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new phone who dis
May 24, 2007

by VideoGames
Morbid Hound

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

If Hillary had bothered campaign in flyover country and won a quarter million more low-info Gomers running on name recognition alone, if Obama hadn't turbofucked the state apparatus and left the party bankrupt and looking for a buyout, would you be trumpeting the Democratic victory as a popular mandate in favor of Schmorkian genderblobs? The Dems lost on their own technocratic terms; the election had little to do with a clash of ideals, there was no grand defection of alienated transphobes, the whole thing came down to which side could get the attention of more of the same people who vote for the party every loving time regardless of who they run or what they say

Yeah, Trump and Romney got similar numbers of votes. It was 100% a Dem collapse due to hubris. Some of that hubris manifested in the more grating woke poo poo, but it was primarily the Clinton hubris that sealed the deal.

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Former DILF
Jul 13, 2017

its pretty lmao that people are still beating this russia drum, we proved conclusively that russia never existed in may of this year

Homestar Runner
Oct 9, 2012

This is the best videogame
I have ever played!
trump is obviously a moron but lol if u think that he's anything other than the yang to Hillary's/Obama's yin, tactless rhetoric notwithstanding

Over There
Jun 28, 2013

by Azathoth

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

new phone who dis posted:

Yeah, Trump and Romney got similar numbers of votes. It was 100% a Dem collapse due to hubris. Some of that hubris manifested in the more grating woke poo poo, but it was primarily the Clinton hubris that sealed the deal.

I've yet to encounter someone offfline who supported Clinton who has any idea what her platform was, beyond maybe a canned Huffpo soundbite about how it actually was just as progressive as Bernie's in unspecified ways but sexists. Try it sometime, see how many correctly identify that she ran on invading Syria. People who actually vote based on the issues of the day are a fuckin rounding error, and the idea that a million votes one way or the other represent a popular mandate on individual policies out of a presidential candidate's dozens is mostly just a fiction spun by the winner to justify doing whatever they like.

A Wizard of Goatse has issued a correction as of 05:12 on Nov 22, 2017

Sophy Wackles
Dec 17, 2000

> access main security grid
access: PERMISSION DENIED.





scrubs season six posted:

rekt doesn't really work when you have to say it yourself.

Your entire argument appears to be "Obama did lovely things so people absolutely should elect someone that would very obviously do far shittier things."

What do you think would have happened without any TARP? And without any foreclosures?

Well, there are thousands of financially sound banks and investment banks out there that weren't heavily leveraged and operating on extreme greed in need of massive bailouts during a downturn. How about they survive and the mismanaged ones are allowed to die? And the rich executives, traders, brokers and shareholders get hosed for their greed as well?

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

The facebook spending does not include their other efforts that we can't get the paper trail to. And that also does not count the viewership that they reached, which is supposedly well over 100M people on fb alone. Russia has a veritable army of paid trolls.

Russia was no doubt trying to stir up poo poo and light fires (on both sides) to gently caress with our country but they never had a grand plan to elect Trump. They were scared when he got elected, just like many countries cause the dude is unpredictable and hot-headed. And it's not just about Russia either when it comes to spending. There are many countries that spend money to influence US elections. And if it wasn't obvious, the US likes to influence elections around the World as well.

My Rhythmic Crotch
Jan 13, 2011

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

I've yet to encounter someone offfline who supported Clinton who has any idea what her platform was, beyond maybe a canned Huffpo soundbite about how it actually was just as progressive as Bernie's in unspecified ways but sexists. Try it sometime, see how many correctly identify that she ran on invading Syria. People who actually vote based on the issues of the day are a fuckin rounding error.
This problem exists in both parties, what is your point?

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

This problem exists in both parties, what is your point?

That Trump didn't win cause trannies, is three whole paragraphs really too much for you

Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

I've yet to encounter someone offfline who supported Clinton who has any idea what her platform was, beyond maybe a canned Huffpo soundbite

it's on her website!!!

Have Blue has issued a correction as of 05:15 on Nov 22, 2017

My Rhythmic Crotch
Jan 13, 2011

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

That Trump didn't win cause trannies, is three whole paragraphs really too much for you
Three of your paragraphs are

new phone who dis
May 24, 2007

by VideoGames
Morbid Hound

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

I've yet to encounter someone offfline who supported Clinton who has any idea what her platform was, beyond maybe a canned Huffpo soundbite about how it actually was just as progressive as Bernie's in unspecified ways but sexists. Try it sometime, see how many correctly identify that she ran on invading Syria. People who actually vote based on the issues of the day are a fuckin rounding error, and the idea that a million votes one way or the other represent a popular mandate on individual policies out of a presidential candidate's dozens is mostly just a fiction spun by the winner to justify doing whatever they like.

Everyone I know who really drank the Clinton kool-aid wants to tell you about her qualifications but reverts to the sexism and conspiracy theories once you start listing off the things she actually did while occupying those positions. You don't get to be president by just showing up and reading your resume when you've spent the last 3 decades being a corrupt shitheel, but a lot of people really thought that was enough.

My Rhythmic Crotch
Jan 13, 2011

Pawn 17 posted:

Russia was no doubt trying to stir up poo poo and light fires (on both sides) to gently caress with our country but they never had a grand plan to elect Trump. They were scared when he got elected, just like many countries cause the dude is unpredictable and hot-headed. And it's not just about Russia either when it comes to spending. There are many countries that spend money to influence US elections. And if it wasn't obvious, the US likes to influence elections around the World as well.
If they had no plan, why expend the time, money, and logistical effort to do it?

I'm glad you agree they did try, and succeed, in influencing us

Sophy Wackles
Dec 17, 2000

> access main security grid
access: PERMISSION DENIED.





Have Blue posted:

it's on her website!!!

It's about 8 more years of the same! AND...progression!

spacetoaster
Feb 10, 2014

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

I've yet to encounter someone offfline who supported Clinton who has any idea what her platform was, beyond maybe a canned Huffpo soundbite about how it actually was just as progressive as Bernie's in unspecified ways but sexists. Try it sometime, see how many correctly identify that she ran on invading Syria. People who actually vote based on the issues of the day are a fuckin rounding error, and the idea that a million votes one way or the other represent a popular mandate on individual policies out of a presidential candidate's dozens is mostly just a fiction spun by the winner to justify doing whatever they like.

All the Hillary supporters around me were blantantly voting for her because she was a woman. They didn't care about anything else. It was going to be so historic.

FactsAreUseless
Feb 16, 2011

spacetoaster posted:

All the Hillary supporters around me were blantantly voting for her because she was a woman. They didn't care about anything else. It was going to be so historic.
Well thank Christ you showed them, lmao.

spacetoaster
Feb 10, 2014

FactsAreUseless posted:

Well thank Christ you showed them, lmao.

Just you wait til 2020, lmao.

Former DILF
Jul 13, 2017

these flabby moon faced incels correctly identified that politicans were corrupt so they... voted for accused rapist and obviously corrupt huckster donald trump to????????

Molothecat
Jul 25, 2007

Wrath, hate, pain, and death!

Former DILF posted:

these flabby moon faced incels correctly identified that politicans were corrupt so they... voted for accused rapist and obviously corrupt huckster donald trump to????????

any word on that 4chan invasion?

Former DILF
Jul 13, 2017

thank you for asking, no the administration staff is still refusing to go through their records :argh:

Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther
Hi im the hacker known as "four-chan"

Molothecat
Jul 25, 2007

Wrath, hate, pain, and death!

plz keep us informed on this situation as it unfolds. it is of utmost importance to the security of our forums

your friend a dog
Nov 2, 2016

by Nyc_Tattoo

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

Three of your paragraphs are

if you're not going to read responses, why bother trying to argue coward

Waffle House
Oct 27, 2004

You follow the path
fitting into an infinite pattern.

Yours to manipulate, to destroy and rebuild.

Now, in the quantum moment
before the closure
when all become one.

One moment left.
One point of space and time.

I know who you are.

You are Destiny.


It's almost impossible that anyone would crosspost on different forums on the internet.

really queer Christmas
Apr 22, 2014

Have Blue posted:

Hi im the hacker known as "four-chan"

Finally the coward shows his face. You’re in big trouble mister!!

Waffle House
Oct 27, 2004

You follow the path
fitting into an infinite pattern.

Yours to manipulate, to destroy and rebuild.

Now, in the quantum moment
before the closure
when all become one.

One moment left.
One point of space and time.

I know who you are.

You are Destiny.


Like Russians? Everyone knows there's special DNS measures in place to keep the Russians from escaping. It's like North Korea, but with the internet.

My Rhythmic Crotch
Jan 13, 2011

your friend a dog posted:

if you're not going to read responses, why bother trying to argue coward
not reading pages back so i can glean that last bit of insight into the mind of a trumper makes me lazy. very lazy, even. that is all though.

Sophy Wackles
Dec 17, 2000

> access main security grid
access: PERMISSION DENIED.





My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

If they had no plan, why expend the time, money, and logistical effort to do it?

I'm glad you agree they did try, and succeed, in influencing us

You miss the point. If you are interested in reading about their motivations and the "Trump Dossier" which the Democrats paid for and pushed so very hard. And which has also been the source of many of the Russia collusion stories this year and investigations, read this. It's written by Dr Mark Galeotti, who knows his poo poo when it comes to Russia and isn't some hack from CNN. You might find it interesting.

quote:

The ‘Trump Dossier,’ or How Russia Helped America Break Itself
By Mark Galeotti · June 13, 2017

There can be little doubt that Russia actively seeks to undermine the legitimacy of the American government, its capacity to act, its unity of purpose. There can be a great deal of legitimate doubt as to quite how far the Russian state and its agents expected or tried to go when the Kremlin made the decision to interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections. There can be considerable suspicion that the process has acquired a momentum all its own, and that America is tearing itself apart with little need of Russian help.

In many ways, one can blame the so-called Trump Dossier, a collection of often dubious and dramatic allegations about the then-candidate collected by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. On commission first to “Never Trump” Republicans and then to Democrats, Steele assembled a dossier that painted a damning portrait of a candidate of low morals, deep greed, and shallow perspectives who posed a high risk to American political and state institutions.

In general terms, the dossier may well accurately characterize the U.S. president’s character. The problem is that the details given of Trump’s alleged Russian links were so often questionable and, indeed, open to being disproved. Steele, an agent-runner who had not been back to Russia since the late 1990s, somehow was citing multiple sources with extraordinary access, including senior figures in the Kremlin. The Russians had, it alleged, been grooming Trump as a political agent of influence for years (which would seem to suggest that they had a quite astonishing degree of political prescience)—but then, nonetheless, placed control of this most secret of programs in the hands of Vladimir Putin’s urbane but not always especially discreet press spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.

The trouble with the Trump Dossier is that it’s a recognizable product of a specific milieu: If you spend an evening or two in the bars where Moscow’s chattering classes hang out, you’ll hear an equal complement of political tall tales about Putin and his presidential administration. The inner circle of the Kremlin is secretly gay; Putin is a pedophile; there has been a “slow-motion coup” and Putin is now just a figurehead. Moscow is a breeding ground for conspiracy theories because it is very far from a healthy or open society: Decisions are made within a very narrowly-drawn and tightly-controlled circle; the legislature is a pantomime caricature of a parliament; “public consultations” are carefully managed; even institutions such as the foreign ministry no longer have any real traction on policy. In such an environment, everyone gossips, everyone speculates, everyone competes to have the most interesting bits of samovar conversation. The kind of gossip that fills the Trump Dossier is common currency in Moscow, even if very little of it has any authority behind it aside from the speaker’s own imagination.

Any experienced observer learns to filter gossip for the stray useful clues that are sometimes hidden within curlicues of fantasy. The author of the Trump Dossier, though, appears enthusiastically to have transcribed every bit of tittle-tattle that fit the overarching narrative of a grand Kremlin scheme to elevate Donald Trump to the presidency.

In doing so, the dossier not only fatally overestimated the Kremlin—it also fatally underestimated it. Stock clichés about Russians notwithstanding, Putin is not a chess player. He does not have carefully calculated long-term schemes planned out a dozen moves ahead. He and his people are improvisers and opportunists. They try to create multiple potential points of leverage, never knowing which may prove useful and which not. They take advantage of the fact that they can operate covertly, break the rules, act without worrying about legislative oversight or constitutional niceties.

They understand their tradecraft very well. They understand Western democracies dangerously badly. It is not just the way that Russian attempts to meddle in elections in Europe, from Austria to France, managed to ensure that their preferred candidates lost; they have also managed to alienate former bridge-builders such as Germany’s Angela Merkel and have made loyalists of the once-fractious Russian-speaking minorities of the Baltic States.

The suggestion of a cunning conspiracy years in the making is a questionable one: Person after person in Russia’s foreign-policy, national-security, and expert community last year told me there was no chance of Trump being elected. In a telling example of the way members of the Russian establishment mirror-image, assuming that Western democracy is like Russian pseudo-democracy, one airily assured me that “the American establishment would not allow this to happen.”

Instead, the Russians, like most everyone else, “knew” Hillary Clinton would be president; unlike members of the Western media and political classes, the Russians saw Clinton as a threat. In the Kremlin’s worldview, Clinton is a hawk of the most interventionist kind, a fervent supporter of American gibridnaya voina—“hybrid war”—and policy of regime change through subversion and artfully manufactured and manipulated public protest. Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution, the other “colored revolutions” of post-Soviet Eurasia, the Arab Spring and the anti-Assad rising in Syria—these were, in the eyes of Moscow’s hawks, made in America and blessed by Hillary Clinton.

The aim of the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign was not to elect the supposedly unelectable Trump but to sow the fields with salt for Hillary Clinton. While patriotic blowhards in the parliament were popping champagne corks when Trump won, serious political strategists in Moscow were looking shocked. The point of the Kremlin’s information-warfare campaign was to weaken President Clinton, distract her, and prevent her from being able to assemble the kind of political consensus for the onslaught on Russian interests they assumed she was bent on. So, stir up trouble in her base. Bring her legitimacy into question. Light a dozen political fires she would have to put out before she could even think about foreign policy.

This kind of multidirectional, brush-fire-information-warfare campaign—not a single overarching conspiracy directed toward a specific aim—is what Russia specializes in these days. The Kremlin practices what I have called “authoritarian entrepreneurialism” rather than the ruthless centralized command and control of the Soviet model. Putin and his circle sketch out in broad terms what they would like to happen, and agents of the state scurry to interpret and meet those desires. From journalists and press agencies, through diplomats and spies, to pundits and hackers, Russian state agents were bent on undermining the legitimacy and coherence of the United States.

The Kremlin’s approach to information warfare and subversion sacrifices some of the authoritarian state’s capacity to focus its resources on a single strategic aim. It also can lead to duplication of effort and even fratricidal collisions, such as the simultaneous attempts to present today’s Ukraine as controlled by both Jews and Nazis. Yet by allowing the Kremlin to weaponize the creative imaginations of its agents and allies, this centrally inspired (but in practice, rather undirected) form of hostile entrepreneurial activity creates a challenge that is, in many ways, too diffuse for the target to predict or resist. This is not a great white shark of the infosphere, directed by Moscow Centre, but a shoal of piranhas; while you fight one off, the rest are rending the flesh off your bones. What is the point of “myth-busting” or “fact-checking” false rumors and stories one by one when none of the individual stories are that important to any larger aim—and new ones are being spawned by the dozen?

The 2016 Kremlin invasion of the United States’ information space was about weakening Washington, not deciding who would sit in the White House. The aim was not to win the political battle so much as to make it as bloody, Pyrrhic and divisive as possible: The point was to turn the election into a poo poo-show. Freedom of speech, plurality of opinion, the goal of consensus—all the things that make a democracy great are, in the Russians’ eyes, points of vulnerability to be exploited through state-inspired information warfare. Objective truths became buried in a landslide of rumors, lies, half-truths, fake news, and conspiracy theories. Existing social, political, and racial fault lines were exploited and levered open, often by seeming to support both extremes.

Because the aim was not as simple as to elect Trump, though, but rather to weaken the world’s last superpower, the campaign is by no means over. Instead, it has pivoted to take advantage of the polarizing influence of President Trump. Some of Russia’s info-warriors and their convenient dupes are now seeking to discredit Trump, thereby damaging the institutions of the state and America’s now-questionable global leadership by proxy. Others are among his most rabid defenders—especially when defending Trump can be a way of undermining the credibility of the U.S. intelligence community, which has itself been fractured and has joined the fray.

This seeming multiplicity of purpose may seem confusing—but it’s not really that hard to understand. Just as Moscow’s RT television channel has offered a platform for alt-right demagogues and Texan secessionists, as well to Occupy-movement leftists and pro-Palestinian activists, so, too, its political and covert campaigns are equal-opportunity subversive—everyone is invited to the party. Intelligence-community leaks against Trump are portrayed as evidence that the shadowy “deep state” is defying the democratic will of the people. Meanwhile, the Kremlin itself publishes photos taken by a Russian photographer inside the Oval Office (to the White House’s chagrin) and, as one Moscow source put it to me, they “needle the Democrats until they will burn down the White House just to get at Trump.”

The real tragedy, from the Western standpoint, is that a passion for conspiracy theory and polarizing positions can very quickly acquire its own momentum. Most of those currently ripping America apart are Americans, who are doing so because they believe it is their patriotic duty to stand up to Moscow. Others are Trump supporters who are enraged by what they see as a conspiracy to smear their hero and weaken America. They are both right—and they are both missing the larger point of the campaign in which they serve as unwitting agents of influence. The damage they inflict on each other, and on American political and state institutions, is precisely what the Kremlin wants: a self-sustaining process that erodes the country’s democratic legitimacy and reduces the scope for compromise and consensus, even without another single Russian hack, leak, or disinformation operation.

At the same time, the Kremlin is also realizing it should have been more careful in what it wished for. It is tempting to assume the Russians are now sitting back, eating popcorn, and watching the unfolding drama in America with glee. And yet, truth be told, they are worried.

I was in Moscow when Damascus’ chemical weapons attack—or, at least, the TV coverage of its aftermath—prompted Donald Trump’s decision to launch a cruise missile strike on the Syrian Shayrat airbase. The next day, one Russian foreign-ministry insider was candidly downbeat in his assessment that all their worst fears had been vindicated: They now faced a U.S. president who could and would change state policy in unpredictable ways literally overnight, felt no need to telegraph his moves or sound out responses in advance, and had a relatively low threshold for the use of force.

Putin has long capitalized on American restraint and predictability. In carefully crafting for himself a persona as an unpredictable risk-taker, he has relied on Washington to be the responsible adult in the relationship. However, the Russian diplomat I spoke with feared those days were over, with an American president who no longer felt constrained by working institutions or was even willing to believe his own government, and no longer felt the need or saw the possibility of creating any kind of bipartisan policy consensus. Such a president, he felt, was a danger not just to the United States but to everyone. Much the same could be said about the self-sustaining political firestorm that is now burning in Washington.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/237266/trump-dossier-russia-putin

bird with big dick
Oct 21, 2015

new phone who dis posted:

They spent something like 600k on facebook. That's so tiny that it's ridiculous.

I guess we should pretend it didn’t happen then without looking at it or thinking about it or considering it.

quote:

Each respective campaign spent billions

Source?

Lemming
Apr 21, 2008

Pawn 17 posted:

You miss the point. If you are interested in reading about their motivations and the "Trump Dossier" which the Democrats paid for and pushed so very hard. And which has also been the source of many of the Russia collusion stories this year and investigations, read this. It's written by Dr Mark Galeotti, who knows his poo poo when it comes to Russia and isn't some hack from CNN. You might find it interesting.

jewish-news-and-politics/237266/trump-dossier-russia-putin

Lol

Sophy Wackles
Dec 17, 2000

> access main security grid
access: PERMISSION DENIED.





Lemming posted:

jewish-news-and-politics/237266/trump-dossier-russia-putin

Lol

Yeah, Tablet is an American Jewish magazine. The first thing that came up when I was trying to find the article.

FisheyStix
Jul 2, 2008

This avatar was paid for by the Silent Majority.
guys I just got back from 4 chang and you're not gonna BELIEVE what they think of this "Democrat" fella

Telephones
Apr 28, 2013
Good article, thanks for posting it.

Former DILF
Jul 13, 2017

FisheyStix posted:

guys I just got back from 4 chang and you're not gonna BELIEVE what they think of this "Democrat" fella

probably used the k word a bunch, maybe n word lover

Sophy Wackles
Dec 17, 2000

> access main security grid
access: PERMISSION DENIED.





FisheyStix posted:

guys I just got back from 4 chang and you're not gonna BELIEVE what they think of this "Democrat" fella

I heard that a nazi frog lives there creating weaponized memes all day long. Did you meet him??

FisheyStix
Jul 2, 2008

This avatar was paid for by the Silent Majority.

Pawn 17 posted:

I heard that a nazi frog lives there creating weaponized memes all day long. Did you meet him??

yes he is surprisingly well spoken

Tiberius Christ
Mar 4, 2009

lol at the thought that american psychology is so fragile and weak that advertisements on facebook was enough the psyop the whole country, in which case let the russians take over they are far superior to us

Conch Shell Corp
Feb 24, 2009

oh no a foreign government spent money influencing american democracy

aipac spends 10x what russia did every NON-election year, and no one gives a gently caress lmao, but all of a sudden leftists care about foreign influence in elections. man a country attempting to influence another... fuckjed up...

new phone who dis
May 24, 2007

by VideoGames
Morbid Hound

scrubs season six posted:

I guess we should pretend it didn’t happen then without looking at it or thinking about it or considering it.


Source?

I mean generally, not specifically on FB, sorry I was unclear.

your friend a dog
Nov 2, 2016

by Nyc_Tattoo
its funny bc the russia argument is the same sort of argument that leftists use to infantalize minorities.

"the american people couldnt help it, the russian ads were just too much for them. they're not capable of making decisions on their own, they need the brave smart democrats to do it for them"

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Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther

Conch Shell Corp posted:

oh no a foreign government spent money influencing american democracy

aipac spends 10x what russia did every NON-election year, and no one gives a gently caress lmao, but all of a sudden leftists care about foreign influence in elections. man a country attempting to influence another... fuckjed up...

aipac is also bad hth

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