NY Times: Russia Trolls Helped Elect Donald Trump Or Something

By William Teach December 18, 2018 – 8:09 am

The NY Times’ Michelle Goldberg thinks she’s on to something. But, it forgets a central point: this provides zero proof of collusion

Yes, Russian Trolls Helped Elect Trump

This year, researchers at Ohio State University tried to measure the impact that fake news had on the 2016 election. They based their analysis on a postelection survey in which they’d asked voters 281 questions, three of which were intended to determine their exposure to online disinformation.

Respondents were asked to rate the accuracy of statements claiming that Hillary Clinton was suffering from a serious illness, that she’d approved weapons sales to the Islamic State as secretary of state, and that Donald Trump had been endorsed by Pope Francis. “Belief in these fake news stories is very strongly linked to defection from the Democratic ticket by 2012 Obama voters,” wrote the researchers, Richard Gunther, Paul A. Beck and Erik C. Nisbet. Even after controlling for variables like ideology, education, party identification and dislike of Clinton, they found that believing a fake news story made people who voted for President Barack Obama in 2012 significantly less likely to vote for Clinton in 2016.

That’s interesting, because she received over 400,000 more votes than Obama did in 2012. Trump received 2 million more votes than Mitt Romney, and, get this, won them in a few more states than Hillary. Did Russian Instragram bots posing in barely there bikinis holding cups of coffee in the woods keep Hillary from going to Wisconsin? Did Russian bots dropping posts on Facebook make her pass out on 9/11, which is where many of the Hillary is seriously sick memes came from?

The study’s authors don’t claim a clear causal link between propaganda and voting; it’s possible that people who rejected Clinton were more open to misinformation about her. It’s hard to believe, however, that at least some of them weren’t affected by a social media ecosystem saturated with deliberate lies.

Is Michelle talking about the NY Times and there 100% negative news on Donald Trump and 100% positive for Hillary Clinton or the Russia trolls?

Russian propaganda, one of the reports found, had about 187 million engagements on Instagram, reaching at least 20 million users, and 76.5 million engagements on Facebook, reaching 126 million people. Approximately 1.4 million people, the report said, engaged with tweets associated with the Internet Research Agency. “The organic Facebook posts reveal a nuanced and deep knowledge of American culture, media and influencers in each community the I.R.A. targeted,” it said.

There is no way to quantify exactly what this barrage of disinformation and manipulation did to American politics. But it should be obvious that what happens online influences our perceptions of, and behavior in, the offline world. People have committed horrific acts of violence based on Facebook propaganda. The Islamic State has used Twitter to recruit alienated Westerners.

You mean the people who Obama called the JV Team, and grew tremendously after his Big Libyan Adventure? You can bet that the NY Times had more influence on the election than some Russian trolls.

In an election decided by a rounding error — fewer than 80,000 voters spread over three states — Russian trolling easily could have made the difference. It’s mortifying and preposterous that fake news ruined America. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

Now, prove it. That’s where the rubber meets the road. Prove it. Here’s Nate Silver, who is catching major league flung moonbat poo for daring to show the reality (via Twitchy)

Michelle yammers about Instagram. Consider that 80% of Instagram users are outside of the US. And there are 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram per day. 95 million. So these Russian trolls had 187 million engagements? That’s nothing. Were they posting sexy selfies with political views?

The very fact is that the Russians tried, but, did they actually have much of an influence? Did they change the election? No. Just like Obama and Hillary didn’t make a difference on the election in Russia. Nor did Obama change the outcome of the Brexit referendum in Britain. You can bet The NY Times, Washington Post, and the rest of the Leftist Hillary supporting media had more of an influence.

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Say, Why Don’t Washington Voters Want To Be Carbon Taxed Out The Wazoo?

By William Teach December 17, 2018 – 3:43 pm

A big case of Someone Else syndrome

Why Do Washington Voters Struggle With Climate Change Policies?
Despite environmental awareness and the public’s apparent desire for reform, statewide initiatives keep failing

Attempts to tax carbon emissions have twice failed on Washington state ballots and efforts in the Legislature have been stalled. And while activists say they’ll continue to push for greener policies, some researchers are suggesting the way these policies are constructed must be rethought. (big snip)

Aseem Prakash and Nives Dolsak are professors at the University of Washington who focus their research on climate policy. In an opinion piece published in The Hill, they write that while climate change itself will disproportionately affect poorer sections of society, climate activists have been unable to use that information to their advantage and are facing a populist backlash in France. Moreover, they point to this same trend in the U.S. In a November Gallup poll, only 2 percent of respondents listed environmental issues as the most important problem facing the U.S.

In an interview with Seattle Weekly, the pair said as people are forced to rank their list of priorities, climate change begins sliding down the list. When people are asked whether they support climate change, most people will say they do, but when asked if they think they should pay for measures to reduce it, support drops.

Dolsak said there is a strong sense of “we the people should not be taxed, it should be the corporations that should be taxed,” and added that “there is a sense of urgency, policy has to happen, but we the consumers should not be bearing the cost of policy.”

Now, lots of Warmist groups and “climate researchers” will whine about fossil fuels companies and groups spending money to defeat these types of policies and initiatives, because Leftists only like spending money when it agrees with their views (because they are rather Fascist), but it really does come down to the notion that lots of people believe we should Do Something about man-caused climate change, they’re just unwilling to pay for it (much like with healthcare) themselves. Someone Else should pay for it.

They also never seem to understand that if Someone Else is getting nailed with carbon taxes, those extra costs will be passed on to consumers.

Read: Say, Why Don’t Washington Voters Want To Be Carbon Taxed Out The Wazoo? »

Posted in Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach December 17, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…are horrible carbon pollution clouds causing sea rise, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Watcher Of Weasels, with a post on some of the newly uncovered FBI texts, which even threaten physical harm to Trump.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 18 Comments | Trackback URL

Miss Universe Was Possibly The Most Woke Ever!

By William Teach December 17, 2018 – 10:30 am

You know, the show you no longer bother with because it no longer makes any sense

50 Shades of Gray: Was this really the most woke Miss Universe Pageant?

It was designed as a post-#MeToo pageant, from its all-inclusiveness to its message of body positivity—delivered by plus-size model, and one of the three pageant hosts, Ashley Graham.

But the main host was good old Steve Harvey—bumbling, funny, politically incorrect, and decidedly unwoke. His opening spiel alone roasted the inordinate spiciness of Thai food many, many times. When he asked Miss Canada a question, and she mentioned that she was both a model and engineer, Harvey quipped (and I loosely quote), “Engineering isn’t fun, just be a model and travel around the world and wear nice clothes.” But we expected as much from the host—and his presence was offset by the selection committee (I didn’t hear the word “judges,” though ostensibly that’s what they were)—an all-woman panel composed of ex-beauty queens turned philanthropists, renowned designers, scientists turned beauty queens turned Media CEOs. It seemed like it was a good time to be a woman in a pageant; the only misogyny came in the form of the almost benign titoness of Harvey. Of course, we couldn’t escape a few racist turns from Miss America— this being the Trump era after all—as she poked fun at Miss Vietnam and Miss Cambodia’s lack of English proficiency. It seemed a kind of poetic justice then when Miss America made it only to the top twenty, and Miss Vietnam made it to the top 5.

Of course there had to be some Trump Derangement Syndrome included, and some men hating. Plus, women who push body positivity, otherwise known as telling women it is OK to be overweight and out of shape, despite all the health issues this causes.

As much as I rooted for Catriona Gray, the other candidate I had set my sights on was Angela Ponce, who I missed in the montage introducing the beauty queens—and though I’d been hawkishly watching the segment, I did not see a Miss Spain perhaps that one moment I blinked.

Yeah, Ponce is a dude

https://twitter.com/robbyjr04/status/1074409829370859520

(Deadline) On Sunday night, the Miss Universe pageant crowned Catriona Gray from the Philippines as the winner, but another winner of the evening was Spain’s Angela Ponce, who made history as the pageant’s first transgender contestant.

“What an honor and pride to be part of the history of @missuniverse,” she wrote in Spanish. “This is for you, for those who have no visibility, no voice, because we all deserve a world of respect, inclusion and freedom. And today I am here, proudly representing my nation, all women and human rights.”

Ponce did not make the final round of 20, but she claimed another victory with representation and inclusivity.

She took a spot from a real biological woman. Congrats, nutters: you are mainstreaming mental illness.

Read: Miss Universe Was Possibly The Most Woke Ever! »

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NY Times: Say, Would Human Extinction Be Such A Bad Thing Or Something

By William Teach December 17, 2018 – 8:06 am

Why, yes, this is all about ‘climate change’ and extreme environmentalism. Consider that this is being discussed via the very modern trappings that they want to wipe us out over. This opinion piece is by Todd May, a professor of philosophy at Clemson University and a philosophical adviser for the television show, “The Good Place” (I had to look that up to see what it was)

Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?

There are stirrings of discussion these days in philosophical circles about the prospect of human extinction. This should not be surprising, given the increasingly threatening predations of climate change. In reflecting on this question, I want to suggest an answer to a single question, one that hardly covers the whole philosophical territory but is an important aspect of it. Would human extinction be a tragedy?

To get a bead on this question, let me distinguish it from a couple of other related questions. I’m not asking whether the experience of humans coming to an end would be a bad thing. (In these pages, Samuel Scheffler has given us an important reason to think that it would be.) I am also not asking whether human beings as a species deserve to die out. That is an important question, but would involve different considerations. Those questions, and others like them, need to be addressed if we are to come to a full moral assessment of the prospect of our demise. Yet what I am asking here is simply whether it would be a tragedy if the planet no longer contained human beings. And the answer I am going to give might seem puzzling at first. I want to suggest, at least tentatively, both that it would be a tragedy and that it might just be a good thing.

To make that claim less puzzling, let me say a word about tragedy. In theater, the tragic character is often someone who commits a wrong, usually a significant one, but with whom we feel sympathy in their descent. Here Sophocles’s Oedipus, Shakespeare’s Lear, and Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman might stand as examples. In this case, the tragic character is humanity. It is humanity that is committing a wrong, a wrong whose elimination would likely require the elimination of the species, but with whom we might be sympathetic nonetheless for reasons I discuss in a moment.

To make that case, let me start with a claim that I think will be at once depressing and, upon reflection, uncontroversial. Human beings are destroying large parts of the inhabitable earth and causing unimaginable suffering to many of the animals that inhabit it. This is happening through at least three means. First, human contribution to climate change is devastating ecosystems, as the recent article on Yellowstone Park in The Times exemplifies. Second, increasing human population is encroaching on ecosystems that would otherwise be intact. Third, factory farming fosters the creation of millions upon millions of animals for whom it offers nothing but suffering and misery before slaughtering them in often barbaric ways. There is no reason to think that those practices are going to diminish any time soon. Quite the opposite.

He continues on in this vein, laying out a case that it might not be so bad for humanity to go extinct. Because these people are nuts. When studies talk about ‘climate change’ making people crazy, depressed, wackadoodle, etc, these are the very people being discussed, who have internalized the doom and gloom being pushed by the Cult of Climastrology elites. It’s a vicious circle, but, that’s the way cults work.

This is not the first time a Cultist discusses human extinction in a positive light, nor will it be the last. All over a tiny increase in the global temperature average, something which is utterly normal.

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Draft Report Shows Scale Of Russia Russia Russia Operations

By William Teach December 17, 2018 – 7:55 am

Interestingly, the question of “why didn’t Obama and the people under him do anything” is never asked

New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, shows the operation’s scale and sweep

A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Trump — and worked even harder to support him while in office.

The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the first to study the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), its chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), its ranking Democrat. The bipartisan panel hasn’t said whether it endorses the findings. It plans to release it publicly along with another study later this week.

The research — by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a network analysis firm — offers new details of how Russians working at the Internet Research Agency, which U.S. officials have charged with criminal offenses for interfering in the 2016 campaign, sliced Americans into key interest groups for targeted messaging. These efforts shifted over time, peaking at key political moments, such as presidential debates or party conventions, the report found.

“What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party — and specifically Donald Trump,” the report says. “Trump is mentioned most in campaigns targeting conservatives and right-wing voters, where the messaging encouraged these groups to support his campaign. The main groups that could challenge Trump were then provided messaging that sought to confuse, distract and ultimately discourage members from voting.”

Here’s two important points: first, the draft report, at least as far as the Washington Post’s reporting goes, doesn’t say that Team Trump was working with the Russians, only that they were trying to influence the election. And do they consider that perhaps it wasn’t so much pro-Trump (and had been pro-other Republican candidates prior), but anti-Hillary?

Second, there’s no mention in the story as to whether these operations had any real influence. Conservatives would support conservative positions anyhow. Me, I waited till election day and filled out the whole ballot before finally making a final decision on whether to vote for Trump or just leave that box blank.

The report offers the latest evidence that Russian agents sought to help Trump win the White House. Democrats and Republicans on the panel previously studied the U.S. intelligence community’s 2017 finding that Moscow aimed to assist Trump, and in July, they said investigators had come to the correct conclusion. Despite their work, some Republicans on Capitol Hill continue to doubt the nature of Russia’s interference in the last presidential election. (big snip)

The report traces the origins of Russian online influence operations to Russian domestic politics in 2009 and says that ambitions shifted to include U.S. politics as early as 2013 on Twitter. Of the tweets the company provided to the Senate, 57 percent are in Russian, 36 percent in English and smaller amounts in other languages.

Let’s look back

(Daily Caller)  U.S. intelligence overheard a Russian operative brag about targeting Hillary Clinton in the upcoming 2016 presidential election as payback for an “influence campaign” the former secretary of state ran against Vladimir Putin five years earlier.

Senior intelligence officials told Time that a Russian military intelligence officer with GRU said his group “was going to cause chaos in the upcoming U.S. election” to “pay Clinton back for what President Vladimir Putin believed was an influence operation she had run against him” during Russian elections.

Obama, with Hillary as his SecState, were interfering in the Russian elections at that time (the NY Times even noted this year that the U.S. interferes in elections in many countries all the time), and this may have been payback.

Putin and his operations didn’t seem to diminish the vote tallies for Hillary in Blue states, nor was it his fault she passed out on camera, demeaned millions of Americans, and failed to visit necessary states.

The report also notes how all the tech companies failed to deal with this. But, again, one big question remains: was it effective? Did it make a difference in the 2016 election outcome?

Because, really, we all know Russia was playing games. But, did it have an effect? Nor does this say anything about collusion. But you know the unhinged Trump haters will point to this as proof.

Read: Draft Report Shows Scale Of Russia Russia Russia Operations »

Posted in Elections | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Warmists Drag Frosty The Snowman Into Their Cultish Beliefs

By William Teach December 16, 2018 – 4:31 pm

They have to ruin everything

Prevent Frosty’s climate change Christmas — Madeleine Para

I hope never to see “Frosty’s Climate-Change Christmas” on TV, as joked about in the “FoxTrot” comic strip last Sunday. But the cartoon made me think about communicating with children about climate change.

As a former first-grade teacher, I always felt children should be allowed to just be children, and I was pretty careful to not overload them with thoughts of a grim future. On the other hand, adults need to face problems and work together to solve them.

And there’s good news. Recently, two Republicans and three Democrats in the House of Representatives did just that. Led by Ted Deutch, D-Fla., Francis Rooney, R-Fla., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., they worked together to craft the strongest bipartisan carbon pricing legislation in a decade, called the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. Already two more sponsors have joined the original five, and I hope that Wisconsin’s congressional delegation will join them. This is sensible legislation that will benefit all Americans.

For Frosty and the children who love him, and for the millions of Americans who want to see reasonable solutions to the pressing problem of climate change, I hope we see swift action on this legislation. Find out how it works at energyinnovationact.org.

This bit of climanutbaggery was by Madeleine Para of Madison, which I would assume to be Madison, Wisconsin, as this is a Wisconsin paper, the State Journal. They fail to identify her, almost making her seem just like some any-old citizen, but, there is a Madeleine Para who is the Program Director of the uber-left Citizens’ Climate Lobby.

Yes, because Frosty would melt when the North Pole stays below freezing. (full size here)

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Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach December 16, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is the remains of extreme weather from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Last Tradition, with a post on the revenge of the swamp.

It’s Santa week!

Read: If All You See… »

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Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

By William Teach December 16, 2018 – 9:31 am

Patriotic Pinup Gil Elvgren

Happy Sunday! Another gorgeous day in America. The Sun is shining, the ducks are quacking and splashing and making lots of duck noise, and we’re just nine days from Christmas. This pinup is by Gil Elvgren, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. Climatism discovers all the climate refugees
  2. No Tricks Zone covers data showing that the global temp has dropped since 1850
  3. America’s Watchtower notes data scrubbing of Peter Strzok’s phone
  4. Blazing Cat Fur covers incoming Congress member Rashida Tlaib promising to wear traditional Palestinian garb
  5. Chicks On The Right covers the Blame Trump narrative for the death of the illegal alien child taking a big hit
  6. Creeping Sharia notes the media and most of Congress ignoring the victims of Sharia law
  7. DC Clothesline has the Border Patrol arresting lots of sex offenders in just one day
  8. Diogenes’ Middle Finger discusses NY’s newest AG thug
  9. Happy 42nd birthday to Jamie Jeffords at Eye Of Polyphemus!
  10. Geller Report notes the tolerant, loving Muslims in Germany
  11. Legal Insurrection covers yoga being banned over cultural appropriation
  12. LL 1885 notes NC Gov Roy Cooper vetoing the voter ID legislation
  13. Moonbattery covers moonbattery reducing the Boy Scouts to brink of bankruptcy
  14. MOTUS A.D. notes the left melting down over Melania’s blond locks
  15. And last, but not least, Powerline discusses the settled science of latte liberals

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page. While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your “Pinups for Vets” calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me

Don’t forget to check out all the other great material all the linked blogs have!

Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list.

Read: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup »

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Nations Agree To Report Their (Non) Progress To “Historic” Paris Climate Agreement

By William Teach December 16, 2018 – 8:24 am

No matter how much lipstick you put on a pig, it’s still a pig

Nations Agree On Rules To Put Paris Climate Agreement Into Action

Nearly 200 countries have agreed on a set of rules to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, a crucial step in implementing the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement.

The rules describe in detail how countries will track their emissions and communicate with each other about their progress in the coming years and decades. But it stops short of committing them to the more ambitious emissions reductions necessary to slow climate change.

The meeting in the heart of Poland’s coal country unfolded in the shadow of a stark scientific reality about the threat posed by rising temperatures and in the midst of global political upheaval. In the months leading up to the meeting, a series of reports from the world’s scientists showed that global emissions are not just continuing to rise, but that nations are not on track to limit the rise of global temperatures enough to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. (snip)

One of the most fundamental parts of the so-called rule book negotiated at the talks is a section on transparency, which governs what information governments must disclose to each other about their greenhouse gas emissions. Not all countries agreed going into the talks about how much information they should be required to share about their progress — and as a result, the inner workings of their economies.

The final rules set a timeline for countries to update each other, and includes highly technical guidelines for what types of information they must provide, such as sources of emissions and explanations of their internal analyses.

Let’s put that in clear language: it does virtually nothing to implement the Paris climate agreement, it simply obligates nations to say “here’s what we haven’t done in reducing our carbon emissions.” It doesn’t actually obligate nations to honor their commitments to (destroy their economies) follow through on those reduction. Nor will they. They haven’t done so so far. There were less than a handful of countries that hit their Kyoto Protocol targets. Most were not even close.

But the talks also left many issues unresolved, including whether countries will commit to transitioning even more quickly to clean energy sources, and how much richer countries will help poorer countries pay for that transition.

Which upset the moocher countries, who want that sweet, sweet redistributed climate cash, which allows them to line the pockets of the elites, build more airports, get more fossil fueled vehicles, and not be beholden to the countries giving them the money.

The Malaysian delegation called for more money to flow from countries like the U.S. — the world’s largest economy and the second largest polluter — to help pay for damage caused by climate change, saying, “We owe this to the poor and vulnerable who are paying sometimes with their lives in our part of the world.”

See? When 1st World nations would give nations assistance, they expected something in return. Now turned it into something where nations feel they are owed this cash, with no beholding.

(Reuters) Nearly 200 countries overcame political divisions late on Saturday to agree on rules for implementing a landmark global climate deal, but critics say it is not ambitious enough to prevent the dangerous effects of global warming.

Just imagine how much carbon pollution could have been avoided if 15,000+ people hadn’t taken long fossil fueled trips to a meeting which complains about fossil fuels.

Read: Nations Agree To Report Their (Non) Progress To “Historic” Paris Climate Agreement »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 2 Comments | Trackback URL
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