People aren't allowed to loiter within the polling area, so one person couldn't check many ballots. So while they could violate #2 on a handful of ballots, they wouldn't be able to do so on a scale large enough to affect the election. At least, not without a very large army of people acting as "watchers", which would make it far more likely someone would talk.
What good does it do to get your spawn into an elite college if they're not good enough and they'll just fail out?
It's actually quite challenging to fail out of an elite college. You really have to work at it. The school will also offer all sorts of tutoring and help if you're just not quite as smart.
The goal is to have the brand name on your resume. The "Degree" line on your resume is going to look the same if you got a 2.0 or a 4.0. Plus you're going to meet some really rich and/or smart people there, which will open a lot of doors for you.
Why not go the time-honored fraud route of just pretending your offspring is a minority?
Because there's plenty of other people combing over their family history. It's not a guaranteed way in anymore.
Let that soak in fo ra bit - calls are so cheap that even if you start doing something about U.S. numbers. spammers may just move to international lines.
:facepalm:
So, the callers aren't moving shit. They use a VoIP phone system that lets them send any outbound number they put in.
what CAN the FCC actually do to stop this?
Require that the number provided by VoIP services accurately reflect the originating country, and require phone providers to verify ownership of the caller ID number by the person claiming it. If either of these are false, don't relay the call.
Southern Democrats founded the KKK. And when the Civil Rights Act passed, those same people switched to the Republican party. And that party welcomed them.
So name all those politicians who switched parties?
You want literally thousands of names. How 'bout you actually learn about the subjects you claim to know about?
If you'd love a couple archtypical examples, there's Strom Thurmond, and you can compare his route to that of former KKK grand wizard Robert Byrd.
If you'd like another example, here's South Carolina's presidental voting history. You'll note they voted Democrat from post-reconstruction until 1964. After that, they've voted for Republicans except for the anti-Nixon-aftermath of 1976.
So odd that there's such a change if there was no realignment.
Why didn't the black vote change until the 80s if the realignment was earlier?
Actually, the "black vote" changed approximately around 1972. There's also the fact that the realignment took a while to completely work itself through since individual politicians were better or worse.
Even if we take this all at face value, that means that the Democrats were the racists when that meant literal slavery and the KKK
You realize the KKK isn't gone, right? Also, there's quite a few people y'all need to clean out if you're going to attempt to claim purity.
were the racists when racism in the days when the media tells us that milk and the OK hand sign are racist dogwhistles and white people are bad because they have white privilege.
Well, if you actually paid attention to race you'd realize there's just a teeny-tiny mountain of problems you're ignoring to belittle black people. But hey, that's not exactly surprising.
If the market is bearing that price, then that's a signal that society thinks eyeware is worth it.
Or it's being distorted by the state doing things like requiring people to have glasses to drive, then making >95% of the country require driving to live in.
Less stupid-libertarian, vision isn't exactly something people can just do without, which distorts market incentives. Further distorting the market is vision insurance programs that effectively disguise the price for the frames from the consumer.
Of course, if you think that price is too high, then that means there's a business opportunity—the market is telling you that society needs to enhance the supply of eyeware.
Only if you live in textbook land.
Out in the real world, monopolies defend their monopoly. So your new eyewear company would quickly find itself without suppliers or retailers, and quickly go bankrupt.
When there's a monopolist in the market, the market can not be efficient. That's the point of breaking up monopolies - so the market can be efficient again.
A bunch of what-if's, followed by blaming the Russians.
If you're going to discuss the effects that any particular group had on an election, you're going to have to discuss what would happen in the absence of those efforts.
Give me context. How many other countries 'meddle' in our election
You'll need some more specifics. Meddle specifically in elections? So far it's Russia. Meddle in our politics in general via lobbying and public relations campaigns? A shitload. That's why we have a lot of laws about things like registering as foreign lobbyist.
Those efforts do spill over into elections, but elections are not themselves the target due to the much smaller scale. For example, the Netanyahu government has worked very hard to conflate any criticism of their policies with criticism of all Jews. That's primarily in the service of gaining foreign aid and blocking sanctions, but also lays some groundwork for a candidate to accuse their opponent of being antisemetic. Or Saudi efforts at anti-Iran lobbying resulting in accusations of being "soft on terror".
If fake news and random facebook posts are attempts to 'hack' our election, then there is zero chance that only Russia was involved.
Again, you're not understanding the scale of the effort Russia undertook vs the scale of the efforts other countries undertake. Russia's scale was the new thing in this area.
And you can expect other countries to notice Russia's success, so expect 2020 to be a major shitshow as China and others get involved.
If Saudi Arabia or France was trying to 'meddle' and posted facebook ads for team Clinton would we know?
Yep! You seem to be forgetting which party ran everything from 2017 to 2019. If there was any shred of evidence of other countries acting at the scale Russia was, then you can be sure the Republicans would be screaming about it into any microphone they could find.
How many people in power worldwide know the Clinton's, she was Secretary of State if you didn't know that
Are you under the illusion that Donald Trump had zero foreign contacts? Are you aware of just how many Russians just happen to buy luxury condos from Trump?
How many total 'fake news' or ads where there?
Facebook says they found thousands of individual stories that were linked to by thousands-to-millions. Network affects mean that those stories should have been seen by about 100 per share, resulting in hundreds of millions of views. Other social media has not publicly announced numbers.
Please explain to me exactly how the 10,000 people in Michigan that decided to not show up was directly related to Russians?
One of the primary vectors the Russians used was "Clinton Sucks and she stole it from Sanders". Post-election polling shows those efforts depressed Democratic turnout. Other Russian efforts to increase Republican turnout were not found to be effective.
Since you're interested in scale, +10,000 turnout would be roughly what a candidate could have achieved from one large rally in Michigan, at these low turnout rates. So the Russian efforts were effective, but could have been countered by basic competence by the Clinton campaign. That doesn't make those efforts irrelevant, but provides scale.
The argument you seem to be making is that Americans are so dumb that Russia puts a fake ad on facebook so we believe it and therefore do not go and vote for a Clinton
A man literally drove hundreds of miles to shoot up a pizza parlor in order to "rescue" trafficked children that were locked in a non-existent basement. There's a not-insignificant number of people who still insist Obama was not born in the US. Several families of the victims of Sandy Hook are in hiding due to people claiming they are "crisis actors" worthy of death threa
Yep, though far more important is they all have turnout models. And turnout among Democrats in 2016 was abysmal. Democratic turnout in 2016 was lower than in 2014. That's mostly unheard of - Turnout has always gone up in presidential election years. (Republican turnout was about as expected in 2016).
So it's understandable that the turnout models expected that pattern to continue, as well as an indication of just how terrible the Clinton campaign was at the basics of campaigning.
I thought, that every administration, elected body is running Success propaganda close to elected term.
That's where "be careful" comes into play. They can't outright lie or they run afoul of laws against propaganda. So they have to have some basis for what claims they do push into the media, and can "selectively interpret" the data they have.
They always demonized republicans, called them racists, ever since LBJ lost the Civil Rights Act battle to them.
Um....you do realize the Civil Rights Act passed, right? With more Democratic votes than Republican votes. And LBJ was instrumental in lobbying FOR the bill.
Also, for those of you as unaware about US politics as this poster, there's this thing called the "Southern Realignment". In 1964, many Southerns were still so pissed off at Lincoln that they refused to join the Republican party. So the political division in the US at the time was not Democrat vs Republican, it was Western Republican + Southern Democrat vs Northern Republican + Western Democrat. Even this is an oversimplification, in that skillful politicians gathered a bloc of other politicians and frequently voted together, regardless of party lines.
The Civil Rights Act was the thing that broke this pattern, because it was so abhorrent to those Southern Democrats that they switched to the Republican party. And as a result of the ensuing party shift, many Northern Republicans became Democrats. This is called the Southern Realignment, and it is one of the major reasons why US politics is where it is today, instead of where it was in the 1930s to 1950s.
This is also the end of the process where the Democratic and Republican parties flipped who was Left and Right. And why you'll hear lots of Republicans falsely talking about how Republicans are all about civil rights - the parties are not in the same political positions as they used to be.
Cross reference the things you believe to be facts
That would be lovely if only one (or a small number) of sources were reporting a particular lie.
For example, "Obama was born in Kenya!!" was started by 2 political operatives (one D, one R). Pizzagate appears to be originally from 4chan. "Seth Rich was the DNC leaker" started from one guy.
All of those false stories got reported by larger and larger numbers of outlets, lending credibility to the stories.
If you came in after those stories blew up, you'd find lots of "confirmation" via many sources saying the same thing.
I mean if the media were right and a few dozen Russians spending on the order of six figures really swung the election
I don't think you quite understand just how close the 2016 election was, as well as how inexpensive Russian labor is.
10,000 more people in Michigan show up to the polls, and Clinton wins. With turnout so low, there were plenty of people who did not vote who could have been part of that 10k.
That's not to say Russia was entirely responsible - team Clinton could have overwhelmed the Russian efforts in Michigan if they hadn't ignored the state. But that statement doesn't mean the Russian efforts did not exist.
You also don't quite understand the difference between coordinated efforts and random efforts. Individuals posting on the Internet are going to have a more-or-less random distribution of who they support, which means they're going to mostly cancel each other out. A coordinated effort by a country or large organization is going to be only in one direction, thus pushing public opinion in that direction.
"Meddling", what does that even mean in plain english?
That they are attempting to influence the results of elections via efforts to change public opinion.
Is Saudi Arabia "meddling"?
Yes.
Is Israel?
Yes.
What about corporations?
Them too
Government agencies?
Technically illegal, but if they're careful they can influence public opinion too.
What's new and different is the level of effort and sophistication Russia is employing, as well as their targets. The other meddlers attempt to co-opt the already powerful which does create a sort of balance via competing lobbying efforts. Russia's going after rank-and-file voters.
This is disturbing and the fact that after 2016's Fake News debacles, you'd think either party would be rather adverse towards creating yet more fake news
Slashdot Mirror
People aren't allowed to loiter within the polling area, so one person couldn't check many ballots. So while they could violate #2 on a handful of ballots, they wouldn't be able to do so on a scale large enough to affect the election. At least, not without a very large army of people acting as "watchers", which would make it far more likely someone would talk.
What good does it do to get your spawn into an elite college if they're not good enough and they'll just fail out?
It's actually quite challenging to fail out of an elite college. You really have to work at it. The school will also offer all sorts of tutoring and help if you're just not quite as smart.
The goal is to have the brand name on your resume. The "Degree" line on your resume is going to look the same if you got a 2.0 or a 4.0. Plus you're going to meet some really rich and/or smart people there, which will open a lot of doors for you.
Why not go the time-honored fraud route of just pretending your offspring is a minority?
Because there's plenty of other people combing over their family history. It's not a guaranteed way in anymore.
Yes, but the schools charge so much for their guaranteed admission program. You can't really blame these folks seeking out a discount.
Reading. Try it!
Again, you completely glossed over the problem with your claim about illegal domestic spying via Snowden docs: There isn't any in the docs he leaked.
So where's the proof? Is your ego so large you find it unfathomable that the NSA would spend its time spying on foreigners?
Let that soak in fo ra bit - calls are so cheap that even if you start doing something about U.S. numbers. spammers may just move to international lines.
:facepalm:
So, the callers aren't moving shit. They use a VoIP phone system that lets them send any outbound number they put in.
what CAN the FCC actually do to stop this?
Require that the number provided by VoIP services accurately reflect the originating country, and require phone providers to verify ownership of the caller ID number by the person claiming it. If either of these are false, don't relay the call.
So, you claim there was no swap, but the parties are now doing radically different things than they were back then.
What's it like desperately ignoring cognitive dissonance?
The Democrats founded the KKK
Southern Democrats founded the KKK. And when the Civil Rights Act passed, those same people switched to the Republican party. And that party welcomed them.
So name all those politicians who switched parties?
You want literally thousands of names. How 'bout you actually learn about the subjects you claim to know about?
If you'd love a couple archtypical examples, there's Strom Thurmond, and you can compare his route to that of former KKK grand wizard Robert Byrd.
If you'd like another example, here's South Carolina's presidental voting history. You'll note they voted Democrat from post-reconstruction until 1964. After that, they've voted for Republicans except for the anti-Nixon-aftermath of 1976.
So odd that there's such a change if there was no realignment.
Why didn't the black vote change until the 80s if the realignment was earlier?
Actually, the "black vote" changed approximately around 1972. There's also the fact that the realignment took a while to completely work itself through since individual politicians were better or worse.
Even if we take this all at face value, that means that the Democrats were the racists when that meant literal slavery and the KKK
You realize the KKK isn't gone, right? Also, there's quite a few people y'all need to clean out if you're going to attempt to claim purity.
were the racists when racism in the days when the media tells us that milk and the OK hand sign are racist dogwhistles and white people are bad because they have white privilege.
Well, if you actually paid attention to race you'd realize there's just a teeny-tiny mountain of problems you're ignoring to belittle black people. But hey, that's not exactly surprising.
Look at the actual percentages.
Percentages don't pass bills, vote counts do.
Also, you're completely skipping over the Southern Realignment to cling to your false narrative.
Democrats tend to try to wave away their own party's history of racism through pretending the "parties switched" after the Civil Rights Act passed.
You realize that politicians literally switched parties, right? And they did so publicly? And described exactly why they were switching?
I realize actual history is double-plus ungood, but it did actually happen.
If only he had some sort of position of power involving communications. He could do something about robocalls.
They're political robocalls, and as such they do not need a business purpose.
On the contrary, it means any of a hundred factors could have been a little different and the supposed meddling wouldn't have mattered.
So, it was simultaneously not big enough of an effect, and a big enough effect.
Shrodinger's interference?
Also, there has been no evidence of effort coordinated by the Russian state to do any of the stuff billed as elections interference.
Sure, as long as you ignore the pile of indictments.
In most cases, BOM is maybe 10%-15% of the price you pay
Ok, so it costs $4-$8 to make according to TFS, which means the glasses should cost $40-$80 according to your formula.....and they charge >$200.
Wanna try to justify the monopoly rent again?
Anyone with a few million in capital should be able to enter this market and make a killing
Who's going to supply them and who's going to retail them? With the threat of Luxotica cutting that supplier/retailer off?
That's how Luxotica bought Oakley - they cut off their retailers and then bought up the company when the stock tanked.
If the market is bearing that price, then that's a signal that society thinks eyeware is worth it.
Or it's being distorted by the state doing things like requiring people to have glasses to drive, then making >95% of the country require driving to live in.
Less stupid-libertarian, vision isn't exactly something people can just do without, which distorts market incentives. Further distorting the market is vision insurance programs that effectively disguise the price for the frames from the consumer.
Of course, if you think that price is too high, then that means there's a business opportunity—the market is telling you that society needs to enhance the supply of eyeware.
Only if you live in textbook land.
Out in the real world, monopolies defend their monopoly. So your new eyewear company would quickly find itself without suppliers or retailers, and quickly go bankrupt.
When there's a monopolist in the market, the market can not be efficient. That's the point of breaking up monopolies - so the market can be efficient again.
The last time I got new astigmatic contacts, I discovered their focal length was further out than my arms could hold something I was trying to read
Welcome to getting older. I'm almost up to three separate prescriptions depending on what I'm doing.
A bunch of what-if's, followed by blaming the Russians.
If you're going to discuss the effects that any particular group had on an election, you're going to have to discuss what would happen in the absence of those efforts.
Give me context. How many other countries 'meddle' in our election
You'll need some more specifics. Meddle specifically in elections? So far it's Russia. Meddle in our politics in general via lobbying and public relations campaigns? A shitload. That's why we have a lot of laws about things like registering as foreign lobbyist.
Those efforts do spill over into elections, but elections are not themselves the target due to the much smaller scale. For example, the Netanyahu government has worked very hard to conflate any criticism of their policies with criticism of all Jews. That's primarily in the service of gaining foreign aid and blocking sanctions, but also lays some groundwork for a candidate to accuse their opponent of being antisemetic. Or Saudi efforts at anti-Iran lobbying resulting in accusations of being "soft on terror".
If fake news and random facebook posts are attempts to 'hack' our election, then there is zero chance that only Russia was involved.
Again, you're not understanding the scale of the effort Russia undertook vs the scale of the efforts other countries undertake. Russia's scale was the new thing in this area.
And you can expect other countries to notice Russia's success, so expect 2020 to be a major shitshow as China and others get involved.
If Saudi Arabia or France was trying to 'meddle' and posted facebook ads for team Clinton would we know?
Yep! You seem to be forgetting which party ran everything from 2017 to 2019. If there was any shred of evidence of other countries acting at the scale Russia was, then you can be sure the Republicans would be screaming about it into any microphone they could find.
How many people in power worldwide know the Clinton's, she was Secretary of State if you didn't know that
Are you under the illusion that Donald Trump had zero foreign contacts? Are you aware of just how many Russians just happen to buy luxury condos from Trump?
How many total 'fake news' or ads where there?
Facebook says they found thousands of individual stories that were linked to by thousands-to-millions. Network affects mean that those stories should have been seen by about 100 per share, resulting in hundreds of millions of views. Other social media has not publicly announced numbers.
Please explain to me exactly how the 10,000 people in Michigan that decided to not show up was directly related to Russians?
One of the primary vectors the Russians used was "Clinton Sucks and she stole it from Sanders". Post-election polling shows those efforts depressed Democratic turnout. Other Russian efforts to increase Republican turnout were not found to be effective.
Since you're interested in scale, +10,000 turnout would be roughly what a candidate could have achieved from one large rally in Michigan, at these low turnout rates. So the Russian efforts were effective, but could have been countered by basic competence by the Clinton campaign. That doesn't make those efforts irrelevant, but provides scale.
The argument you seem to be making is that Americans are so dumb that Russia puts a fake ad on facebook so we believe it and therefore do not go and vote for a Clinton
A man literally drove hundreds of miles to shoot up a pizza parlor in order to "rescue" trafficked children that were locked in a non-existent basement. There's a not-insignificant number of people who still insist Obama was not born in the US. Several families of the victims of Sandy Hook are in hiding due to people claiming they are "crisis actors" worthy of death threa
Didn't they all indicate margins of error?
Yep, though far more important is they all have turnout models. And turnout among Democrats in 2016 was abysmal. Democratic turnout in 2016 was lower than in 2014. That's mostly unheard of - Turnout has always gone up in presidential election years. (Republican turnout was about as expected in 2016).
So it's understandable that the turnout models expected that pattern to continue, as well as an indication of just how terrible the Clinton campaign was at the basics of campaigning.
I thought, that every administration, elected body is running Success propaganda close to elected term.
That's where "be careful" comes into play. They can't outright lie or they run afoul of laws against propaganda. So they have to have some basis for what claims they do push into the media, and can "selectively interpret" the data they have.
They always demonized republicans, called them racists, ever since LBJ lost the Civil Rights Act battle to them.
Um....you do realize the Civil Rights Act passed, right? With more Democratic votes than Republican votes. And LBJ was instrumental in lobbying FOR the bill.
Also, for those of you as unaware about US politics as this poster, there's this thing called the "Southern Realignment". In 1964, many Southerns were still so pissed off at Lincoln that they refused to join the Republican party. So the political division in the US at the time was not Democrat vs Republican, it was Western Republican + Southern Democrat vs Northern Republican + Western Democrat. Even this is an oversimplification, in that skillful politicians gathered a bloc of other politicians and frequently voted together, regardless of party lines.
The Civil Rights Act was the thing that broke this pattern, because it was so abhorrent to those Southern Democrats that they switched to the Republican party. And as a result of the ensuing party shift, many Northern Republicans became Democrats. This is called the Southern Realignment, and it is one of the major reasons why US politics is where it is today, instead of where it was in the 1930s to 1950s.
This is also the end of the process where the Democratic and Republican parties flipped who was Left and Right. And why you'll hear lots of Republicans falsely talking about how Republicans are all about civil rights - the parties are not in the same political positions as they used to be.
Cross reference the things you believe to be facts
That would be lovely if only one (or a small number) of sources were reporting a particular lie.
For example, "Obama was born in Kenya!!" was started by 2 political operatives (one D, one R). Pizzagate appears to be originally from 4chan. "Seth Rich was the DNC leaker" started from one guy.
All of those false stories got reported by larger and larger numbers of outlets, lending credibility to the stories.
If you came in after those stories blew up, you'd find lots of "confirmation" via many sources saying the same thing.
I mean if the media were right and a few dozen Russians spending on the order of six figures really swung the election
I don't think you quite understand just how close the 2016 election was, as well as how inexpensive Russian labor is.
10,000 more people in Michigan show up to the polls, and Clinton wins. With turnout so low, there were plenty of people who did not vote who could have been part of that 10k.
That's not to say Russia was entirely responsible - team Clinton could have overwhelmed the Russian efforts in Michigan if they hadn't ignored the state. But that statement doesn't mean the Russian efforts did not exist.
You also don't quite understand the difference between coordinated efforts and random efforts. Individuals posting on the Internet are going to have a more-or-less random distribution of who they support, which means they're going to mostly cancel each other out. A coordinated effort by a country or large organization is going to be only in one direction, thus pushing public opinion in that direction.
"Meddling", what does that even mean in plain english?
That they are attempting to influence the results of elections via efforts to change public opinion.
Is Saudi Arabia "meddling"?
Yes.
Is Israel?
Yes.
What about corporations?
Them too
Government agencies?
Technically illegal, but if they're careful they can influence public opinion too.
What's new and different is the level of effort and sophistication Russia is employing, as well as their targets. The other meddlers attempt to co-opt the already powerful which does create a sort of balance via competing lobbying efforts. Russia's going after rank-and-file voters.
After Trump won, you say?
It's almost like you're utterly clueless about politics beyond the talking points you've been handed...
This is disturbing and the fact that after 2016's Fake News debacles, you'd think either party would be rather adverse towards creating yet more fake news
Why? It worked.
Yes, this whole Internet thing has nothing to do with nerds. :eyeroll: