Russian trolls in my computer. Another good reason to not join Twitter, Tweeter or whatever it is.
No twitter, no facebook, instagram, or whatever other iteration. Email is bad enough. Posting here lets me vent though. I suppose there are Russian trolls, bots of whatever source, or posters (looking at you ukky) trying to get a rise out of people who inhabit TPM but generally this seems to be a safe sandbox to play in.
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The most amazing aspect of this Russian effort to affect American politics is how brazen and open the Russians have been in its execution.
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Yes. If youâre going to investigate state-sponsored Russian trolling, there is no earthly reason to confine your investigation to Facebook.
There should also be an investigation into why our security agencies are only investigating this now.
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Archeologists Of The Future,
Honestly, we could not believe our mortal Russian enemy was in that Trojan Horse.
â The Lost American Civilization
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Iâm pretty sure at the time Obama thought Hillary was going to win easily despite all of this. The polls showed thatâŚright up until Comeyâs late October message. At that point, I doubt very much that Obama could have turned the narrative. After the election would have been a politically less fraught time to then publicize and punish these Russian activities.
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You are absolutely right. And President Obama failed to speak out because he was afraid of the Republican response and he assumed Hillary was a shoo-in to win. This was a massive national security failure on Obamaâs watch, perhaps greater than 9-11.
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Ah, but weâre all being paid by George Soros. Donât tell me you never noticed?
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No doubt - recall the big St Petersburg white power rally (not the one hit by Irma, and a KGB-run town second to none) a couple years back.
Huh. That is an interesting question. I admit, Iâm having a difficult time weighing the two against each other.
Certainly, both have led to deaths (one more directly than the other) ⌠but I canât shake the notion that 9/11 leads to certain cultural factors which contributed to the public being more susceptible to propaganda; fear mongering, in particular. Plus the Giuliani connection⌠although, maybe thatâs of limited impact.
Of course, 9/11 leads to the Iraq Invasion⌠Iâve heard it suggested (although I canât say that Iâm convinced by the notion) that the Iraq War is responsible for Obama being elected. I canât recall if the proponent of the theory meant it in the sense that without the Iraq Invasion, Obama wouldnât have been the presidential candidate at that point in time, or that he wouldnât have won the primary, or that he wouldnât have won the general election.
Honestly, I donât know; I give Obama the benefit of the doubt that he was trying to do what he felt was right.
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Yahbut her emails!?!
/s
Youâre right. It pains me (but not you, I suspect) to say that this will prove to be the stain on the Obama legacy. But the failure wasnât so much to speak up against Republicansâfor all we know, that might have actually increased Trumpâs voteâbut in falling asleep at the wheel in the years preceding the election. Absent a catastrophic failure of US intelligence, there must have been some knowledge in 2014 and 2015 that Russia could attack the 2016 election/primaries using âactive measuresâ. There should have been a public discussion and a plan in place before 2016.
In any case, there has to be a discussion of the role of the intelligence and security services in this. How was this allowed to happen? Why are we spending billions of dollars on these clowns? Who do they recruit? Are these institutions riddled with Russian agents and/or GOP extremists? What the fuck is going on? My hope is that Mueller will get some sense of this crisis and, in addition to whatever measures he might recommend in relation to the action of particular individuals, will recommend a massive scrutiny of the intelligence/political failure on the scale of the 9/11 Commission.
EDIT: I might add that there should likewise be an acknowledgement from the Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders campaigns that the Russian interference exerted a huge and possibly decisive influence on the rhetoric of defamation routinely employed by their supporters against Clinton, and maybe even their votes. To put it another way, millions of Americans read and received a lot of the trolling propaganda and werenât taken in by it and didnât repeat it and resisted its often transparent attempts at influence. But a large segment of the progressive movement either fell for it or cynically put it to use for their own purposes (Sarandon, Turner, Weaver are not in the clear in this respect).
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Spencerâs personal trolling budget may be higher than Moscowâs. Which is yet another reason that, yes, he needs looking through.
Judging by some of the surprisingly extreme left wing views occasionally expressed here, Iâve wondered the same as well.
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You just did.
You might want to run your theory by Malcolm Nance.
[edited for spelling error]
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Sadly, I think part of the problem in exposing the Russian operation, or in having taken it fully seriously early on, is the fact that we do it too. In a way, it just seemed like business as usual.
Until it wasnât.
@mattinpa There could of course easily be Russian trolls commenting here. Or those paid by Russia. Comments by Russian speakers are always obvious. They just canât get on board with articles. But what I see is mostly right wing intruders. Trump is president. Get used to it, tards.
The Russian approach would be to sow dissension among Democrats, or Liberals, or Progressives, or however you want to term the block. You know, people calling other people emo progs and Bernie Bros. And Clintonistas. When itâs someone who hasnât been around for a while and wasnât in the Clinton v. Sanders wars here, I think itâs quite suspicious.
Though I think itâs more likely just the Mercers manipulating the opposition party than it is the Russians.
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I want to know why only now is the âgovernmentâ outlawing use of Kapersky software. When my FaceBook page was hijacked and they recommended I use Kaperskyâs anti-virus program, I was horrified, appalled, aghast and more. I couldnât and still canât believe that FaceBook was naively in bed with a Russian software company. I am old enough to remember the Cold War. My dad was in the Defense Industry. Are these tech kids just too young and ignorant?
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Malcolm Nance has had his hair on fire over this for yonks. Heâs said thatâs true of the IC as a whole. Itâs the damned (R) politicians and media that have lagged.
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We here at the NDASKL take troll incursions very seriously. Seriously! Our billy goat tributes are way down.
Nothing about this is business as usual. That got left behind when we realized that rethuglicans, Konservatives, and garden-variety oligarchs were working with âlilâ Vlad to reshape what will soon become a wasteland for most of us into a paradise for them.
I predict that no one worth less than a million dollars will ever live in the Florida Keys in my lifetime. Indeed, if itâs up to former-mayor Clint Eastwood of Pebble Beach, theyâll charge a hefty fee just to drive through and view their opulence. (Luckily for them, most drummpits will do so happily.)
I am praying that the U.S. Virgin Islands are not completely consumed.
If there is one skill rethuglicans have, it is turning every disaster - natural, or often man-made, into a PROFIT CENTER.
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Well, as a Bernie supporter, I wondered about some of the nastiness myself. It didnât seem logical. Itâs not like it was Eugene McCarthy v. LBJ.
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Amen to all of this.
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