Donald Trump is talking about having met with the President of the Virgin Islands (who technically would be himself). He says that tomorrow he will meet with the Commander-in-Chief of the US armed forces. He has also suggested that Mike Pence schedule a meeting with the President of the Senate. This is the guy who was boasting about his IQ earlier in the week.
Columbia is talking about hiring Hillary Clinton to be a professor. Can they afford her speaking fees? Do university’s have any form of ethics agreements before hiring someone? If so, they should know that she totally ignored the ethics agreement she entered into before taking her last job as Secretary of State.
Question of the Day: Which organization is more wracked in scandal and chaos: The Weinstein Co. or the Trump White House?
It makes perfect sense that Bernie Sanders was picked instead of Hillary Clinton to speak at the Women’s Convention. Unlike Clinton, Sanders has not promoted bombing of women around the world, has not defended the use of cluster bombs where women live, and has not backed taking welfare benefits away from women.
Eighteen states are suing the Trump administration over stopping the ObamaCare subsidies. The Pottery Barn Rule should now take effect with regards to Donald Trump and the Affordable Care Act–You Break It, You Own It.
I’ve been saying all along that the real Russia story is about the money, not altering the 2016 election results. NBC News is reporting that Paul Manafort had a $60 million relationship with a Russian oligarch.
Quote of the Day: “For the last 24 hours, Donald Trump has been the president of busy town. This morning, he signed an executive order to get rid of some key provisions of Obamacare. For instance, the care part.” –Stephen Colbert
Financial ties between various members of the Trump family and associates are the more obvious, and probably actionable, parts of the Russian influence campaign. So far no one has claimed the Russians directly affected vote totals. However, we dismiss the psyops angles at our peril:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/14/russia-us-politics-social-media-facebook
Clinton, her supporters, and many Democrats do claim not only the Russians affected the vote totals but also are the reason Clinton lost.
The “psyops angles” are also greatly exaggerated. Russia did not change American attitudes with $100,000 in Facebook ads. While the Clinton camp claims that views of those oppose her are based upon Russian propaganda, people did not oppose Clinton because Russians changes American views and attitudes. Russia merely repeated views which many people had about Clinton long before the election on both the left and right. Views about Clinton were pretty firmly established before the election. Clinton lost for reasons I had discussed long before the campaign started in posts warning against giving her the nomination, and which were very similar to posts written during the 2008 campaign.
Evidently you didn’t read the article I linked. Facebook wasn’t the only social media company involved and Russian propaganda was seen by tens of millions of Americans. If psyops (propaganda) didn’t work our military and intelligence services wouldn’t have groups devoted to them and advertising wouldn’t be a $190B per year industry.
No doubt there are Clinton supporters willing to blame anything but their candidate for her loss. However, blaming her, her dead-end supporters, and Democratic operatives alone is equally blind.
I read it but the article didn’t change anything. I’m not saying psyops doesn’t work but there is no evidence of Russia achieving anything of significance.
The bottom line is that Russia did not cause Trump to win as Clinton and her supporters claim.
As far as we’re likely to know that’s true. The Russian social influence operation and the outcome of the election must be treated as separate issues unless proven otherwise. However, that doesn’t make psychological and cyber operations against our democratic process any less important.
Of course it makes it less important. The whole controversy is over Clinton and her supporters claiming that Clinton would have won the election if not for Russia. It makes a huge difference whether there is any validity to this, or if we are merely talking about propaganda which every country uses. It is also dangerous to spread anti-Russia hysteria and ignore the facts that many of the claims of cyber operations were spread with minimal evidence and later found to be false claims, and that the United States has done far more to intervene in the elections of others. ”
Of course we need to improve up cyber security in general, but not because of bogus claims that the 2016 election was hacked. It is also unrealistic in the internet age to expect that other countries won’t express their views. This was especially true in 2016 when one of the candidates is alligned with neocons who support regime change in Russia and the other candidate was (even if often incoherently and for questionable motives) talking about improving relations with Russia. Under the circumstances, and considering how much Russia had at stake in the 2016 election, the only surprising thing is that they didn’t spend more than a trivial amount of money on advertising.
Evidently you don’t understand what the Mueller investigation is about. The main thrust is not how Clinton was affected. Her popularity is still low and her dead-end supporters are irrelevant since she won’t be running again.