12/12 Mike Luckovich: Wall protecting America
Heh, true story. (Another reason to sit down and shut the fuck up, Seth.)
Category: Media and Culture,
Donald Trump Hilariously Fucks Up The Army/Navy Coin Toss
Donald Trump Hilariously Fucks Up The Army/Navy Coin Toss
What, had he never seen a coin toss before?! Moron.
New reports detail sophistication of Russian influence efforts in U.S.
Some content that was initiated by the Russian government, operating through the Internet Research Agency (IRA), still lives on social media platforms here and the Kremlin’s interference operations are likely to continue – now and through 2020, experts found.
…The Oxford report, which also drew from data provided to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said IRA’s activities began on Twitter in 2013, before evolving into a “multi-platform strategy” that included Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms.
“The scale of their operation was massive,” New Knowledge’s authors wrote, citing the 126 million Facebook users and 20 million Instagram users whom they estimated were reached by IRA content. The IRA’s efforts also included posting more than 10.4 million tweets and 1,000 YouTube videos, as well as targeting other, less prominent platforms, including Tumblr, Reddit and Pinterest.
…”The most prolific IRA efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted Black American communities,” New Knowledge’s report said, “and appear to have been focused on developing Black audiences and recruiting Black Americans as assets.”
The report included new details on the ways in which IRA operatives engaged in direct outreach and recruitment of American citizens, coaxing them to protest or perform specific jobs or tasks, and even attempting to forge personal connections around difficult personal struggles like sex addiction.
…Facebook and Instagram posts targeting right-wing users and mocking the idea of Russian interference as well as the media outlets that covered it sprouted up in the election’s immediate aftermath.
“What we’ve seen here is a sophisticated operation that does not hesitate to reach out to individual Americans, that does not hesitate to turn them into unwitting tools of the Russian government,” said Renee DiResta, one of the principal authors of New Knowledge’s report. “We believe they are going to spend less time creating their own, easily-detectable pages in bad English, and begin engaging in even more targeted outreach, including by infiltrating political fringe groups to opportunistically exploit divisions.”
New reports detail sophistication of Russian influence efforts in U.S. – CBS News
hmmmm
Instagram Called Bigger Russia Influence Tool Than Facebook
Instagram played a much bigger role in Russia’s manipulation of U.S. voters than the company has previously discussed, and will be a key Russian tool in the 2020 elections, according to a report commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The Russian Internet Research Agency, the troll farm that has sought to divide Americans with misinformation and meme content around the 2016 election, received more engagement on Instagram than it did on any other social media platform, including Facebook, according to a joint report by three groups of researchers.
…There were 187 million interactions with Instagram content, compared with 77 million on Facebook and 73 million on Twitter, according to a data set of posts between 2015 and 2018, analyzed by New Knowledge, Columbia University and Canfield Research.
…It could also mean the IRA used click farms to boost their numbers.
…Content that the IRA posted sparked conversation, with the overall goal of emboldening followers of Donald Trump and criticizing Hillary Clinton, sometimes in subtle ways. About 40 percent of the Instagram accounts achieved more than 10,000 followers, and 12 had over 100,000 followers. The biggest account, @blackstagram__, attracted 303,663 followers, and may have used e-commerce to make money or gather information about U.S. voters. Another account, @femenism_tag, promoted feminist ideas and the idea that Clinton was a bad feminist.
Instagram Called Bigger Russia Influence Tool Than Facebook – Bloomberg
hmmm
Trump was in the room during hush money discussions with tabloid publisher
Donald Trump was the third person in the room in August 2015 when his lawyer Michael Cohen and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker discussed ways Pecker could help counter negative stories about Trump’s relationships with women, NBC News has confirmed.
…The “statement of admitted facts” says that AMI admitted making a $150,000 payment “in concert with the campaign.”
…The statement of admitted facts says that AMI’s “principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.”
Trump was in the room during hush money discussions with tabloid publisher
hmmm
Donald Trump Moves to Deport Vietnam War Refugees
In essence, the administration has now decided that Vietnamese immigrants who arrived in the country before the establishment of diplomatic ties between the United States and Vietnam are subject to standard immigration law—meaning they are all eligible for deportation.
…Many pre-1995 arrivals, all of whom were previously protected under the 2008 agreement by both the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, were refugees from the Vietnam War. Some are the children of those who once allied with American and South Vietnamese forces, an attribute that renders them undesirable to the current regime in Hanoi, which imputes anti-regime beliefs to the children of those who opposed North Vietnam. This anti-Communist constituency includes minorities such as the children of the American-allied Montagnards, who are persecuted in Vietnam for both their ethnicity and Christian religion.
…“Forty-three years ago, a lot of the Southeast Asian communities and Vietnamese communities fled their countries and their homeland due to the war, which the U.S. was involved in, fleeing for their safety and the safety of their families,” said Kevin Lam, the organizing director of the Asian American Resource Workshop, an advocacy group. “The U.S. would do well to remember that.”
Donald Trump Moves to Deport Vietnam War Refugees – The Atlantic
WTF?! Unamerican son-of-a-festering-putrid-asshat
140-year-old pics show Native Americans before and after “Forced assimilation”
White Wolf : 140-year-old pics show Native Americans before and after “Forced assimilation”
Sigh…
The expressions on the children’s faces in the “after” pictures are so heart-breaking
Family Of Migrant Girl Disputes U.S. Officials’ Story Of Her Death
Border Patrol officials on Friday said agents did everything they could to save the girl but that she had not had food or water for days. They added that an initial screening showed no evidence of health problems, and that her father had signed a form indicating she was in good health.
But the family took issue with that form, which was in English, a language her father doesn’t speak or read. He communicated with border agents in Spanish but he primarily speaks the Mayan Q’eqchi’ language.
“It is unacceptable for any government agency to have persons in custody sign documents in a language that they clearly do not understand,” the statement said.
…In a statement released by lawyers, the parents of Jakelin Caal said the girl had been given food and water and appeared to be in good health as she traveled through Mexico with her father, 29-year-old Nery Gilberto Caal Cuz. The family added that Jakelin had not been traveling through the desert for days before she was taken into custody.
…The consul said Nery Caal told him the group they were traveling with was dropped off in Mexico about a 90-minute walk from the border.
Family Of Migrant Girl Disputes U.S. Officials’ Story Of Her Death |
Sounds like the border officials are as full as shit as the bloviated crazy person in DC who keeps ranting about a pointless wall. When it is proved that they lied, the individuals involved need to be immediately dismissed, charged, and imprisoned.
Border Patrol death: Girl, 7, fled impoverished Guatemala village
There were only four agents working with a group of 163 migrants, including 50 unaccompanied children, and only one bus to take them to the nearest station 94 miles away. The Homeland Security Department’s inspector general has opened an investigation.
That single bus set out on a several-hour trip to the Border Patrol station filled with unaccompanied minors – following protocol – while the daughter and her father waited for it to return. They left about eight hours after being detained.
Caal told the consul that while they were on the bus, his daughter began to feel warm and uncomfortable and began to vomit, and Caal told the driver that his daughter was ill.
…The girl died at about 12:30 a.m. Dec. 8, roughly 19 hours after she began throwing up on the bus and 27 hours after being apprehended. Officials said she had swelling on her brain and liver failure. An autopsy was scheduled to determine the cause of death. The results could take weeks.
Border Patrol death: Girl, 7, fled impoverished Guatemala village
hmmm
Giuliani indicates Trump Tower Moscow discussions took place up until November 2016
Rudy Giuliani indicated Sunday that ..trump’s former longtime attorney, Michael Cohen, may have pursued discussions about a possible Trump Tower Moscow development up to November 2016.
via Giuliani indicates Trump Tower Moscow discussions took place up until November 2016 | TheHill
hmmmm
North Carolina governor vetoes latest voter ID legislation
Cooper has repeatedly opposed voter ID legislation over the years, saying it was unnecessary and would prevent many poor and minority citizens from exercising their right to cast ballots. He vetoed the measure even though more than 55 percent of voters approved a constitutional amendment last month requiring in-person voter photo ID.
“Requiring photo IDs for in-person voting is a solution in search of a problem,” Cooper said in a statement.
“Instead, the real election problem is votes harvested illegally through absentee ballots, which this proposal fails to fix,” he said.
North Carolina governor vetoes latest voter ID legislation
hmmm
Ryan Zinke Is Out As Interior Department Secretary
Zinke had a tumultuous tenure as chief steward of America’s natural resources, facing nearly 20 federal investigations ― one of which his agency’s internal watchdog recently referred to the Justice Department for possible criminal violations ― and besieged by a steady drumbeat of unfavorable headlines.
…Zinke pegged himself as a champion of public lands and a conservationist in the mold of President Theodore Roosevelt. [But then] he cozied up to fossil fuel interests, embraced sweeping budget cuts that his boss proposed, and prioritized Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda over habitat and resource conservation.
Theodore Roosevelt IV told HuffPost last year that his great-grandfather would have condemned the job Zinke had done and that many in the Roosevelt family were angry that Zinke repeatedly invoked their ancestor to misrepresent his own actions.
…[Zinke] came under fire after proposing to open nearly all U.S. waters to offshore drilling, only to turn around and almost immediately remove waters off the coast of Florida from the plan.
…Zinke supported drilling in Alaska’s pristine and fragile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge …and proposed drastically hiking entrance fees at 17 of America’s most popular national parks.
…Like several other members of Trump’s Cabinet, Zinke was the target of numerous ethics probes. He billed taxpayers for his use of private charter planes and government helicopters (instead of taking commercial flights) on at least three occasions ― a controversy Zinke characterized as “a little BS.”
…the Interior Department’s inspector general determined that Zinke had violated government travel policies by bringing his wife along on taxpayer-funded trips. That probe found that Zinke had asked staff to explore making her a department volunteer, a move that would have legitimized her travel.
…Deputy Secretary Bernhardt is not without his own apparent conflicts of interests. As HuffPost reported, he’s met on several occasions with lobbyists for MGM Resorts International, the casino-resort giant that his longtime former employer also represents.
In fact, Bernhardt has so many potential conflicts of interest that he carries a list around with him.
Ryan Zinke Is Out As Interior Department Secretary | HuffPost
hmmm
Tennessee Republican sparks pushback after vaccine comment
Republican U.S. Rep.-elect Mark Green has since walked back the comments he made Tuesday at a town hall, [now] saying he encourages families to vaccinate their children. On Monday, he …claimed the Centers for Disease Control hid information from the public.
On Thursday, the Tennessee Department of Health issued a brief but direct statement saying vaccines “do not cause autism” but do “save lives.”
Tennessee Republican sparks pushback after vaccine comment
hmmm
The left continues to attack their own allies, including darling of the left: Beto
The criticism — ranging from O’Rourke’s membership in the centrist New Democrat Coalition to his acceptance of campaign money from oil industry employees — has so far been confined largely to social media, newspaper opinion pages and online message boards. But as O’Rourke considers running for president in 2020, his potential opponents are quietly taking stock, plotting lines of attack they believe could weaken the Texas congressman in a crowded primary field.
…In an early test for O’Rourke in the “ideas primary” at the front end of the presidential campaign, progressives writing in Current Affairs and The Washington Post, respectively, called him “plainly uninspiring” and said he “rarely challenged concentrated power in D.C.”
A headline in the socialist Jacobin magazine went even further: “We don’t need another photogenic media star with run-of-the-mill liberal politics running for president.”
Among other criticisms, progressives have faulted O’Rourke for his 2015 vote granting then-President Barack Obama “fast track” trade promotion authority for a controversial Asia-Pacific trade agreement, and for not joining the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
The left blindsides Beto – POLITICO
hmmm
Comments From The Peanut Gallery 