Moon of Alabama — Cambridge Analytica And The Manipulation Of People

MoA-ites correctly distrust every word emanating from the mealy mouthed Guardian because it has been used in a vicious campaign to advance the interests of Zionists to the point where the well being of Guardian readers has been relegated below the interests of apartheid Israel.

Nevertheless having a bit of a shufti at the loudly trumpeted Facebook-Cambridge Analytica expose is an essential act for anyone who wants to try to get a grip on how populations are being deliberately manipulated.

There is a relatively easy to digest video here where Christopher Wyllie, a computer scientist, outlines the birth of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, the CEO and the method used to sell the development of the corporation to Steve Bannon, CA's first customer and Robert Mercer, the Wall Street financier who underwrote the cost of setting up the corporation.

I recommend spending the 13 minutes required to watch the video because Wyllie's summation of what they did and why is horrifying. Lines such as "If you want to change the way a person votes you have to change the culture the person lives within." and "to change a culture, first you have to smash the existing one then grab the pieces and mold it into the shape you want the culture to be"....

Moon of Alabama
Cambridge Analytica And The Manipulation Of People

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See also

Reuters
Cambridge Analytica CEO claims influence on U.S. election, Facebook questioned
Eric Auchard and David Ingram

Walden Bello — Keynesianism and the Great Recession

Not MMT, but interesting.

Triple Crisis
Keynesianism and the Great Recession

An Interview with Walden Bello, professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines Diliman and executive director of Focus on the Global South

Moon of Alabama The Deep State Versus Donald Trump - New Smears And The Ukrainian Connection

The foreign influence on the presidential race through the Ukrainian (fascist) connection to the Clinton campaign is thereby much more grounded in reality than the alleged but completely unproven Russian connections to the Trump campaign.

Moon of Alabama
The Deep State Versus Donald Trump - New Smears And The Ukrainian Connection

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Fox News Poll — Majority says Russian hacking made no difference in 2016 election

A majority of American voters think there was no real effect on the presidential race from Russian cyber-attacks, according to a new Fox News Poll.

CIA officials reportedly believe Russian hackers meddled in the election to help Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. Yet 59 percent of voters believe the hacking didn’t make a difference.

The poll finds 32 percent think Russia did help Trump in the election, while just one percent says the cyber-attacks aided Clinton.

Looks like American recognize the smell of BS? However, the poll also indicated high confidence in the CIA.

Fox News
Fox News Poll: Majority says Russian hacking made no difference in 2016 election

Dana Blanton

Robert Parry — Clinton’s ‘Russia Did It’ Cop-out

The Clinton machine – running on fumes after Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential bid – is pulling out all remaining stops to block Donald Trump’s inauguration, even sinking into a new McCarthyism.

In joining a recount effort with slim hopes of reversing the election results, Clinton campaign counsel Marc Elias cited a scurrilous Washington Post article that relied on a shadowy anonymous group, called PropOrNot, that issued a “black list” against 200 or so Internet sites, including some of the most respected sources of independent journalism, claiming they are part of some Russian propaganda network.

In classic McCarthyistic fashion, no evidence was supplied, simply an anonymous smear....

But the Democrats risk a bleak political future if they don’t break away from the corporatist model that Bill and Hillary Clinton have personified over the past quarter century. Or maybe the Democrats can just keep on blaming the Russians.

Consortium News
Clinton’s ‘Russia Did It’ Cop-out

Robert Parry

Joe Lauria — A Bare-Knuckle Fight Over Recounts

Democrats are trying to stop Donald Trump’s inauguration by claiming Russian interference in the election, but the White House sees no evidence and Trump is now challenging the recounts, reports Joe Lauria.…

Since recounts that overturn the vote totals seem unlikely, it appears the Clinton campaign’s Plan B is to use any evidence of tampering that it can pin on Russia to lobby electors to change their votes to Clinton when the Electoral College meets in state capitals on Dec. 19.

Mook is the guy leading the charge.

At an event at Harvard University on Thursday, Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, repeatedly blamed Russia for hacking and tampering with the election. “Congress has got to investigate what happened with Russia here,” said Mook. “It is outrageous that a foreign aggressor got involved in our election.”

Robert Reich pitches in.

Robert Reich, labor secretary under President Bill Clinton and a Hillary supporter, argued that one reason the electors should flip to Clinton is to “stop foreign interference in an election.”
Quoting on article, he wrote on Facebook: “The Framers were extremely concerned about infiltration by rivals including Great Britain. In Federalist No. 68, Hamilton wrote that one major purpose of the Electoral College was to stop the ‘desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.’ He said that the college would, ‘Guard against all danger of this sort … with the most provident and judicious attention’ from the electors.”

Reich continued: “There’s incontrovertible evidence Russia interfered in the campaign by hacking the email accounts of top Democratic officials and cooperating with WikiLeaks’ parallel campaign to undermine Hillary Clinton campaign.”...

The Democrats are mounting a last ditch effort to overturn the election in the electoral college.

The lobbying effort to blame Russia and get the electors to flip their votes is being accompanied by an intense media campaign.

In the announcement that the Clinton campaign would join the recount, campaign counsel Elias aligned the campaign with an unverified Washington Post article based largely on a shadowy, anonymous group that blamed a list of 200 alternative media sites and political groups for spreading Russian propaganda to influence the election, without providing any evidence.

“The Washington Post reported that the Russian government was behind much of the ‘fake news’ propaganda that circulated online in the closing weeks of the election,” Elias wrote.
A Huffington Post article said one of the eight reasons the electors should overturn the election is because “Russian covert action influenced the election.”

The staunchly pro-Clinton Daily Kos wrote that “Even if they never touched a voting machine, there’s absolutely no doubt: Russia hacked the election.”

 President Obama is taking the other side.

The administration said it remained “confident in the overall integrity of electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was borne out,” adding: “As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a cyber-security perspective.”

All the brouhaha over fake news is now making complete sense. It is a desperate move on the part of the Establishment to wrest back power.

If it succeeds there, will be civil war. If it doesn't succeed, Trump will "get even." The stakes are no less than world domination.

Consortium News
A Bare-Knuckle Fight Over Recounts

Joe Lauria

Ali Watkins — Intel Officials Believe Russia Spreads Fake News

Fake news about fake news at BuzzFeed. No evidence, unnamed "intelligence officials." Read the whole thing. US intel admits it is clueless.

No response from the Washington Post yet either.

This is looking more and more like a US government disinformation operation all the time. If so, this is way beyond so-called McCarthyism.

It also seems to be an attack on the legitimacy of the election of Donald Trump and appears to be an attempt to marginalize a Trump administration even before President-elect Trump takes office.

BuzzFeed
Intel Officials Believe Russia Spreads Fake News
Ali Watkins, BuzzFeed News Reporter

ht Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism

Paul Krugman loses it on Twitter

 

Paul KrugmanVerified account‏@paulkrugman

So Comey and Putin installed a crazy, vindictive can't-handle-the-truth person in the White House. Scary.

George Lakoff — A Minority President: Why the Polls Failed, And What the Majority Can Do

A cognitive science analysis of the election.

I will argue that the nature of mind is not a mere technical issue for the cognitive and brain sciences, but that it had everything to do with the outcome of the 2016 election — and the failure of the pollsters, the media, and Democrats to predict it. They were not alone. The public needs to understand better how the human mind works in general — but especially in politics. There is a lot to know. Let us go step by step….

Important.

Humans act much more in terms of presumptions of which we are not consciously aware, unlike assumptions of which we are conscious. Presumptions are hidden assumptions. Understanding now this operates is based on understanding the neurology from the point of view of cognitive science.

We can only understand what our brain circuitry allows us to understand. If facts don’t fit the worldviews in our brains, the facts may not even be noticed — or they may be puzzling, or ignored, or rejected outright, or if threatening, attacked....

Why do people vote against their interests? Because they vote their values. Republicans got this. Democrats didn't.

For each type of conservative, the main issue is one’s identity, which is defined by strict father values. One can have a religious version, a business version, or a working class resentment version, but in each case self-identity is the issue. That is why those who voted for Trump didn’t care if he constantly lied, or if he treated women outrageously, or if he was ignorant of foreign policy. What mattered was the voter’s moral identity, the voter’s sense of right and wrong, the voter’s self-respect as a conservative.

Trump and those in his campaign understood this. Those in the Democratic party, the media, and pollsters did not.

Moreover, values can be shaped. Conservatives have been working on this for decades. As result, many of the white working class voted against their economic interests, generally more supported by liberals, in favor of their more deeply seated conservative values.

This is a bit longish and somewhat repetitive for those who are already familiar with Lakoff. But it is a good summary and worth the read.

Incidentally, this accords in some ways with Scott Adams' view about persuasion versus reason in that both are based on psychology rather than reason. Lakoff and Adams view reason as the booby prize in politics.

George Lakoff
A Minority President: Why the Polls Failed, And What the Majority Can Do
George Lakoff | Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, and Director of the Center for the Neural Mind & Society

Pepe Escobar — It’s All a Russia/Al-Qaeda/WikiLeaks/«Rogue» FBI Plot

More on the farce.

Strategic Culture Foundation
It’s All a Russia/Al-Qaeda/WikiLeaks/«Rogue» FBI Plot

Pepe Escobar

Wikileaks — Assange Statement on the US Election

Wikileaks
Assange Statement on the US Election
8 November 2016
Julian Assange

Prediction Markets and Daily Polling Update

Prediction Markets

Election Betting Odds

Predict It

Predictwise

Iowa Electronic Markets

Polls updated daily

The USC Dornsife / LA Times Presidential Election "Daybreak" Poll

IBD/TIPP Poll

Prediction Markets and Daily Polling Update

Prediction Markets

Election Betting Odds

Predict It

Predictwise

Iowa Electronic Markets

Polls updated daily

The USC Dornsife / LA Times Presidential Election "Daybreak" Poll

IBD/TIPP Poll

Jonathan Cohn — A Bunch Of Influential Progressives Just Gave Hillary Clinton Their Stamp Of Approval

Informed progressive observers will recognize many of the letter’s signatories, starting with Stephanie Kelton, a University of Missouri-Kansas City economist who has been a top adviser to Sanders.

The Huffington Post
A Bunch Of Influential Progressives Just Gave Hillary Clinton Their Stamp Of Approval

Jonathan Cohn

Robert Mackey — Ecuador Cuts Internet Access for Julian Assange to Preserve Neutrality in U.S. Election

Correa is not neutral himself. "I want Hillary to win."

The Intercept
Ecuador Cuts Internet Access for Julian Assange to Preserve Neutrality in U.S. Election
Robert Mackey

Zero Hedge
Ecuador Admits Censoring Assange Over "U.S. Election"; Denies "Yielding To Pressure From Other States"

Sputnik — US Elections: Trump Leads Clinton Nationwide, According to Poll That Called 2012

The US Dornsife/LA Times survey approaches polling slightly differently than others. For one, the opinions of participants are weighted based on how certain they are. Someone who is only 60 percent sure of their vote will count for less than someone who is 100 percent sure.

The Daybreak poll also relies on the same group of people.…

Sputnik
US Elections: Trump Leads Clinton Nationwide, According to Poll That Called 2012

Sophia Tesfaye — Ron Paul Suggests Support for Jill Stein, Admits He Is 'Disappointed' by Gary Johnson

As you may have noticed, I'm staying away from politics here lately since everyone seems to have had enough it, but this is a shocker I couldn't resist.

“She’s probably the best on foreign policy at the moment,” Paul said of the Green Party nominee on Monday.

AlterNet
Ron Paul Suggests Support for Jill Stein, Admits He Is 'Disappointed' by Gary Johnson
Sophia Tesfaye, Salon

Xinhua — Absurd presidential debate underlines deep-rooted problems facing US

A view from China. "Absurd." The wonders of democracy.

Xinhua
Absurd presidential debate underlines deep-rooted problems facing US

Chu Lei and Qi Zijian

Harry Enten — Election Update: The Top ‘Must-Win’ States For Trump And Clinton

Too early to call anything, but HRC maintains her lead. Harry Enten gives the details.

FiveThirtyEight
Election Update: The Top ‘Must-Win’ States For Trump And Clinton
Harry Enten, senior political writer and analyst for FiveThirtyEight

Scott Adams — The Race for President is (Probably) Over — Updated

If you are following breaking news, Hillary Clinton abruptly left the 9-11 memorial today because she was reportedly “overheated.” Her campaign says she is fine now.

You probably wonder if the “overheated” explanation is true – and a non-issue as reported – or an indication of a larger medical condition. I’m blogging to tell you it doesn’t matter. The result is the same.

Here’s why.…

Scott Adams' Blog
The Race for President is (Probably) Over

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert

Update:

Checking My Predictions About Clinton’s Health