How the take down of Al Franken was orchestrated by the Right Wing and supported by Russian Twitter bots.

Courtesy of Newsweek:

While everyone has been focused on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election to support Donald Trump, the Franken take-down originated in—and was propelled by—a strategic online campaign with digital tentacles reaching to, of all places, Japan. Analysts have now mapped out how the initial accusation against Franken by Hooters pinup girl and lad-mag model Leeann Tweeden was turned into effective propaganda after first being hinted at by right wing black ops master Roger Stone.

A pair of Japan-based websites, created the day before Tweeden came forward, and a swarm of related Twitter bots made the Tweeden story go viral—and then weaponized a liberal writer's criticism of Franken. The bot army, in tandem with prominent real live human right-wingers with Twitter followers in the millions, such as Mike Cernovich, spewed thousands of posts, helping the #frankenfondles hashtag and the "Franken is a groper" meme effectively silence the testimonies of eight former female staffers who defended the Minnesota Democrat before he resigned last year. 

The operation commenced on November 15, when Roger Stone— who is now banned from Twitter for racism and profanity—tweeted from one of his accounts “Roger Stone says it’s Al Franken’s ‘time in the barrel.’ Franken next in long list of Democrats accused of ‘grabby’ behavior.” 

On the same day, a web domain called realusa.site was registered in Japan by a developer named Atsufumi Otsuka. A fake-news website was then established at that web address, and then a second one was created a few days later, according to research shared with the voting rights research outfit Unhack the Vote. 

Tweeden’s account of being groped by Franken was first amplified by a network of right wing media, including KABC in Los Angeles, where Tweeden has a radio show, The Hill, Infowars and Breitbart, which mobilized within hours of Stone's tweet and the release of a picture of a Tweeden and Franken clowning around at a USO performance before he was a senator.

By November 17, the trending of “Al Franken” was officially also a Russia Intelligence operation, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, an organization tracking Russian social media accounts, based on a sample taken that day of 600 of the fake accounts.

There is apparently a sophisticated botnet called "The Voty botnet" that was instrumental in pushing a story by a liberal writer called “Dear Al Franken, I’ll Miss You But You Can’t Matter Anymore” out to millions of people.

That article provided legitimacy for actual liberals to pile on Al Franken as well, and before you knew it Democrats like Kirsten Gillibrand were calling for his resignation. 

The rest, as they say, is history. 

And this serves as yet another reminder that it is not only the Right Wing who can be manipulated by Russian tactics online, but also seemingly intelligent liberals.

We have to examine literally every bit of information we see to discover its roots, and to determine if it is indeed accurate, before we accept it as fact.

This puts a huge burden on each of us, but right now this is essentially our only defense against allowing ourselves to be used to spread and weaponize misinformation.

Facebook is now going to let you find out if you were manipulated by Russian propaganda. Spoiler alert: You probably were.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:  

Facebook Inc. will show people which Russian propaganda pages or accounts they’ve followed and liked on the social network, responding to a request from Congress to address manipulation and meddling during the 2016 presidential election.

The tool will appear by the end of the year in Facebook’s online support center, the company said in a blog post Wednesday. It will answer the user question, “How can I see if I’ve liked or followed a Facebook page or Instagram account created by the Internet Research Agency?” That’s the Russian firm that created thousands of incendiary posts from fake accounts posing as U.S. citizens. People will see a list of the accounts they followed, if any, from January 2015 through August 2017.

It’s Facebook’s most direct effort to explain to users how they may have been affected by the IRA’s postings, which reached an estimated 150 million people and stirred up controversy over gun rights, immigration, race relations and religion in the U.S., sometimes prompting real-world protests on both sides of a debate. 

“It is important that people understand how foreign actors tried to sow division and mistrust using Facebook before and after the 2016 US election,” the company said in the post.

I know my headline seems a little assholey, but even if you did not participate on Facebook, friends and family members who you spoke to very likely did.  

So while they were expressing their political point of view to you, it is quite likely, whether they were conservatives or liberals, that the Russians helped to influence it just a little.

I told you about that one friend at the gym who said that he saw a photo of Hillary Clinton standing among dead bodies that convinced him she was a war monger.

I never saw such a picture, and believe me I looked for it, but it still bothered me. It manipulated my emotions to some degree.

In the end if you did not vote for Hillary Clinton, which seems to have been the absolute focus of this propaganda, then it is more than likely that you were at least subliminally influenced by something the Russians sent out on social media.

Instagram joins the growing list of social media platforms that the Russians used to manipulate the American people.

Courtesy of Business Insider:

It's been a couple months since Facebook confirmed that fake accounts likely originating in Russia bought ads on the platform to sow discord during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

On Friday, the company revealed that its subsidiary Instagram was also used in an attempt to influence the election. And on Wednesday, as officials from Facebook, Google, and Twitter testified before Congress, House Democrats released examples of the Instagram posts in question.

The ads are similar in many ways to those posted on Facebook and Twitter, which also targeted things like Sharia law, Black Lives Matter, and gay rights.

They're similar in another fundamental way: They succeeded in reaching millions of Americans. Colin Stretch, general counsel for Facebook, said Tuesday before Congress that malicious Russian actors managed to produce 120,000 relevant Instagram posts, which reached 16 million people from October through the election. 

The data before October is murkier, according to Stretch, though the company estimates that another 4 million people likely saw content from Russian accounts.

At this point I think we can safely assume that every social media platform was infected with Russian propaganda designed to alter our political points of view and make us hate each other even more. 

And no, staying completely off of social media yourself does nothing to solve this problem.

Facebook groups created by Russian trolls not only attempted to sway election, they also attempted to incite violence.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Posts from three now-removed Facebook groups created by the Russian Internet Research Agency suggest Russia sought not only to meddle in U.S. politics but to encourage ideologically opposed groups to act out violently against one another. The posts are part of a database compiled by Jonathan Albright, the research director at Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism, who tracks and analyzes Russian propaganda. 

For example, "Being Patriotic," a group that regularly posted content praising Donald Trump's candidacy, stated in an April 2016 post that Black Lives Matter activists who disrespected the American flag should be "be immediately shot." The account accrued about 200,000 followers before it was shut down. 

Another Russia-linked group, "Blacktivist," described police brutality in a November 2016 post weeks after the election, and stated, "Black people have to do something. An eye for an eye. The law enforcement officers keep harassing and killing us without consequences." 

The group "Secured Borders" had the most violent rhetoric, some of it well after the presidential election. A post in March 2017 described the threat of "dangerous illegal aliens" and said, "The only way to deal with them is to kill them all." Another post about immigrants called for a draconian new law, saying, "if you get deported that's your only warning. You come back you get shot and rolled into a ditch... BANG, problem solved." And a post about refugees said, "the state department needs to be burned to the ground and the rubble reduced to ashes."

Well that's troubling.

And it also indicates that the Russian trolls were likely more interested in sowing unrest and even violence than in getting Donald  Trump elected.

In fact they probably believed that getting him elected would create even more disharmony and distrust.

Which would help to explain this next story.

Courtesy of Politico:

Top lawyers from Facebook and Twitter said Tuesday that Russian-linked posts and advertisements placed on the social networks after Election Day sought to sow doubt about President Donald Trump's victory. 

Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch told a Senate Judiciary panel that content generated by a Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency after Nov. 8 centered on “fomenting discord about the validity of [Trump’s] election.” That's a change from Russia's pre-election activity, which was largely centered on trying to denigrate Hillary Clinton, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a January report. 

“During the election, they were trying to create discord between Americans, most of it directed against Clinton. After the election you saw Russian-tied groups and organizations trying to undermine President Trump’s legitimacy. Is that what you saw on Facebook?” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked at the hearing. 

Stretch and his Twitter counterpart, Sean Edgett, called that an "accurate" statement.

Donald Trump is the chaos candidate, which is likely why Putin wanted him in the White House.

I imagine that Putin also hoped that he could do something about the sanctions against Russia, but when Trump proved impotent in that regard, well then  it was time to use him to ignite more unrest among the American people.

I have said it before, but it bears repeating.

If you are getting your information from Facebook it is almost certain that your opinions have been manipulated in one way or another.

Russian trolls paid actual American activists to help fund protests during 2016 election cycle.

Courtesy of The Guardian:  

On Tuesday, the newspaper RBC published a major investigation into the work of a so-called Russian “troll factory” since 2015, including during the period of the US election campaign, disclosures that are likely to put further spotlight on alleged Russian meddling in the election. 

The existence of the troll factory, which has a history of spamming Russian and English blogs and comment forums, has been reported on by many outlets including the Guardian, but the RBC investigation is the first in-detail look at the organisation’s activity during the election period. 

RBC said it had identified 118 accounts or groups in Facebook, Instagram and Twitter that were linked to the troll factory, all of which had been blocked in August and September this year as part of the US investigation into Russian electoral meddling. 

Many of the accounts had already been linked to Russian disinformation efforts in western outlets, but RBC said its sources at the troll factory had provided screenshots of the internal group administration pages of some of the groups, as proof they were run from Russia. It also spoke to former and current employees of the troll factory, all of whom spoke anonymously. 

Perhaps the most alarming element of the article was the claim that employees of the troll factory had contacted about 100 real US-based activists to help with the organisation of protests and events. RBC claimed the activists were contacted by Facebook group administrators hiding their Russian origin and were offered financial help to pay for transport or printing costs. About $80,000 was spent during a two-year period, according to the report.

So another $80,000?

Oh but that is not all. Not by a long shot.

Courtesy of CNN:

A social media campaign calling itself "Blacktivist" and linked to the Russian government used both Facebook and Twitter in an apparent attempt to amplify racial tensions during the U.S. presidential election, two sources with knowledge of the matter told CNN. The Twitter account has been handed over to Congress; the Facebook account is expected to be handed over in the coming days. 

Both Blacktivist accounts, each of which used the handle Blacktivists, regularly shared content intended to stoke outrage. "Black people should wake up as soon as possible," one post on the Twitter account read. "Black families are divided and destroyed by mass incarceration and death of black men," another read. The accounts also posted videos of police violence against African Americans. 

And then there is this:

A group linked to the Russian troll farm behind thousands of fake Facebook ads paid personal trainers in New York, Florida, and other parts of the United States to run self-defense classes for African Americans in an apparent attempt to stoke fear and gather contact details of Americans potentially susceptible to their propaganda. 

"Be ready to protect your rights... Let them know that black power matters," the group, known as Black Fist, wrote on its website promoting the events. 

The group appears to have been set up in January 2017, and it ran events before stopping at some point this year, evidence that Russia's attempts to use social media to meddle in American affairs have extended far beyond the 2016 presidential election. 

The events, which appear to have been designed to suggest a connection to the Black Lives Matter movement, were -- unbeknownst to the trainers who led them -- likely conceived by the Russian government-linked Internet Research Agency. 

Seriously?

At this point nobody could possibly say that the Russian government was not all in to help Donald Trump get elected.

And you simply do not put this much effort into something unless you are getting a substantial, guaranteed, benefit.

Russian operatives used Facebook to organize armed anti-Islamist protest and targeted military vets in 2016.

Courtesy of Think Progress: 

Last May, nearly 100 demonstrators gathered around the Islamic Da’wah Center in downtown Houston, squaring off against one another in competing camps. 

The “Stop Islamization of Texas” protest was, on its face, largely similar to any number of other tense, vitriolic demonstrations that percolated through 2016. On the one end: a crew carrying Confederate flags, #WhiteLivesMatter banners, and heavy weaponry. On the other: counter-protesters with signs decrying Islamophobia, calling for communal unity, and a bubble machine going at full blast. 

Despite the presence of AR-15s, the demonstrations ended without violence. The white supremacists screaming “Fascist and proud!” dissipated, as did those supporting the Islamic center. 

The organizers behind the anti-Islam protesters, however, never showed. And now, over 16 months later, we know why. 

As CNN reported last week, the protest was put together by the “Heart of Texas” Facebook page – a page that was revealed last month as one of the fake accounts operated out of Russia. Unlike the November anti-Hillary Clinton, pro-secession rallies the page attempted to organize across Texas, the May protest not only brought armed protesters, but a raft of counter-protesters to face down those calling for “white power!”

Just let that roll around in your mind a little.

That means that the Russian government used an American social media platform to organize a situation where American people could easily have been shot and killed.

Who needs more bombs and bigger armies when you can so easily accomplish something like that?

And the Russians clearly knew which Americans were most susceptible to their manipulations.

Courtesy of McClatchy:

Russia has exploited social media networks to target current and former U.S. military personnel with propaganda, conspiracy theories and other misinformation, achieving “significant and persistent interactions” over Twitter during a one-month period last spring, a British research team found. 

The Oxford University study, which traced the reach of three websites with clear ties to the Russian government, adds a new dimension to revelations of a Kremlin cyber campaign aimed at undermining Americans’ trust in democracy during last year’s U.S. elections and helping Donald Trump win the presidency. 

“We’ve found an entire ecosystem of junk news about national security issues that is deliberately crafted for U.S. veterans and active military personnel,” said Philip Howard, a professor of internet studies who led the research. “It’s a complex blend of content with a Russian view of the world – wild rumors and conspiracies.”

Remember when I told you about that buddy from the gym who claimed that his opinion of Hillary was altered when he saw a meme on social media showing Hillary standing among a bunch of dead bodies and calling her a "war monger?"

Yep, you guessed it, he is ex-military.

I remember at the time wondering how he was targeted as he is essentially apolitical.

Now I know.

And we are still everyday learning more and more about how easily the Russians manipulated the American people.

It is enough to make you feel disgusted that you have to share the planet with such fucking morons.

Google uncovers evidence that it was also used by the Russian to manipulate voters in the 2016 election.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

Google for the first time has uncovered evidence that Russian operatives exploited the company’s platforms in an attempt to interfere in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the company's investigation. 

The Silicon Valley giant has found that tens of thousands of dollars were spent on ads by Russian agents who aimed to spread disinformation across Google’s many products, which include YouTube, as well as advertising associated with Google search, Gmail, and the company’s DoubleClick ad network, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters that have not been made public. Google runs the world’s largest online advertising business, and YouTube is the world’s largest online video site. 

The discovery by Google is also significant because the ads do not appear to be from the same Kremlin-affiliated troll farm that bought ads on Facebook -- a sign that the Russian effort to spread disinformation online may be a much broader problem than Silicon Valley companies have unearthed so far.

I have been waiting for Google to join the party.

After all if you are going to manipulate American voters it makes no sense to ignore perhaps the biggest player on the internet.

And of course utilizing Google's multiple social platforms also includes You Tube, which apparently allowed the Russians to recruit black vloggers who made videos to convince the black community that Hillary Clinton's campaign was funded by Muslims.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

According to the YouTube page for “Williams and Kalvin,” the Clintons are “serial killers who are going to rape the whole nation.” Donald Trump can’t be racist because he’s a “businessman.” Hillary Clinton’s campaign was “fund[ed] by the Muslim.” 

These are a sample of the videos put together by two black video bloggers calling themselves Williams and Kalvin Johnson, whose social media pages investigators say are part of the broad Russian campaign to influence American politics. Across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, they purported to offer “a word of truth” to African-American audiences. 

“We, the black people, we stand in one unity. We stand in one to say that Hillary Clinton is not our candidate,” one of the men says in a November video that warned Clinton “is going to stand for the Muslim. We don’t stand for her.”

Like I said, we are only hearing about the tip of the iceberg.

The Russians clearly went all in to discredit Hillary Clinton, and help Donald Trump get elected.

It is becoming impossible to believe that there was not some sort of deal made with the Trump campaign. 

According to Facebook as many as ten million people saw those Russia linked ads.

Courtesy of Time Magazine: 

Facebook said that the 3,000 Russia-linked advertisements it turned over to congressional investigators on Monday were seen on the social network by an estimated 10 million people in the United States. 

The social media company said 44% of the ads were seen before the 2016 presidential election, and 56% of the ads were seen after the election. 

Facebook turned over the ads this week in the midst of public scrutiny over its role in spreading "fake news" stories that critics say might have influenced the outcome of the election. Russia created fake accounts on Facebook and bought ads with the goal of spreading false stories. And last month, Facebook said nearly 500 accounts that originated in Russia purchased $100,000 worth of Facebook ads during the 2016 election.

Well that's disturbing.

And what is more disturbing is that Facebook just handed them the tools to pull it off.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

Russian operatives set up an array of misleading Web sites and social media pages to identify American voters susceptible to propaganda, then used a powerful Facebook tool to repeatedly send them messages designed to influence their political behavior, say people familiar with the investigation into foreign meddling in the U.S. election. 

The tactic resembles what American businesses and political campaigns have been doing in recent years to deliver messages to potentially interested people online. The Russians exploited this system by creating English-language sites and Facebook pages that closely mimicked those created by U.S. political activists. 

The Web sites and Facebook pages displayed ads or other messages focused on such hot-button issues as illegal immigration, African American political activism and the rising prominence of Muslims in the United States. The Russian operatives then used a Facebook “retargeting” tool, called Custom Audiences, to send specific ads and messages to voters who had visited those sites, say people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details from an ongoing investigation.

We can blame Facebook for their part in this, that is fair, but we also have to recognize that none of this would have been possible if the American people had not proven to be so susceptible to manipulation.

Now I know from experience that a number of you will say that this is the reason you don't go on Facebook, or use other types of social media, but that misses the point of all this.

It does not solve one single problem that you yourself don't use Facebook, because you are only one person and in the grand scheme of things your choice matters not at all.

The real problem is that multiple millions of people DO use Facebook, and THEY either need to be better educated or Facebook needs to protect them from manipulation.

That second one will simply never happen, because our entire capitalist way of life depends on the ability to manipulate people into buying certain products, adopting new technologies, and trying to live a lifestyle that advertisers convince them is more desirable than the one they are already living.

So that means we are left attempting to educate those who are likely targets of the kind of manipulation that puts people like Donald Trump and Sarah Palin into office.

And that my friends does NOT mean abandoning Facebook. It means sharing factual, informative articles on all social media platforms in an attempt to offset the fake news that is already much too readily available.

Keep in mind that if you are not part of the solution, then you remain part of the problem.

Head of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, uses Yom Kippur to beg for forgiveness.

Courtesy of, where else, Facebook:

Tonight concludes Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews when we reflect on the past year and ask forgiveness for our mistakes. For those I hurt this year, I ask forgiveness and I will try to be better. For the ways my work was used to divide people rather than bring us together, I ask forgiveness and I will work to do better. May we all be better in the year ahead, and may you all be inscribed in the book of life.

I'm sorry, there is an insane person in the White House, that your social media platform helped get elected, spending his days golfing while people are dying in Puerto Rico and being massacred in Las Vegas, there is no forgiving that. 

Facebook needs to completely revamp how it sells advertising, and it needs to reject any attempts by foreign entities to manipulate citizens of sovereign nations.

Or it could just shut down, which would be okay with me as well.

Those Russian Facebook ads could have reached as many as 70 million people.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

Russian-funded covert propaganda posts on Facebook were likely seen by a minimum of 23 million people and might have reached as many as 70 million, according to analysis by an expert on the social-media giant’s complex advertising systems. That means up to 28 percent of American adults were swept in by the campaign. 

On Wednesday, Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, revealed that Russia had “likely” used 470 fake accounts to buy about $100,000 worth of advertising promoting “divisive social and political messages” to Americans. It was Facebook’s first public acknowledgment of the role it unwittingly played in the Kremlin’s active measures campaign. Stamos’ statement was also conspicuous by what it omitted. Facebook has refused to release the ads. More significant, it hasn’t said what kind of reach Russia attained with its ad buy. 

There may be a reason for that. On the surface, $100,000 is small change in contemporary national politics, and 3,000 ads sounds like a drop in the pond when Facebook boasts 2 billion monthly users. But it turns out $100,000 on Facebook can go a surprisingly long way, if it’s used right. On average, Facebook ads run about $6 for 1,000 impressions. By that number, the Kremlin’s $100,000 buy would get its ads seen nearly 17 million times.

The article goes on to explain that the initial 17 million hits would extrapolate out if the propaganda went viral, which of course we know it did as both Trump and Bernie supporters gobbled up anything negative about Hillary.

They in turn would link to the propaganda, which would then show up all across Facebook, and probably Twitter as well.

I actually have a friend who said that he did not trust Hillary based on a phony picture of her standing with dead bodies at an undisclosed location with the words "War hawk" emblazoned across the image.

That was literally all it took for him, so I certainly know how effective this strategy could be.

And the Russians have been honing this particular skill for quite some time:

Russia has meddled in the affairs of at least 27 European and North American countries since 2004 with interference that ranges from cyberattacks to disinformation campaigns, according to an analysis by a surveillance organization. 

The findings, provided to USA TODAY, show the meddling started in former Soviet republics allied with the West and spread to Western Europe. More recently affected are Canada and the United States, where Congress and an independent prosecutor are investigating possible Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election. 

The alleged Russian interference abroad was compiled by the Alliance for Securing Democracy of the German Marshall Fund, a nonprofit organization that fosters closer bonds between the United States and Europe. In August, the group began tracking Russian efforts to influence U.S. public opinion through a network of Twitter accounts that disseminates messages considered helpful to the Kremlin.

One can only imagine how thrilled Putin was to have Edward Snowden fall into his lap and present him with the tools to supercharge his program of political manipulation.

Online advertising makes the spreading of fake news as easy as tying your shoes.

Courtesy of Bloomberg: 

The intentional spreading of false stories has been credited with swaying such monumental events as last year's Brexit vote and U.S. presidential election. Tech firms such as Alphabet Inc. unit Google and Facebook Inc. have been trying to find ways to weed it out, or at least help users spot it. Some say we need to start earlier, educating children on how to think critically. 

But understanding the unique epidemiology of fake news may be no less important. Unlike a typical virus, purveyors of falsehood don't have to infect people at random. Thanks to the wealth of information available on social media and the advent of targeted advertising, they can go straight for the most susceptible and valuable victims -- those most likely to spread the infection. 

This insight emerges from a recent study by network theorists Christoph Aymanns, Jakob Foerster and Co-Pierre Georg, who ran computer simulations of the way fake news moves through social networks. Using state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms, they examined how individuals might learn to recognize false news, and sought to identify the most important factors in helping fake news spread. 

They found that the most important catalyst of fake news was the precision with which the purveyor targeted an audience -- a task that can easily be accomplished using the data that tech companies routinely gather and sell to advertisers. The key was to seed an initial cluster of believers, who would share or comment on the item, recommending it to others through Twitter or Facebook. False stories spread farther when they were initially aimed at poorly informed people who had a hard time telling if a claim was true or false. 

Hence, we've unwittingly engineered a social media environment that is inherently prone to fake news epidemics. When marketers use information on surfing habits, opinions and social connections to aim ads at people with just the right interests, this can facilitate beneficial economic exchange. But in the wrong hands, the technology becomes a means for the precision seeding of propaganda.

I read through the entire article and to sum it up in a few words, we're fucked.

It seems the only possible long tern solution to this problem is to convince people to stay off social media entirely, and we know that ain't happening.

Or to dramatically improve our education system.

What was that first one again?

Budget Director proudly reveals how easy it is to manipulate Donald Trump.

What can I say, he's a dumbass.

Courtesy of Politico:  

Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s budget director, walked into the Oval Office in early May on a longshot mission. The slash-government conservative wanted to persuade the president to break one of his most popular campaign promises. 

During his populist run for the White House, Trump had vowed to leave Social Security and Medicare alone. But Trump had also vowed to rein in America’s national debt, which Mulvaney didn’t think was possible without reining in the two biggest chunks of the federal budget. So Mick the Knife brought a cut list to his meeting in the Oval.

“Look, this is my idea on how to reform Social Security,” the former South Carolina congressman began. 

“No!” the president replied. “I told people we wouldn’t do that. What’s next?” 

“Well, here are some Medicare reforms,” Mulvaney said. 

“No!” Trump repeated. “I’m not doing that.” 

“OK, disability insurance.” 

This was a clever twist. Mulvaney was talking about the Social Security Disability Insurance program, which, as its full name indicates, is part of Social Security. But Americans don’t tend to think of it as Social Security, and its 11 million beneficiaries are not the senior citizens who tend to support Trump. 

“Tell me about that,” Trump replied. 

“It’s welfare,” Mulvaney said. 

“OK, we can fix welfare,” Trump declared. 

Sure enough, the Trump budget plan that Mulvaney unveiled a few weeks later would cut about $70 billion in disability benefits over a decade, mostly through unspecified efforts to get recipients back to work. That may sound like welfare reform, but the program isn’t welfare for the poor; it’s insurance for workers who pay into Social Security through payroll taxes. The episode suggests Trump was either ignorant enough to get word-gamed into attacking a half-century-old guarantee for the disabled, or cynical enough to ditch his promise to protect spending when it didn’t benefit his base.

I put the word "proudly" in the headline because while this would seem like the kind of thing one would keep to themselves, or only reveal to a few close lipped confidants, Mulvaney is essentially bragging to the whole world that the guy he works for is an uneducated moron who is easily manipulated.

And apparently he has no fear of repercussions or losing his job. 

I can only imagine how proud Trump voters are of their president after reading this.

Assuming of course some of them can actually read. 

Trump's tweets are a goldmine for spies, and they can use them to anticipate his next move or even determine what they will be.

Mexico was just ranked the second deadliest country in the world, after only Syria. Drug trade is largely the cause. We will BUILD THE WALL!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2017

Courtesy of WaPo: 

Trump’s Twitter feed is a gold mine for every foreign intelligence agency. Usually, intelligence officers’ efforts to collect information on world leaders are methodical, painstaking and often covert. CIA operatives have risked their lives to learn about foreign leaders so the United States could devise strategies to counter our adversaries. With Trump, though, secret operations are not necessary to understand what’s on his mind: The president’s unfiltered thoughts are available night and day, broadcast to his 32.7 million Twitter followers immediately and without much obvious mediation by diplomats, strategists or handlers. 

Intelligence agencies try to answer these main questions when looking at a rival head of state: Who is he as a person? What type of leader is he? How does that compare to what he strives to be or presents himself as? What can we expect from him? And how can we use this insight to our advantage? 

At the CIA, I tracked and analyzed terrorists and other U.S. enemies, including North Korea. But we never had such a rich source of raw intelligence about a world leader, and we certainly never had the opportunity that our adversaries (and our allies) have now — to get a real-time glimpse of a major world leader’s preoccupations, personality quirks and habits of mind. If we had, it would have given us significant advantages in our dealings with them. 

Trump’s tweets offer plenty of material for analysis. His frequent strong statements in reaction to news coverage or events make it appear as if he lacks impulse control. In building a profile of Trump, an analyst would offer suggestions on how foreign nations could instigate stress or deescalate situations, depending on what type of influence they may want to have over the president.

Great, so not only is Trump embarrassing the country with his constant tweeting, but he is also allowing foreign spies to monitor and perhaps manipulate him like no other president before him.

A little further down in the article are these two paragraphs: 

What Trump doesn’t say can be very revealing, too. For instance, the lapse of time between when the USS Fitzgerald collided with a cargo ship off the coast of Japan (12:30 p.m. on June 16, in Washington) and when the president tweeted about the incident (10:08 a.m. the next day) was nearly 23 hours. The tragedy marked the U.S. Navy’s most significant loss of life aboard a vessel since terrorists bombed the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. 

Typically, a president would quickly make public remarks about a significant military loss. With Trump, intelligence analysts would note the inconsistency compared with previous administrations and search for similar patterns. Is Trump so hands-off that he waited for his secretary of defense to speak? Did something else capture his attention during those hours that he found to be a higher priority? Between the crash and his first public statement about it, Trump tweeted a video of his remarks on a new Cuba policy, a picture of himself signing the Cuba memorandum and a reference to his campaign promise about Cuba; he also retweeted Sean Hannity, a Fox News personality, promoting an upcoming show on the “Deep State’s allies in the media” working to undermine Trump. 

Fairly easy to determine from his tweets that Trump does not know how to respond to a national crisis or emergency until he receives instruction from his aides, but has a knee jerk reaction to every perceived slight which inspires a quick and most often inappropriate off the cuff response.

At the end of the article there is this observation:

Even deleted tweets would be of interest. Trump mostly appears to delete tweets because of spelling errors, later replacing them with a correction. For an intelligence analyst, this would confirm that Trump’s Twitter feed really is a raw insight into his thought process, without much input from aides. 

Analysts would also be likely to use technology to perform content analysis on the president’s tweets in the aggregate. Intelligence agencies can employ a more robust version than the open-source projects that news organizations have used, because they can marry Trump’s tweets with information they collect through intercepts and other means. Software could look for patterns in speech or word categories representing confidence related to policy, whether Trump is considering opposing points of view and if he harbors uncertainty toward any subject. Computers can perform metadata analysis to build timelines and compare Trump’s Twitter feed with his known public schedule, creating a database of when and where he tweets and what else he’s doing at the time. Anything that provides a digital footprint adds context to the analysis. 

Trump says it’s the press’s fault that he uses Twitter as much as he does. His aides clearly want him to stop, but the president just as clearly wants and needs to be heard unfiltered. Fortunately for him, the platform lets him speak directly to his supporters whenever he chooses. Unfortunately for the rest of us, they aren’t the only ones listening.

So there you have it, yet another reason to be mortified, and possibly even terrified, by this presidency.

You know when I pictured a Trump presidency I quite literally pictured an apocalyptic landscape where the entire country was in various stages of decay and self destruction.

I actually think I might have underestimated how bad it was going to be.

We're not even half way through the first year yet.

Russian officials discussed ways to exert influence over Donald Trump through his advisers.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

American spies collected information last summer revealing that senior Russian intelligence and political officials were discussing how to exert influence over Donald J. Trump through his advisers, according to three current and former American officials familiar with the intelligence. 

The conversations focused on Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman at the time, and Michael T. Flynn, a retired general who was advising Mr. Trump, the officials said. Both men had indirect ties to Russian officials, who appeared confident that each could be used to help shape Mr. Trump’s opinions on Russia. 

Some Russians boasted about how well they knew Mr. Flynn. Others discussed leveraging their ties to Viktor F. Yanukovych, the deposed president of Ukraine living in exile in Russia, who at one time had worked closely with Mr. Manafort. 

The intelligence was among the clues — which also included information about direct communications between Mr. Trump’s advisers and Russian officials — that American officials received last year as they began investigating Russian attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of Mr. Trump’s associates were assisting Moscow in the effort. Details of the conversations, some of which have not been previously reported, add to an increasing understanding of the alarm inside the American government last year about the Russian disruption campaign.

And the noose grows ever tighter.

But hey did you hear that according to Sean Hannity Hillary Clinton may have shot a young DNC staffer to death?

According to the Right Wing blogosphere THAT'S the real scandal, not all of this silly Russian nonsense.

It turns out the Syrian hoax meme was the result of Russian propaganda.

Ah you Americans are ever so easy to manipulate. You are like children.

Courtesy of ABC News:  

As Syrian president Bashar al-Assad called videos of last week’s chemical attack a “fabrication,” a piece of propaganda promoted by a Russian cyber operation and bearing the hashtag #SyriaHoax has gained traction in the United States, analysts tell ABC News. 

Following the chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians on Tuesday, Al-Masdar News, a pro-Assad website based in Beirut, published claims that "something is not adding up in [the] Idlib chemical weapons attack." Its author cited "holes" in the accounts provided by the "Al-Qaeda affiliated" White Helmets leading to the conclusion that "this is another false chemical attack allegation made against the government." 

That hoax story was promoted by a network of Russian social media accounts and ultimately picked up by popular alt-right personalities in the United States, including Mike Cernovich, one of the leading voices in the debunked 'Pizzagate' conspiracy theory. Cernovich popularized its new hashtag -- #SyriaHoax -- and sent it soaring through cyberspace. According to Trends24, within hours of the retaliatory missile strike President Donald Trump launched on Thursday night, #SyriaHoax was the No. 1 trending Twitter topic in the United States. 

J.M. Berger of The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at The Hague, who studies propaganda and social media analytical techniques, said #SyriaHoax is "a clear example of a Russian influence campaign" designed to undermine the credibility of the U.S. government. 

"The point of an influence campaign is to get people involved who wouldn't otherwise be involved," Berger said. "A lot of people in the alt-right would not necessarily characterize themselves as being pro-Russian, but they're receiving influence from this campaign."

It should be noted that some of the people clearly influenced by this propaganda include Alex Jones, Tulsi Gabbard, and of course Sarah Palin.

We all need to keep in mind that the Russian attempt to spread disinformation and shape our opinions did NOT end with the election. They are still doing it, and it does not seem that it will stop anytime soon.

We just have to be vigilant and make sure that our sources are from reputable news outlets, and not some faux Russian backed news website whose sole purpose is to keep us off balance and make us question reality itself. 

Another thing we learned from the Senate Intelligence hearing, many of the "Bernie Bros" were Russian trolls.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

Dr. Thomas Rid of Kings College London’s Department of War Studies explained that polarization makes societies vulnerable to manipulation by disinformation campaigns. 

Russia, Rid explained, according to CBS News, likes to use “unwitting agents” to carry out its work. WikiLeaks, Twitter and “overeager journalists” all contributed to Russia’s efforts to destabilize the U.S. by disrupting its 2016 election. 

Democratic committee co-chair Sen. Mark Warner (VA) asked the panel if they had any doubt that Russia had attempted to interfere in some aspects of the 2016 election. Alexander said not only did he have no doubt, he could get very specific. 

“Senator, I think what they were trying to do was drive a wedge within the Democratic Party between the Clinton group and the Sanders group,” said Alexander. “And then in our nation between Republicans and Democrats.” 

Supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) reported earlier this month that during the 2016 election, their social media feeds and pro-Sanders Facebook groups were inundated with what they now believe were Russian bots spewing anti-Hillary memes including fake news stories about Clinton using a body double and murdering her ideological opponents. Over time the anti-Clinton online faction became known by the nickname “Bernie Bros.”

I think that many of us have already come to realize that this is true, however I think it needs to be repeated frequently so that we are all on guard the next time. 

And it must also be pointed out that none of this trolling would have worked if there were not so many people desperate to accept the lies and to spread them far and wide around the internet.

I am sure that many of you watched in real time as I confronted some of this misinformation here on IM only to be labeled a "Hillary-bot" or accused of "working for my queen," or "supporting the Wall Street candidate."

And it worked. I lost thousands of visitors during the primary, and no matter how often I pointed out that people were being manipulated by false information, I was simply accused of "being in the tank for Hillary" and that was the end of the conversation.

If you look around today you can see it still happening, with people attacking the DNC and blaming them for Trump's victory, just as they have been directed to do by the Russian trolls.

Remember the Russians want to undermine our entire democracy, and the first step in doing that is to make people distrust the two parties.

So at this point we have to ask ourselves if we are part of the solution to this problem, or just another of the Russian's "useful idiots."

It looks as if Putin is not the only one who can pull Donald Trump's strings.

Big Boy. #PresidentBannon pic.twitter.com/bR06v4TJeD

— Pia Guerra (@PiaGuerra) January 30, 2017

A megalomaniac who is easily manipulated by others.

Sad!

Makes a lot of sense.

Last spring during primaries social media was so consumed w anti-HRC vitriol from the left it was difficult to speak out in support. 1/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

Most HRC supporters just kept quiet, as hateful rhetoric rose to near hysteria by Bernie supporters. Two main reasons for silence. 2/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

a) It was obvious that publicly and strongly supporting HRC would result in immediate attack on social media. Because corrupt, obv. 3/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

b) HRC supporters knew that to engage with the furious Bernie supporters risked alienating badly needed support during the general. 4/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

Consequently, very strong HRC support was muted, and anti-Clinton clamour rose to near hysteria. “She’s going to be INDICTED!” 5/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

The Steele memo suggests that much of this rhetoric was deliberately driven by Russians acting in concert w Trump campaign. 6/ pic.twitter.com/FOPRIbt3CP

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

Further, to an unknown extent, Steele memo suggests that Jill Stein was pulled into Putin’s orbit as part of anti-Clinton pro-Trump plan. 7/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

Steele memo outlining Putin paid to bring Stein, Carter Page, and Flynn to Moscow; photo of Stein, Flynn, Putin at RT dinner. 8/ pic.twitter.com/xtjAnAI4Tc

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

Interesting, in light of Trump pro-Sanders strategy, that Bernie has been absolutely silent on Russian hacks and election interference. 9/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

What’s especially interesting about Sanders’ silence on the Russian hacks is the CV of his chief strategist, Tad Devine. 10/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

Sanders’ chief strategist Devine worked on TWO election campaigns for Putin’s man in Ukraine, Yanukovich.

And so did Paul Manafort. 11/ pic.twitter.com/NQmDUlm0nm

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

The whole world watched as Hillary Clinton was dragged through the mud in & humiliated in the most abusive campaign in US history. 12/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

13/ https://t.co/dpklmApjtV

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

And it all worked like a charm. HRC’s approval ratings, which averaged around 60% during/after SoS tenure, suddenly plummeted to 37%. 14/ pic.twitter.com/3wTBvrexum

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

Media danced to the tune like puppets. "Emails Emails Emails!"

Comey/Wikileaks, reinforced message that HRC emails = untrustworthy. 15/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

If Steele memo is to be believed, a great deal of pro-Sanders & Stein/anti-HRC hysteria was a Russian propaganda op. 16/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

It was EXTREMELY effective in silencing HRC supporters early & building the CrookedHillary theme that finally took her out. In 3 states. 17/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

I actually was going to write something very much like this, until I stumbled upon these tweets.

And don't think Garossino and I are alone in this either.

Courtesy of the Daily Mail:  

Perhaps the starkest case in point is Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her constituency. In December 2015, the Kremlin feted Stein by inviting her to the gala celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Kremlin-funded propaganda network RT. Over a year later, it remains unclear who paid for Stein’s trip to Moscow and her accommodations there. Her campaign ignored multiple questions on this score. We do know, however, that Stein sat at the same table as both Putin and Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, Trump’s soon-to-be national security adviser. She further spoke at an RT-sponsored panel, using her presence to criticize the U.S.’s “disastrous militarism.” Afterward, straddling Moscow’s Red Square, Stein described the panel as “inspiring,” going on to claim that Putin, whom she painted as a political novice, told her he “agree[d]” with her “on many issues.” 

Stein presents herself as a champion of the underclass and the environment, and an opponent of the surveillance state and corporate media, and yet she seemed to take pleasure in her marriage of true minds with a kleptocratic intelligence officer who levels forests and arrests or kills critical journalists and invades foreign countries. Their true commonality, of course, is that both Putin and Stein are dogged opponents of U.S. foreign policy.

To sum up, though we are correct in giving a large amount of the blame for Trump's "victory" to the ease in which the Russians were able to manipulate the Right Wing, we also have to recognize that there are those on our side of the ideological fence who are just as easily manipulated.

Putin's victory was in recognizing that the fringe in both parties are searching for validation, and that once given can be a ring by which to lead them around by their proverbial noses.

Andy Borowitz knows the score.

I have been saying some version of this ever since the election.

And don't give me that crap suggesting that his "victory" was not due to a lack of intelligence, because it was indeed.

First off you had to believe the things that Donald Trump promised, building a wall, rounding up undocumented immigrants and sending them back to Mexico, blocking people from visiting the US based on their religion, were good ideas for the country.

They are not.

Second you had to believe that Donald Trump was really going to try and keep these promises.

He is not.

Thirdly you had to believe that even if he wanted to keep those campaign promises that Congress and the Supreme Court would let him.

They will not.

So yes, if you voted for Donald J. Trump to be President of the United States of America you are either ignorant, mentally deficient, or gullible beyond comprehension.

Or perhaps all three.

Wikileaks email dump suggests that Hillary Clinton might have had a hand in picking Donald Trump as her 2016 opponent.

Clinton team instructed DNC with strategic goal of "elevating" Trump two months before he declared his candidacy https://t.co/DAmWNq9K0f pic.twitter.com/mrGTyCycSu

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 9, 2016

Courtesy of Inquisitr: 

The email from April 2015 shows exactly how calculated the Clinton campaign was from the very beginning. In fact, Clinton’s campaign strategy was so accurate that a full year before the GOP field would be narrowed to Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, the Clinton campaign had detailed their plans to “elevate” the two candidates, along with Ben Carson, in a bid to split the Republican Party and force the more established candidates to become “more conservative” in speech and discredit themselves with communities of color, women, and millennials. 

The Clinton strategy referred to the 2012 Mitt Romney campaign in which the Democrats note that the party inflicted damage on itself before the election even took place. 

“There are two ways to approach the strategies mentioned above. The first is to use the field as a whole to inflict damage on itself similar to what happened to Mitt Romney in 2012.” 

To ensure the GOP was battling itself, the Clinton campaign identified three key “pied piper candidates” that would help reign in the GOP’s downfall. These candidates were listed as Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Ben Carson. 

“The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right. In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more “Pied Piper” candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party. Pied Piper candidates include, but aren’t limited to: 

• Ted Cruz 
• Donald Trump 
• Ben Carson 

We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously."

Now if these emails are accurate, this is fairly impressive on the part of the Clinton Campaign and the Democrats.

I am not exactly sure how they would have gone about orchestrating this outcome, but if they were actually able to manipulate the Republicans into nominating the most toxic candidate in the history of the country, that is shear genius.

No wonder the Republicans fear this woman so much.

If this is how she plays the game of politics they might just as well give her everything she wants right now and save themselves the humiliation of losing to her over and over again.

And now I am even more impressed than ever that Barack Obama was able to beat her back in 2008. 

Clearly the Democrats on the national level are playing three dimensional chess while the Republicans are apparently playing Tiddlywinks.