The Message Forum is an ongoing dialogue among classmates. The goal is to encourage friendly interaction, including interaction among classmates who really didn't know each other. Experience on the site has revealed that certain topics tend to cause friction and hard feelings, especially politics and religion. 

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Sandra Spieker (Ringo)

David,

I see your point.  Older folks, living with kids get their votes influenced by their kids left leaning ways....hummm.

My mother voted by mail this time.   I helped her this way:  I showed her the correct way to color in the square indicating a choice of candidate.  I left her with brochures from every candidate who sent us one by mail.  She made her own choices.  Trust me.  She did.  No help from me.  I showed her where to sign on the envelope containing the ballot, then I showed her how that envelope went into another one with the postage.  She was confused by that. 

Last year she voted in person.  We had to wheel her into the polling place.  Someone (not me) had to help her use the voting machine (computers scare her, paper ballots not so much).  I have done this numerous occasions with voters. I have to teach them to use the machine, mostly but sometimes they ask me to interpret the resolutions.  Each time a voter asks me my opinion (this has happened dozens of times).  I get:  What does this mean?  or:   Does this mean no or yes?  I have to answer the same way each time  "I can't tell you how to vote or whether that means yes or no. All I can say is if you agree with the statement, vote yes, if not, vote no." 

Hey how about husbands and wives influencing votes just before going to vote???

Sandra Spieker (Ringo)

Lance,

Never fear, I am enjoying life!  Right now I am listening to great music via Danny's iPod. In addition I have The Graduate movie playing, with the sound off, while enjoying a glass of wine with my mother sitting next to me. Danny is cooking dinner of chicken Alfredo and Aaron is playing with our sweet German shepherd. It does not get much better than that!

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Lance,

I just heard from the Chief Security Officer of CrowdStrike that there was never any unfiltrated evidence that Russia stole emails from the DNC!  For the past three years we have heard continually from the Democrat Party that the DNC was hacked by Russia and that Russia caused the 2016 election great harm; that Russia harmed Hillary so badly with their propaganda that the results of that election were badly skewed!

It's balderdash!  It's BS!  There is no evidence, and even at the time of the Mueller Investigation, there was no evidence, but the members of that investigation insisted that Russia MUST have caused skewed results in that election....Nope!  Not true!  And to top it all off, the Chief Security Officer said he admitted this information back in 2017, when he was being questioned at a hearing in December!

So why is the public just now hearing this information in May of 2020?

How many other important facts are being held from us all, by the Democrats, I'm wondering?

I also want to know why Tony Podesta's brother hurriedly bailed from working with a Ukrainian company, as soon as Trump began asking questions of the Ukrainian president, Zelensky, last September.  I smell a rat there, I do!  A hurried cover-up was done, and Podesta's brother quickly got out of town on the first flight outta' Ukraine......hm-m-m-m-m-m-m..........Soros was involved too.....no surprise there........son-of-a-who knows what!

Heard tonight this too, that Dershowitz is calling Emmet Sullivan, the judge who is keeping everyone in suspense in the Michael Flynn case, as he appoints a new judge to enter the fray with "new perspective,"      .......Ol' Dershowitz claims Judge Sullivan is attempting to be "a prosecutor in robes," which is totally insane & incorrect!

David Cordell

Janalu,

None of this is about General Flynn. It is all about blind hatred of Trump.

As I understand it, Flynn plead guilty to "willfully and knowingly" lying to the FBI, even though the agents said they didn't think he was lying, i.e. he may have said something that was incorrect, but did so innocently.

There was no underlying crime. He plead guilty to move on and to protect his son. Now, the judge is implicitly threatening to charge him with plagiarism for swearing that he was guilty if he wasn't.

Can you say, "Kafka"?

They have ruined this patriot's reputation and have bankrupted him. 

Why continue this craziness?

At the very least, Judge Sullivan shoud say, "Go, and sin no more." But what he really should do is apologize profusely.

I think there is a small possibility that Sullivan appointed Gleeson because Gleeson is on record in another case suggesting that judges must accept the prosecutor's decision. Maybe Sullivan is using Gleeson to give himself cover from the left, i.e., bring in a leftie who ultimately will say that Flynn should walk.

I admit that that is a long shot, but I am hopeful that this judge will find fairness in his heart.

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Lance,

We told no spin!

What we have here (in what we have offered) is absolute truth.

My info was gleaned from attorneys; honest attorneys I know to be true Americans with 'gin-u-wine' ethics.

You're a'teasing us, aren'tcha Bro?

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

David,

Oh that it were true!

What I heard about Sullivan is that he is an Obama fan, and a buddy of Weissmann, "the Pitbull" lead prosecutor in the Mueller Investigation, so they say his attitude is to continue "the smear" of Gen. Flynn's name and character, to try to influence our citizens as we approach the November election.

Another gem I heard, is that Fauci and Bill Gates will gain 50% royalties from a certain Covid-19 vaccine that is in competition with a few others, so they are hoping their vaccine works out.  They contend that if they should gain royalties, they will pledge their gain to the NIH.

We'll see.

Wayne Gary

Sandra

The voting by mail in Dallas was abused and filled with fraud in the past.  There were people going into nurshing hames and helping people vote or filling the ballots in themselves.  There were people "harvesting ballots" then going to a canadate and saying I have X number of basllots and votes for you and if you pay me I will send them in. There were a number of ballots requested form vacant lots and also many more ballots for a house than people living there. This fraud helped in local races where the margin is very small. 

Come November there may be few cases of Covid-19 in your area.  One county in soutwest of Ft Worth has no reported cases of Covid-19.  Just take a wait and see attitude about the election.

Wayne Gary

David and Janalu,

The Judge in Flynn's case is saying should Flynn be charged with perjury for pleading guilty at the time.  That logic should be applied to every defendant that pleaded not-guilty and was later convicted of the crime.

I heard one judge state that most of those who commited perjury should not be tried for perjury because they were in jail.

Sandra Spieker (Ringo)

Wayne,

My decision on whether to serve as a Judge was made today.  I have declined.  The risk to my mother is too great.  I will vote, along with Danny and my mother by mail. 

David Cordell

Very disturbing Senate testimony regarding Google and elections.

https://facebook.com/vinnysinisi/videos/2677295625615990/

Steve Keene

Sandra

My vote is too important to trust to the U.S. Postal Service.  They cannot even get my bills that I write a check to pay to the recepient on time.  I cannot tell you the number of times I have overnighted items for delivery the next business day and they did not get them there in time.  I always get an apology and a refund, but when you are trying to beat a large penalty on a mortgage it is small consolation.  The Railroad Commission does not recognize poor mail service as a legitmate excuse for receiving late reports before issuing a violation for non-compliance.

Kurt Fischer

Janalu:

Regarding your comments related to the Crowd Strike president and Chief Security Officer and the DNC server(s).

This is one of those kinds of issues where tech guys say something and it gets interpreted by media guys in different ways.  If you'd like to talk in more detail about it, I'd be happy to communicate on a one-on-one basis.  I don't think many of the folks on this site would be very interested in technical details.  I have some insight based on my role in my company being part of the Information Security group.

One of the issues with a "data breach" is you can tell the bad guys came into your systems, but you can't fully prove they copied/stole data.  Information security firms like Crowd Strike can identify the malware and what it does, but can't on a 100% basis confirm data actually passed to the outside.

Here's a story from my company about the one time we had a data breach.  This applied to a small portion of our business where we used a third party ecommerce platform.  One day an individual contacted us and said our credit card information was being stolen.  We brought in an information security/forensics firm to understand what occurred.  Ultimately, the firm found that malware had been injected into the code of the third party software.  It did not attempt to access data within our databases, but instead injected malware onto the computer of the individual buying something.  When the individual made the purchase, it sent the credit card information to both our payment proccessing site as well as a site in India.  In a sense, the bad guys did not "breach" our databases, but in another sense they harvested purchase information.  We could not tell whether the bad guys obtained the credit card information for all transactions during the period in question or some portion.  Ultimately, we had to treat it as if all transactions were involved and all of the credit card information was obtained.  Again, this was only a small piece of our portfolio and only involved around 2,500 cards.   My main point is that we knew something went on, we understood how it occurred, but we were not able to definitively say what data was taken.  This is the same perspective the Crowd Strike leaders were making.

I'm glad my job doesn't require me to deal with these topics on a continuiing basis.  It's amazing how many different ways individuals can compromise your data.  

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Kurt.

You're correct in saying that Crowd Strike DID notice some "diddling" on DNC computers, and they determined that the interference was quite "Russian-like" as compared to what they had observed before, in their daily work.  However, they could not say that any info possibly gathered by Russians, was ever used in any covert way, or that any info was ever truly retrieved completely from American computers, only that they noticed some attempts to begin hacking processes.  Crowd Strike couldn't say what happened conclusively.

But when the news of Russian interference was relayed to US citizens, it was told that THE RUSSIANS HACKED INTO AMERICAN COMPUTERS AND CAUSED HILLARY TO LOSE THE ELECTION, which was no more than stymied speculation at best, and then, shortly after that, Rod Rosenstein said that even though 13 Russians were indicted as having meddled with the intent to sow discord and division in our country, nothing they did had any impact on the outcome of the election.

Yet still today, we have Hillary on TV programs saying she was cheated and that Trump is an illegitimate president, which many of the Democrats repeat frequently, especially Maxine Waters and other minorities who feel Trump is anti-black or anti-brown-skinned people.  Hillary and Obama actually help perpetuate the sentiment that Trump is an absolute racist, and that he had a 'hand' in encouraging the Russians to help him win the election.

There is no proof of that.  As a matter of fact, we know that Hillary actually had more popular votes, yet Trump won by way of the Electoral College tally, in which no Russians interferred at all.

And now as we have recently learned, the Obama Administration was purposely and vigorously thrusting out Russian meddling propaganda in the waning days of their admin., with the effort to sow distrust and misinformation throughout the American society, to further sully Trump.  They were frantic to get as much info out to the media as possible, promoting the idea that Trump cheated his way into office with Russia's help.  It's revealing that the Crowd Source myth was just one more piece of the massive propaganda wave.

Hull Barbee

Gosh , what a blessing it has been staying at home with my wife for the last 6 weeks .......... we've now caught up with everything I've done wrong for the last 20 years !!!!!!

David Cordell

Billy Hull, 

Amazing! It only took six weeks???

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Hull,

That's hilarious!   And so true.......

Kurt Fischer

Janalu:

I fully agree with you that the various interpretations of the hack of the DNC servers were way beyond any objective facts.  The linking together of Trump, a Russian hack and Hillary losing the election is not substainable.

However, we need to be careful and not go too far the other direction in interpreting the results of the forensic study of the hack.  I think the most convincing piece to me is something from CSO (Chief Security Officer) magazine.  Here's the quote:

"Shortly after the DNC revealed it had been hacked, Matt Tait, a noted cybersecurity researcher formerly with Google Project Zero and now a senior cybersecurity fellow at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin, highlighted a technical discovery by cybersecurity expert and author Thomas Rid linking Russia to the DNC server hack.  Rid discovered that the malware control servers used in the DNC hack are the same computers as the malware control servers used in the hack of the German Parliament years earlier. The German Bundestag hack was attributed to Russian intelligence by the head of Germany’s BfV intelligence."

This is the strongest link back to Russian hacking.  Of course, so much of Russian hacking is carrried out by state sponsored criminal groups, so it is easy for Russia to say they did not hack the DNC servers.  As I noted before, it is also difficult to tell what data was stolen vs. only having the malware planted. 

My point is there is sufficient evidence of Russian hacking of the servers that most security guys would accept it as true.  On the other hand, the Crowd Strike President and their CSO both were correct in stating they were not able to absolutely prove data was stolen.  And all of the fanciful stories that were spun off this about being the cause of the election loss are not provable.

Thanks for listening.

David Cordell

RIP 

Eddie Haskell

http://www.tributes.com/obituary/show/Ken-Osmond-108485399

https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/ken-osmond-dead-leave-it-to-beaver-eddie-haskell-dies-actor-1234609639/

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Kurt,

 I understand fully what you have said about the Russian hackers.  It makes sense.

One thing I'd like to understand is, what could they have gained from the hacking?  As I have read, they have been "hacking" for quite a few years, along with other nations.  But to what end?

I've heard that the Russians placed some ads on Facebook and tried to further add to our racial tensions, and I understand that they even set up some sights where they were able to draw Facebook readers into attending a  rally of some sort.  What actually was the result of these shenanigans?  Were there truly some voters whose votes may have been swayed?  Did any of those voters completely change their minds about which candidate should win?

I have a feeling that little if any persuasion was accomplished, because, in my opinion, a person who is decidedly going to vote, has come to a conclusion about which candidate he feels is worthy of his vote, and he has studied the issues at hand.  Just reading a propaganda ad on Facebook would not change his mind, most likely, nor would attending a rally that probably didn't have much point, or organized message.  Seems to me anything the Russians may have accomplished was fairly futile and silly.......a waste of their money, not that I care.

I think that so much of this issue is much ado about nothing.

That's my opinion, of course, and not to be taken as anything more.

David Cordell

I'm taking an online defensive driving course to lower my auto insurance bill. Not sure if it is cost effective, but whatever. It was actually a pretty good reviw and included some information that I didn't know. Comedydefensivedriving.com. $25. The comedy is mostly cheesy, but some of it is pretty funny -- a lot better than a dry five-hour lecture. Here is one of the sidebars:

ACTUAL INSURANCE STATEMENT CLAIMS

• Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don't have.
• The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intention.
• I thought my window was down, but I found it was up when I put my head through it.
• I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way.
• A truck backed through my windshield into my wife's face.
• The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.
• I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law and headed over the embankment.

Disclaimer: We know, these are old but they're still funny.

Lowell Tuttle

Maybe the song from 1969 which sent millions into bowling alleys, airport game rooms, back of the bar machine ports...I know it did me.

This version I liked.

Happy 75th birthday, Pete Townshend.

Jerry May

Hull, 

I'm glad I'm on the second one! Maybe the novelty hasn't worn off yet @ 4 1/2 years! 

No truthfully......Ellen has been just the greatest wife in the world, not to mention what kind of person she is!

David,  I'm sure many of us have known Eddie Haskell's over the years. I've known several!

And, the driving course does sound fun. 

I'll give you a real life one: An older in-law.....at the time was driving home after drinking several Jack Daniels. (she called him John)

When she came upon her exit off the tollway......she slammed into the back of a guy at the booth! (his car and hers had extensive damage) 

When questioned by a family member........ that the man was putting in toll change, she defiantly said: "Well.....he shouldn't have been sitting there!"

Lowell Tuttle

Years before there were instant MVR's (driving records) and CLUE (claim history) reports, it took days to check up on persons' driving records.  Even with the changes evolved, people forget they have had losses when they are shopping for insurance.   Many times people shop after their rates go up.  It takes time for the carriers to get surcharges for accidents onto someone's rates.  By then they have forgotten.

One time while still at the Cowboys building office in Dallas, I worked the phone on a quote and asked if there were any tickets or accidents in past three years.  This supposedly new client professed none.  A week or so later she came into the office to purchase the insurance.  Still stating no tickets or accidents on the rate survey I was doing, I began the application....but...

Something struck me as familier.  I went into my other office and pulled a file with the same name.  I looked and saw that 18 months before, she had been in an accident with a train.

Of course I had to change quote/application to a higher rate.  She had assumed, I guess, that the train was wrong....and left the loss off her survey.

In case you are wondering....trains have the right of way.

Mike Marks

Lowell,

Pete Townshend of the Who was in a class by himself. His creativity in designing songs was unique. The lyrics and his Guitar technique were revolutionary. Can you imagine sitting down and writing the Rock Opera "Tommy" followed by Quadrophenia? This was after Magic Bus, Substitute, My Generation, etc.in the mid-sixties. We saw them live two years ago and were fantasitc. Ringo Starr's Son, Zak, did an amazing job as Drummer replacing long since departed Keith Moon.

David Cordell

Mike,

Re: The Who

I've posted this before. Roger Daltrey, front man for The Who, with my son Christopher in 1998. They were making a commercial for A Christmas Carol at Madison Square Garden. I got Daltrey to sign a CD. It was interesting to be a fly on the wall when he was getting ready for the shoot.