-fish-
Footballguy
Like I said upthread, Trump could admit it, admit collusion, admit FEC violations, and there would still be a huge group of people who would defend Trump and call it a liberal conspiracy.
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The Russia Investigation: Trump Pardons Flynn (16 Viewers)
- Thread starter whoknew
- Start date
Henry Ford
Footballguy
roadkill1292
Footballguy
I think we're actually two thirds of the way home for the most Trumpian move ever.-fish- said:
1. Don sells political considerations in return for foreign election help
3. Don spends four years taking zero, zip, nada action to clean up the election processes
4. Don cancels the '20 election, saying the process can't be trusted anyway.
5. PROFIT
The Z Machine
Footballguy
Yup. Me too. Never signed up. Even had a big fight with my wife about it a few months back.. Not gonna do it. Eff them.
moleculo
Footballguy
Bah. I don't know what they would learn about me or use against me. Anyone stalking my Facebook would just see pics of my kids, pics of beer, and rants about the Broncos. I don't use Facebook for news at all.
If CA were to have hacked FBG, that would be something.
The week leading up to the election on FBG was consumed with PizzaGate and Podesta spirit dinners. Yeah, CA had nothing to do with that.
Sheriff Bart
Footballguy
Lutherman2112
Footballguy
I can agree with the Facebook hate. Haven't been on since before last Christmas.
Facebook in 2016 and early 2017 got me laid, lots.
Facebook in 2016 and early 2017 got me laid, lots.
Sheriff Bart
Footballguy
I post about a dozen times a year and they would find some of my content interesting.... My address up until a year ago was 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
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timschochet
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
Jimmy Kimmel refers to Vladimir Putin as “Trump’s KGBFF”
SWC
Bromigo
Godsbrother
Footballguy
I don't have a FB account either. I don't see why people feel the need or desire to share their personal life, beliefs, and what they had for lunch. Screw that...
bagger
Footballguy
joffer
Footballguy
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
- He also avoided the Skripal issue against the briefing notes.
Trump’s been messing with State, CIA & NSC and now he has a real leak in real time, this stuff was out almost before the end of the call. And they’re defending their own reputations. But they’re also telegraphing serious concern to the American people. I thought this was interesting from WaPo:
>>But a senior White House official emphasized that national security adviser H.R. McMaster did not mention the issue during a telephone briefing with the president, who was in the White House residence ahead of and during his conversation with Putin.<<
>>Trump, who initiated the call, opened it with the congratulations for Putin, one person familiar with the conversation said.<<
>>Ahead of Tuesday’s phone call, national security aides provided Trump with several handwritten notecards filled with talking points to guide his conversation, as is customary for calls with foreign leaders, according to the officials with knowledge of the call, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss *private conversations.<<
- Trump *initiated the call.
- In defending the president a source who sounds like one of his aides reveals that McMaster wasn’t present for the call and Trump did it from the private residence, not from the Oval Office. It doesn’t sound like there was much notice on this and it sounds as if Trump may have been alone.
Last edited by a moderator:
Godsbrother
Footballguy
Banger
Footballguy
it's the only thing that makes sense...even if it was your tendency to flatter when you have index cards in front of you with capital letters "DO NOT CONGRATULATE" and you do it there's no excuse. none. He's the President of the US and we have to right to expect a minimal amount of competence and ability to follow advice of people that are smarter and understand diplomacy much better than you. The people defending the President will do so under any circumstance.....they are just apologists that can't / won't criticize for political reasons. There is no defense of the President not bringing up the poisoning in London OR more importantly THE HACKING OF OUR ELECTRICAL GRIDS! there is nothing more important than that and he's our chief law enforcement officer and when he's confronted with the aggressor of those actions and he stays silent....he's either a complete and absolute coward (best case scenario) or much worse (the more likely scenario).
Hilts
Footballguy
'Why would anybody want an online community to discuss topics or share moments from their life?', asks long time fbg community member.
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
Fwiw here’s the Kremlin’s read out of the call.
If I had the energy I’d pull the WH readout but I’m sure it looks nothing like this. A couple takeaways:
>>Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with President of the United States Donald Trump ****at the latter’s initiative.<<
- We’ll there it is.
>>The exchange on economic cooperation revealed an interest in bolstering it. Energy was discussed separately.<<
- Gosh we just didn’t hear about this, odd.
>>It was agreed to develop further bilateral contacts in light of the changes in leadership at the US Department of State. The possibility of organising a top-level meeting received special attention.<<
- Gee sounds like ol’ Rex had become a sticking point. Color me as surprised as anyone.
>>On the whole, the conversation was constructive and businesslike, with a focus on overcoming the accumulated problems in Russian-American relations.<<
- Sure like Battlin’ Bob Mueller.
****
It’s obvious how deep in Vlad’s pockets Don is. They basically brag about it in Moscow and Don’s not ashamed of anything in DC. Clapper said it and it’s true, Putin acts like Trump’s handler.
— But in some respects I don’t think Moscow is the only one. Trump doesn’t consult his own diplomats or IC or he ignores them when he does. It’s first come first serve.
Koya
Footballguy
At this point you have to think CYA has also kicked in...
"while I never liked nor trusted Trump, the opportunity to influence him toward making good, informed decisions was a responsibility I could not deny. As such, and with reticence, I joined the Admin out of my patriot sense of duty. However, it became apparent to me that (blah blah, total lunatic, racist #######, traitor, pick your poison - maybe polonium?)... it is with this that I resign, but not after doing all I could to get the ship going in the right direction...
There has to be a lot of that going on. Save face, save careers, some sense of actual right vs wrong and these instances are clearly examples of folks distancing themselves from Trump through their behavior - and likely preparing for what downfall may come.
timschochet
Footballguy
And he’s so pissed about it too. The Whote House is talking about the leak being a “fireable offense.”
Myself, I think congratulating Putin for his sham election should be a fireable offense.
Weebs210
Footballguy
cosjobs
Footballguy
lakerstan
Footballguy
cosjobs
Footballguy
Ted Cruz says Cambridge Analytica assured him its voter data methods were legit after Facebook leak
Todd J. Gillman
Katie Leslie
WASHINGTON — Under fire for his connections to a voter-targeting firm that used data taken from 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz insisted Tuesday that he was unaware of any impropriety.
The Cruz presidential campaign touted its collaboration with Cambridge Analytica as a sign of a cutting edge run for the White House, allowing the Texan to carefully identify likely supporters. The firm shifted allegiance to Donald Trump once the Texan dropped out of the GOP primaries.
Both campaigns pumped millions into the company, controlled by billionaire Robert Mercer — a key patron first of Cruz and then Trump in 2016.
Cruz continued work with Cambridge Analytica for six months after allegations surfaced in December 2015 that the firm was using Facebook data it had received illicitly. Recent revelations show the data harvesting was far more extensive than previously suspected, and possibly among the biggest privacy breaches in history.
"They assured us the claims made in the press were false," Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said Tuesday.
She said the campaign's contract with the firm included explicit assurances "that all data used by them were obtained legally, that they would conduct their operations 'in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations,' and that they 'hold all necessary permits, licenses and consents to conduct its operations.' The campaign relied upon those representations."
And she said, Cambridge Analytica reiterated those assurances after the reports in late 2015. Critics of the firm, including whistleblower Christopher Wylie, a data scientist who worked for Cambridge Analytica, have long questioned the firm's methods.
"It was a grossly unethical experiment because you are playing with the psychology of an entire country ... in the context of the democratic process," Wylie told The Guardian. "It is a full service propaganda machine."
The firm's chief executive, Alexander Nix, called such allegations "entirely unfounded and extremely unfair," telling the BBC that he views the attacks as backlash stemming from its work with Trump.
Texas Democrats blasted Cruz on Monday for benefiting from a "massive invasion of privacy" and demanded that Cruz explain when he knew the company had engaged in "deceitful activity."
"Ted Cruz will stop at nothing to weasel his way into power, even if it means weaponizing stolen information to manipulate people to like him," Texas Democratic Party deputy executive director Manny Garcia said in a news release. "Cruz's campaign exploited personal information to create psychological profiles on millions of Americans. All to keep lining the pockets of Cruz's billionaire super PAC donors — like Robert Mercer, who funded this propaganda machine."
Frazier declined a request for comment Monday. On Tuesday, she said in a written statement: "The campaign hired Cambridge Analytica as a vendor to assist with data analysis and online advertising. The campaign's data analysis program followed and built upon the successful data-modeling and micro-targeting approach pioneered by the Obama campaigns in 2008 and 2012."
Cruz faces a Senate challenge in the fall from Rep. Beto O'Rourke, an El Paso Democrat. Federal campaign records show no sign of Cruz campaign ties with Cambridge Analytica since mid-2016.
Questions about the firm
A New York Times report published Saturday reopened questions about the firm and its methods, and the links between the Mercers, Trump and erstwhile Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
In July 2015, Rick Tyler, then a spokesman for Cruz, said the campaign used the data to identify potential voters by six personality types. He hailed the Cambridge data as "better than anything I've ever seen."
"This allows us to go into Iowa and match those traits with likely caucusgoers," he told Politico, referring to the February contest that Cruz ended up winning.
As questions ramped up about the Mercers' involvement with Cambridge in the following months, Tyler said he didn't "know all the details of ownership," according to an October 2015 interview with The Washington Post.
Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica on Saturday. The personal data at issue was harvested by an academic researcher who then provided it to the firm in violation of Facebook's terms of service. Facebook says that in 2015, it learned that a University of Cambridge psychology professor, Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, had passed data from an app to Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, SCL.
About 270,000 people had downloaded an app Kogan had developed, "thisisyourdigitallife," which "offered a personality prediction, and billed itself on Facebook as "a research app used by psychologists." Unknown to those users, Kogan was also able to harvest data on their friend networks.
Cruz campaign
The Cruz campaign paid Cambridge Analytica $5.8 million between July 2015 and June 2016 for services that included "voter ID targeting," "voter modeling" and "survey research/donor modeling," according to the campaign's FEC reports.
The last payment was made a month after he suspended his campaign on May 3.
Cruz's leadership PAC, the Jobs Growth and Freedom Fund, paid the firm $133,000 more in October 2014, for a total of $5.94 million.
Conservative donor Rebekah Mercer pictured at the Media Research Center's 2015 annual gala, held at the National Building Museum in Washington.
The Mercers pumped about $13.5 million into the pro-Cruz super PAC.
With Cruz out of the race, the Mercers shifted their support to Trump, and payments from his campaign to Cambridge Analytica began in July 2016 — $5.9 million for "data management" between then and December 2016.
The total is $7.4 million including payments from "Make America Number 1," a Super PAC funded mostly by Trump's largest donor, Mercer, and controlled by his daughter, Rebekah Mercer.
First questions
In December 2015 — six weeks before the first voting of the presidential cycle in the Iowa caucuses — The Guardian raised questions about Cambridge Analytica's methods, reporting that:
Ted Cruz's presidential campaign is using psychological data based on research spanning tens of millions of Facebook users, harvested largely without their permission, to boost his surging White House run and gain an edge over Donald Trump and other Republican rivals, the Guardian can reveal."
A little-known data company, now embedded within Cruz's campaign and indirectly financed by his primary billionaire benefactor, paid researchers at Cambridge University to gather detailed psychological profiles about the US electorate using a massive pool of mainly unwitting US Facebook users built with an online survey.
In that same story, Tyler denied anything unethical, telling The Guardian: "My understanding is all the information is acquired legally and ethically with the permission of the users when they sign up to Facebook."
Two days after that story was published, The Washington Postlooked at Cruz's use of Cambridge Analytica and its tools.
Jeff Roe, Cruz's campaign manager, told The Post that the heavy reliance on data and analysis had rewritten the playbook for campaigns, making such tools as ads and polling less relevant.
"The conventional wisdom has been destroyed. What you can do is rely on data," Roe said.
He didn't respond to an interview request on Monday.
At the time, the Cruz campaign had spent just $750,000 with Cambridge Analytica, and the firm reportedly had staffers embedded at the Cruz campaign's headquarters in Houston.
As the Post reported: To develop its psychographic models, Cambridge surveyed more than 150,000 households across the country and scored individuals using five basic traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. A top Cambridge official didn't respond to a request for comment, but Cruz campaign officials said the company developed its correlations in part by using data from Facebook that included subscribers' likes. That data helped make the Cambridge data particularly powerful, campaign officials said.
The Cruz campaign modified the Cambridge template, renaming some psychological categories and adding subcategories to the list, such as "stoic traditionalist" and "true believer." The campaign then did its own field surveys in battleground states to develop a more precise predictive model based on issues preferences.
The Cruz algorithm was then applied to what the campaign calls an "enhanced voter file," which can contain as many as 50,000 data points gathered from voting records, popular websites and consumer information such as magazine subscriptions, car ownership and preferences for food and clothing.
Ending the relationship
It's unclear when Cruz stopped working with Cambridge Analytica.
Some news accounts indicate that his campaign stopped using the firm's data after the South Carolina primary in late February 2016, though federal campaign records show more than $670,000 in payments to the firm for "media/voter modeling" or "voter ID targeting/web service" in March and June, plus $218,000 for "media" and "digital service/web service."
In March 2017 — long after Cruz ended his presidential bid — Tyler said Cambridge data had proven unreliable. The Timesreported that "in one early test, more than half the Oklahoma voters whom Cambridge had identified as Cruz supporters actually favored other candidates."
It also is possible that the intense profiling of individual voters became less relevant or feasible once the contest expanded beyond the small states where retail-style campaigning is paramount — Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Todd J. Gillman
Katie Leslie
WASHINGTON — Under fire for his connections to a voter-targeting firm that used data taken from 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz insisted Tuesday that he was unaware of any impropriety.
The Cruz presidential campaign touted its collaboration with Cambridge Analytica as a sign of a cutting edge run for the White House, allowing the Texan to carefully identify likely supporters. The firm shifted allegiance to Donald Trump once the Texan dropped out of the GOP primaries.
Both campaigns pumped millions into the company, controlled by billionaire Robert Mercer — a key patron first of Cruz and then Trump in 2016.
Cruz continued work with Cambridge Analytica for six months after allegations surfaced in December 2015 that the firm was using Facebook data it had received illicitly. Recent revelations show the data harvesting was far more extensive than previously suspected, and possibly among the biggest privacy breaches in history.
"They assured us the claims made in the press were false," Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said Tuesday.
She said the campaign's contract with the firm included explicit assurances "that all data used by them were obtained legally, that they would conduct their operations 'in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations,' and that they 'hold all necessary permits, licenses and consents to conduct its operations.' The campaign relied upon those representations."
And she said, Cambridge Analytica reiterated those assurances after the reports in late 2015. Critics of the firm, including whistleblower Christopher Wylie, a data scientist who worked for Cambridge Analytica, have long questioned the firm's methods.
"It was a grossly unethical experiment because you are playing with the psychology of an entire country ... in the context of the democratic process," Wylie told The Guardian. "It is a full service propaganda machine."
The firm's chief executive, Alexander Nix, called such allegations "entirely unfounded and extremely unfair," telling the BBC that he views the attacks as backlash stemming from its work with Trump.
Texas Democrats blasted Cruz on Monday for benefiting from a "massive invasion of privacy" and demanded that Cruz explain when he knew the company had engaged in "deceitful activity."
"Ted Cruz will stop at nothing to weasel his way into power, even if it means weaponizing stolen information to manipulate people to like him," Texas Democratic Party deputy executive director Manny Garcia said in a news release. "Cruz's campaign exploited personal information to create psychological profiles on millions of Americans. All to keep lining the pockets of Cruz's billionaire super PAC donors — like Robert Mercer, who funded this propaganda machine."
Frazier declined a request for comment Monday. On Tuesday, she said in a written statement: "The campaign hired Cambridge Analytica as a vendor to assist with data analysis and online advertising. The campaign's data analysis program followed and built upon the successful data-modeling and micro-targeting approach pioneered by the Obama campaigns in 2008 and 2012."
Cruz faces a Senate challenge in the fall from Rep. Beto O'Rourke, an El Paso Democrat. Federal campaign records show no sign of Cruz campaign ties with Cambridge Analytica since mid-2016.
Questions about the firm
A New York Times report published Saturday reopened questions about the firm and its methods, and the links between the Mercers, Trump and erstwhile Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
In July 2015, Rick Tyler, then a spokesman for Cruz, said the campaign used the data to identify potential voters by six personality types. He hailed the Cambridge data as "better than anything I've ever seen."
"This allows us to go into Iowa and match those traits with likely caucusgoers," he told Politico, referring to the February contest that Cruz ended up winning.
As questions ramped up about the Mercers' involvement with Cambridge in the following months, Tyler said he didn't "know all the details of ownership," according to an October 2015 interview with The Washington Post.
Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica on Saturday. The personal data at issue was harvested by an academic researcher who then provided it to the firm in violation of Facebook's terms of service. Facebook says that in 2015, it learned that a University of Cambridge psychology professor, Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, had passed data from an app to Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, SCL.
About 270,000 people had downloaded an app Kogan had developed, "thisisyourdigitallife," which "offered a personality prediction, and billed itself on Facebook as "a research app used by psychologists." Unknown to those users, Kogan was also able to harvest data on their friend networks.
Cruz campaign
The Cruz campaign paid Cambridge Analytica $5.8 million between July 2015 and June 2016 for services that included "voter ID targeting," "voter modeling" and "survey research/donor modeling," according to the campaign's FEC reports.
The last payment was made a month after he suspended his campaign on May 3.
Cruz's leadership PAC, the Jobs Growth and Freedom Fund, paid the firm $133,000 more in October 2014, for a total of $5.94 million.
Conservative donor Rebekah Mercer pictured at the Media Research Center's 2015 annual gala, held at the National Building Museum in Washington.
The Mercers pumped about $13.5 million into the pro-Cruz super PAC.
With Cruz out of the race, the Mercers shifted their support to Trump, and payments from his campaign to Cambridge Analytica began in July 2016 — $5.9 million for "data management" between then and December 2016.
The total is $7.4 million including payments from "Make America Number 1," a Super PAC funded mostly by Trump's largest donor, Mercer, and controlled by his daughter, Rebekah Mercer.
First questions
In December 2015 — six weeks before the first voting of the presidential cycle in the Iowa caucuses — The Guardian raised questions about Cambridge Analytica's methods, reporting that:
Ted Cruz's presidential campaign is using psychological data based on research spanning tens of millions of Facebook users, harvested largely without their permission, to boost his surging White House run and gain an edge over Donald Trump and other Republican rivals, the Guardian can reveal."
A little-known data company, now embedded within Cruz's campaign and indirectly financed by his primary billionaire benefactor, paid researchers at Cambridge University to gather detailed psychological profiles about the US electorate using a massive pool of mainly unwitting US Facebook users built with an online survey.
In that same story, Tyler denied anything unethical, telling The Guardian: "My understanding is all the information is acquired legally and ethically with the permission of the users when they sign up to Facebook."
Two days after that story was published, The Washington Postlooked at Cruz's use of Cambridge Analytica and its tools.
Jeff Roe, Cruz's campaign manager, told The Post that the heavy reliance on data and analysis had rewritten the playbook for campaigns, making such tools as ads and polling less relevant.
"The conventional wisdom has been destroyed. What you can do is rely on data," Roe said.
He didn't respond to an interview request on Monday.
At the time, the Cruz campaign had spent just $750,000 with Cambridge Analytica, and the firm reportedly had staffers embedded at the Cruz campaign's headquarters in Houston.
As the Post reported: To develop its psychographic models, Cambridge surveyed more than 150,000 households across the country and scored individuals using five basic traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. A top Cambridge official didn't respond to a request for comment, but Cruz campaign officials said the company developed its correlations in part by using data from Facebook that included subscribers' likes. That data helped make the Cambridge data particularly powerful, campaign officials said.
The Cruz campaign modified the Cambridge template, renaming some psychological categories and adding subcategories to the list, such as "stoic traditionalist" and "true believer." The campaign then did its own field surveys in battleground states to develop a more precise predictive model based on issues preferences.
The Cruz algorithm was then applied to what the campaign calls an "enhanced voter file," which can contain as many as 50,000 data points gathered from voting records, popular websites and consumer information such as magazine subscriptions, car ownership and preferences for food and clothing.
Ending the relationship
It's unclear when Cruz stopped working with Cambridge Analytica.
Some news accounts indicate that his campaign stopped using the firm's data after the South Carolina primary in late February 2016, though federal campaign records show more than $670,000 in payments to the firm for "media/voter modeling" or "voter ID targeting/web service" in March and June, plus $218,000 for "media" and "digital service/web service."
In March 2017 — long after Cruz ended his presidential bid — Tyler said Cambridge data had proven unreliable. The Timesreported that "in one early test, more than half the Oklahoma voters whom Cambridge had identified as Cruz supporters actually favored other candidates."
It also is possible that the intense profiling of individual voters became less relevant or feasible once the contest expanded beyond the small states where retail-style campaigning is paramount — Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
cosjobs
Footballguy
RynheartTheReluctant @TheRynheart 16h16 hours ago
More
RynheartTheReluctant Retweeted NBC News
Cambridge Analytica suspended CEO Nix? Pffft. Nix has already started a new company ‘Emerdata Ltd’ in the UK and Rebekah Mercer was appointed Director On March 16, 2018. https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10911848/officers …
More
RynheartTheReluctant Retweeted NBC News
Cambridge Analytica suspended CEO Nix? Pffft. Nix has already started a new company ‘Emerdata Ltd’ in the UK and Rebekah Mercer was appointed Director On March 16, 2018. https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10911848/officers …
toshiba
Footballguy
This was pushed by a bunch of easily targeted buffoons who refused to acknowledge facts because they didn't have the skills to tell the difference.
lakerstan
Footballguy
Godsbrother
Footballguy
)
Koya
Footballguy
The greatest secret agent of all time. She has lived her entire life to save us from this traitorous clown.
-fish-
Footballguy
If Stormy Daniels is any indication of Trump's preferences, she's probably more of a squirter.
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
Melania would probably be more trustable.
Here's the WH readout.
- Compare vs the Kremlin readout.
The WH version is the vaguest thing ever. Weird, weirder.
sho nuff
Footballguy
Dr Oadi
Footballguy
Russians hasn't meddled in our election resulting in Hitler II becoming President in 2012 so yes a wee bit different.
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
At least have the sense to criticize or complement Obama when doing this 'lefty tears/hypocrisy' shtick.
-fish-
Footballguy
Yeah, I'm really not seeing the issue with congratulating Putin. We know their elections are a sham and that he's really a dictator, but we've decided to ignore that for years in our diplomatic approach to Russia. I think Trump will ultimately turn out to be guilty of conducting organized crime and money laundering on top of sexual harassment, but making an issue out of this phone call looks pretty petty.
apalmer
Footballguy
So, basically this is Cruz's version of "I asked him twice and he denied it, so I have to believe him."
Koya
Footballguy
His OWN TEAM OF ADVISORS wrote a note so he would NOT congratulate.
While its not that big an issue in isolation, it's damning in any number of ways adding more straws to the camels back
Of course it's worse because Trump did it.
I wonder if anyone would be pissed if Trump brought out a plastic "reset" button?
sho nuff
Footballguy
Joe Summer
Footballguy
- says we're all brainwashed.
- only mentions "witch hunt" after Trump tweets it.
- only mentions "witch hunt" after Trump tweets it.
