US Politics Mega-thread - Page 11

On March 21 2018 15:07 Leporello wrote:

His capitulating to Putin outweighs even his own self-interest at this point. Whatever the "thing" is, be it financial debt or blackmail, it is devastating and his whole family is implicated.

I'm not sure why we've had to wait 10-20 months for some of these folks to wake up. What Trump said in this recent phone call is, after all, simply congruent to his campaign-rhetoric nearly two years ago in regards to praising Putin's "democratic successes" and denying all allegations made against him. The extent to which we took things for granted cannot be overstated. We've had to listen and watch this for two years for people to finally realize that this man's conflict-of-interest is real and has real consequences.

For all the Deep State talk, I get the feeling Republicans really do believe and rely on it. They take it for granted that the Deep State will keep Trump totally in check, and therefore nothing this one man does really matters (likewise, nothing they do or say matters, so lie your ass off). But in a way, this is giving Republicans benefit of the doubt. Because the alternatives are worse, which is that they either don't care about the history and struggle for democracy (of which Putin has long been enemy #1), or they're just completely incapable of judging people at even the shallowest, easiest of levels.

Word of the conversation comes just hours after the Kremlin said Putin didn’t feel slighted that Trump snubbed him after he won re-election Sunday, advising that it would make sense to “sleep on it.”

“This should not be regarded as an unfriendly step. Putin remains open to normalizing relations with our US partners, where it is of interest and crucial,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier Tuesday.

“The president has been getting many congratulatory messages from foreign leaders. Some may be unable to make a phone call due to a tight schedule, and others, for a different reason,” he continued. “There is no reason to make a mountain out of a molehill about anything here. Lastly, there is a good old saying: ‘Sleep on it.'”

On March 21 2018 22:31 Plansix wrote:


This story keeps getting weirder. "Deep state" and "drain the swamp" were field tested as messages to get peoples support all the way back in 2014. This isn’t a political research firm, this is a propaganda agency. They are not testing political policy messages, but the best way to manipulate people.

On March 21 2018 23:05 zlefin wrote:

I'm not getting a strong sense of the distinction you're trying to make; political policy messages are often, from what i've seen, about finding the best ways to manipulate people.

On March 21 2018 23:17 On_Slaught wrote:


This is one of the least surprising things ive ever read. To think that Deep State, Build the Wall, and Drain the Swamp were propaganda created in a lab to appeal to the racism and paranoia underlying white America should surprise no-one.

Though having it in writing is all the more fun to beat it over the heads of fools like those on Breitbart parroting them.

On March 21 2018 23:19 Plansix wrote:

They were developing a campaign message back in 2014 for an election that would take place 2 years later with an unknown candidate. For context, the company also ran a rumor campaign in 2007 to undermine a Nigerian election, which from all reports was effective. This isn’t a company that is interested in what policies people respond to and how to present those policies to voters. They are looking for what causes an emotional responses and uses that to push them to vote in a specific manner. Truth or fiction doesn’t matter to them, only that young, white conservatives responded to it.

Also they are a foreign company that collected this data separate from the Trump campaign. If they gave that data to Trump, it would be a violation of the strongest provision of the election laws. Election campaigns cannot receive material support from foreign groups or people. It doesn’t matter that they opened an office in the US, they are still a UK company.

On March 21 2018 23:26 zlefin wrote:


yes, I get that. I'm just not seeing the distinction you were trying to make with typical political policy messages, which to me, also seem to be about getting people to vote one way or the other rather than about reality. i.e. my concern/reply wasn't about the larger issues, but about the very narrow issue of what distinctino you were trying to make between whta they did and what typical political policy messages are.

On March 21 2018 23:26 zlefin wrote:


yes, I get that. I'm just not seeing the distinction you were trying to make with typical political policy messages, which to me, also seem to be about getting people to vote one way or the other rather than about reality. i.e. my concern/reply wasn't about the larger issues, but about the very narrow issue of what distinctino you were trying to make between whta they did and what typical political policy messages are.

On March 21 2018 23:40 Plansix wrote:

Because the research and messaging was created outside of the scope of an election or candidate. They were looking for messaging that would cause an emotional response, mostly based on fear of immigrants and cultural change. That is the foundation of propaganda throughout history. This system found its home with Trump, who ran on similar messaging up to that point. But it was created long before he existed and they knew who would respond well to it.

Take that in contrast to someone like Bernie Sanders, who ran on a platform shooting the moon creating services and tackling income disparity head on. The campaign messaging formed around things he already stood for, not separate from him. The team he hired had not done research to confirm how to frame taxing the wealthy 1-2 years before he decided to run for office.

On March 21 2018 23:33 On_Slaught wrote:


At the very least it undermines the idea that the idea of a Deep State was ever founded on any sort of real world evidence. It's a rabid wet dream of Breitbarters.

Also, there is value in what it reveals about many Trump voters.

On March 21 2018 23:49 zlefin wrote:

ok, but (setting aside the legal issues) wouldn't you expect an electioneering company to pre-prepare some optimized messages for sale?
to me it just looks like manufacturing a good (the message) which you'll sell later.
lots of campaigns run based on fear of immigrants and cultural change, and that's been true for a long time; so it's not like i'ts a message that would have no buyers.
and you gotta do something in the off-season; I imagine this kind of research is something you do to make sure your talent/employees have work in between campaign seasons.

On March 22 2018 00:00 Plansix wrote:

A lot of Germans bought tickets to see The Triumph of Will. It was a well directed and moving film. It was also Nazi propaganda. Just because there was a market for the Mercers propaganda research doesn’t mean it isn’t based on lies and a desire to manipulate voters.

On March 22 2018 00:03 zlefin wrote:

again, I don't dispute that part.
I'm questioning how that's different from much of the rest of politics, which is also based on lies and manipulation of voters.
probably we shoudl just drop this line of inquiry, as my attempt to focus on the narrow point isn't getting through clearly.

On March 22 2018 00:03 zlefin wrote:

again, I don't dispute that part.
I'm questioning how that's different from much of the rest of politics, which is also based on lies and manipulation of voters.
probably we shoudl just drop this line of inquiry, as my attempt to focus on the narrow point isn't getting through clearly.

Cambridge Analytica was not employed by the Leave campaign, it said. Cambridge Analytica “is a US company based in the US. It hasn’t worked in British politics.”

Which is how, earlier this week, I ended up in a Pret a Manger near Westminster with Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU’s affable communications director...

Cambridge Analytica had worked for them, he said. It had taught them how to build profiles, how to target people and how to scoop up masses of data from people’s Facebook profiles. A video on YouTube shows one of Cambridge Analytica’s and SCL’s employees, Brittany Kaiser, sitting on the panel at Leave.EU’s launch event.

Facebook was the key to the entire campaign, Wigmore explained. A Facebook ‘like’, he said, was their most “potent weapon”. “Because using artificial intelligence, as we did, tells you all sorts of things about that individual and how to convince them with what sort of advert...

[Cambridge Analytica's] psychometric model...owes its origins to original research carried out by scientists at Cambridge University’s Psychometric Centre, research based on a personality quiz on Facebook that went viral. More than 6 million people ended up doing it, producing an astonishing treasure trove of data...

These Facebook profiles – especially people’s “likes” – could be correlated across millions of others to produce uncannily accurate results. Michal Kosinski, the centre’s lead scientist, found that with knowledge of 150 likes, their model could predict someone’s personality better than their spouse. With 300, it understood you better than yourself. “Computers see us in a more robust way than we see ourselves,” says Kosinski...

Did SCL Group have access to the university’s model or data, I ask Professor Jonathan Rust, the centre’s director? “Certainly not from us,” he says. “We have very strict rules around this.”

A scientist, Aleksandr Kogan, from the centre was contracted to build a model for SCL, and says he collected his own data. Professor Rust says he doesn’t know where Kogan’s data came from. “The evidence was contrary. I reported it.” An independent adjudicator was appointed by the university. “But then Kogan said he’d signed a non-disclosure agreement with SCL and he couldn’t continue [answering questions].”

Kogan disputes this and says SCL satisfied the university’s inquiries...

There’s nothing accidental about Trump’s behaviour, Andy Wigmore tells me. “That press conference. It was absolutely brilliant. I could see exactly what he was doing. There’s feedback going on constantly. That’s what you can do with artificial intelligence. You can measure ever reaction to every word. He has a word room, where you fix key words. We did it. So with immigration, there are actually key words within that subject matter which people are concerned about. So when you are going to make a speech, it’s all about how can you use these trending words.”

Wigmore met with Trump’s team right at the start of the Leave campaign. “And they said the holy grail was artificial intelligence.”

Who did?

“Jared Kushner and Jason Miller.”

On March 22 2018 00:18 Excludos wrote:


There is never just a "yes" or "no" to the "lies and manipulation". Every politician, even the really sainty ones, does it to some degree. The difference is exactly that, the degree. Any attempt at excusing what has been done here with "every politician lies" is really just that, an excuse. Winning votes based on enraging your voter base against the rest of the country and world due to propaganda and lies is not the same as, for instance, promising not to raise taxes and then end up doing it anyways.

On March 22 2018 00:47 Plansix wrote:
https://twitter.com/krassenstein/status/976210020391006208

John Bolton and the North Carolina GOP. The Mercers seems to have their thrown their lot in with the worst the nation has to offer.

On March 22 2018 00:51 GreenHorizons wrote:


I'd love to see their corporate clients, anyone seen those?

On March 22 2018 00:58 Plansix wrote:

The stuff about US political clients is front facing, ie: folks like the NRA and Cruz talked about hiring CA. I don’t anyone has obtained a client list for them yet. I know they worked for a Russian Oil company doing political research outside of Russia. The Russia oil company happens to be run by one of the oligarchs we sanctioned. The guy who used to work for them was really bothered by an oil company doing the level of people research CA was involved with. But that was out of the UK “branch”.

Edit:

The interview about the Russian Oil company:

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/18/594671296/report-cambridge-analytica-harvested-private-information