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rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

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The words do not have to be perfect.

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Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

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Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

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You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Cambridge Analytica Suspends CEO

Cambridge Analytica Suspends CEO

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London’s Channel 4 ran the last segment of their Cambridge Analytica undercover exposé today — the part about the Trump campaign. Immediately afterward, CA suspended its CEO:

An investigation by Channel 4 News has revealed how Cambridge Analytica claims it ran ‘all’ of President Trump’s digital campaign – and may have broken election law. As the report went on air, the firm announced it has suspended chief executive Alexander Nix, pending a full investigation.

An undercover investigation by Channel 4 News has revealed how Cambridge Analytica claims it ran key parts of the presidential campaign for Donald Trump.

The British data company was secretly filmed discussing coordination between Trump’s campaign and outside groups – an activity which is potentially illegal.

Executives claimed they “ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy” for President Trump.

They also claim credit for spreading the “Defeat Crooked Hillary” meme, proving once again that it’s always about projection with these lowdown creeps. Top CA execs were caught bragging about how they evaded congressional investigation and, in a crowning irony, claimed that the candidate is “always” a puppet.

Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ. You can watch the program on YouTube here.

Reader Interactions

339Comments

  1. 1.

    Corner Stone

    And CA is also out with a statement denying they would ever, in any forum or way, shape or manner, ever suggest they were the reason Trump won.

  4. 4.

    germy

    has Rebekah vowed to stay and “make them better” ? She’s more than just a passive investor. Will she be compelled to testify (along with her dad)?

    There was a thread on this at LGM, but it was hijacked by two “Hillary Sucks” commenters and the actual subject was never brought up.

  5. 5.

    Roger Moore

    I predict their next defense will be to claim it was all puffery. They didn’t actually do all that stuff but were lying and claiming they did to try to win business, don’t you know.

  7. 7.

    germy

    Somone (I don’t remember who) suggested CA really couldn’t get results, but candidates hired them anyway because of the unspoken agreement, that it was a sure way to get those big Mercer $Donations.

  9. 9.

    Mnemosyne

    Has GG tweeted in support of poor, maligned Cambridge Analytica yet?

    I still find it curious how Trump and Sanders just happened to come up with exactly the same attacks on Hillary for being “crooked” and “corrupt.” After all, if she gets attacked from both the left and the right on something, it must be true, amirite?

  10. 10.

    ruemara

    I also see Wilmer & MM are describing Russia & Stormy Daniels as “distractions”. Plus Moore is saying not voting is a noble, valid choice. Isn’t the 15 minutes up for both of these great thinkers?

  12. 12.

    germy

    @Roger Moore:

    I predict their next defense will be to claim it was all puffery.

    Nix claimed that all that talk about hookers and blackmail was just to see if the potential client was interested, so they’d know not to work with him. Of course, another solution could have been “we don’t do stuff like that”

  13. 13.

    Mnemosyne

    @Roger Moore:

    They’ve already been claiming that they only said that stuff to weed out the clients who were willing to do it. Riiiiiight.

  14. 14.

    ET

    This is PR but they didn’t have a choice. Not doing it would mean the company would definitely cease to exist, now they can try to stay afloat – much like the Weinstein company. That the whole endeavor is rotten regardless who the CEO is – nothing particularly good can come from impure (and downright bad) motives. The Mercer Klan should be dropped kicked into the garbage where they belong but like roaches, they seem to come out OK. Guess money can buy you stuff – like a good team of lawyers, tax accountants shielding your money, and a PR firm to do the spinning.

  15. 15.

    Adam L Silverman

    @LAO: I believe Special Counsel Mueller is fond of the phrase: conspiracy against the United States of America.

  16. 16.

    Mnemosyne

    @ruemara:

    I still think Wilmer has some Russian money he doesn’t want us to know about. MM is just a fucking moron who’s unwilling to look at his deep-seated racism and misogyny.

  18. 18.

    Roger Moore

    @ruemara:

    I also see Wilmer & MM are describing Russia & Stormy Daniels as “distractions”.

    Wilmer definitely doesn’t want anyone looking too closely at Russia, because he’s not going to like what they find.

  20. 20.

    Corner Stone

    @germy: The Channel 4 person on MSNBC earlier said that even several months after their undercover last meeting, people at CA were emailing the team and asking them if they wanted to go forward.

  21. 21.

    TenguPhule

    @ruemara:

    Oh, I do so hope to see the Mercers destroyed.

    To see them driven before us, to hear the lamentations of their women, to admire a mound of their polished skulls.

  22. 22.

    Adam L Silverman

    Nix, as well as his technical lead, Tayler, and his partner, Turnbull, should never, ever be allowed anywhere near any company that handles classified materials or does classified work for the US and/or British governments. SCL’s contracts with the Department of State and the British Ministry of Defense need to be suspended pending investigator general and counterintelligence investigations.

  23. 23.

    Mnemosyne

    @LAO:

    I was kind of wondering about that. IANAL, but I was pretty sure that the claim that It was an international conspiracy, so the law can’t touch us! was, um, not factual.

    Facebook is going to rue the day they decided it was a good idea to try and send their “cleaners” to the CA offices ahead of the cops.

  25. 25.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:

    MM is just a fucking moron who’s unwilling to look at his deep-seated racism and misogyny.

    He’s also a washed up has-been who’s unwilling to acknowledge his growing irrelevance.

  29. 29.

    TenguPhule

    @Mnemosyne:

    After all, if she gets attacked from both the left and the right on something, it must be true, amirite?

    Let’s not go overboard here.

    The initial attacks from the left were often recycled from her last primary because they damned well hit home that time and if she wasn’t prepared for them this time, she was in big trouble anyway. Let’s not go off the rails.

  30. 30.

    Jager

    Watching Nix and the other guy pitch their prospective client the other day, I was thinking, those two are doing the classic “over promise” no, no. Then they didn’t just answer the client’s simple questions, they gave everything away. They just couldn’t stop talking (bragging?) I was a damn good salesman for a lot of years, the way to sell is to get the client to tell you what they want, listen and keep your mouth shut. Then make a deal to fit your client’s wants, needs and desires. Good thing for them they were selling a rather exclusive product because those two couldn’t sell p*ssy in a lumber camp.

  32. 32.

    germy

    @Corner Stone:

    The Channel 4 person on MSNBC earlier said that even several months after their undercover last meeting, people at CA were emailing the team and asking them if they wanted to go forward.

    Always Be Closing

  33. 33.

    Corner Stone

    That feeling when you skim someone’s twit feed and you get to something posted 6 hours ago and decide to stop there because every thing has changed since then.

  34. 34.

    LAO

    @Mnemosyne: Some how they think that US law do not apply to: (1) an American business, (2) incorporated in Delaware and (2) that does business in the United States. That’s crazy.

  35. 35.

    Leto

    I’m glad Nunes and the House Intel committee wrapped up their investigation. Nothing to see here folks, keep moving…

  36. 36.

    Mnemosyne

    @rp:

    You’d think that a gay Jewish man would be reluctant to throw his lot in with fascists, but he may actually think he’s white. He won’t realize that his “allies” in Russia and America disagree until it’s too late.

  37. 37.

    Adam L Silverman

    @LAO: I am aware, no need to explain. Also, you may want to have that eye checked out.

    Other than that I’m fine.

  40. 40.

    TenguPhule

    @Mnemosyne: He thinks he’s safe in a gated community.

    His polonium retirement plan is going to be sweet to read about in the obits.

  44. 44.

    Mnemosyne

    @TenguPhule:

    People in 2016 were bringing up Whitewater and Mena, from the “left.”

    So, no, I don’t think I’m going overboard when I point out that the left was just as propagandized against Hillary as the right was, using the same attacks.

  45. 45.

    dmsilev

    @rp: Of course he is. He’s so invested in his own personal legend that it would be unpossible for him to admit mistakes.

  47. 47.

    rp

    Also, isn’t Brendan Nyhan supposedly a smart guy? He’s been saying all day that there’s no evidence that CA’s work had any impact, and then retweeted a guy comparing the left’s claims about CA to the right’s claims about ACORN.

  48. 48.

    Mnemosyne

    @LAO:

    I know that Delaware is very corporation-friendly, but I’m pretty sure they ain’t friendly enough to let treason and conspiracy slide.

    (Yeah, I used the T word. It’s a moral charge, not a legal one.)

  49. 49.

    rp

    @dmsilev: I used to think that, but now I’m 100% convinced that he’s being paid to spout these talking points. You can tell from his twitter feed that the only issue he genuinely cares about is animal rights; the rest is just propaganda.

  51. 51.

    LAO

    This is my favorite take so far:

    If a story came out about how the Trump campaign robbed a jewelry store and then fenced the loot to pay for the distribution of bumper stickers, I don’t think “well I’m skeptical bumper stickers swayed any votes” would be a smart or sophisticated reaction.— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 20, 2018

  52. 52.

    Jeffro

    Naturally Fox News is reporting on the Facebook/CA scandal…by reporting that the Obama 2012 campaign used Facebook data (hint hint hint).

    It’s nothing but chaff, all the way down…

  53. 53.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Mnemosyne:

    Facebook is going to rue the day they decided it was a good idea to try and send their “cleaners” to the CA offices ahead of the cops.

    Huh?

    @Jeffro: that’s true though. Many many groups mined data in this same manner prior to facebook’s policy change in 2015 or so, although they weren’t pretending to be academics.

  54. 54.

    gene108

    @TenguPhule:

    The initial attacks from the left were often recycled from her last primary because they damned well hit home that time

    In 2008, the Left, was just lit about the Iraq War, primarily, and on other issues there wasn’t much actual difference between Obama and Hillary, though Hillary was more accommodating on gay marriage, and gun control than 2008 candidate Obama.

    What I saw from my Bernie supporting friends were not attacks about “she supported Iraq”, but crap about how she said “super predators”, when talking about kids in gangs 25 years ago, stuff about the 1994 crime bill, which has mandatory sentencing requirements that have ballooned the prison population, general stuff about how her wealth is ill-gotten (something Bernie reinforced with a vengeance, after he was mathematically eliminated from the primary), and some other right-wing talking points, about Bill’s failed Presidency.

    Hillary had mended fences with the left-wing of the Democratic Party. What she didn’t expect was that there’s this huge group of people, who are even further Left than the left-wing of the Democratic Party, and some of them are pretty fucking dumb, when it comes to picking a candidate to support.

  56. 56.

    Leto

    @Mnemosyne: Just reinforces that they’re all up to their eyeballs in the slime. All of them. Only way to fix this is to flip the House/Senate so we can have proper investigations into all the fu*kery.

  57. 57.

    JMG

    @rp: Nyhan’s defending his own turf. He has done a lot of work on “negative partisanship” which leads him to a lot of bothsiderism. Matt Yglesias made the point that if the Trump campaign robbed a jewelry store and used the proceeds to buy bumper stickers, no one would say “but that had no effect on the voters.” Nyhan did not like this, because he does not wish to acknowledge campaign illegality by Trump. Which is weird, because he tweets about Trump breaking the law while in office all the time.

  59. 59.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: The British regulator is very cross, to use the vernacular, that facebook sent a tech squad of cleaners to try to recover their stolen/lost/missing/purloined/misappropriated (Narrator Voice: Actually it was willingly handed over without asking any questions in exchange for money) data just as she was seeking a warrant to seize CA’s servers and the data. I foresee an Interpol Red Notice in Zuckerberg’s future.

  60. 60.

    germy

    @LAO: This is Cory Doctorow’s take:

    Just because Cambridge Analytica tells its customers it can sway elections, it doesn’t follow that they’re any good at it

    https://boingboing.net/2018/03/20/wanamakers-ghost.html

    Unilever founder John Wanamaker famously said, “I know that half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. My only problem is that I don’t know which half.” It’s an odd testament to the power of advertising, an industry whose executives are incredibly effective at selling their services to other executives, even if they can’t prove they’re any good at selling their customers’ products to the public.

    For more than a year, Cambridge Analytica has been trumpeting its incredible ability to use “psychographic targeting” and the “big five personality traits” to change the way people vote. It’s an incredibly self-serving claim, marketing hype dressed up as a news story.

  61. 61.

    CaseyL

    From now on, all references to Hillary should be prefaced with “the rightful President of the United States, Hillary Clinton,” and all references to Dolt45 should be prefaced with “the Usurper and Thief.”

  62. 62.

    germy

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Just in from BBC News – Mark Zuckerberg has been summoned by UK Parliament to give evidence about the use of personal data by Cambridge Analytica.Cambridge Analytica: Facebook boss summoned over data claims https://t.co/kvOLtTGpe9

    — ProfHelen (@Helenhs) March 20, 2018

  65. 65.

    Corner Stone

    @germy: I stopped reading Doctorow some time ago. IMO, he’s kind of a loonie. And I don’t mean currency.

  66. 66.

    Corner Stone

    @Major Major Major Major: FB wanted back what they had previously willingly allowed them to have. IMO, in order to verify what it was they had and to verify the destruction of that dataset(s). FB is just now realizing that all their lobbying money may not keep them from being regulated. And they are scared to death of all the leaks coming through the CA angle.

  67. 67.

    different-church-lady

    @germy: Hey I got an idea for how to answer this: don’t let CambAnal operate during the next election, then compare.

  70. 70.

    Jager

    @germy: Right CA is all about using sophisticated analysis, must be why they literally opened their presentation with an extortion scheme.

  74. 74.

    Mike in DC

    @Jeffro: Yeah, this is the “hey, look at how similar this apple and orange are to each other, they’re practically the same thing. Checkmate, libtards!” response.

  75. 75.

    GregB

    Col. Ralph Peters, long a Fox analyst has quit the network claiming it has devolved into a propaganda organ for a dangerous man.

    MAGA-Many Are Getting Awoke.

  78. 78.

    Adam L Silverman

    Ruh Roh!!!

  88. 88.

    Adam L Silverman

    @GregB: First off, he’s a lieutenant colonel retired, not a full colonel. Second, he’s a serious hack.

  89. 89.

    TenguPhule

    @gene108: I remember the Goldman Sachs accusations.

    Yeah the money was good, but giving lectures and speeches to those people was the kind of thing you normally did after completing your career in politics. It got traction because Goldman Sachs was worse then Satan in the public’s mind. At least you could find well meaning honest people who’d argue on Satan’s behalf.

    It got uglier and out of bounds as time passed, but again, the first sparks were already there because she had some goofs early on (like hiring those Fucking Asshole Consultants who insisted on doing everything from scratch instead of intergrating Obama’s machine into her own campaign)

  95. 95.

    TenguPhule

    @germy:

    Good Lord, what’s happened to Zuckerberg’s 2020 presidential chances?

    Hopefully deader then the witch under the House from Kansas.

  98. 98.

    Corner Stone

    @GregB: Man, when you lose Ralph Peters you are in some serious damn weeds. That dude is a nutjob’s nutjob.

  102. 102.

    Elizabelle

    Thank the lord. That dreadful deficit scold, Peter G. Peterson, has kicked. Aged 91. Per WaPost:

    Peter G. Peterson, a self-made billionaire financier who was briefly commerce secretary under President Richard M. Nixon and was a longtime fiscal Paul Revere, spending much of his fortune to sound the alarm about the perils of the burgeoning national debt, died March 20 at his home in Manhattan. He was 91.

    The death was confirmed by his wife, Joan Ganz Cooney. The cause was not disclosed.

    Since the late 1970s, “Pete” Peterson was among the most prominent public figures warning that runaway spending on Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs — for an increasingly long-living population — had lit the fuse on a budgetary time bomb. He criticized the politicians who he said were focused “not on the next generation but on the next election” and were too craven to rein in deficit spending.

    “We are at a make-or-break point in American history,” Mr. Peterson said. “The entitlement monster is unfunded.”

    He spoke those words in 2008, shortly before launching the New York City-based Peter G. Peterson Foundation to warn about the country’s economic challenges. Mr. Peterson poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the nonpartisan organization, which has contributed to think tanks as politically varied as the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Bipartisan Policy Center.

  103. 103.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:
    And where did this info from the left on HRC come from? Why if I remember correctly it was BS.
    Yeah I don’t think he wants the Russian can of shit opened up at all.

  104. 104.

    gwangung

    @TenguPhule:

    Yeah the money was good, but giving lectures and speeches to those people was the kind of thing you normally did after completing your career in politics.

    Not to mention her fees are on the low end of the A-list of speakers. And most of the speeches were to non-profits.

  105. 105.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @ET:

    Funny that you mention the Weinstein Company. Just before I left the house an hour ago I saw a snippet on the news that they have declared bankruptcy and are being sold to a Texas company. And all of Harvey Weinstein’s NDAs are being canceled by the new company.

  106. 106.

    Roger Moore

    @gene108:

    What she didn’t expect was that there’s this huge group of people, who are even further Left than the left-wing of the Democratic Party, and some of them are pretty fucking dumb, when it comes to picking a candidate to support.

    I think the bigger issue is how many supposedly liberal men are still misogynists at heart and were willing to believe the most transparent nonsense if it gave them an excuse to vote against the woman. Never underestimate how much of the supposedly pro-Bernie camp was actually the never Hillary camp.

  109. 109.

    Jager

    @germy: A broadcast research PhD i worked with back in the mid 70’s told me two truisms one late night, the first was “long hair often covers a redneck” and the other was “if a woman really likes a song, her nipples get hard”. I threw back my drink and asked, “How the hell did you research that?” He said, “Easy, personal observation.” He said two songs stood out in his observation of women, The Pretenders “Brass in Pocket” and Chaka Khan’s “Tell Me Somethin’ Good

  115. 115.

    Adam L Silverman

    @GregB: Given that the other major investor in CA is Dmitry Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch who is close to Putin, this should not be surprising. CA has always been one of the major bridging nodes between the GOP and the Russian Intelligence Services/Putin.

  116. 116.

    TenguPhule

    @Elizabelle:

    which has contributed to think tanks as politically varied as the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Bipartisan Policy Center.

    That’s as politically varied as saying the colors of shit are brown, yellow, black, green and pink. Its still all shit.

  119. 119.

    Corner Stone

    @Major Major Major Major: IMO, i think it’s like a savvy hot take or a Slate pitch to be jumping on the, “CA, man! They didn’t do nuffin!” bandwagon. While I do not think they had the dismissively termed “mind-control ray”, I do believe it’s obvious that they scaled up from 270K +/- users to 50M with basically no cost involved. It is also fairly easy to believe that they could, and did, build content to tailor to smaller and smaller subsets of users. It was a one-stop shop for nutjobs, both on the far left and the right.
    Among all the BS the CA execs state on those videos there is one thing they say that absolutely rings true, “Don’t try to win on facts. The only way to win a campaign is using emotion.” (para).

  120. 120.

    Redshift

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I agree with your assessment of him, but I also agree with his assessment of CA’s mind-control ray. His conclusion then wanders off into the land of pointless garbage, but I think his opinion of CA’s abilities is right.

    I agree CA’s claims about what they could do operationally are mostly or entirely BS. I’m less sanguine about what Russian intelligence was able to do with their ill-gotten trove of data.

  121. 121.

    Jay

    @Jager:

    Anal’s a full service Ratfucking Shop, Intertubes, Real World, maybe even Computer Voting and Voters rolls via their Russian subcontractors.

  125. 125.

    Mary G

    It is utterly delicious that the techniques used by James O’Keefe against ACORN are taking down a YUGE right wing conspiracy. Cue the doctored videotape claims in 3, 2, 1….

  127. 127.

    Tom Q

    This whole “I only said all that stuff about hookers to weed out unwanted clients” excuse reminds me of Republican Congressman Richard Kelly (from Betty’s beloved Florida) who, when caught on tape making clearly corrupt arrangements in the Abscam scandal, said he’d been playing along in a undercover attempt to trap those making the offer.

    Spoiler alert: the voters decided he was full of shit, defeated him in his primary, and he ended up gong to jail.

  128. 128.

    TenguPhule

    @Elizabelle:

    At some point, I hope we can have nice things.

    I’m fairly certain we’ll have to pluck them from the cold dead hands of the GOP.

  130. 130.

    germy

    @ruemara:

    Hopefully as well decomposed as the fat & muscle tissue of Brontosaur that’s passed through the alimentary canal of an Allosaurus and shat out into a deep river.

    I like those chances. If Zuckerberg ever took power, we’d all have to log in to Facebook to vote.

  133. 133.

    Elizabelle

    @Yarrow: I want the Mercers in rowboats. They need to lose the yachts, the real estate, their fortune they are spending to destroy opportunities for the rest of us.

    Also, I want NPR and PBS and other fronts to stop taking radical paleoconservative money. No more from the David Koch whitewashing fund. I suspect it is helping to make them both too timid. The Snooze Hour is a museum piece. Terry Gross is about the only thing on NPR that is reliably wince-proof.

  134. 134.

    germy

    What is the Facebook hysteria about? Social media allowed the bypassing established propaganda — sharing stories that educated the masses directly. Big Tech now censors the independent flow of information, preserving the corporate media cartel's power to control election outcomes pic.twitter.com/BzmmcaYNcs— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) March 20, 2018

  135. 135.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Redshift:

    I’m less sanguine about what Russian intelligence was able to do with their ill-gotten trove of data.

    BINGO!

  136. 136.

    joel hanes

    @Elizabelle:

    Peter G. Peterson, has [shuffled off this mortal coil and joined the choir eternal]

    Good.

    May Rupert Murdoch, Richard Bruce Cheney, Sheldon Adelson, both of the conservative Koch brothers, and the Usurper and Thief follow him in short order. Today would be good.

  137. 137.

    Redshift

    @TenguPhule:

    Yeah the money was good, but giving lectures and speeches to those people was the kind of thing you normally did after completing your career in politics.

    Oh, bullshit. This is another one of those Calvinball “rules” that was made up after the fact in an attempt to rationalize why it was okay even though previous politicians hadn’t been attacked the same way.

  142. 142.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Corner Stone:

    IMO, i think it’s like a savvy hot take or a Slate pitch to be jumping on the, “CA, man! They didn’t do nuffin!” bandwagon.While I do not think they had the dismissively termed “mind-control ray”, I do believe it’s obvious that they scaled up from 270K +/- users to 50M with basically no cost involved. It is also fairly easy to believe that they could, and did, build content to tailor to smaller and smaller subsets of users. It was a one-stop shop for nutjobs, both on the far left and the right.

    I have no doubt that they did all these things. I’m also pretty sure that they didn’t find some fancy new way to do it that was any more effective than the other zillion corporations and campaigns working with similar datasets. At least not on their own, these are not earth-shattering geniuses we’re talking about.

    ETA the 270k-to-50-million thing was basically a simple data pivot that Facebook had turned on for anybody with the right permissions to access.

  146. 146.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    People need to march in front of Scam Alito’s house, shouting “Not True on CU” 24/7.

  150. 150.

    Corner Stone

    @Major Major Major Major: There’s a reason FB is scared to death. We do not have to inflate any “geniuses” at CA to point to the simple fact that they put their illicit dataset to work in ways that had an impact on the 2016 election, and if believed, at least Tom Thillis’ election in 2014.
    I think people that are adamant about painting CA as nothing but a charade, charlatans or just as a way to get in tight with the Mercers are missing the larger point.

  152. 152.

    Roger Moore

    @Redshift:

    I agree CA’s claims about what they could do operationally are mostly or entirely BS. I’m less sanguine about what Russian intelligence was able to do with their ill-gotten trove of data.

    I’m not sure there’s any difference. My main hypothesis now is that Cambridge Analytica is just a front for Russian Intelligence’s election undermining schemes. Their claims about their technology are a bunch of flim-flam designed to explain how a smallish company can achieve so much.

  153. 153.

    GregB

    Face Book just issued a statement claiming they are outraged.

    Now the people with lots of moolah will start focusing their fire on one another.

    Let the games begin and pray for lots of coffer draining and character assassinations.

  156. 156.

    Roger Moore

    @Yarrow:

    The legal bills for the Mercers are going to be brutal.

    They can afford the best. It’s the penalties they need to worry about.

  157. 157.

    Gin & Tonic

    @GregB:

    Face Book just issued a statement claiming they are outraged.

    Outraged that they’ve lost $50B in market valuation over the last two days, maybe.

  158. 158.

    different-church-lady

    @GregB:

    Face Book just issued a statement claiming they are outraged.

    Of course they are: they didn’t get paid.

  159. 159.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Corner Stone: i think it’s pretty obvious that Doctorow is in that camp but that doesn’t make his assessment of what CA did wrong. Somebody was bound to do this eventually with data harvested more or less legally from Facebook users. Facebook is absolutely and rightly scared to death—because this is making the real-world consequences of their longstanding data policies clear, in a way that the last ten years’ of privacy advocates banging on pots and pans hasn’t.

    That doesn’t mean that CA did anything particularly novel. That’s all I’m saying.

  160. 160.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Corner Stone: It is beyond that. There are at least a dozen GOP candidates/campaigns and Super PACs that can be tied to CA over the past decade.

  161. 161.

    StringOnAStick

    @Mnemosyne:

    So, no, I don’t think I’m going overboard when I point out that the left was just as propagandized against Hillary as the right was, using the same attacks.

    Exactly so, I have a co-worker who is very Boulder hippie and she hated Hillary because of this, and still brags about her “total Berner friends” who are just the paragon of the perfection of leftism. I’m so glad her last day is the end of this month, just so sick of her petty BS and completely uninformed (except by RT) political opinions. If you don’t agree with her and what she gets from RT, you are a total corporate sellout, maaaaannnnnn.

  167. 167.

    Yarrow

    @Corner Stone: Facebook knew all about this data scraping happening. They didn’t seem to care and have been dragging their feet on the issue ever since.

  170. 170.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Corner Stone: @Yarrow: it’s also not really ‘illicit’. They didn’t care about it because it was standard operating procedure for app developers—get users to grant you full account permissions because people don’t read before clicking; harvest their data; harvest their friends’ semi-protected data that you now have access to. Tinder quite famously did it, it was their whole shtick. The only thing that made CA’s ‘wrong’ is that they pretended to be academics.

  172. 172.

    catclub

    @GregB:

    claiming it has devolved into a propaganda organ for a dangerous man.

    Rupert Murdoch, too.

    That devolved does not make sense. Implies an un-devolved phase.

  174. 174.

    Corner Stone

    @Yarrow: Of course they knew. Their platform was performing exactly as intended and they were selling it like hotcakes and wondering why people kept saying gamboling was going in their establishment.
    But now it’s out and in their face. The last thing they want, besides being shut down like Arthur Andersen, is to be regulated. They don’t want to comply because it will cost them money and growth. That is why they are terrified.

  175. 175.

    Roger Moore

    @Yarrow:
    For a variety of reasons, treason is unlikely to be in play. There are plenty of other possibilities, like espionage and violation of campaign finance rules.

  177. 177.

    sukabi

    @Jeffro: blistering “I quit your propaganda network” by a one of FOX’S security experts…

    In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration,” he continued. “When prime-time hosts–who have never served our country in any capacity–dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller–all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of ‘deep-state’ machinations– I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove.”

    “To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit,” he concluded.

  180. 180.

    germy

    Here’s a response to one of Michael Moore’s tweets:

    Lost all respect for Bernie after he laid down when Hilary and the DNC stole the primary election from him.— The Upright Company (@uprightcompany) March 20, 2018

  188. 188.

    sukabi

    @Adam L Silverman: isn’t it notable when “a serious hack” can’t / won’t associate with an organization because it is pushing nothing but dangerous Bullshit?

  190. 190.

    Bruce K

    As an aside, on account of this appears to be an open thread, apparently everyone’s favorite vote-suppression expert Kris Kobach got personally Roto-Rootered by a Federal judge in a contempt hearing today, using the sort of language that would lead me, if I were representing Mr. Kobach, to advise him to bring a change of underwear and a toothbrush to court with him tomorrow.

    Article’s here:

    http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article206025749.html

    And that judge sounded severely honked off. When I was in law school, we were told that hearing judges talk like that from the bench is a sign that Bad Things are fixing to happen.

  194. 194.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Elizabelle:

    What an A-hole. Good riddance.

    [. . .] runaway spending on Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs [. . .].

    It’s not “runaway” spending. It’s legislated, rigorously calculated and easily measured. Unlike, say, the defense budget, which is only one of those three things.

  196. 196.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Dave: In this case he left at O5. Never attended one of the senior leadership colleges (war colleges), so he’s had none of the military higher/professional ed that would have allowed him to really make the claim that he makes: which is that he knows strategy and policy.

  198. 198.

    Mary G

    @Bruce K: Reading the ACLU’s twitter feed of that trial has been hilarious. The judge has had to explain basic legal techniques over and over again. She has no fucks left to give.

  199. 199.

    GregB

    I don’t want to be premature here…..but I think the Peak Wingnut collapse has begun.

  202. 202.

    TenguPhule

    @Bruce K:

    a judge on Tuesday tore into the Kansas Republican about repeatedly skirting her orders.

    Repeatedly. As in more then once.

    Kobach may become a poster boy for too stupid to live.

  204. 204.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sukabi: I mean hack in that his assessments are usually wrong. Not that he doesn’t have convictions or a professional ethic. But it is a significant break given the way he explained his actions.

  208. 208.

    TenguPhule

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I mean hack in that his assessments are usually wrong. Not that he doesn’t have convictions or a professional ethic.

    How could we tell the difference?

  209. 209.

    Chip Daniels

    @Elizabelle:

    Mr. Peterson poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the nonpartisan organization, which has contributed to think tanks as politically varied as the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Bipartisan Policy Center.

    Snerk…Bipartisan. That’s a good one.

  210. 210.

    Elizabelle

    @sukabi:

    “To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit,” he concluded.

    Ralph Peters is goddamned slow on the uptake. But props to him for coming to his senses, several decades late.

    His statement is accurate. What are we going to do about Fox News? I don’t think they deserve to hide behind the First Amendment to broadcast their shit and propagandize, particularly with heavy repetition and frightening the elderly.

    They are a threat. They are not a legitimate broadcaster. They’re Radio Milles Collines. And getting rich off it.

  211. 211.

    Corner Stone

    @germy: I’m wondering where Cheryl Sandberg is? Maybe she and Chris Wray are skiing somewhere together in a basement.

  212. 212.

    TenguPhule

    @GregB:

    I don’t want to be premature here…..but I think the Peak Wingnut collapse has begun.

    Which means of course, that tomorrow will be worse, just to prove you wrong.

  214. 214.

    Bruce K

    @Mary G: Yeah, that bag’s empty. And I swear, it’s almost like Kobach thought he could muscle through a legal theory that was essentially quia ego sic dico, which might fly in Ankh-Morpork, but apparently not so much in the US District Court for Kansas…

  215. 215.

    catclub

    I was impressed by the article linked to in the other thread, that came out in december 2016 in Germany, that had a deeper reporting on what CA does than anything else I have read.

    danielx says:
    March 20, 2018 at 3:27 pm

    Cambridge Analytics…

    The following was published at Antidote Zine on January 22, 2017, originally from a German language publication. If you want to know how far behind the curve mainstream media was on this whole deal, the date tells you a lot right there.

    Trump Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself

  216. 216.

    TenguPhule

    @Bruce K:

    And I swear, it’s almost like Kobach thought he could muscle through a legal theory that was essentially quia ego sic dico, which might fly in Ankh-Morpork, but apparently not so much in the US District Court for Kansas

    To be fair, Ankh-Morpork is both more sophisticated then and better managed then Kansas.

  218. 218.

    germy

    “We need to actually re-think our attitude [to the internet.]”

    Inventor of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee says “it is not enough just to keep the web open and free” following the row about Facebook data. pic.twitter.com/iEaeIaTv7q— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) March 20, 2018

  220. 220.

    TenguPhule

    Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his country’s diplomats today to seek changes to international doping rules in the wake of the nation’s drug scandals.

    A month after the Winter Olympics took place without a full Russian team, part of the country’s punishment for past doping offenses, Putin said the Foreign Ministry should try to alter the key treaty underpinning anti-doping work worldwide.

    He said Russian diplomats working with UNESCO should aim to “refine” the existing International Convention against Doping in Sport so that “the rules are fair and absolutely transparent.”

    Of course.

  221. 221.

    Brachiator

    @Elizabelle:

    His statement is accurate. What are we going to do about Fox News?

    People can stop watching it. That’s about it. Also, Fox may soon be eclipsed by Sinclair Broadcasting as the major right wing propaganda outlet in the United States.

    I don’t think they deserve to hide behind the First Amendment to broadcast their shit and propagandize, particularly with heavy repetition and frightening the elderly.

    Scurrilous journalism is an American tradition as old as apple pie, and has been around since the revolution. And some people love to be frightened.

    They are a threat. They are not a legitimate broadcaster. They’re Radio Milles Collines. And getting rich off it.

  222. 222.

    Yarrow

    @Adam L Silverman: Yep. Reminder that this 2015 article that talked about what CA did was about the Ted Cruz campaign. I hope Beto O’Rourke ties him to this whole mess. That would be sweet!

    @Roger Moore: Treason in the vernacular use of it. Espionage in the legal sense to be used in court. An argument could be made that we’re in a cyber war with Russia, so then treason might apply.

  223. 223.

    Roger Moore

    @NotMax:

    If it can be done concisely, a quick explanation of what is meant by dogfooding for the uninitiated (raises both hands) would be appreciated.

    Using your own product. Some pet food company used to claim they ate their own dog food, and programmers have adopted “eating your own dog food” and the shorter “dogfooding” to mean the same general idea.

  224. 224.

    germy

    Congress having to work on Saturday means they’ll be here when the big gun control march is happening. The protesters will be all around the Capitol and in their offices while they struggle to find the government. Boy those are bad optics. – Joe Perticone

  227. 227.

    Yarrow

    @Corner Stone: She’s off counting her money. Is she still telling non-millionaire women how to conduct themselves by using her millionaire experience as a template?

  228. 228.

    jl

    Well, the conservative hack propaganda machine is already swinging into action to misdirect (a rude uncivil person might say also use the word ‘lying’)

    Ben Shapiro equates Obama data mining with what CA did for Trump. Except, from what I can tell from the links, Obama got data from people who were knowingly signing onto his campaign site to volunteer, Obama campaign didn’t lie to Facebook about what they were doing, and seems to have been completely legal.

    @joshtpm
    Wait, Ben Shapiro is both tendentious and embarrassingly ignorant?
    https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/976202274447020032

    Edit: whether there needs to be clearer and more transparent disclosure about any kind of data harvesting is a valid issue, but not one that can be used to equate CA/Trumpster tricks with what several other campaigns did, and were widely known in news reports to be doing, at the time.

  229. 229.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @germy:
    Sanders will crow about his “millyons and millyons” of young people outside Mitch McConnell’s window.

  230. 230.

    Mary G

    Possibly O/T but important. Can you all please call your senators and ask them to support SJRes54, to stop our military helping the Saudis bomb Yemen back to the Stone Age? I know Wilmer is the main name on it, but a stopped clock is right twice a day and the starvation and disease caused by the blockade MBS said he lifted but hasn’t is a humanitarian disgrace. I called mine; DiFi (and Chris Murphy, too) is one of the co-sponsors, and Kamala Harris will vote yes as well.

    ETA: Mike Lee is the only Republican in favor, other co-sponsors include Liz Warren, Cory Booker, Dick Durbin and eight more Democrats we like. Bob Corker and Mitch McConnell don’t want anything to do with it, but the more noise that breaks thru all of the Twitler circus, the better.

  231. 231.

    Rommie

    All I can say is thank goodness these people are Dr. Evil Evil. If they were Xanatos / Dr. Doom Evil…

  232. 232.

    catclub

    @Roger Moore: If Microsoft used Linux to run its servers, or if Google used Microsoft Bing for searching rather than Google apps, that would be NOT eating your own dogfood.

  235. 235.

    No Drought No More

    “What I think we’re witnessing is a very public obstruction of justice. He, as I see it, has already exceeded everything that Nixon did. He’s really much more intimately involved than Nixon ever was in the cover-up…Trump is Nixon on steroids and stilts”. John Dean

    I’d say Trump is more like Nixon on cheap gin and acid, and that Justice is being gang raped by Trump, congressional republicans, and any American that still supports todays republican party.

  236. 236.

    Corner Stone

    @Yarrow: Sound jealous. You mean you don’t have two maids, a team of nannies 24/7, a nutritionist, chef, personal driver, executive assistant and an on-call masseuse?

  237. 237.

    different-church-lady

    @GregB: Really feels like that today, doesn’t it? Soooo many curtains pulled back on so Oz’es.

  241. 241.

    TenguPhule

    @Rommie:

    If they were Xanatos / Dr. Doom Evil

    We’d have universal healthcare, fully funded Social Security and flying cars.

  242. 242.

    Roger Moore

    @catclub:
    Exactly right. The basic idea is that users give you helpful feedback on your programs, so making your developers also be users lets you bypass whole layers of bureaucracy in getting feedback where it’s needed*. There’s also the potential embarrassment of customers hearing you don’t believe enough in your product to use it yourself.

    *In practice, of course, good organizations will still have a regular customer relations side of thing to get more feedback from outside customers, but using the product in-house does help ensure a lot of basic problems will be caught before they can become serious.

  244. 244.

    Jay

    @Corner Stone:

    Trump won the Electoral Colledge because of 40,000 votes in 3 States.

    You don’t have to sucessfully ratfuck millions to turn a US Presidential Election, you just have to ratfuck sucessfully a few tens of thousands.

  245. 245.

    Yarrow

    @schrodingers_cat: She sure is. As I said above, the whole “Lean In” thing was her “telling non-millionaire women how to conduct themselves by using her millionaire experience as a template.”

  246. 246.

    Brachiator

    @catclub:

    I was impressed by the article linked to in the other thread, that came out in december 2016 in Germany, that had a deeper reporting on what CA does than anything else I have read.

    I missed any link in a previous thread, but caught it here. It looks like a good long read. I will have to save it for later. Thanks.

  247. 247.

    Rand Careaga

    @GregB: So Ralph Peters has bailed from Fox News. I am of course prepared to welcome any ally of convenience, but as others have pointed out, Peters is seriously cray-cray, and if Trump and his enablers have crossed his line, the news is as worrisome as it is gratifying.

    @RobertDSC-iPhone 6:

    He has written a couple of really good fiction novels. I have several in my library.

    So do you own multiple copies of his two “really good fiction novels?” Disclosure: Twenty-five or thirty years ago (must have been closer to thirty) I read one of his novels, Red Army, which was a serviceable yarn about a US/Soviet land war in Europe. Nukes are not deployed; the Reds prevail; his political points, while obvious, are not unduly belabored. I was a little disappointed when he next came to my attention, earlier in the present century, via second-hand reports—I don’t do cable—as a foam-flecked commentator.

  250. 250.

    Corner Stone

    @Yarrow: That one executive assistant delegates all the work to everyone else. You didn’t think Sheryl actually interacted with that many plebes, did you? She dictates digital notes and then Facebooks them to her EA sitting in another room.

  252. 252.

    The Lodger

    @Adam L Silverman: I don’t know what Beto is going to do with that information, but I devoutly hope some of his people are paying attention. Whoever got assistance from CA deserves to be smeared far and wide.

  253. 253.

    Roger Moore

    @Jay:

    Trump won the Electoral Colledge because of 40,000 votes in 3 States.

    That’s a gross oversimplification. Those votes were the margin of victory, but his campaign* had to work very hard to get things close enough to steal.

    *Including its Russian assistants.

  256. 256.

    Corner Stone

    @Jay: I think we’re agreed and it’s the point I have been trying to make. You don’t have to have a “mind-control ray” or be staffed by “geniuses” to flip 100,000 votes across three key states. Either by pumping your guys up to vote or deflating others from voting or voting 3rd party.
    Targeting smaller subsets to rile up and/or confuse is what CA did with their dataset. Then Russia came along behind them and amplified those messages. It’s not innovative, it’s not genius, it’s not crazy unheard of from a marketing perspective. But, IMO, they did it successfully.

  258. 258.

    trnc

    @LAO:

    they are going to employ the “it’s none of your business” defense.

    Well, sure, why not? Obviously, that worked out great for Nunberg.

  260. 260.

    catclub

    @The Lodger:

    but I devoutly hope some of his people are paying attention. Whoever got assistance from CA deserves to be smeared far and wide.

    sorry, that will be super inside baseball, BJ readers plus about nobody else will care, or know.
    Facebook they will recognize, but Cambridge Analytica, not likely. Happy to be wrong.

  262. 262.

    tobie

    @gene108:

    What I saw from my Bernie supporting friends were not attacks about “she supported Iraq”, but crap about how she said “super predators”, when talking about kids in gangs 25 years ago

    I’m late to this party but “A-fucking-men.” My Bernie-lovin’ family and friends still talk about HRC’s super predator comment, how crooked she is/was, her being in bed with Wall St., and her supposed history of exploiting prison labor in Arkansas when she was the state’s first lady and then her or her brother owning plantations in Haiti. The last two charges are weird if you ask me and clearly part of a disinformation campaign.

  265. 265.

    moops

    Given how ratf-ed our politics has gotten and now the connection from Facebook and CA, I’m becoming a bit concerned about commenting in blogs, even here. I took the time to read the Balloon Juice Privacy Policy. While it calls out that tracking software might collect anonymous information, it is known that there is a whole industry dedicated to reattaching personally identifiable information to anonymous data hordes. Thankfully it is not too hard to read the source code on BJ. The Enfold package is pretty transparent. I don’t have much faith in websites running WordPress, and at some point we are going to hear that Disqus has been mined and cross-referenced and de-anonymized. I can’t get through the Disqus page source. I’m not sure how much tracking is really there. I’m thankful that Balloon Juice makes the effort to in-source their website development.

    But I will not be surprised when I hear about wide-ranging data breaches from politically active websites being used for influence campaigns.

  267. 267.

    ruemara

    @TenguPhule: Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

    @tobie: Considering how few of them are usually black or were alive back then, I find their focus amusing.

  268. 268.

    Patricia Kayden

    Mueller is so lucky. He’s investigating a man made of mud and slime. Drain the swamp, indeed.

  269. 269.

    Elizabelle

    @joel hanes: Yeah. I think some anti-monopoly regulation, once we get Congressional control.

    You cannot pretend this is in the public interest. I realize we are stuck, as long as we have the oligarch-enabling GOP in control. But this might be their high watermark.

  273. 273.

    zhena gogolia

    @GregB:

    Kakuiu khuiniu on nesiot?

    As a Russia analyst for many years, it also has appalled me that hosts who made their reputations as super-patriots and who, justifiably, savaged President Obama for his duplicitous folly with Putin

  274. 274.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Rand Careaga:
    I really find it hard to envision a scenario where a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact doesn’t involve nukes at some point.

  275. 275.

    Fair Economist

    @Mnemosyne:

    MM is just a fucking moron who’s unwilling to look at his deep-seated racism and misogyny.

    I’m getting to the point that I wonder. The Stormy Daniels scandal is a really obvious tool to weaken Trump’s authority and support, as well as the perverted and twisted “evangelical” movement now supporting him. Any enemy of Trump should be eager to use it. You could possibly argue it’s not the best tool to weaken Trump but anybody calling it a “distraction” is very suspect.

  276. 276.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @Corner Stone:

    wondering why people kept saying gamboling was going in their establishment.

    There are no goats or lambs here! This is a classy joint!

  277. 277.

    moops

    It’s not just Facebook. As Schneier has pointed out, the rating agencies are sitting on gigantic hordes of personal information that they trade with banks and credit cards and insurance companies, and in turn increase their own data hordes. The people in these data hordes are not customers, and there is no natural market limitation on their misbehavior and negligence. And that is just these actors being greedy and stupid. When you add in “plus evil” for some actors, the incentives get even worse. Then you have Amazon, and EBay, and other e-commerce giants that are sitting on their own weapons-grade toxic data that is just too tempting for them to let go of.

    It is looking like the only rational path is to outlaw personal data archives. If I don’t have a business relationship with you then it should be illegal for you to have my information. Yes, that will cause a few problems with things like rapid credit reporting, but that should be eliminated anyways.

  278. 278.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Fair Economist: What I found weird was MM’s calling Russia a distraction. I could have sworn MM called Trump a traitor or something like that on Seth Myers like a year ago.

  281. 281.

    Baud

    @Fair Economist:

    “Distraction” is bullshit. That said, I can see how people who only have one political tool in the woodshed would get antsy if they can’t use it because something else is “distracting” their audience. It’s not necessarily Russian influence.

  284. 284.

    different-church-lady

    @tobie: It’s a cart/horse order problem: they first decided they didn’t like Hillary, and then the justification comes after. And any justification will do, no matter how crazy.

  285. 285.

    joel hanes

    @TenguPhule:

    Saturation bombing by B52s.

    Did not work as advertised in Laos, Cambodia, North Viet Nam, Baghdad …

    I find your bloodthirsty “sense of humor” repellent, and wish you’d grow up or go away.

  289. 289.

    Fair Economist

    @Major Major Major Major:

    but I also agree with his assessment of CA’s mind-control ray.

    I don’t know if it’s CambAnal, but *somebody* got the far left marching to the right’s tune like they were on puppet strings. *Somebody* affiliated with the Republicans/conservatives is pretty good at opinion manipulation. Even if CambAnal isn’t the puppetmaster, I think they were key in providing the puppetmaster data.

  299. 299.

    TenguPhule

    @Princess:

    I find it hard to tell the difference between FOX and NPR these days sometimes

    The one with blondes flashing their legs is Fox.

  302. 302.

    Fair Economist

    @Roger Moore:

    My main hypothesis now is that Cambridge Analytica is just a front for Russian Intelligence’s election undermining schemes.

    Not exactly. CamAnal is a conduit for money and intelligence between the Mercers and the Russians (and possible DeVos and Prince too), allowing them to collude under-the-table.

  310. 310.

    TenguPhule

    Ben Carson: “That $31,000 dining set? Totally my wife’s fault, Congress!”

    Christ he’s an asshole.

  313. 313.

    Fair Economist

    @Calouste:

    A clip is a recording Stormy Daniels has. A magazine is what she is spanking the shitgibbon with in that clip.

    I am so stealing this!

  318. 318.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud: But after the midterms OR before, if we can get President Nancy Pelosi.

    Whole house of cards must fall. No Pence, No Ryan, no Republican POTUS. They stole the fucking White House and a Supreme Court seat.

  320. 320.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Gin & Tonic:
    Was referring to the novel mentioned by the OP that was set (presumably) during the late Cold War.

    Somebody was eventually going to use nukes in a direct confrontation.

  323. 323.

    Roger Moore

    @Fair Economist:

    You could possibly argue it’s not the best tool to weaken Trump but anybody calling it a “distraction” is very suspect.

    It’s a distraction from what they want to talk about, which is economic inequality. They care far more about talking about what they want to talk about than they do about stopping Trump or winning elections. Purity is everything.

  324. 324.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    His conclusion then wanders off into the land of pointless garbage, but I think his opinion of CA’s abilities is right.

    Right, which is why CA was selling their willingness to stage dirty tricks rather than their magical data mining techniques. They used the data for voter suppression, not for ads. Possibly for outright election tampering.

  334. 334.

    JR

    @Mary G: unfair to channel 4; that was s properly executed sting. Statements are provided in context and there’s no selective editing. In other words none of the dishonesty that marks veritas operations.

  336. 336.

    Sean

    @LAO: Since CA really only exists on paper as an LLC of the larger SCL; not sure suspending Nix is much of anything really.

  337. 337.

    RobertDSC-Mac Mini

    @Rand Careaga:

    My favorite is “The War in 2020”. A yarn about a really disfigured world order where the world is decimated by a fictional disease with unique consequences. The United States and Japan are in a shooting war over resources, the Russians are bankrupt and need American help for defense, and a squadron of American gunships rides to the rescue.

    The other I liked very much is “The War After Armageddon. Nuclear war has scrambled the world order to a horrifying degree, but the key development is an American military unit on the ground in the Holy Land that is comprised of “Christian” loyalists determined to take over Biblical historical sites by force from Muslim resisters. It’s a over-the-top bunch of nonsense, but I liked it.

    I have also read “Red Army”, which I also liked.

  338. 338.

    Procopius

    @Mnemosyne: “Facebook is going to rue the day they decided it was a good idea to try and send their “cleaners” to the CA offices ahead of the cops.”

    Boy, do I hope so.

  339. 339.

    Procopius

    @Jager: Well, there’s a difference. You’re talking about the honest salesman who wants to build a long-term relationship in which both parties win. I’m thinking these guys are more like used-car salesmen, who figure they will never see these suckers again, and the suckers have no recourse against them anyway.

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