Reddit Admits Russian Trolls Got Into Website During 2016 Election (vice.com) 345
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VICE News: Reddit says it has identified and removed hundreds of Russian propaganda accounts, a few days after reports revealed that Russian trolls were active on the platform during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In a post Monday, Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman said his site operators had been investigating for awhile and had found a few hundred accounts suspected to be of Russian origin or linked to known sources of Russian propaganda. "Of course, every account we find expands our search a little more," he said, also claiming the "vast majority" of the suspicious accounts were banned back in 2015-2016. An even bigger challenge was the problem of "indirect propaganda," where content produced by accounts now known to be Russian trolls was enthusiastically shared by Trump supporters on subreddits such as r/The_Donald. Reddit's investigation followed a report from The Daily Beast, based on leaked internal data from Kremlin-backed troll farm the Internet Research Agency, that confirmed Russian trolls were active on the site, as well as Tumblr, in their mission to spread disinformation, divide Americans and disrupt U.S. politics. The Washington Post reports that congressional investigators looking into the Russian issue intend to question Reddit and Tumblr over their involvement.
Russians (Score:3, Interesting)
I was a lifelong straight ticket Democrat voter until 2016.
The Russians didn't make me vote for Trump.
Hillary Clinton, CNN, Jimmy Kimmel, HuffPo, WaPo, MSNBC, Madonna, etc, etc, etc made me vote for Trump.
They were so god damn smug, condescending, elitist, insulting, divisive, and arrogant... It made Trump's personality flaws look endearing in comparison, and voting for him was my big "fuck you".
No. The Russians didn't divide us. The Democrats and their media stooge propagandists did. Fuck them all to hell. I will never vote Democrat ever again, even though I disagree profoundly with the Republicans on most issues.
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"What happens to me is a precise guide for happens with everyone else"
Oh, and stop pretending you weren't always voting Trump. It's pretty clear.
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He was intellectually honest and went with what he knew to be the truth without exhibiting fatalistic tendencies. He did the right thing.
What spez really said (Score:2, Interesting)
> On the first topic, ads, there is not much to share. We don’t see a lot of ads from Russia, either before or after the 2016 election, and what we do see are mostly ads promoting spam and ICOs. Presently, ads from Russia are blocked entirely, and all ads on Reddit are reviewed by humans. Moreover, our ad policies prohibit content that depicts intolerant or overly contentious political or cultural views.
> As for direct propaganda, that is, content from accounts we suspect are of Russian origin o
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Shocking news: Russian trolls will try to make their exploits seem bigger and more impactful than they really were, especially if they can stoke partisan divisions at the same time. Like other megalomaniacs, they like talking about themselves, talking about other people talking about them, etc.
Oh not again! (Score:2)
Seriously Russia, internet trolls & elections??
Clearly the more we hear about this the more false it is. After all, who has an interest to spread such lies? The west! -With their anti-Russian propoganda.
You see if the US/CIA blame Russia for Trump being elected then uhm...that means his election wasn;t meddling or collusion but an inside job by the intelligence community that seem to hate Trump...hmmm.
Maybe it isn't all Anti-Trump/Anti-Russia BS. Maybe we're just finding more EVEIDENCE.
But hey w
Re: Oh not again! (Score:5, Insightful)
"because he has objectively been one of the best presidents in history and you can't talk about his actual job performance"
Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
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Or war.
Thanks Trumpsters...
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Not only white liberals. All liberals.
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"Defeated ISIS"
Utter lie. He didn't make significant changes to Obama's ISIS strategy, and most of the fighting was done by other countries.
"brought massive tax reform"
An idiotic, poorly-thought out plan that he had zero knowledge about that was created by lobbyists and Republicans, and that will explode the deficit while offering no real help to most of the country.
"massive cuts to regulations"
You're a rube who has been tricked by greedy businesses into thinking regulations are this massive drain on the ec
Russians are in a no lose situation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Emboldened Russians will meddle even more in the next election.
Low turn out in the off year primaries in just a few states decides the fate of the whole nation.
Combine the Democratic and the Republican primaries and let the top two go for general election. In most red states two Republicans will run for the same seat. Though Democrats will suffer in the short term, there is some chance sanity will return and Republicans will stop fearing being primaried from the right.
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Fooled how? To believe what? Based on what statements? How does this factor in to the electoral process?
The list of unanswered questions grows long.
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The media did it to themselves. The media discredited itself. The media is private business. The media is often owned by billionaires whom are some of the richest people in the world. Jeff Bezos is a perfect example. Bezos owns the WaPo and is either the richest man in the world or he is second in line. He has no need for the WaPo as far as profit is concerned as it is a loosing proposition. The richest man in the world owns the WaPo to fulfill his agenda. The media did this to themselves. The Amer
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And of course, the Reddit CEO claims no responsibility in this, but who is he kidding.
With rules like "No criticism of Donald Trump allowed" in some of these subs as the #1 rule to follow, it means that if you're genuinely trying to correct a piece of false information, the mods of these subs will automatically ban you for it.
Think about it for a minute. If someone were to equate Donald Trump to be a god-like person on one these subs (like folks frequently do in North Korea with their great dear leader), or
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There is nothing inherently wrong about people overdosing on their favorite topic. It's when they make it their reality that it becomes a problem for the rest of us.
--
Beam me up scotty - Jim K.
Dumbest conspiracy theory of all time (Score:2)
I wonder how much time Cheney spends kicking himself these days. Why go through all the trouble of faking evidence of Saddam's WMD's when he could have made a series of vague, ever-changing series of assertions and people would just suck that shit up with a straw?
Come on, zero people are altered by a troll (Score:2)
Some people may be "fooled' by a troll, but with zero consequence..
It's like claiming that some people now crave pictures of assholes because they fell for a Goatse link on Slashdot.
I mean, really.
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It's an extremely difficult (near impossible) task to design a rigorous experimental protocol that can accurately track decision-making cause and effect, especially concerning a decision potentially buffeted by hundreds of distinct forces.
Do you really know why you do what you do? [ted.com] — recorded November 2016
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This is pretty much irrelevant. People protest against a lot of things. Just because some shady entity promoted and backed it doesn't mean the people were fooled into action. They protested because they already believed in the protest.
US politicians are obfuscating the fact the events often accreat with the participants having little knowledge as to who backs, funds and organizes it. Soros funded protests are a perfect example. Frankly, that is pretty pathetic if you ask me.
So the claim is that the Russ
Why should we believe him? (Score:4, Informative)
Reddit is predominantly white and male. Trump's supporters are predominantly white and male. It stands to reason they would be highly active on reddit as they are on other forums like 4chan, and so on. Yet if you listen to Steve Huffman he seems to act like they are a minority on the site and any activity must be Russian Trolls. It just doesn't seem likely.
These CEOs want us to believe they have these brilliant investigative skills into this mythical army of russian trolls, yet they can't cover their own traces when they manipulate votes, edit people's posts or alter algorithms to favor political forums they agree with.
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Sub Reddit dedicated to conspiracy theories thinks there is a conspiracy against them, and then does the most trump thing possible by launching an ad hominem attack.
Any comment on the actual story, by the way?
Banned their account.... (Score:2)
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A couple hundred accounts? For a reddit troll, that's what, 2-3 actual people?
The news stories about Russian trolls in various websites have probably been seen 10,000x more than any of their actually trolling messages ever were.
What do you mean, "got into"? (Score:2)
They didn't "get into" it, as per the headline. They just signed up, as anyone can, and posted. That's the whole point of Reddit.
Anyway, we all know that inside every Russian troll is another, slightly smaller, Russian troll.
What about Slashdot? (Score:2)
3 or so years ago it was a running joke that Russian "infiltrators" were running around Slashdot, with obvious bias, trying to steer conversations around in the comments section. Suddenly, in 2018, that joke is seen is absurd, not happening, never ever, not on THIS website, and how dare you for suggesting!
One wonders if they actually won the Slashdot "battle" when no one was noticing.
Hail, Comrade. How is St. Petersburg this time of year?
lack of credibility (Score:2)
Reddit is notorious for pervasive, aggressive Chinese-style censorship. They have zero credibility. Why does anyone believe a word they say?
Re:Every time.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you BTW. Let's not forget that America's CIA has been doing the same thing via different channels for decades. They are perhaps still doing this to this day.
Where's the media outrage? There is an article here [theguardian.com] affirming trolling by the USA.
USA complains because they can now be beaten [on the cheap] at their own game.
Re:Every time.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Where is the "whataboutism"? This isn't "whataboutism", but a "pot, meet kettle" situation. You want the world to care about election meddling that allegedly happened in your country? Well, show us how you're different, uncover, stop and apologize for your own meddling and then we'll consider. Unless you do that, just shut up, you whiny bunch of hypocrites.
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"Well, it's clear that Mr. Putin has a plan, and that plan includes not just the use of his military but also cyberattacks, disinformation, support for fringe political groups, the weaponization (ph) of energy resources, organized crime and corruption, all of that to compromise democratic institutions. His primary target is Europe. He's trying to influence countries particularly where there is Russian-speaking populations but also Western Europe. And he's also been interested in the United States, as we saw in the 2016 election."
- Ben Cardin of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee
“So I have a very simple message for Russia. We know what you are doing. And you will not succeed,”
- Theresa May
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Ah yes, when reminded that your sins are infinitely greater than the thing you criticize you whine like a bitch to deflect from your hypocrisy.
Prove it. Russiagate is real long on assertions and non-existent on facts. Like the whackjobs that insist to this day that Obama wasn't born in Hawaii an
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So's the idea that the moon landings were faked. Lunar conspiracy theorists can also rattle off a long series of talking points that fail to withstand any degree of scrutiny.
Then you'll have no problem with laying off the McCarthyite dipshittery and proving your case, then.
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What you provided was propaganda about Russian propaganda:
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You are relentless. Trying to avoid getting nerve gassed like the guy in the UK?
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Trying to avoid human extinction brought on purely, utterly and entirely from Western Exceptionalist assholes. The evidence of the U.S. and its allies fucking with the rest of the world and Russia in particular could fill an encyclopedia set. As opposed to the evidence of Russian "meddling" in the US 2016 election, which thus far is non-existent.
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I gotta admit, whoever writes your material is very good at it. They must have studied in a Western University.
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You copy and paste that from a 2003 post, smearing an Iraq war skeptic as a Saddam supporter? And for that psyop they actually presented evidence - faked evidence, but they presented it at the UN. Now they aren't bothering with evidence at all, and people like you are eating their shit up with a spoon, and attacking anyone who doesn't join you for second and third helpings.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq has cost a million lives and trillions of dollars. Just WTF do you geniuses think the cost will
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Oh please you can do better than that. Dig deeper into the playbook.
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The article is propaganda about propaganda. I copied and pasted a paragraph and responded to it directly - did you even look at your own link?
If the USSR had overthrown Canada and brought it into the Warsaw Pact, it's not as if the US would sit around with its thumb up its ass.
^ repeated for those engaging in so much willful dumbfuckery they can't see a stra
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While completely ignoring the fact that the Ukrainian government was overthrown by the United States or the fact that Russia already had a base in Crimea. Would you find a Japanese historian reasonable if he wrote a book bitching, moaning and crying about the American invasion of Iwo Jima while completely omitting Pearl Harbor?
If you choose to be willfully blind to support your narrative, that's your call, but you can't expect Russians (or anyone with a function
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None whatsoever, but that doesn't stop them. Curious, though, that they only whine about supposed interference to supposedly help Trump. They DGAF about the Hillary campaign engaging in all the same activities, or a single rich Chinese couple spending $1.3 million to get Jeb elected.
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Card skimming and pestering people to buy flowers when they're trying to have a quiet drink.
Re:Every time.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah yes, the one thing that is a pretty sure bet whenever Russia comes up in the news in a none positive way is whataboutism.
It is not just about whataboutism [wikipedia.org]. It is also about setting a precedent for censorship and thought control. We have gone from "Congress shall make no law ..." to "Censorship is okay if the speaker is Russian". The next step is a prohibition on speech by other "bad people". Anyone who stands up to defend the scoundrels is obviously one of them.
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Does free speech cover Russian government paid for propaganda, done by people posing as ordinary Americans
If you can find an exception for Russians when the Constitution says "no law", please let me know.
... and spreading false information to influence an American election
You mean like how the Russians leaked info about the DNC colluding with Hillary to cheat Bernie out of the nomination? Except that turned out to be true.
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The Bill of Rights doesn't apply to foreign citizens on foreign soil, so your slippery slope argument is misplaced.
Bullcrap. The Bill of Rights says Congress shall make NO LAW abridging freedom of speech. It says nothing about an exception for foreigners.
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Foreigners interfering in elections isn't an 'act of war' though, otherwise Mexico would have declared war on the US each time a Mexican citizen illegally voted in a US election.
The individual foreigner voting is breaking US law, but the country they come from isn't declaring war on the US.
And before you say 'Non citizens voting doesn't happen, you racist!' yeah, it does
https://empowertexans.com/arou... [empowertexans.com]
While the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requires local election officials to maintain accurate voter rolls, it also made it easier for non-citizens to get on the rolls by mandating that states offer voter registration by mail and at driver's license offices. Registering to vote is now an honor system, with no documentation required and no one verifying citizenship -- applicants merely check a box affirming they're U.S. citizens.
Birdwell asked Ingram what mechanisms the Secretary of State or county voter registration officials have to ensure that non-citizens aren't registering to vote. "Only the jury summons," Ingram responded. State law requires jury clerks to report to elections officials all individuals who claim an exemption to jury duty because they are not citizens.
"The Secretary of State's office's only way to ensure non-citizens aren't voting is the random sampling of a jury duty summons?" Birdwell asked.
"That is correct," Ingram replied.
If a non-citizen never gets summoned to jury duty or doesn't respond to a summons, Birdwell asked, "you have no mechanism to correct that wrong?"
"That's right," Ingram confirmed.
"We have no active method [to ensure non-citizens aren't registering to vote]. We depend on the self-reporting of the individual," Birdwell concluded. "That is a significant problem."
Texas Scorecard reported on those findings last month. A brief survey of four Texas counties found that in just the past two years, 165 unlawfully registered non-citizens were removed from those counties' voter rolls -- but only after they self-identified as non-citizens in the process of recusing themselves from jury duty. Those non-citizens cast 100 illegal votes.
Worse, the AG's investigators found that "the process for removing ineligible voters who self-report as non-citizens at jury duty is not being followed correctly, or even at all, in various counties."
Curious is it not how when a few Russians spend a few hundred thousand dollars in an election where t
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Thos are puoprposeful acts, and believe me brother I declare those acts of war.
Yeah but they're not. I realise that since you don't care about spelling and grammar you also probably don't care about legal niceties but everyone else does.
Awating your next howaboutism, tovarish.
It's whataboutism [wikipedia.org] and tovarishch [wikipedia.org]
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MAGA baby!
Good luck with that friend.
Whoosh.
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Bullshit. All the polls say that Hispanics are much more likely to vote Democrat than Republican. Which is why the Republicans want voter ID laws and Democrats say they're racist.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac... [pewresearch.org]
As Congress debates immigration reform, some political leaders and analysts have speculated that there will be "an electoral bonanza for Democrats" if the nation's estimated 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants -- three quarters of whom are Hispanics -- eventually are granted the right to vote.
While there's no way of knowing if these predictions are accurate, the data provide some insights. In 2012, the Pew Research Center's National Survey of Latinos found that among Latino immigrants who are not U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents (and therefore likely unauthorized immigrants), some 31% identify as Democrats and just 4% as Republicans. An additional 33% say they are political independents, 16% mention some other political party and 15% say they "don't know" or refuse to answer the question.
When one takes party "leaners" into account (i.e., those who don't say they identify with one of the major parties, but in a follow-up question say they feel closer to one party than the other), about half of unauthorized Hispanic immigrants either identify with (31%) or lean towards (23%) the Democratic Party, while about two-in-ten identify with (4%) or lean towards (15%) the Republican Party. About a quarter (27%) do not identify with or lean towards either party.
Comparing unauthorized immigrant Hispanics with other Hispanic subgroups suggests that as immigrants move closer towards citizenship, it is likely that a greater share of them will identify with one of the major political parties. Our survey found that most legal permanent residents (57%) and foreign-born U.S. citizens (65%) are affiliated with one of the major parties.
Our research has also found a correlation between the amount of time Hispanic immigrants (regardless of legal status) spend in the United States and the share that identifies with a political party. While nearly two-thirds (63%) of Hispanic immigrants who have been in the U.S. at least 15 years identify with one of the two major parties, that share falls to 38% among those who have been in the U.S. for fewer than 15 years.
The predictions about how unauthorized immigrants will vote stem from the fact that among all Latino immigrants who are eligible to vote (i.e. are U.S. citizens) many more identify as Democrats than as Republicans -- 54% versus 11%. And in the 2012 presidential election, according to the National Election Pool, Latino voters favored Democrat Barack Obama over Republican Mitt Romney by 71%-27%. While Democratic candidates have garnered a greater share of the Hispanic vote than Republican candidates in every election over the past three decades, the gap has been narrower in some elections than others. For example, in the 2004 election the gap among Hispanic votes between John Kerry and George W. Bush was only 18 percentage points (58% vs. 40%), compared with the 44 percentage point gap in the 2012 election.
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Did you know there are quite a lot of Russian illegal immigrants in Texas? I'm serious. If you go to most construction sites in Houston, Dallas, Ft Worth, you will meet some of them.
How do you know the "100" illegal votes that were supposedly cast by immigrants according to your fake article weren't all cast by Russian immigrants voting Republican? You don't, and you know why? Because the State of Texas did
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Except there was no research involved. Nothing but a set of assumptions made by a person and then conclusions made based upon those assumptions with absolutely no data involved. Read your article again, Hal.
Even President Trump's much-vaunted s
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Yes there is research and I linked to it here
http://www.judicialwatch.org/w... [judicialwatch.org]
Re:Every time.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Even the author of your research says that Judicial Watch's interpretation (and math) are wrong.
https://www.wired.com/2017/01/... [wired.com]
Also, remember this entire research is based on an opt-in online survey. In other words, as evidence of voter fraud, it's pretty much horseshit.
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Judicial Watch just linked to his original paper and even your article says this
Here's what the math should look like (that is, if Richman's initial study was accurate -- which many researchers doubt). If 6.4 percent of the estimated 20.3 million noncitizens in the US voted, and if just 81.8 percent of them voted for Clinton (the percentage who voted for Obama in his 2008 study), that's an added margin of a little more than 835,000 votes. In other words: Even with all of those supposedly fraudulent ballots, Clinton still would have won the popular vote by more than 2 million votes.
Exactly what I said. And Richman stands by his study and defended it here
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
It's true he wrote this article attacking the way his research has been used
https://fs.wp.odu.edu/jrichman... [odu.edu]
This post is not intended to make a specific claim on my part concerning how many non-citizens voted in 2016. It has a much narrower aim. My goal was to show that an extrapolation from my coauthored work on the 2008 election to the 2016 election did not support the arguments some seemed to be making that the entire popular vote margin for Clinton was due to illegal votes by non-citizens. In this post I do my own calculation of that extrapolation for the purpose of demonstrating that this extrapolation would not support that claim.
So what he's saying is that if you use his estimate of 834,318 non citizen votes to claim that that was less than Clinton's 2,235,663 popular vote lead that's fine with him. If however you use his estimate of 834,
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I'm not going to convince him, but I might convince some of the people reading this thread that non citizen voting is a significant problem in the US.
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What can I say? Illegal voting is the only way Republicans can win in Texas.
Obviously you've never been to rural Texas before.
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I've lived in Texas. And the only immigrant who has been prosecuted for illegal voting in Texas has been a Trump supporting Republican.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0... [nytimes.com]
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Must have been Ivana, because it's pretty obvious Melania voted for Hillary.
Re:Every time.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The AC does have a point though. Voter ID laws on the face of it are a good idea. The problem is that it is easy to manipulate the ID requirements to disenfranchise chunks of the population.
Here in Canada, we've had voter ID laws for a long time. Generally they worked well until the last Federal election where the Conservatives were in power and getting coaching from the American Republican party on how to do it right.
Used to be that most ID was good enough, perhaps combined with some bills with your address and name on it and the ability to do an affidavit when the ID wasn't good enough. Last election, they limited the type of ID required and did a few other weird things. For example, my wife has always voted under her maiden name, partially due to her ID being in that name, and that is how she was registered. Went to the elections web site and double checked our registration, everything was fine, even the day before the election. Went to vote and mysteriously her registration had changed to my name. As this was expected due to her race, we showed up with marriage license, lots of ID and time. After a couple of hours on the phone to Ottawa, she did manage to vote. Meanwhile, I had no problem voting even though my ID just proved my residency, not my citizenship, unlike hers which was only available to citizens.
Voter ID laws are just easy to manipulate. Make it hard and ideally expensive to get ID (need to drive 40 miles here to pay $75 for ID), be really anal about the ID and disenfranchise people, especially the poor, university students who are resident somewhere but don't bother updating their ID, demand actual street addresses to remove those living in places without addresses such as Indian reservations and such and you limit voting to the correct people, including wealthier non-citizens.
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Which would turn the US into a one party state with no borders and an economy like Venezuela.
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Damn, son, that kool aid taste good?
Denial is not a river in egypt. Trump is sketchy. Facts.
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So are the Clintons - that doesn't mean that they had Vince Foster murdered. It's amazing how Russiagate turns a bunch of otherwise rational people into a bunch of mouth breathers.
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Eh. When you know as many people as the Clinton's have, the chances of a number of them having crazy deaths is pretty high. Kind of like the list of Power Ranger [cracked.com] actors that have died at young ages from accidents, illnesses or even landed in prison for murder. There isn't a "curse" on the show, just a natural effect of a huge number of people being involved in a long running franchise.
That said, Russiagaters everywhere need to have this, Vince Foster, and the alleged heroin smuggling operation the Clinto
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The investigation will disappear in a puff of greasy smoke.
Eventually. After the pundits find something else interesting to hype.
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FTFY. The notion that a few trolls swung an election with a few thousand dollars in ads, many of which were placed after the election and nothing to do with politics, in a race where one candidate spent over a billion dollars just proves the capacity of human beings to engage in willful dumbfuckery.
No collusion, no Russiagate. It doesn't matter if Putin himself came ove
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if there is no collusion with Trump then Mueller has no basis for his witch hunt.
So if there was only collusion with many of Trump's staffers that would be prefectly fine because there was no collusion with Trump? Really?
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And there's as much evidence to suggest that as there is that one of the Clinton's staffers shot Vince Foster.
Really.
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Your best arguemnt is "oh but Clinton!".
Read your own post. You argued that unless it was Trump himself colluding then there was no need for Meuller going about his "witch hunt". You are explicitly discounting any collusion from staffers as being important from a law enforcement point of view.
Oh but Clinton!
And that my man is why you're fucked.
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You first.
Uh, no. The point - which was clear enough the first time - that's there's as much evidence that Trump staffers colluded with Russia as there is that Clinton staffers shot Vince Foster. As in none. If you don't want to be compared to crazy nuts who believe asinine conspiracy theories without any evidence - then maybe you should find some evidence, eh?
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Uh, no. The point - which was clear enough the first time - that's there's as much evidence t
That was the second post, ya numpty. Try reading the FIRST one I responded to. The one where you said:
The only criterion you gave was Trump's actions. Ergo, you consider the actions of the staffers unimportant.
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Hysterical pedantry. No collusion, no Russiagate. As there is nothing approaching even probable suspicion that there was collusion between Trump and Russia - or his staffers for the exceptionally retentive - then there is no Russiagate.
Laughable. Long before we knew about the Hill
Actual polls don't support that claim (Score:5, Insightful)
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Honestly, I am most shocked by the result that 40% of americans don't know who Mueller is. The fuck???
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Does it? You could be polled on what you think the price is of rice in China. Does answering that question mean it's important to you? Give people a list of issues to rank, or allow them to fill in a list of their own concerns, and Russiagate is not likely to be high on that list. Compared to the economy, health care, debt, etc etc.
Re: Actual polls don't support that claim (Score:3)
Re: Actual polls don't support that claim (Score:2)
Re: Actual polls don't support that claim (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Actual polls don't support that claim (Score:2)
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Exactly, or do you think that a telecommunications company is going to donate to a party with left wing ideology like pushing municipal internet or co-ops? Or one that is going to support the unions over the company?
Next you'll be claiming that the Dems are left wing because they supported the out of work coal miners and steel workers.
Re: Actual polls don't support that claim (Score:2)
"slight"
Fox has slight liberal lean
Trump supporters don't know what these words mean (Score:5, Insightful)
far left leaning liberal progressive
I've followed The_Donald since early 2016 as a hostile observer and it is clear to me that they don't know what any of these words mean. Not in the political sense.
Almost the entire Democratic party is centrist. Google "new democrats". Bill Clinton set them on this path. The party has become both neoliberal (free-market capitalist) and neoconservative (American exceptionalism, interventionist foreign policy).
They are very much NOT leftist, NOT liberal, NOT progressive. Those words have all become meaningless, because people are still using them to describe the Democrats, when they are very much none of those things any more.
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They are very much NOT leftist, NOT liberal, NOT progressive. Those words have all become meaningless,
They were meaningless a century ago, if not more. Political parties are all about choosing a side and helping "your side" win. Partisans have a bad name for that reason.
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We the public, hear the words.... Trump, Russia, Mueller.... We stop listening. Nobody cares. Move on... Seriously.
We the public choose to be mindless drones that don't give a fuck if our democratic institutions are manipulated, discredited, and which hostile governments are interfering in our system and using mass propaganda to sway public opinion, because we already have become mindless drones that click and share every link that confirms our preconceived notions. Who really cares if its fake or not, as long as it confirms my biases. As mindless drones, we only care about the dopamine kick, if Putin decides to sponsor
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
We the public choose to not allow the entire political agenda to be steered by the shrieking minority who lost the election.
Nobody cares about Hillary Clinton's underwear (esp. Bill, btw). We do care about rampant corruption. Which is being ignored during all this deflection about 'Russian collusion'. Also, because it doesn't matter, the foul Clinton Machine was defeated.
Re: (Score:2)
AND STOP BRINGING YOUR DAMN POLITICAL TROLLING TO SLASHDOT.
Stop trying to stir up trouble, we donâ(TM)t come here for politics,
Submitter, go back to reddit, shoo or twitter
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
I come for the girls and the free food.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Trump continues trolling dems very successfully by trash-tweating them into distracting pointless investigations.
Completely invisible to public is a spectacular economy jumpstart in 2017 fueled solely by a Republican winning the WH and even more in 2018 (never mind market corrections, they happen all the time). Trump could go out as the worst president in history or he could go out as OK president.
Re: (Score:2)
Trump is obsessed with the Russia investigation and continually enraged by it, so I doubt he is intentionally pushing the investigation to continue.
Re: (Score:2)
I have often thought that one category of Trump supporters is low information voters.
You are a classic example of that.
Re:Every time.... (Score:5, Insightful)
We the public, hear the words.... Trump, Russia, Mueller.... We stop listening. Nobody cares. Move on... Seriously.
Wouldn't that be nice? Looks like you identified a new attack vector. Enough news about it and you will say I'm bored, so do what ever you want.
Your post has indicted that you are completely manipulable. I kinda hope you are at least a Russian troll, and not an American who will just accept anything because you are tired hearing about it.
Or perhaps just a Trumpster.
Re: (Score:2)
There you are, trying to divide us into warring camps again. We are all Americans. We stand together, strong, against those who would divide us. You are either a paid shill or an unpaid agent of Moscow. Either way, you're the enemy of the American people, Ivan.
How did you guess my name?
Re:This could easily be solved (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What other nationalities would you like to exclude from discussion forums? Latvians? Spaniards? The British?
Should we establish an Americans Only Internet? Should we exclude any other classes of people? The handicapped can't participate in forums concerning wine and cigars? Women can't participate in forums about sports cars?
Re: (Score:2)
It's not about nationality, but foreign governments spreading propaganda aimed at subverting democracy, targetting communities which lap it up and spread it forward. This should be troubling to everyone.
Re: (Score:3)
Like the Russians don't already have that information.
SSN is not a private key!
Re: (Score:2)
They love focusing on the bloody messenger (apparently) and not the message.
The democrats got trump elected, not the republicans.
Re: (Score:2)
Major censorship. Absolutely horrendous. And you know it. Banning people for making statements that don't fit the leftists ideologies. The CEO of Reddit changing user posts. Banning groups. Allowing people to scream things like execute Trump and Jr. for treason while muting and banning people for pointing that very fact out. I've seen it all. Reddit has become a horrendous cesspool even if they are still allowing some controversy.
Re: (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia, Slashdot trolls you!