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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#237626: Apr 5th 2018 at 8:53:18 PM

[up][up] Considering the stuff he has said in public, I am not surprised.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Ingonyama Since: Jan, 2001
#237627: Apr 5th 2018 at 8:53:35 PM

I just have to say I can't believe that even now, two years after the election, people are still trying to re-hash the Democratic primary. Considering what was brought up by one of you a couple pages back, about the Russian bots, I have to wonder just how many people who keep coming into various forums, sites, and comments sections (including this very forum) might actually be bots themselves trying to spread this divisiveness. Or else they're getting their info from (and falling for) bots. Either way, sure seems like there's getting more and more desperation and hysteria to try and break apart our unity and distract from Mueller and everything else going on, just like Trump himself has been for forever (but especially recently).

Oh, and I'd also like to say I regret ever voting for Sanders in the primary.

So with the trade war: if Congress does take away Trump's tariff power, will he turn on them, and will his base? Or will they actually realize this saved them from having their livelihoods destroyed by China's response? And similarly, if Congress doesn't do anything and things just keep getting worse, will they actually turn on him then for causing this, or somehow believe it's all the Democrats' fault again? (I'm kidding, we all know they'll never turn on him.)

All I can say is what I've felt for a long time: that I don't feel one bit sorry for them bringing this down on themselves, but that the rub is, we're all going to suffer too because of their idiocy and hatred and refusal to accept change/blame.

BearyScary Since: Sep, 2010 Relationship Status: You spin me right round, baby
#237628: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:02:22 PM

Bernie is an old fool after all

Do not obey in advance.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#237629: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:06:22 PM

[up][up]TBF, these posts only show up whenever Sanders says or does something stupid. I would not go so far as to accuse other posters of being bots.

edited 5th Apr '18 9:06:51 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
TheWildWestPyro from Seattle, WA Since: Sep, 2012 Relationship Status: Healthy, deeply-felt respect for this here Shotgun
#237630: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:08:34 PM

The last thing we need is this lovely forum descending into paranoia over who's a bot and who's not.

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#237631: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:08:42 PM

So just to be safe, is there any cleverly disguised Russians on this forum? tongue

edited 5th Apr '18 9:10:18 PM by megaeliz

smokeycut Since: Mar, 2013
#237632: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:10:20 PM

Says you. I’ve been on this site for years without anyone catching on to me being a bot.

...I mean, what?

Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#237633: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:12:46 PM

I’d say that some people do tend to go looking for instances of Sanders saying something stupid more than they do anyone else saying something stupid.

The bot acussation is absurd (man I remember pre-2016 when I could jokingly call someone a Kremlin stooge and it was an obvious joke), but people here have fallen for fake news about Sanders in the past.

None of thei changes the fact that Sanders is a racist fool.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#237634: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:14:09 PM

More seriously though, all I'm saying is that that type of irrelevant but divisive content tends to be picked up by trolls and botnets, and I would rather not inadvertently help them spread it.

edited 5th Apr '18 9:16:41 PM by megaeliz

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#237635: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:19:57 PM

Sanders once again demonstrating racial tone deafness and contempt for the Democratic Party in particularly egregious circumstances is not exactly irrelevant.

Disgusted, but not surprised
LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#237636: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:20:41 PM

I do think that there's a bit too much focus on Sanders here, seeing as this point it doesn't seem like anyone views him as "the messiah" and I'd even say most don't have a particularly high opinion of him. The point has been made.

Although he clearly still wants to be relevant, I have to question how much he actually is at this point.

Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#237637: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:21:31 PM

So just to be safe, is there any cleverly disguised Russians on this forum? tongue
Nyet.

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#237638: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:24:35 PM

If he wins the nomination he will be pretty relevant. Heck he will be relevant if he loses. Hopefully he will not run another divisive campaign.

[up] <hides bowl of borscht>

edited 5th Apr '18 9:26:17 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#237639: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:25:18 PM

I highly doubt we have any bots here. They tend to prefer networks where interaction isn't required, like Twitter or Facebook, and (quite literally) everything they say hits on the same few notes. I haven't noticed any tropers mindlessly backing the Kremlin in every thread they post in.

I really wonder what Sanders has to gain from continuing to angle for the limelight like that. He can't possibly think he'd be a viable 2020 candidate.

They should have sent a poet.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#237640: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:27:17 PM

[up] I think he does. Not sure if it is confidence or arrogance.

edited 5th Apr '18 9:35:02 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
LeGarcon Blowout soon fellow Stalker from Skadovsk Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Gay for Big Boss
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
#237641: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:27:50 PM

I remember fighteer cleaning out a couple of people fronting for them but I dunno if they were on the Kremlin's actual payroll.

Oh really when?
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#237642: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:33:21 PM

[up]Doesn't really matter either way honestly. Useful idiots are useful for a reason.

edited 5th Apr '18 9:33:32 PM by megaeliz

Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#237643: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:37:20 PM

I find Sanders relevant under the following circumstances.

  • He’s getting involved in a particular race, be it a primary, special or midterm.
  • The 2020 primary has actully begun.
  • There is a vote of particular relevance that he’s making noise about.

I don’t see why he deserves more attention than any other senator, he’s not special, and I wish somebody would tell him so.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#237644: Apr 5th 2018 at 9:44:32 PM

Speaking of Russian Trolls note 

MOSCOW — At first, new recruits to the Internet Research Agency, the notorious Russian troll factory, were thrilled by the better-than-average salaries they earned simply for posting on the internet. But one says he eventually realized that the work hid a darker reality: both they and their audience were meant to turn into zombies.

“They were just giving me money for writing,” said the former troll, a St. Petersburg resident who wanted to get into marketing or journalism but was drawn by the hard-to-match $1,400 weekly paycheck. “I was much younger and did not think about the moral side. I simply wrote because I loved writing. I was not trying to change the world.”

On Friday, the United States Department of Justice accused the Internet Research Agency and its senior employees of working illegally to meddle in the 2016 American presidential election, indicting 13 Russians and the companies linked to it.

In recent interviews conducted before the indictments, two former trolls spoke about their experiences. Neither man wanted his full name used, citing the threats and intimidation others have been subjected to for speaking out.

Both left the agency for different reasons — one troubled by the substance of the work, the other struggling with the breakneck pace to create fake content.

Aleksei, the troll from St. Petersburg, said he was among the first 25 employees hired. To get the job, he said, he had to write an essay on the “Dulles Doctrine,” a Soviet-era conspiracy theory that may seem obscure to Westerners but is well known to Russians.

That was a significant clue about what was to come. The Dulles Doctrine — born in a 1971 novel, and gaining new life after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 — was a supposed plot by Allen Dulles, the C.I.A. director from 1953 to 1961, to destroy the Soviet Union by corrupting its moral values and cultural heritage.

That, as the West has learned in the last couple of years, is precisely what the Kremlin and the troll factory set out to do to the United States, undermining faith in its electoral system by encouraging or even establishing groups that would sow domestic discord. Troll factory tactics included applauding Donald Trump’s candidacy while trying to undermine Hillary Clinton’s.

As the factory got going, Aleksei said, the first task assigned to all new employees was to create three identities on Live Journal, a popular blogging platform. One was to be of very high quality in writing and content, the other two “marginal.”

They worked in 12-hour shifts, either day or night, and the assigned topics popped up in their email: President Vladimir V. Putin, or President Barack Obama, or often the two together; Ukraine; the heroism of Russia’s Defense Ministry; the war in Syria; Russian opposition figures; the American role in spreading the Ebola virus.

The key words and subject line were always assigned. At the time, the removal of chemical weapons from Syria negotiated under Russian auspices was a favorite topic. Aleksei recalled writing seven or eight blog posts about it.

“You had to write that 30 percent of the weapons had been removed, and the next day we would say that 32 percent had been taken out,” he said, adding that he had no idea if any had been removed.

Aleksei wrote for the Russian-speaking audience. The English-speaking trolls were kept apart, he said, but from their loud conversations in the communal smoking room, it seemed like they were engaged in similar work.

The English speakers discussed the best time to post commentary to attract an American audience, he remembered, and bragged about creating thousands of fake social media accounts.

Aleksei was interviewed before the indictments were handed up and he cut off contact within days of the interview. He had said that he did not know much about the company management and that he had never seen Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the man the United States accused of creating the agency and nicknamed “Putin’s cook” because he got his start in the restaurant and catering business.

The former troll did identify Dzheykhun N. O. Aslanov — called “Jay” around the firm — as the head of the trolls running the coverage of the American elections, an assertion that Mr. Aslanov has denied.

Aleksei said that two departments generated articles and tweets in English. On the Russian side of things, he said, the main thread running through the blog posts and the commentary was that “life was good in Russia under Putin and it was bad in the U.S. under Obama.”

On domestic issues, the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny was a favorite target. The Russian annexation of Crimea was always presented as an historical achievement for Mr. Putin that opened new horizons for Russia.

“If things were not great before, now we would start living really well,” was the general theme, he said.

Once a blog post was created, the troll exclaimed, “Then the magic began!”

The computers were designed to forward the post to the agency’s countless fake accounts, opening and closing the post to create huge numbers of fake page views.

After the initial excitement of his new job wore off, Aleksei began to realize that much of the commentary was garbage, with the same themes repeated endlessly. “It was like turning people into zombies by repeating: ‘Everything is good, everything is good. Putin is good, Putin is good,’” he said.

In his nearly two years the staff around him had mushroomed from a few dozen to over 1,000, but by the middle of 2015 he had decided to leave.

The work began to trouble him. “If I went first because they paid a lot of money for nothing, when I left I started to understand what I was doing and it was bad,” he said

Not everyone had the same reaction, he noted. Some seemed brainwashed by the material. “They became cheerleaders for the regime,” he said.

Sergei, 30, now a furniture salesman, was one of those.

With only a high school education, he was thrilled to discover that he could earn good money — he said he was actually handed cash in an envelope for part of his weekly salary — without much effort.

“I was 25 years old and knew nothing about politics,” said Sergei, who arranged for a rendezvous in a St. Petersburg food court so that he could confirm from afar that the meeting was with a foreign journalist.

Working in a room with about 40 other people, he received a stream of blog posts by other agency writers. His job was to add comments and to share the posts on other social media platforms. He said everyone had a quota of at least 80 comments and 20 shares a day.

“The main idea was to work on people’s thinking, to raise patriotism among the Russian people and to portray the U.S. negatively,” Sergei said.

The comments were supposed to be original, something he struggled with, particularly as the articles all began to sound identical even if written by different authors. He had a hard time fulfilling his quota, he said. Hired in October 2013, he left in March 2014, he said.

The job changed him.

“Of course I became more patriotic,” he said. He realized, he said, just how much Russia had to struggle against foreign powers, mostly the United States, who sought to control its natural resources.

From the blog posts, Sergei said he learned that just a few families like the Rockefellers, the Morgans and the Rothschilds controlled much of the wealth in the United States, and that their banks charged rapacious interest rates.

“I began to be more aware of the reasons for the world’s problems,” he said. “I now believe that the world evil is the top elite who control the Federal Reserve system in the United States.”

Reached by telephone after the indictments were announced, Sergei said he had not heard about them.

Aleksei said that ultimately, the managers demanded that the trolls do more and more by rote, even as the audience seemed to grow more jaded and paid less attention to what they wrote.

“If there was some creativity at the beginning,” he said, “by the end that creative part was gone and we were all like robots.”

This 2015 article is also worth checking out as well.

edited 5th Apr '18 9:50:53 PM by megaeliz

Ingonyama Since: Jan, 2001
#237645: Apr 6th 2018 at 12:15:39 AM

To be fair, I wasn't truly accusing anyone of being a bot; if anything I think it's much more likely that whenever something happens which can be used to divide us, the bots come out and push the issue into the limelight, and then real people (even ones here) fall for it and start spreading it themselves. I just found the timing interesting since we know the bots are very active still right now, and seeing the Sanders vs.Hillary fight still being fought this long after the fact seems like more of the division they would want to keep the Blue Wave from happening. It's hard to believe so many could still be refusing to let it go, this long after the fact, without the bots helping keep the flames burning. But maybe I'm just being cynical (or not cynical enough).

edited 6th Apr '18 12:19:15 AM by Ingonyama

Wariolander Since: Nov, 2017
#237646: Apr 6th 2018 at 12:26:14 AM

The only Russian here is Knit Tie, and he hasn't been active for ages.

Julep Since: Jul, 2010
#237647: Apr 6th 2018 at 1:10:17 AM

Also most "bots" don't do that out of the goodness of their hearts (if they have any), they have a goal in mind, and as such pick their targets. The TVT forum is not exactly an interesting one, both because it is very much liberal leaning, and because it is very, very tiny.

You're better off on Twitter or Reddit if you want to shill Vlad. 4chan or its current iterations too.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#237648: Apr 6th 2018 at 2:03:38 AM

I'd be willing to cut Sanders some slack if he just showed some sign that he's learning to be less tone deaf. But with each new gaffe, with this one being especially bad given the timing and the audience, he's making it harder and harder to believe that it really is just tone deafness and not actual racism.

I'd also be willing to cut him some slack if his support and policies really were making a difference in terms of electoral victories. But so far a lot of the special elections in non-blue districts and states have been won by moderate Democratic candidates. Even then, I'd be willing to cut him slack if he didn't engage in sour grapes behavior after some of those wins.

As for rehashing the 2016 primaries, it's Sanders who is arguably doing that. He's been repeating the same talking points since 2016, especially "screw the establishment Democratic Party". He could at least give us something new and non divisive.

All of this and more are reasons why I for one have no compunctions against calling out Sanders whenever he says or does something shitty. And the funny thing? I'd still vote for him in a heartbeat if he ends up being the candidate in 2020. Since at that point the only bar a candidate would need to clear is "Better than Trump".

Disgusted, but not surprised
Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#237649: Apr 6th 2018 at 2:04:03 AM

@Fighteer: I think a takeaway from the election is that any candidate, regardless of qualifications can fall under the weight of enough corruption, systemic bias, nationalist sentiment and disinformation. And we do need to acknowledge that, not just "refuse to accept it," unless you want to try beating Trump in 2020 through the Hopes And Prayers game.

So I'll say it: No possible candidate could have won under the attack our democracy faced in 2016. This is a call to action, not complacency: it means that we cannot allow that to happen again, and must take countermeasures. Some of those are already starting (fortunately, Trump is his own best countermeasure), others need to be started once we have the Oval Office, others with the consent of Senate or of the full Congress, or at the state level.

And in particular, something you personally can do after this year's state legislature election (if Pennsylvania turns blue) is write to your Pennsylvania State Representative and Senator, and ask them to sign Pennsylvania on to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which will be another step towards something that will remove the Republican Party's most important systemic advantage.

Acknowledging facts doesn't mean accepting them as immutable.

3of4 Just a harmless giant from a foreign land. from Five Seconds in the Future. Since: Jan, 2010 Relationship Status: GAR for Archer
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
#237650: Apr 6th 2018 at 2:45:20 AM

"In many places like California, the same person votes many times," Trump said. "You’ve probably heard of that. They always like to say, 'Oh, that's like a conspiracy theory.' Not a conspiracy theory, folks. Millions and millions of people. And it's very hard, because the state guards their records. They don't want to see it."

Did any of the state's offer to show theirs if Trump shows his tax returns? Because, Stones. Glass house.

"You can reply to this Message!"

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