The Goat Pen

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 8:23 am**

eCat wrote:the fact that 130m Americans viewed Russian propaganda thru social media should tell you how meaningless this idea of Russian collusion is with Trump. The reality is the Russians were manipulating as many people on social media as the liberal media was in trying to bring down Trump.

I'd actually show some concern if the people that talked about Russian influence actually gave a shit about it as a real threat and not just some grand butthurt realization that Trump won the election and they hate him for doing it. The reason I know this is because if Hillary was president and it came out that she hired a British contractor to create a dossier on Trump and used information gleaned from Russian hacking the GOP headquarters, no liberal would say a single word about it. They'd have some glib answer about politics being a dirty game, and they'd talk about how Trump deserved it because he was an awful human being.

I get it, its the liberal equivalent of pushing the birther issue during the Obama presidency. Butthurt conservatives called Obama a Kenyan because they couldn't get past him winning the election either.

After the Russian collusion things goes away , liberals will latch on to something else, IRS taxes, maybe some kickback where Trump leveraged the white house to get money for his real estate holdings. It will be something, they have to.

But at the end of the day, it boils down to butthurt over Trump getting elected.

Its why all the screaming on soap boxes that liberals do is just heard by other liberals and the people that got Trump elected just stick their hands in their pockets and walk on by. There but for the grace of God stand I.

Your cries for justice ring hollow because you don't seek justice for everyone, only those you oppose.

This....and confirmation that the media has chosen the side of the establishment.

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 9:25 am**

The Russian social media presence espouses the extreme viewpoints on both sides.

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 9:37 am**

aTm wrote:The Russian social media presence espouses the extreme viewpoints on both sides.

from what I've heard they spent alot of time focusing on racial division.

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 9:55 am**

A Russian front called BlackMattersUS for example organized large BLM and anti-trump rallies. But of course, the media I'm sure will tell you they did this to make people vote for Trump or whatever. Trump is a symptom of what the Russians are doing, but the idea that their goal was to get him elected is idiocy.

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 10:02 am**

Another example of why Trump got elected

An email from Madeleine Leader, who is a manager for the IT department in the DNC, was telling people in the organization they were seeking candidates to fill several positions

If its fake, several websites have been hooked and are running with it

in the email she threw in this caveat

Code: Select all

'I personally would prefer that you not forward to cisgender straight white males, since they're already in the majority.'

so first of all, why do we even need the term cisgender? That is madness. The rest of the sentence speaks for itself.

If anyone is wondering why I'd vote for a candidate like Trump. We can start with self preservation.

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 10:06 am**

"Trump is a symptom of what the Russians are doing"

What, in your opinion, are they doing?

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 10:24 am**

They are fomenting discontent. You can weaken a nation by creating internal strife, or amplifying divisions that already exist. Blaming Trump's election on the Russians is nonsense. Yes, Trump benefited from a climate of division, but it ignores the fact that extreme positions on the left are just about as culpable. Russia promotes both the radical and the reactionary wings here. Russia was funding leftist protests just before the elections. Russia also was creating ties with Hillary and the democrats because they would be stupid not to. They didn't KNOW that Trump would get elected, he could just as easily have lost and they would want a pro-Russia US no matter who was in office.

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 10:33 am**

If anything, I bet Russia may now feel their hand has been overplayed and it may have been better off for them if Hillary had been elected and everyone had ignored and allowed their social media programs to continue unhindered and unexposed rather than the US media screaming about Russia for a year now with no end in sight.

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 11:10 am**

"They are fomenting discontent. You can weaken a nation by creating internal strife, or amplifying divisions that already exist... They didn't KNOW that Trump would get elected, he could just as easily have lost and they would want a pro-Russia US no matter who was in office."

I don't disagree with you, but it would seem that when evidence was uncovered, as it has been, of Russian shenanigans for the sole purpose of, as you say, fomenting discontent and weakening our nation by creating internal strife, that that type of evidence would not be conducive to fostering a pro-Russia US, irregardless of who was president...

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 11:21 am**

hedge wrote:"They are fomenting discontent. You can weaken a nation by creating internal strife, or amplifying divisions that already exist... They didn't KNOW that Trump would get elected, he could just as easily have lost and they would want a pro-Russia US no matter who was in office."

I don't disagree with you, but it would seem that when evidence was uncovered, as it has been, of Russian shenanigans for the sole purpose of, as you say, fomenting discontent and weakening our nation by creating internal strife, that that type of evidence would not be conducive to fostering a pro-Russia US, irregardless of who was president...

a US in chaos would be a positive for Russia at home and in the world standing, a pro Russia US wouldn't be a primary concern

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 12:36 pm**

Right. It's a secondary concern. The are a rival of ours, its not the same as say Israel, for which a pro-Israel US is their #1 concern. A pro-Russia US is a secondary concern for them. A weak or fractured US that has no unified view allows them to exert more influence themselves worldwide. They wouldn't want an anti-Russia President though, that was openly antagonistic towards them.

Trump was the candidate of divisiveness, hence Russia's media influence helped him more than Hillary. However, as far as supporting either candidate, they were helping Hillary too. When you don't know for sure which side is going to win, you support both so that you win either way, rather than risk "losing"

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 12:40 pm**

I said before this isn't really a Trump issue like the media makes it out to be. Its a United States issue, where clearly we are susceptible to this and its a security problem. The outrage is all about Trump though and who benefitted or whatever instead of fixing the problem, so I'm not sure anything will change. We just have to hope that behind the scenes in the national security apparatus that somebody is embarrassed enough to be fixing this shit because there is no pressure from the People right now. Trumpkins are acting like its all no big deal, and Liberals just want whatever ammo they can to impeach Trump.

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 1:00 pm**

eCat wrote:Another example of why Trump got elected...

... so first of all, why do we even need the term cisgender? That is madness. The rest of the sentence speaks for itself.

If anyone is wondering why I'd vote for a candidate like Trump.

Nailed it.

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 1:29 pm**

aTm wrote:If anything, I bet Russia may now feel their hand has been overplayed and it may have been better off for them if Hillary had been elected and everyone had ignored and allowed their social media programs to continue unhindered and unexposed rather than the US media screaming about Russia for a year now with no end in sight.

they clearly have a much better handle on it in the last 6 months than they did 2 years ago, also I don't think they realized just how open advertising was on social media.

At facebook, for example, you can just create a user id, create your ad, and then go thru a checklist of sorts that help narrow your field to get a target audience based on the demographics they provide. You can narrow it down to very finite categories like unemployed African American male millineal in the northeast and you can target these people without ever having to talk to someone at Facebook.

This generates about $26b a year in revenue for facebook and they really don't have that much motivation to change it.

Obama pulled Zuckerberg aside months before the Trump presidency and read this guy the riot act about just how much influence their platform had and how irresponsible it was to make it wide open. Since then they have started red flagging certain topics or categories but its been mostly reactionary to the "obvious" hot button groups like not allowing someone to target individuals lumped into groups identified as Neo Nazis. But the algorithms for identifying people are so robust in facebook, anyone who is relatively savvy with their platform can get around those filters. You could identify these people by other affiliations, economic factors, groups or likes they have and any combination of those.

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 1:38 pm**

as a side note, I saw a video where someone was accusing facebook of listening in on conversations to capture key words that would help identify marketing opporutunites from them by using your cell phone.

In the example, the man and wife sat down and intentionally chose to use the words "cat food" in sentences around their phone with the app running and according to them and their video, after 2 days, ads for cat food and cat related items started appearing in their wall or whatever its called. They said they chose cat food as a topic to prove their point because they didn't own a cat, never associated with any cat related groups or topics and never talked about cats as a subject before.

It might be bullshit, but the world we live in now doesn't make that story quick for anyone to dismiss. In other words the burden of proof would be pretty light given what we know about technology and facebook.

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 1:45 pm**

For some reason I got a chuckle out of "they never associated with any cat related groups"...

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 1:46 pm**

that does sound like it came out Napoleon Dynamite

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2017 5:28 pm**

Heh. Busted!

Posted: **Thu Nov 02, 2017 8:39 am**

aTm wrote:I said before this isn't really a Trump issue like the media makes it out to be.

Seriously? Our current CiC was blaming a '400lb guy sitting on a bed' for hacking the DNC last Sept. when he knew exactly who it was. Trump won't comment on Russian meddling, but he has no problem calling the American judiciary system a laughing stock and a joke. Our intelligence agencies are like Nazis in the 30s he says, and the media is fake and evil - but Putin gets a pass at every turn. Trump has slow walked sanctions against Russia, and he's tried to overturn some that are in place. No contacts between his campaign and Russians, he said as late as last January. Sweet Jesus..whats the count now? 30+?

So just how many times before did you say this really isn't a Trump issue?

Posted: **Thu Nov 02, 2017 9:06 am**

so the Russians wouldn't be influencing the election or utilizing social media if Trump didn't run?

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