a quick poll about Russia and Donald Trump

folks RT are not the only ones getting dinged xp

Cheering @googlenews’ decision to de-rank RT and Sputnik? It’s part of the company’s ongoing crackdown against “offensive sites.” Here are some other apparent targets.https://t.co/edTPsfhFby pic.twitter.com/J78w82crqM

— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) November 20, 2017

can we stop saying "two scoops"?

Ia that not a thing anymore? I don't usually write it, but I'm more sick of seeing/typing his name, tbh.

actually simon the best way to deal with incipient fascism is to crack down on the press, it works every time. everyone knows the institutions of liberal democracy cannot defend themselves against serious attack and must be restrained for their own safety; besides, those who designed them could never have foreseen our modern media environment, in which uncredentialed people may reach and deceive large audiences without proper regulation. it is the corporations and big bourgeoisie that have the correct perspective on political dialogue at this time. they value democracy just as much as you and i do, and they will help to shield us from the threat of authoritarianism. also, another thing it's important to remember to do in these situations is to fill the national culture with a sense of humiliation at the hands of traitorous agents of a foreign power. you def wanna get so much of that in the air that even liberals go full schizo about treason and plot and start calling for military coups. this is all extremely healthy for democracy and if u think otherwise you are a useful idiot. soon donnie dum dums will be flusheroo-rooed and everything will go back to normal.

Simon that's from a site that has many obvious troll articles on it and the data source they used for that is a "competitive intelligence" SEO for hire shop

There's a fine line between not wanting to actually say his name and sounding like Morbs. I'm not saying I know where to draw that line.

xxp

very trenchant, dlh

Morbs calls him Yam, iirc.

My only thing is I like calling his son DJTJ because it makes him sound like a robot. Or a DJ.

The specific data is questionable but aiui Google doesn’t dispute they are doing this. They recalibrated the news search algorithms to deprioritise content they deemed to be less ‘authoritative’ - using human raters to determine site value against a set of criteria that hasn’t been disclosed.

always love it when alt-right fuckboys lament rights they don't have maybe or maybe not being possibly but not necessarily kinda infringed

https://www.npr.org/2017/11/21/565654507/journalist-investigating-trump-and-russia-says-full-picture-is-one-of-collusion

just finished reading that - not really anything new there but seeing it all in one place is... persuasive?

maybe it's all just coincidence though?

https://www.wired.com/story/the-state-departments-fumbled-fight-against-russian-propaganda/

But in other respects, it was a strategic failure because actually sanctions are still in place. It's now impossible for Donald Trump to lift them. And I think what it shows is that the problem with the way the Kremlin thinks about the world is that it imagines other countries to be rather like Russia. It doesn't understand American institutional politics. It doesn't understand Congress. It doesn't understand there's a sort of free and vigorous media despite everything.

also

You're going to have to say it. I can't get it right.

HARDING: Rybolovlev - Dmitry Rybolovlev.

GROSS: Rybolovlev, OK.

HARDING: Rybolovlev.

maybe bill moyers bought rybolovlev's da vinci?

http://billmoyers.com/story/trump-russia-story-coming-together-heres-make-sense/

luv2rybolovlev

also

wherever you look, all of the people in Trump's government, especially in its early stages, have a kind of Russia connection. I mean, it's - obviously, Trump did the picking, but it's almost as if Putin had the kind of last word...

This is correct about a lot, imo, including the difficulty with finding decent cheese in Moscow:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/world/europe/russia-vladimir-putin-liberals.html

“American liberals are so upset about Trump that they cannot believe he is a real product of American life,”

Lol. Horseshit.

Nah, many libs treat Trump as an aberration rather than the natural outcome of the deterioration of the American political system

Thats wrong too, because people know its more than just deterioration- these forces have been there but less enabled and empowered for a while.

Russians, of course, can’t be blamed for believing in an extremely reductive caricature of Americans and our government

“many libs” sounds like Trump talk, up yr game SH

Well, we currently have a government that is a reductive caricature of a government. Americans continue to be multifarious.

hence my deployment, Trumpian or not, of "many" and not "all" or even "most"

"Bijan Kian"

Well, as long as shortsighted “libs” like me and many others seem to think Putin & cronies fucked with our election in a way that deserves exactly the sort of permanent sanctions that they got, and probably criminal charges up to and including treason for one or more members of the sitting POTUS’ campaign staff, I feel it’s only fair to remind the farsighted, right-thinking folks get a reminder of exactly who their only allies are in this very thoughtful, nuanced debate

David Avella: "No Democrat has said specifically 'how did Russia influence voters thinking that @HillaryClinton shouldn't be president.'" pic.twitter.com/JmCFTF8T8g

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 24, 2017

Thats wrong too, because people know its more than just deterioration- these forces have been there but less enabled and empowered for a while.

Do you remember Dubya's administration?

The guy who sealed the nomination by speaking at a white supremacist college. I mean, it was a classier form of white supremacy than tiki torches, I guess...

I feel it’s only fair to remind the farsighted, right-thinking folks get a reminder of exactly who their only allies are in this very thoughtful, nuanced debate

Like I said: thoughtful, nuanced

I’m honestly not even sure what straw man you’re referring to. Buchanan splitting the right vote with his phenomenal ignorance would lead to the government bending in a left direction. Nader actually splitting the vote with his phenomenal ignorance led to the government doing what it did.

Counterfactuals such as these are for morons, anyway, this is about whether Russian state actors played our election in favor of a schmuck that they thought they could control. And the answers seem to be coming up: locally targeted propaganda, yes; favoring a pre-identified mark, yes; working connections as soon as possible to achieve Russian state aims, yes.

Too bad they still suck at understanding Americans and couldn’t even get the sanctions lifted. Cheers.

I also don’t understand how anyone thinks we’re giving Putin (lol autocorrect wanted to say “sputum” - knuckles, my phone) and his FSB pukes a bunch of extra credit by appointing a special prosecutor, who has “FBI Director” on his CV in order to weed out and imprison the scum that were involved. I guess if you’re Russian AF you might think that’s all kabuki. I am not, so I don’t.

Buchanan and Nader both opposed the WTO in the late '90s. For some people this made them essentially the same purpose, because reasons why are apparently irrelevant. Likewise, your "check out yer Fox News allies" stuff is purposefully ignorant of how the left and the right view the Russia issue.

The left, broadly speaking, isn't saying Russia didn't attempt to meddle or that nothing criminal occurred - the left is merely saying that the liberal view of Russian interference is overemphasized to diminish the blame on other parties... like the American people and the Democratic and Republican parties. Russia didn't provoke the decades-long GOP battle to roll back voting rights. Russia didn't create the Electoral College. Russia didn't ensure that 2/3 of white evangelicals have voted Republican for generations. Russia didn't ensure that Democrats nominated the candidate with the second-worst negatives to battle the candidate with the worst.

same person*

russia, a foreign country, isn't allowed to steal campaign information from the democratic national committee and supply it to the republican candidate

Who disagrees with that? The leap between that and "this is why we have Donald Trump" is the chasm you can't bridge.

why do i have to bridge it?

the left is merely saying that the liberal view of Russian interference is overemphasized to diminish the blame on other parties... like the American people and the Democratic and Republican parties.

... ... ... ... okey dokey. Maybe I don’t spend enough time on Twitter, I might understand. I live among a shitload of veterans, minorities, civil servants and scientists, so I have no clue about how America actually works.

SV and SH at least have the excuse of being foreigners who get their confirmation bias of “many libs” via teh internets. But fuck all of you for telling me what and how I think.

If it seems like I’m taking this personally and I shouldn’t be, well, we all know patriotism is for assholes, so you win again.

And the above tirade aside - how in the fuck are we “libs” avoiding the issues of racial injustice, income inequality, endless war, and environmental destruction while we point out that motherfuckers interfering in our election by any means is completely unacceptable? Why does THE LEFT, the proudest and most ineffectual bag of self-sucking dicks in the history of politics, get to dictate what problems get to be solved sequentially instead of in parallel? Because one time your guy convinced insurance companies to demand seat belts at the same time they were going to do it anyway?

Phew

My only thing is I like calling his son DJTJ because it makes him sound like a robot. Or a DJ.

― Josh in Chicago,

Idk why Donaldinho hasn’t caught on.

If I were him, I’d want to be called that. I’d also want to die.

Where is the left on redistricting?
Is the left busting all their asses to find a way for Guam, USVI, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Northern Marianas, and the District to all have Senate and House representation?

And the above tirade aside - how in the fuck are we “libs” avoiding the issues of racial injustice, income inequality, endless war, and environmental destruction while we point out that motherfuckers interfering in our election by any means is completely unacceptable?

because none of the candidates the majority of liberals would ideally replace Trump with effectively oppose any of those things?

Because as far as I’m concerned the Russians only even got close to getting what they thought they wanted because we have failed miserably to provide the franchise to at least a Louisiana’s worth of our citizens. Easy fix! Right? I mean, Left?

Oh hey you’re up, good

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barack_Obama_Supreme_Court_candidates

President Barack Obama made two successful appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States. The first was Judge Sonia Sotomayor to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice David H. Souter. Sotomayor was confirmed by the United States Senate on August 6, 2009, by a vote of 68–31. The second appointment was that of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to replace the retired John Paul Stevens. Kagan was confirmed by the United States Senate on August 5, 2010, by a vote of 63–37.

Morbius cosplayers, all y’all