for Trump.

Project Veritas is properly identifying this news outlet’s plainly evident bias. There is, though, far more than that in these calls.

“The Cubans….” Not even “The Cuban-Americans.” CNN is denying these folks their American citizenship.

“The Cubans….” Not “A significant group of Americans.” CNN is openly plying its despicable segregationist identity politics, its blatant racism.

This. is. CNN.