Donald Fires FBI Director who's investigating Russian Election Hacking

[Archie Moses]

Is it just me, or does Manafort look like Shooter McGavin?

 

[LogGrad98]

I think there were a lot of factors but that was one factor among many. I don't know if it would changed the result. Personally I think it was a combination of things. The FBI investigation being near the top and this being the 3rd or 4th biggest factor.

Do you have numbers to show it only reached a small number and that Republicans don't use Facebook much?

I read an article a while back when this was all gearing up about the ads having a viewing rate that was a few million people in the US from details right after Facebook gave it up. And as for the voting base that is based on stats I read at one point about ages of people that generally use facebook (as in skewed to younger people) and the general age of the bulk of the voting base for republicans being older I could dig for it but it isn't definitive, just more or less my opinion.

 

[LogGrad98]

I don't think it really matters if the interference was effective or not. It's the fact that Russia actively tried to influence our election and the possibility that the Trump campaign colluded with them in that effort.

None of this leads to changing the outcome of the election.

I wasn't saying that the outcome of the investigation should depend on whether it would have changed the election. I just added that I don't think this part of it had much of an impact on the election just as a comment. The investigation absolutely need to happen and anyone who was guilty of a crime needs to pay for it.

 

[Joe Bagadonuts]

I don't think it really matters if the interference was effective or not. It's the fact that Russia actively tried to influence our election and the possibility that the Trump campaign colluded with them in that effort.

None of this leads to changing the outcome of the election.

By this measure it seems pretty obvious that Hillary was guilty of collusion with Russia. Had she won, I wonder if we would be going through a similar investigation. I think not. Not because she is any less guilty than Trump, but because, for the most part, the media was hoping she would win. To me the entire situation always boils back to the fact that we had such an absolutely horrendous choice in candidates. My gut tells me that is because at this point in history only a narcissist would choose to run for President of the United States.

 

[LogGrad98]

I think there were a lot of factors but that was one factor among many. I don't know if it would changed the result. Personally I think it was a combination of things. The FBI investigation being near the top and this being the 3rd or 4th biggest factor.

Do you have numbers to show it only reached a small number and that Republicans don't use Facebook much?

I read an article a while back when this was all gearing up about the ads having a viewing rate that was a few million people in the US from details right after Facebook gave it up. And as for the voting base that is based on stats I read at one point about ages of people that generally use facebook (as in skewed to younger people) and the general age of the bulk of the voting base for republicans being older I could dig for it but it isn't definitive, just more or less my opinion.

Here are a couple of articles about this.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/02/media/facebook-russian-ads-10-million/index.html

Facebook says an estimated 10 million people in the U.S. saw at least one of the 3,000 political ads it says were bought by accounts linked to the Russian government.
The figure, disclosed by Facebook for the first time on Monday, underscores how effective Russian meddling on social media could be with even a minimal investment.
The ad buyers spent just $100,000 over two years to target 10 million people, according to figures Facebook has provided about the ad buys. That's an audience roughly equivalent to the population of Michigan.
More than half of the ads were seen after the 2016 presidential election, indicating that Russian efforts went well beyond meddling during the campaign and may continue to this day.
"Forty-four percent of the ads were seen before the U.S. election on Nov. 8, 2016, fifty-six percent were seen after the election," Elliot Schrage, Facebook's vice president for policy and communications, said in a new post on Monday.

So about 5 million people may have seen the ads before the campaign, then there is the question of how many people were influenced or changed their vote because of them. My bet is not that many. More often than not these things end up as confirmation bias and solidify a voting decision rather than swaying it.

Also this:

http://www.journalism.org/2017/01/1...vided-in-their-main-source-for-election-news/

According to a new Pew Research Center survey, Americans who say they voted for Trump in the general election relied heavily on Fox News as their main source of election news leading up to the 2016 election, whereas Clinton voters named an array of different sources, with no one source named by more than one-in-five of her supporters. The survey was conducted Nov. 29-Dec. 12, 2016, among 4,183 adults who are members of Pew Research Center’s nationally representative American Trends Panel.

Not directly about Republicans and facebook but there is an interesting chart there that shows that only about 7% of republicans used facebook as their source of news for the election.



All in all I just think that this piece did little to affect the outcome of the election. But that doesn't mean that the people involved shouldn't be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, they absolutely should.

 

[Harambe]

Paul Manafort, his longtime business partner Rick Gates charged, and I believe have surrendered.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/30/us/politics/document-paul-manafort-rick-gates-indictment.html

Charges:
1. Conspiracy Against The United States
2. Conspiracy To Launder Money
3-6. Failure To File Reports Of Foreign Bank And Financial Accounts For Calendar Years 2011-2014
7-9. Failure To File Reports Of Foreign Bank And Financial Accounts For Calendar Years 2011-2013
10. Unregistered Agent Of A Foreign Principal
11. False and Misleading FARA Statements
12. False Statements

Separate from Mueller's investigation, former Trump foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos has plead guilty to making a false statement to the FBI.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2017/oct/30/donald-trump-russia-inquiry-paul-manafort-robert-mueller-live-updates

George Papadopoulos, the former campaign aide to Donald Trump, pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents working for special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Here are the key takeaways from the “statement of offense”:

Papadopoulos initially told investigators that he befriended an unnamed London-based “professor” with “substantial connections” to Russian government officials before he became an adviser to the campaign. Papadopoulos later corrected his story and told investigators that the professor only became interested in him after learning that he worked for the Trump campaign.
Papadopoulos joined the campaign as a foreign policy advisor around March 21, 2016. He first met the “professor” on or about March 24, 2016 in London.
In late April – more than a month after Papadopoulos joined the Trump campaign – the “professor” told him that the Russians had “dirt” on then candidate Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails” . He had initially told investigators that those communications occurred prior to joining the campaign.
The professor also introduced the Trump adviser to an unnamed female Russian national who Papadopoulos believed was Putin’s niece.
Following the meeting with the professor and female Russian national, Papadopoulos emailed members of the campaign to tell them that he had just met with a “good friend” the professor and they discussed arranging a “meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump”. A campaign supervisor replied: “Great work.”
On or about March 31, 2016, Papadopoulos attended a national security meeting with Trump and other advisers, at which Papadopoulos stated that he “could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and President Putin”.
He then worked with the professor and female Russian national to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

 

[DutchJazzer]

and a good chunk of the republican voting block are not regular facebook users anyway.

stereotype much? you are saying they are too dumb to know how to work on the facebook?


NO it is because of vilification, we tend to shut the **** up.

 

[DutchJazzer]

I don't think it really matters if the interference was effective or not. It's the fact that Russia actively tried to influence our election and the possibility that the Trump campaign colluded with them in that effort.

None of this leads to changing the outcome of the election.

[MENTION=4984]Bulletproof[/MENTION]
as left wing alan dersowitzh said a great lawyer said on bloomberg, fox, cnn and other major news and fake news outlets. their is nothing illegal about what you said.
i trust he knows the law and i have no reason to think you know the law.

but after all he could be wrong after all he is a liberal. so could you please point out where in the law it said it is illegal what you just stated in your post!

 

[LogGrad98]

stereotype much? you are saying they are too dumb to know how to work on the facebook?


NO it is because of vilification, we tend to shut the **** up.

No this is from demographics. The bulk of the republican voting base tends to be older (from vote records) and facebook users tend to be younger (from facebook stats). Simple demographics.

 

[Stoked]

stereotype much? you are saying they are too dumb to know how to work on the facebook?


NO it is because of vilification, we tend to shut the **** up.

Dude, stop. Try for once to just actually read what was written and respond to what was written. Not this wild jumps in assumption and then attack mode. YOu are one of the two worst posters at this. Stop man, it's sad.

Just once, then we can go from there.

 

[Harambe]

No this is from demographics. The bulk of the republican voting base tends to be older (from vote records) and facebook users tend to be younger (from facebook stats). Simple demographics.

Meta-analysis. Which can be very helpful.

Did this include what states were targeted the most heavily? How about the fact that the bots touted anyone BUT Hillary positively? I believe in early October it was identified that the largest targets were Michigan and Wisconsin. Which were also "hot states" where I wanna say Stein demanded a recount in? Helluva coincidence there. I mean... the 26 EC votes in just those two states were not enough to sway the election. But they were also the closest contests.

What about the other battleground states? It's been identified that those states saw the more Ruski-bot hits than non-swing. And it got WAY worse(hits were ramped up) the few days before November 6th.

One of the two things many SJW critics cite the most, is how quickly "snowflakes" are to act on something they see as injustice. But I think a case can be made that in this day and age all people are reacting too quickly; leaping before they look. It's not all that far of a jump to make a case that Trumpssia-gate appears to have tapped into this behavior; causing an unfavorable outcome for everyone not in the top 1%.

I'll agree that it's not likely, at least with the data we currently have, to say spybots alotted donnie a W. But I feel like it had more than just "a little" effect. I feel like the race would have been a lot closer had it not been for those surgically targeted ads.

 

[candrew]

Did this include what states were targeted the most heavily? How about the fact that the bots touted anyone BUT Hillary positively? I believe in early October it was identified that the largest targets were Michigan and Wisconsin. Which were also "hot states" where I wanna say Stein demanded a recount in? Helluva coincidence there. I mean... the 26 EC votes in just those two states were not enough to sway the election. But they were also the closest contests.

Sanders won both primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin. In fact, Sanders blew Clinton away in Wisconsin by over 10%.

That should have been the first red flag.