Russians Indicted by FBI for Interference in 2016 Elections

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Trump’s latest tweets are self-serving (as usual) and are completely asinine. He claims that “the Russians had no impact on the election results.”

However, as Evan McMullin has stated: “Did Moscow’s interference impact our election? They chose a candidate and bought ads to support him and attack opponents. They recruited activists to amplify his message. They organized rallies. They focused on swing states. They did what all campaigns do to win votes.”

Therefore, the only way that Trump’s comments make sense is to believe that political campaigns have no impact on elections, which is asinine.
 
FCPR said:
You know, judging by this thread, the Catholic Church certainly seems to have it’s fair share of Pro-Trump kooks. What’s up with that?
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Many Catholics have become overly influenced by Evangelical Fundamentalists who are great supporters of Trump. Even the Pope’s close advisor in Rome noticed and wrote this article calling them out for straying too far off the range.

 
Communist Russia has been working overtime for 100 years to influence the United States.
 
Are you saying we’re all “unwitting”?

Not very flattering to Trump.
 
HCTC said:
The bigger issue isn’t collusion; it’s the level of interference in the 2016 elections through influence orchestrated by a foreign government
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In terms of personnel, in terms of money, in terms of anything one wants to name, it was miniscule as compared to either the Trump or the Clinton messaging. One truly does wonder why these 13 Russians even bothered unless it was to give both sides a reason to blame “foreigners” for the outcome and thus weaken whatever candidate won.

And if that was the purpose, it did succeed, but only because there are so many who are willing to believe it.
 
FCPR said:
You know, judging by this thread, the Catholic Church certainly seems to have it’s fair share of Pro-Trump kooks. What’s up with that?
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Some people who actually were opposed to the previous administration and the Clintons for policy reasons were and are “pro-Trump” because he’s not Obama or Clinton. And, of course, calling us “kooks”, “bitter clingers”, “deplorables” and so on only serves to make people who do not support the progressive, pro-abortion agenda more determined.
 
Ah yes, Spadaro and Figueroa, the Italians who know little about American Catholicism or Evengelicalism, either one.

Personally, as between them and American Catholic author Flannery O’Connor, who actually understood both, I’ll take O’Connor. It is not American Catholicism that has adopted aspects of American Evangelical Fundamentalism, it is American Fundamentalism that has never abandoned many aspects of Catholicism.

It is, rather, the Catholics who deviate from Catholic teachings in favor of political Progressivism, who have strayed.
 
Mulligan2 said:
Trump’s latest tweets are self-serving (as usual) and are completely asinine. He claims that “the Russians had no impact on the election results.”

However, as Evan McMullin has stated: “Did Moscow’s interference impact our election? They chose a candidate and bought ads to support him and attack opponents. They recruited activists to amplify his message. They organized rallies. They focused on swing states. They did what all campaigns do to win votes.”

Therefore, the only way that Trump’s comments make sense is to believe that political campaigns have no impact on elections, which is asinine.
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Except of course that anyone in a position to know, including Clapper and Rosenstein, neither a Trump supporter, say the Russians didn’t actually affect the election outcome. And the Russians played both sides. The Dems should look elsewhere to explain their loss of the election.
 
ProVobis said:
Are you saying we’re all “unwitting”?

Not very flattering to Trump.
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And most insulting to those who supported him. But the left has a lot of names for people who don’t support their abortion agenda; “deplorables” “irredeemables”, “bitter clingers”. And what was it that the DNC called the Catholic Church? “Medieval”, “backward”, in need of a “Catholic spring”.
 
Ridgerunner said:
in terms of anything one wants to name, it was miniscule
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In terms of influence - which is what matters - not so “minuscule.”

EXCERPT re Facebook:

Overall, Facebook acknowledged to Congress that the Internet Research Agency had bought 3,000 ads on its platform that reached 11.4 million users. The agency’s employees also reportedly made many free posts that reached 126 million users. In addition to polarizing online political conversation, Facebook reported that the Internet Research Agency used Facebook pages to organize 129 real-world events that drew the attention of nearly 340,000 Facebook users.

One of these, organized by a group called Heart of Texas, took place on May 21, 2016, under the banner of “Stop Islamization of Texas.” On that same day, another Russian-controlled Facebook group, called United Muslims of America, publicized a competing rally to “Save Islamic Knowledge” at the same place and time.

EXCERPT re Twitter:
Twitter has acknowledged finding 3,814 accounts linked to the IRA, which together posted some 176,000 tweets in the 10 weeks preceding the election. The company also found 50,258 automated accounts it said were connected to the Russian government and tweeted more than a million times.

One particularly notorious account linked to the Russian firm claimed to speak for Tennessee Republicans. It persuaded a wide range of American politicians, celebrities and journalists to share tweets with their own massive lists of followers. The list of prominent people who tweeted out links from the account, @Ten_GOP, which Twitter shut down in August, included political figures such as Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, celebrities such as Nicki Minaj and James Woods, and media personalities such as Ann Coulter and Chris Hayes.
 
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Show us a reputable source saying how many votes actually changed because of this small-time effort.
HCTC said:
The company also found 50,258 automated accounts it said were connected to the Russian government and tweeted more than a million times.
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There are 500 million tweets PER DAY on Twitter. And the 13 Russians only managed a million tweets during the whole campaign? Miniscule.

Again, nobody in law enforcement or intel has said any Russian efforts affected the election outcome. That includes Clapper, Comey and Rosenstein, no friends of Trump’s.
 
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Ridgerunner said:
Show us a reputable source saying how many votes actually changed because of this small-time effort.
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HCTC:
The company also found 50,258 automated accounts it said were connected to the Russian government and tweeted more than a million times.
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There are 500 million tweets PER DAY on Twitter. And the 13 Russians only managed a million tweets during the whole campaign? Miniscule.

Again, nobody in law enforcement or intel has said any Russian efforts affected the election outcome. That includes Clapper, Comey and Rosenstein, no friends of Trump’s.
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Nate Silver has an interesting article which admits at the moment at least it is hard to quantify what the effect may have been, but I think you can’t, at this point, just declare there was no effect.
 
Do you really think that only 13 Russians were tweeting? There were 13 Russians indicted. (Why do I have to explain this sort of thing?)

Btw, Twitter and Facebook are only two social media sites. Here’s a link to information about the scope of the operation:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...w-945am:homepage/story&utm_term=.af718bc2ba78

EXCERPT:

What was the working environment like — was it really like a factory?

There were two shifts of 12 hours, day and night. You had to arrive exactly on time, that is, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. There were production norms, for example, 135 comments of 200 characters each. … You come in and spend all day in a room with the blinds closed and 20 computers. There were multiple such rooms spread over four floors. It was like a production line, everyone was busy, everyone was writing something. You had the feeling that you had arrived in a factory rather than a creative place.
 
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Ridgerunner said:
Ah yes, Spadaro and Figueroa, the Italians who know little about American Catholicism or Evengelicalism, either one.

Personally, as between them and American Catholic author Flannery O’Connor, who actually understood both, I’ll take O’Connor. It is not American Catholicism that has adopted aspects of American Evangelical Fundamentalism, it is American Fundamentalism that has never abandoned many aspects of Catholicism.

It is, rather, the Catholics who deviate from Catholic teachings in favor of political Progressivism, who have strayed.
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Flannery O’Connor died in 1964 - that’s more than half a century ago. Maybe you should reference someone more recent.

I find it humorous that you are always trying to gaslight me. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out after posting on this forum that Spadaro and Figueroa are spot on. The evidence is right before everyone’s eyes.

Also, you can’t blame everything on progressive Catholics as if that exonerates those on the right. This article specifically calls out right wing Catholics who have gone off the range, but still have the audacity to claim they represent Catholic doctrine. They don’t.
 
One really has to wonder why the Russian government (if it was the government) would bother with such a miniscule effort. Did it really think 13 people (and that’s all we know about) tweeting out a piddly million tweets among the billions that were tweeted during that time, somehow would affect the outcome of the election?

Or was this something else? Was it a trial run for something bigger another time? Did the Russians never do this before? Hard to believe that.
 
Ridgerunner said:
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ProVobis:
Are you saying we’re all “unwitting”?

Not very flattering to Trump.
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And most insulting to those who supported him. But the left has a lot of names for people who don’t support their abortion agenda; “deplorables” “irredeemables”, “bitter clingers”. And what was it that the DNC called the Catholic Church? “Medieval”, “backward”, in need of a “Catholic spring”.
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It wasn’t the DNC who said those things about the Church, it was a bunch of Catholics griping in stolen private emails who just happened to work for the DNC.

It seems to me that peddling in stolen information for partisan purposes must violate some moral dictum. I would avoid doing that.
 
Or in my case, a rad trad. I don’t think Trump supporters have any idea what that’s like.
 
This is possibly the most preposterous article I have ever read. This “writer” claims he was given topics to write about and “fake” responses to other “trolls”, and all of it, seemingly, on Russian information sites, to make it SEEM there was support on those sites for whatever point of view the Russky in charge was pushing.

From the article:

."Where were you writing this?

We were commenting on Russian sites — all sorts of them, LiveJournal for example, and all the Russian news websites. Wherever a given news item appeared on Russian websites, trolls were immediately created to provide the illusion of support."

But there’s more. This writer wasn’t writing for an American audience, but a Russian one. Others, he says, did the work for American audiences. he didn’t. But even then, he didn’t think any Russians would believe anything they wrote. But he thought Americans would because we’re so gullible, and with no evidence to support his statement at all.

“Who really reads the comments under news articles, anyway? Especially when they were so obviously fake. People working there had no literary interest or abilities. These were mechanical texts. It was a colossal labor of monkeys, it was pointless. For Russian audiences, at least. But for Americans, it appears it did work. They aren’t used to this kind of trickery.”

But he, himself, never worked in the “English department”
“I speak English, and they asked me if I would like to transfer to the Facebook department. The pay there was two times as high. I said, “Well, let me try.” I failed the test because you had to know English perfectly.”

So, this fellow says he knows a major Russian oligarch runs this disinformation “factory”, chiefly for Russian consumption. But he doesn’t think any Russians would believe their drivel. he does, however, think Americans are ignorant enough to believe some Russian propaganda from St. Petersberg and that they would read Russian information sources.

I really do think the most amusing part of this ludicrous article is where this Russian guy says Americans “aren’t used to” fake news. Apparently he is not familiar with the NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, CNN or the HuffPo.
 
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