Remember when the Clinton staff removed all the “W’s” from White House typewriters when George W Bush moved in? Well old Space Invader Joe has much bigger plans. At least according to DC photographer Josh Billinson, who blew up on Twitter this week. Here are the highlights.

_{Look Josh, we even left your name intact}

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No wonder so many people are having trouble deciding.

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You might as well get used to it, you’ll probably be seeing it for the next four years.

You really need to click for the full-size image to enjoy it fully though.

Bonus: Rudy Giuliani’s Mouth

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It all started innocently enough. While talking with a finance-savvy friend about current investment practices, he used the term “40 Act”, causing me to do a perplexed-faced puppydog headtilt. I had NO IDEA what he was talking about, but wasn’t about to let on. “Part of it relates to liquid assets”, he said, inspiring me to do a quick web search while he talked, including a book search. If you search liquid assets on Amazon, you don’t get a lot of books in the results, but about halfway down the page you’ll find this, tagged as an Amazon best seller:

This of course derailed our entire conversation, because, you know, butt jokes are funny, right? At the (ahem) bottom of the page, there was of course a bunch of, er, crap in the “related products” scroller, and before we knew it we were (here it comes) cracking jokes and clicking on the suggested products. Somewhat appropriately, it turned out that a lot of the scatological novelty products being suggested were in reference to Trump, Clinton, and the 2016 presidential election. And thus began another round of Rabbit Wholing, as we call it here on innoculous.com. For previous examples, see HERE and HERE.

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Why do hackers always wear hoodies?

A lot of fearmongering press has been hitting the feeds lately about how easily voting machines can be hacked. This idea is a perfect match for the notion that Russians hacked the DNC during the primaries, and are working in cahoots with Donald Trump, and combined, it’s a perfect storm for the tinfoil hat crowd. But aside from the fact that the Russian/Trump/DNC connections are still being debated by forensics experts and wholeheartedly dismissed by folks like Julian Assange, what often gets glossed over in this clickbaitfest are the facts that only about a quarter of US election locations use the hackable machines, and that there is no documented case of an election having been “hacked” via these machines.

Don’t worry though, this election will be hacked anyway. But by Americans, and without even using a computer! When it comes to how a typical “hack” works, most people forget that the most important ingredient is often some kind of social engineering, not some sweaty evil computer nerd in his basement furiously cracking passwords. This kind of hack has been understood for centuries; it’s basically a feature of democracy, not a bug. It’s so fundamental to the election process, that there are even clever names for most of the exploits. Let’s take a look at just a few….

Cooping

This one has fallen out of vogue for a while, but as we head into an era in which a Trumpian fascist regime and a Clintonian Neo-Dickensian nightmare are equally likely, we suspect it will become quite fashionable again. In the 19th century – right here in the United States – innocent bystanders would be grabbed off the street  by “cooping gangs” working on the payroll of a political candidate. They would be kept in a room, called the “coop”, and given alcoholic beverages in order for them to comply. If they refused to cooperate, they would be beaten or even killed. Edgar Allan Poe is thought by some to have been the victim of cooping before his mysterious death in early October 1849.

Gerrymandering

The word “gerrymander” is a portmanteau of Governor Elbridge Gerry’s last name and the word “salamander”. In 1812, Governor Gerry signed a bill that redistricted Massachusetts to benefit his Democratic-Republican Party. When mapped, one of the contorted districts in the Boston area was said to resemble the shape of a salamander. Gerrymanding is such a fundamental feature of modern democracy that it has lots of fun names for the tactics it uses, like “Cracking”, “Packing”, “Hijacking”, and “Kidnapping”. Here are examples of the effects of each. Gerrymandering is an example of the wasted vote tactic.

Issues Voting and “Values Voters”

Until relatively recently, it was fairly well-established that voters consistently voted based on party or candidate affinities. This changed dramatically when Karl Rove made the 2000 election all about “right to life” issues, without actually making it a plank in the GOP platform, but thereby capturing the important “Catholic Vote”. This strategy can be dicey in the long-term. A couple of examples: many Catholics support a pro-life stance, but strongly oppose the death penalty, which the Republican Party supports, and members of labor unions strongly identify with the Democratic Party’s advocacy for workers’ rights, but also tend to not support gay rights, a stance which more closely aligns with Republican views.

Search Engine Manipulation Effect

Eric Schmidt Points Hillary Toward the White House

We’ve touched on this previously; we called it Googlemandering. It’s described in its Wikipedia entry  as a “change in consumer preference from manipulations of search results by search engine providers. SEME is one of the largest behavioral effects ever discovered. This includes voting preferences. A 2015 study indicated that such manipulations could shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more and up to 80 percent in some demographics.”

Tactical Voting

The strategy of tactical voting  is less common in American politics, because it is most effective when multiple candidates are running for a position. The duopoly in American politics – especially for presidential elections – renders it an ineffective tool. However, it may be relevant in the 2016 election, when there may be as many as 4-5 viable candidates by election day, depending on the GOP reaction to Trump’s erratic behavior, and the strength of Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson’s run.

Voter Caging

Directly quoting the Wikipedia entry: “Voter caging refers to challenging the registration status of voters and calling into question the legality of allowing them to vote. Sometimes it involves sending direct mail to the addressees of registered voters, and compiling a list of addressees from which the mail is returned undelivered. This list is then used to purge or challenge voters’ registrations on the grounds that the voters do not legally reside at the registered addresses. In the United States, this practice is legal in many states. However, it has been challenged in the courts and due to its perceived racial bias, has been declared illegal under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The term voter caging has also been applied to recent cases where increased requirements for proof of identity, residency and eligibility have been added with the intent to limit the number of eligible voters.” Voter caging is – in broad strokes – the most common form of voter suppression in the US.

Whisper Campaign

This method is a time-honored tradition which certainly extends well beyond its earliest notable use in US elections, i.e.: in the 1800 presidential contest, when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were vying for the office. We’ve talked before here about how it definitely took down John McCain in 2000, and may have had something to do with the demise of the Ted Cruz campaign of 2016.

Illegally Block Polling Place Using Bill Clinton

An all new method was put to work this election cycle. It was pretty simple; just give Bill Clinton a forty dollar megaphone and have him illegally occupy a polling place during the only hour the local voters have time to vote:

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The other day I was talking with a friend and asked her a question that’s , which was “If Hillary Clinton gets elected, what are we going to call Bill? First Man? First Gentleman?”, to which she replied “I imagine a lot of people will still call him ‘that slippery bastard’, just like they always have”. After some joking around, I personally settled on “First Ladyman”. It seems to suit his high-pitched, always-about-to-crack speech patterns and delicate lady hands. The conversation then rolled around to another obvious question that comes up when discussing gender and politics, which is “Will everyone fuss as much about what Bill wears to the Inaugural Ball, the way they always do with First Ladies?” I decided that the answer to that question would be a resounding “YES!”, so here’s our quick look at some gown options for our potential new First Ladyman.

This might take some getting used to…

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Pull A Nader – Jill Stein

For the “Bernie or Bust” crowd, the simple thing to do with your third party vote would be to vote for the person that’s most like a liberal democrat, and help siphon enough votes from Hillary Clinton to ensure a Trump presidency. If it worked in 2000, it’ll work in 2016, if current poll numbers hold as we move closer to election day. In this scenario, the Green Party’s Jill Stein would be your gal.

Pull A Perot – Gary Johnson

We have to reach back a little further to find the reverse of the above scenario. If you love guns and God but hate homos and health care, don’t vote for Trump, vote for Gary Johnson. He plays himself off as the champion of regular folk, but he’s probably every bit as full of shit and opportunistic as Ross Perot was back in 1992. Do you miss Kasich, Cruz, Rubio, and Jeb? Johnson’s probably your dude, he can be any one of those guys if you ask the right question.

Our Endorsement – Zoltan Istvan

I think we should all vote for this guy simply on the basis of the fact that his name is “Zoltan”. But what are some of the planks in his platform? Generally things you might expect from a guy named Zoltan, like: creating a Transhumanist Bill of Rights, laying groundwork for rights for other future advanced sapient beings like conscious robots and cyborgs. Protecting us against existential risks like artificial intelligence, plagues, and asteroids. Creating a policy for the phasing out of all individual taxes based on robots taking most jobs in the next 25 years. Advocating for morphological freedom. Encouraging private industry to develop and support usage of a cranial trauma alert chip. What more could you want in a candidate? C’mon, you’re always saying “I fucking love science”, aren’t you?

David Jon Sponheim, Goddamn Supergenius

Sponheim’s main claim to fame is that he’s just soooo goddamn smart. He puts that right up front, by calling himself an “Intellectually Gifted Entrepreneur”. Evidence of this mindblowing IQ of his is purely anectdotal. His story: He debated Dow Chemical company employees at the age of seven, skipped a grade in middle school, and in high school, managed an IQ test score of 185. He then attended classes at UCLA, but discontinued “due to strong disagreement with the Communist leanings of his professors”. Despite an alleged straight-A academic record with these commie bastards, he was unable to gain acceptance at other institutions of higher learning. He blames this on affirmative action minority enrollment quotas. He has since worked as an “advertiser, web site designer, archivist, and entrepreneur”, according to his bio. So tell us something. If he’s such a goddamn genius, why couldn’t he figure out how to finish college? And if he’s a web designer, why the hell is his dumb website throwing up a “500 Internal Server” error? And why can’t he manage to upload a photo of himself that’s not pixelated and horribly cropped, and larger than about 150 pixels square?

Sponheim’s site was down when this piece was posted.

Art Drew

Art Drew’s only clearly defined policies are that all teachers should have a small-caliber handgun, and that a wall on the Mexican border is ridiculous. Because what we really need is a beefed up military presence there! Is Art Drew qualified? Are you kitten me? Just take a look at his credentials. Not only does Art have a USDOT Crop Dusting Cerfiicate [sic], he can cut your hair, because he has Pennsylvania State Barber License! He appears to have failed that web design course though.

David Boarman

David Boarman’s platform  reads more like a hand-wringing laundry list of moral complaints than policy guidelines. Summarized: we need to get the feds out of all our personal business, make people respect America and its money, and let the churches fix things, not the government. Freedom of religion is of utmost importance, especially the freedom for a business to refuse to serve a customer on the basis of religious beliefs. He also seems to pretty much not get the meaning of a pentagram.

Darrell Castle

Like many of these mildly delusional individuals, Darrell Castle does a mashup of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as he sees fit, which makes it easy for him to proclaim that America must be free and autonomous in every regard, so long as those freedoms align with his misunderstanding of his god’s rules as interpreted by white men over two hundred years ago. Which must be when his website was developed, based on its appearances.

Ed Baker

Call Ed Baker a nut if you like, but he has some good points. The main one being that Marijuana is safer than peanuts, so should be legalized. Or that we need to “Punish the Bad Guys” and “Help those in Need”. Which is literally how those items are presented in his platform. Some of his other ideas will fill your nutsack to the bursting point though; his platform also includes things like reopening 9/11 investigations, support of the confederate flag, full disclosure of UFO’s, and deporting illegal aliens. He’s not clear regarding whether or not those last two items are directly related.

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We’ve come a long way in eight years.

Whatever your political leanings, if you have any design sense at all, you have to admire the work behind Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign materials. If you’re not familiar with the story behind how the image material was created, this NYT piece explains how the images were the result of a partnership between Sol Sender and Mode of Chicago. The images disrupted decades of stodgy political campaign design clichés, which historically relied on heavy slab serif typefaces and predictable use of stars, stripes, eagles, and flags. Given the success the Obama campaign had with this new visual approach, you would think the GOP would have taken a cue, and adapted some of the thinking to their own campaigns. They’ve been doing so when it comes to copying the Democratic Party’s digital strategies, albeit a bit slowly.

Nope & Strange

But nope. One of the first logos released for the 2016 election cycle was for the Jeb Bush campaign. The common perception was that it should have said “Jed!”, as in Jed Clampett, and that maybe a good tagline could be found in the Beverly Hillbillies theme song.

Noper & Stranger

More recently, we were all more or less traumatized by the Trump/Pence logo, which quickly got the animated treatment by the crew of Samantha Bee’s show Full Frontal, highlighting everything that was wrong with it:

An Easy Fix, Overlooked

It could have been so easy. Interactive developer Matthew Gordon observed in a tweet  that with some simple color changes and rotation, Trump had an easy solution:

Hospital on the right, got it.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign disappointed as well, setting things back eight years for the DNC with the “H” logo that most designers agree looks like an international hospital waysign:

I’m With Her, Whoever She Is

When placed poorly, the simple “H with an arrow” element was almost comical. Here we’re left wondering who the “her” is that the arrow is pointing toward.

O’Malley Padme Om

If the Dalai Lama were an elected figure, this might actually be a decent campaign graphic, with its simple message of “OM”. Unfortunately for the O’Malley campaign, they were running for president, not spiritual leader, making this one of the worst of the bunch:

Un-Conventional Design

The RNC has used a couple of odd ones in the last few cycles….

2016: Rock & Roll Hall Of Shame

Yeah we get it. The convention’s in Cleveland, home of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. So there’s an elephant walking on the neck of an electric guitar. Okay. No. We don’t get it.

2008: It’s A Leap Year, Not A Hump Year

We have no idea why they chose an image of an elephant humping the year 2008. It probably had something to do with their ticket that year.

RNC 2016 – Quick Rethink

Our quick rethink of the RNC graphic

The post Nope & Strange: Worst Campaign Graphics of the 2016 Election appeared first on Innoculous.com.

The other day, a tea-partyesque acquaintance of mine used the following video to support their argument that the GOP and therefore Trump were pro-LGBT:

The video comes across as a little contrived; it’s honestly hard to tell if the fellow is a bad actor doing a sort of “False Fag Operation”, or just an inarticulate twit doing his first YouTube video. But the clip got me curious: is this “a thing”? That is to say, are there actually significant numbers of LGBT people who support Trump? Given that there is always a fair amount of Astroturfing in an election period, and that there are tons of spin pieces like After the Pulse Club Massacre, It’s Time for Gays to Come Home to Republican Party intended to lure “the LGBT vote” into the GOP fold, it’s worth taking a little time to question the veracity and authenticity of these web presences. This is by no means a comprehensive roundup, but here a few things we found.

Gay as Hell Trump Supporter

At first glance, this appears to be a video of nothing more than a guy carrying a sign that says “Gays for Trump”. But at the end, he makes a much clearer statement. We’ll take his word for it.

Prominent Flip-Flopper

Apparently Chris Barron, the former president of the now-defunct gay conservative group GOProud, likes it both ways. This CNN piece goes into the details.

Phoenix LBGT Pulls Trump Card

As in the video at the top, it was the Orlanda club shooting that flipped the stance of Phoenix LGBT. It’s probably worth noting that this account was created June 12, so may also be a form of astroturfing.

Gays With Guns For Trump

We’ll leave it to you to decide the sincerity of the gun-toting Gays for Trump …

Voices of Varying Reason

It’s a lot easier to accept the authenticity of an online presence if the presenter(s) comfortably include their full names, and didn’t create their account yesterday. These two videos fit that bill. In the first, Matte Baume asks “Is Donald Trump a Friend to ‘The Gays’?”, and in the second, Kyle Kittleson confronts his shame and “outs” himself. Not as a gay person, but as a Trump supporter.

Matte Baume: Is Donald Trump a Friend to ‘The Gays’?

Kyle Kittleson Comes Out

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Find the Glorious Video Further Below

You can go ahead and keep kidding yourself that Trump is going to run out of money, or quit, or maybe even just plain lose. But we think you’d be underestimating the splendorous stupidity of the American populace to cling to such fantasies. For our part, we’ve surrendered to and welcome our new Tiny Handed Orange Overlord. We already outlined a vision for the future in Trumpification Part I, with promises of more to come. But someone in Japan has beaten us to the draw, with this epic yet efficient animated version. Why should we bother? They’ve pretty much covered it all!

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