Ok, comrade.
…
Wait, so the working theory is that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election by noting that Trump’s campaign manager was a crook? THIS is what the GOP claims is foreign interference?
Not saying that he would. Just observing how, after nearly two centuries and multiple regime changes, Russia is still playing it and expanding it from Central.Asia. The only major change was to add the U.S. as a player. As I recall, but cannot find the cites without investing more effort than I care to, MacNamara and JFK’s other Whiz Kids felt it was up to them to pick up the game from the faltering British.
It has been pointed out to you numerous times in multiple threads that the Russian effort in 2016 went far beyond a few stupid memes. For example, there is evidence that they tried to electronically access voting infrastructure in every single county in Florida. That is, in fact, far more than a few stupid memes.
Did you forget?
There was also money laundering through the NRA
Do you mean this?
Mueller Report: FBI Thinks Russia Got Into Florida County Network Ahead of 2016 Election
There was also a ton of other things. Every few months UltraVires tries to minimize the Russian interference in the 2016 election as “mean things on Facebook” or similar. Then twenty or so posters present examples of Russian interference that go well beyond Facebook and demonstrate that Facebook was only a tiny slice of the massive undertaking that was Russian interference in the 2016 election. UltraVires will then fade out of the thread without acknowledging any of those posts only to pop up and do it all again six months down the road.
Oh Maria Butina, the “Natasha” of Rocky & Bullwinkle?
I didn’t see any of this “massive” stuff outlined in the Mueller report and that was his exact mandate to investigate. Where’s the beef?
The beef starts on page 50 of volume 1 of the Mueller report.
Here’s the chunk about Florida…
This is just one example, but the point is this is clearly a crime, even if an American did it, and definitely has nothing to do with Facebook. This and many, many other aspects of the massive Russian operation have been pointed out to UltraVires before, but for some reason he insists that it was just, “Facebook memes.”
It’s absurd.
Be plausible enough to chalk up some of those voting database incursions as poking around and trying to find out what they could do, rather than actually setting out to do it. What concerns me more is the ability to target disinformation to vulnerable segments of the population.
Reagan talking about welfare queens in Cadillacs? Outdated, obsolete. Today, its a FB ad about how Hillary kidnapped Bernie’s grandchildren and enslaved them on one of her pizza shop sex farms.
Progress!
Let’s say that I tell you that studies have been performed that show that 80% of rape accusations have been proven to have been true, 5% were pure slander, and the other 15% could not be established.
Now, a particular man, Roger, has been accused of rape by ten different women. There is no indication that they know each other.
Woman by woman, there’s up to a 20% chance that their testimony adds nothing. Mary could be lying, Joanne could be lying, Barbara could be lying, Mandi could be lying, and so on.
But Roger is a rapist.
At an 80% probability across 10 independent reports, the probability that Roger is innocent is 0.00001024%. That is science and math. Our 80% value was generated by an independent research effort that has no relationship to the case at hand. The calculation to reach 0.00001024% is simple math. It’s 20^10 / 100^10 because those are the areas of the hypercube for the “10 liars” option and the hypercube for all possible options. If even one woman is telling the truth, when the other nine are lying, Roger is still a rapist.
In science, sleuthing, or anything else, proof is achieved through a preponderance of evidence. “Preponderance” does not mean “I have a video tape of the guy doing it”. It means, “I have a bunch of independent factoids that, alone, mean nothing. But, viewing them as a whole and running some odds, we have a certain thing even if some elements of evidence prove to have been wrong.”
Feel free to go through that article and assign probabilities.
What are the odds, for example, that someone else (see footnote 136 on page 41 of the Mueller report), other than Russia, also hacked into the DNC, also stopped their hacking operation on or around the same day that Russia stopped, also would be motivated to use WikiLeaks as a front?
Yeah, each of those items independently could happen. But the only person to write an article that tries to convince you to consider all those elements independently and exclusive of one another is someone whose job it is to generate political spin to mislead those who want to be mislead.
(emphasis added)
(emphasis added)
Why would you ask such a foolish question?
Don’t forget Albania — its Fakebook entrepreneurs make it a strong candidate for a medal in the Small Country category.
Of course, by far the hugest amount of 2016 election frauds and crimes were committed down there in the Yewnited States.
What are the odds that the DNC wasn’t hacked but the emails were obtained by WikiLeaks via a leak? Meaning someone inside the DNC provided the emails to WikiLeaks. Perhaps a Bernie supporter dissatisfied about how the DNC was operating with respect to the primary system. Small probability of that, right?
Go ahead, quote him then.
I don’t think such a quote can be found. There are some where he says he doesn’t believe Russia hacked the DNC servers, but that has not been considered proven by US Intelligence. The latest quote I can find on it says “high confidence”:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/spy-agency-consensus-grows-that-russia-hacked-dnc.html which falls short of “absolute certainty”. And that is just one type of interference. His statement therefore is not a denial of Russian interference of any kind.
So there is a false “exclusive or” in the impeachment articles. Russia AND Ukraine interfered in the 2016 US election. Unless you are so xenophobic as to say that “a Ukranian court finding of Ukranian interference does not merit any further investigation”.
It took me all of 30 seconds:
2017 Lie of the Year: Russian election interference is a ‘made-up story’
The “Trump and Russia is a made up story” is saying he did not collude with Russia. He was not trying to say Russia made no attempts to interfere.
The “ads on Facebook” were compared to “Media coverage in favor of Crooked Hillary”. He was not denying Russia bought ads on Facebook. The ads on Facebook were compared in significance to Media bias in favor of Hillary, like a butterfly flapping its wings (ads on Facebook) behind one runner (Trump) compared to a jet engine (Media bias) pushing the competing runner (Hillary). And he still won.
And the third quote is about Putin denying the hack of the DNC servers, which the US Intelligence agencies are “highly confident” Russia did, but not absolutely certain. One way to help the US Intelligence agencies to remove their remaining doubts, and learn more things which might help the US, would be to ask the Ukranians to locate the server, which some believe is now in Ukraine, and which the DNC would not allow the FBI to look at directly, but instead used a private contractor.
I know enough about Ukraine to know not to give the findings of their corrupt legal system anywhere near the kind of weight I would give the findings of a court that operates under the rule of law.
This is patently untrue, and you should apologize for saying something so untrue without researching first.
The conversation had gone on extensively before that, but it was always in the context of election meddling. Here’s some more of it:
You’re just plain wrong here, and it’s a test of your posting habits whether you can, confronted with the evidence from whitehouse.gov, admit error and change your mind.
I would consider the President to be remiss if he failed to ask Ukraine to investigate Ukranian interference in the 2016 election after a Ukranian court declared there was, despite doubts some have about the Ukranian court system. The Democrats have done the opposite, and to the extreme: they say it is an impeachable offense to request such investigations.