Donald Trump

[Jon Letendre]

17 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

You are cutting a pie with a pretzel stick.

--Brant

Here is a picture of the current German Chancellor hanging out as a child with the current Priime Minister of Great Britain and the current President of Lithuania.

Mileage varies, but for me, coincidence has stopped cutting a lot of things.

[Brant Gaede]

Gee--they're, uh, ugly.

--Brant

[william.scherk]

Pareidolia? Facial identification technology?

3 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

Mileage varies

Spoiler

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Gee--they're, uh, ugly.

Brant,

Rejects from casting for The Addams Family?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I want to make a comment about the Cambridge Analytica scandal brewing. I don't have time to go deeply into it right now, though. So here's just an opinion.

It's a hoot watching Facebook commit suicide by SJW. This is like suicide by cop except it's more toxic. (See  here for a mainstream news overview of what I am talking about. But this is just one story among many right now. This thing is exploding in the fake news press.)

Cambridge Analytica is a data firm that used Amazon's Mechanical Turk to pay a couple of hundred thousand people or so to fill out a personality profile. Then they managed to suck in the Facebook friend data from those who took the test. I don't know how much Mechanical Turk paid, but knowing that platform, it couldn't have been more than a few dollars, if that. Lots of gigs over there go for fifty cents or less.

Anyway, the anti-Trumper narrative is that Cambridge Analytica "harvested" gazillions of profiles in a big data grab and, as such, was involved in a plot involving Steve Bannon to, basically, brainwash independent voters and Hillary supporters into voting for Trump through micro-targeted messaging. To them, Cambridge Analytica was Steve Bannon's mind control weapon.

Hmmmm... But where have I heard that term "micro-targeting" before?

Oh yeah...

COBS (Consortium of Behavioral Scientists).

 

These are the dudes who helped elect Obama--twice--by using social media big data for micro-targeting. They bragged about it at the time in the NYT and elsewhere. These dudes are mostly university professors who get big government grant bucks for studying how to alter human behavior. (See the folks who hang around Daniel Kahneman for a good sampling, although Kahneman himself seems to stay out of actively working in politics. One of them, Cass Sunstein, even became big in the Obama administration and his wife, Samantha Powers, helped Hillary Clinton use the US military and intelligence services to turn Libya into a shithole, but that's another issue.)

Micro-targeting actually works up to a point. The people who man the telephones making cold calls in an election are able talk to one psychographic/demographic (etc.) profile differently than they talk to another. Folks listen better to those who talk like them. But that's about as far as it goes.

The anti-Trumpers think they have a big gotcha because one of the people associated with Cambridge Analytica, Aleksandr Kogan, is also an associate professor at St Petersburg University and knows some people in the Russian government. Therefore, in the pathetic corrupted elitist anti-Trumper minds, they think this proves Russia colluded with the Trump people to steal the election from Hillary.

Now here's the rub. If social media is supposed to influence people to the point of brainwashing them in a political election, don't you think it would be a good idea for those who are influenced to actually use social media?

I mean, how do you do mind control on someone who doesn't look at your stuff?

 

The profile of a typical Trump supporter is not one who stays glued to social media. These are heartland people squarely within the culture of the traditional family. 

However, the profile of a typical Obama supporter (and Hillary supporter) is one who DOES stay glued to social media. These folks belong to a younger demographic in general and they tend to be more tech-savvy than Trump supporters. 

President Trump's main outreach strategy during the election was through live speeches with large crowds and keeping the broadcast media constantly outraged by pushing their control-freak buttons, thus hogging all the air time. His campaign simply did not put that much money and effort into big data and social media. Oh, his folks did some cold calling, but I saw it up close. It was not gung-ho like it was during the Obama elections.

Clinton, on the other hand, squandered about a billion dollars or so, and a good deal of it was on professional consultant schemes based on big data.

So now Facebook is going under fire for electing President Trump--and through "Muh Russians" at that. And that, to me, is a hoot. In reality, Facebook was actively campaigning for Clinton all along.  

What the Facebook administration folks don't get is that they are now being punished by their own SJW crowd for being unable to brainwash Trump supporters.

And, yes, bad times are coming for Facebook: death by a thousand lawsuit cuts, antitrust stuff coming from the US government and other governments around the world, and users leaving the platform in such numbers that this threatens to become a stampede. Similar things are happening at other big tech companies as well.

Social media giants and politics don't mix when the wrong person (for them) wins. They are learning this the hard way. 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

13 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I want to make a comment about the Cambridge Analytica scandal brewing.

I have to make one more comment about this.

I don't know if anyone remembers Edward Snowden?

Big Data has been around for some time and the US government was not the first to start using it. How do people think the tech giants became tech giants?

Well, duh...

But when you read the headlines about Cambridge Analytica these days, it seems like someone announcing the automobile as the new horseless carriage. Look folks, you don't need a horse to go somewhere quickly!

That might have been a great ad around 1901 or so, but in 2018, it's a tiny bit outdated.

After the Arab Spring, COBS, Snowden and so on, they are now saying someone can use Facebook data in order to profile ads and cold calls.

Well, duh...

I have almost no respect for the US news media. I so don't want to be like them, ever. Not ever. What a bunch of clowns, that is when they are not acting like sold-out toadies to deep political power.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Trump is not an Objectivist much less a libertarian. Not if he wants to use the state to wage a war on drugs.

Because he is President he is giving leftists everywhere a gigantic pain in the rear. What is most characteristic of the left is the arrogance of its moral hubris. Morally right they can't do wrong. This is why communists have gotten away with murdering tens upon tens of millions with essentially no regrets. The biggest regret they ever had--historically--was when Hitler and Stalin decided to be buddies--for a while. They were saved when Germany attacked Russia leaving the overt fascists/Nazis as the sole totalitarian bad boys celebrated that way since by Hollywood and the intelligentsia. They hated Ayn Rand for she was effectively against their game at the root--but she had no power. Trump too is against their game, but doesn't know its essentially a moral issue--but he has power. Hence, we are living in interesting times.

Ironically such as the ARI haven't a clue as to what is really going on. Official Objectivism has gone off the rails not understanding who and what the enemy is. The enemy is fascism. Not the overt kind as in Italy ended in and by WWII, but the fascism that underlies all that is not freedom: the use of force in and by politics and the advocacy of such.

The West--implicitly at least--is at war not against the Muslim religion--that's a war that can't be won--but against any fascist manifestations from same. The left is against this war because it is for fascism--as long as they aren't Nazis. (Never mind the past connection between Nazism and the Arab world.) That is the left is against freedom, except its own freedom to control and rule in the name of its righteousness, now without any of the intellectual pretensions they saturated the culture with in the 1930s through most of the 1960s.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

Trump is not an Objectivist much less a libertarian. Not if he wants to use the state to wage a war on drugs.

Brant,

This reminds me of the one drop rule old Southern people used to use for determining race. Or maybe the people who played chess with intensity as the Titanic sank.

It's called priorities in reality as opposed to arbitrary priorities in mind only.

Anyway, that's a long discussion. The main issue is that, when we get to politics, there will NEVER be an ideologically "pure" Objectivist or libertarian who can pass the one drop rule. One could say that is because these ideologies are incompatible with government power except in name only.

But there's a deeper reason, and you nailed it in your very post:

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

Ironically such as the ARI haven't a clue as to what is really going on. Official Objectivism has gone off the rails not understanding who and what the enemy is.

But... but... but... These folks do pass the one drop rule. With flying colors.

You can disagree with them, but you cannot say they are not Objectivists.

So why wasn't Objectivism able to turn them into properly thinking human beings on so many issues?

Think about it.

Here's a clue. Where the hell did reality go for these folks? It got absorbed in their fantasies, that's where.

You also nailed the political essence.

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

That is the left is against freedom, except its own freedom to control and rule in the name of its righteousness...

In politics, that is the fundamental issue--freedom of the individual versus subjugation of the individual to power-mongers. And, when you look at the literature, it's there as a fundament in Objectivism and libertarianism. 

Not some policy or other about mind-altering drugs. In today's context, entire neighborhoods are being ravaged by drug-related gang warfare and power-mongers run rampant all over that scenario. They have guns and they use them a lot, too. In tomorrow's context, this kind of damage will be much less, so the laws will relax.

Today, what's worse, the biggest suppliers are not even Mexican. They are massive crony pharmaceutical corporations, protected and subsidized by the US government. So the moral rot is much deeper than just saying the government is perpetuating the drug crisis by immorally attacking drug users.

I, for one, hope that President Trump's drug policies take out the government influence of the crony pharmaceutical corporations. That's a swamp that really needs draining. If he manages to do that, it will pave the way for a real legal solution about drugs, a rational one that can exist in reality. As opposed to what people normally say when they bitch about it, that is an ideology-based syllogistic on-off switch that magically makes large swaths of people behave differently on the spot. Except for one problem. That doesn't work and never has. Ideology only works that short-term way when it is a smokescreen for brutal power-mongers. 

As to President Trump's ideological purity test, in my mind he stands as a moral giant above the ARI folks and others who suffer from the same corruption in their thinking.

They would prefer watch the US tank--in reality--so they can say they are right and superior to others--in their minds. Then when they can no longer exist in reality as society collapses to thugs and manmade disasters, I suppose they can die happy in their narcotic moral purity stupor and feel good about their so-called superiority because everybody else will die, too. Dead people don't need to prove anything in reality anymore, so if everybody dies, they know they will die superior to others. That way they can remain superior to others for eternity and not have to do anything further to keep their status. It's easy...  

But...

Reality is the bitch to deal with. Reality for living people...

Fortunately, in the marketplace of ideas, we can choose reality-oriented political leaders who fix things like President Trump. The ideological Superior Ones don't like it because they have to keep trying to prove they are superior, but this way, people like me get to live and use my own mind to the best of my ability instead of dying in their one-drop rule fantasies.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

btw - I was reminded of the One Drop rule in the following brilliant essay by Victor Davis Hanson in National Review.

The Confederate Mind

Hanson claims the current progressives are the new Confederates, including their division of mankind into the inferior class and the superior class. 

This is the philosophical division I keep detecting in all ideologies and religions, but nobody ever targets it as evil.

However, it is evil.

Just being an Objectivist does not make you good. You also have to NOT believe in human livestock with you as a different superior species. Then you are good.

At least at the foundation. Where you take it is another matter.

Any superiority you gain has to be in a specific area, be earned, and not be accepted by others as an innate quality because you are total awesomeness incarnate and the lower folks are not

Michael

[Jon Letendre]

He’s not seeking an expanded war on drugs... more later.

[anthony]

4 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Trump is not an Objectivist much less a libertarian. Not if he wants to use the state to wage a war on drugs.

Because he is President he is giving leftists everywhere a gigantic pain in the rear. What is most characteristic of the left is the arrogance of its moral hubris. Morally right they can't do wrong. This is why communists have gotten away with murdering tens upon tens of millions with essentially no regrets. The biggest regret they ever had--historically--was when Hitler and Stalin decided to be buddies--for a while. They were saved when Germany attacked Russia leaving the overt fascists/Nazis as the sole totalitarian bad boys celebrated that way since by Hollywood and the intelligentsia. They hated Ayn Rand for she was effectively against their game at the root--but she had no power. Trump too is against their game, but doesn't know its essentially a moral issue--but he has power. Hence, we are living in interesting times.

Ironically such as the ARI haven't a clue as to what is really going on. Official Objectivism has gone off the rails not understanding who and what the enemy is. The enemy is fascism. Not the overt kind as in Italy ended in and by WWII, but the fascism that underlies all that is not freedom: the use of force in and by politics and the advocacy of such.

 

--Brant

1

The Left has spread itself across from hard left to center stage, taking over the center from moderate conservatives in most places.  (And pushing conservatives to the right, relatively). The window has shifted so gradually and insidiously, you wonder if many people recognise that fact. It is a worry for the future of "official" Objectivism, that ARI - maybe in an effort to stay 'relevant'and 'modern' - has also slid a little to the Left ("left" - "Right", neither political place where Objectivists, by principle, should position themselves permanently anyway) and so virulently and early on taken such an unsupportably anti-Trump position .

"Why Ayn Rand Would Have Despised A President Trump". Onkar Ghate.

"But as an expert on Ayn Rand's philosophy, my wager is..."

Don't bet on it, mate, could be you'd be astonished. 

[Jon Letendre]

PodestaMolesta with pal Stephen Colbert.

Biden and Barry Soetoro share pizza, and look, Stephen and Jon Stewart do, too...

[Jon Letendre]

The FTC has opened an investigation into Facebook.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/03/20/what-facebook-could-learn-from-wells-fargos-woes/

The last sentence is the best one:

”Facebook, like many of the big tech companies, already operates under a consent decree with the FTC regarding user data. If it is found to have violated that decree, it will officially become a serial wrong-doer. That could come with big fines and other sanctions.”

...followed by a suit from Sessions that will ultimately destroy it.

[Jon Letendre]

On 3/18/2018 at 9:30 AM, Jon Letendre said:

Here is a picture of the current German Chancellor hanging out as a child with the current Priime Minister of Great Britain and the current President of Lithuania.

Mileage varies, but for me, coincidence has stopped cutting a lot of things.

The Snopes on this is hilarious. “It can’t be Theresa May because it doesn’t look like Theresa May.” ?

And they don’’t say who the girls are, if not May and Grybauskaitė. You see, Merkel kept a photo of a New Year’s party with friends  when she was 18, kept it for over forty years, but no one can tell who they are. Did Snopes ask Merkel who they are? Nah. Why bother? It doesn’t look like May, so it’s not. Nothing to see here, move along.

[Jon Letendre]

At first it looks like lower lip trapped under upper teeth, but upon closer examination it’s just that she started ugly and is staying ugly. Her smirk prefers her left, just left of center.

[Jon Letendre]

Statement from David Seaman

 

MARCH 20, 2018

Justice always comes for the arrogant.

Susan Wojcicki, YouTube's CEO, effectively destroyed my career. Looks like FULCRUMwill be shutting down next month due to financial issues resulting from her deleting our 505 videos, and deleting our 162,000 subscriber base. Susan, enjoy everything ahead!

It's been a pleasure since FULCRUM launched in January 2017, and I want to thank everyone involved, from the contributors and researchers to the readers and smart audience. Also want to thank those who flew out from around the world for the FULCRUM two-day deep meet up in Denver, Colorado. That was special.

I'll be retaining my producer Missy for more sporadic video projects, as well as maintaining the weekly newsletter and paid podcast for existing subscribers.

Other FULCRUM operations will be mothballed, as we can't afford to continue. Google and Facebook banning discussions of crypto and banning advertisements for legitimate cryptocurrency companies has hurt my personal savings. These are dummies in a cult, and the push back from millions of us is going to be extraordinary. 60,000,000 of us own Bitcoin, and not one of us is giving up on the idea. Fuck the Rothschilds. Fuck the Federal Reserve.

And fuck Susan Wojcicki most of all:

"Additionally, their foundation: The Troper and Wojcicki Foundation is publicly inaccessible, it has NO website, address, or even a Board of Directors to view." Investigative article 1 of 7 on YouTube's CEO Susan Wojcicki and her weird DNA/blood data obsessed sister Anne Wojcicki. Susan, you and your husband at a minimum are going to prison. You fucked the wrong team. (Read the full article here.)

I interned at Gawker, remember. This scorned journalist still has a few tricks up his sleeve, as do my friends. You destroyed my startup, Susan Wojcicki. Our turn.

[Jon Letendre]

13 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Trump is not an Objectivist much less a libertarian. Not if he wants to use the state to wage a war on drugs.

Because he is President he is giving leftists everywhere a gigantic pain in the rear. What is most characteristic of the left is the arrogance of its moral hubris. Morally right they can't do wrong. This is why communists have gotten away with murdering tens upon tens of millions with essentially no regrets. The biggest regret they ever had--historically--was when Hitler and Stalin decided to be buddies--for a while. They were saved when Germany attacked Russia leaving the overt fascists/Nazis as the sole totalitarian bad boys celebrated that way since by Hollywood and the intelligentsia. They hated Ayn Rand for she was effectively against their game at the root--but she had no power. Trump too is against their game, but doesn't know its essentially a moral issue--but he has power. Hence, we are living in interesting times.

Ironically such as the ARI haven't a clue as to what is really going on. Official Objectivism has gone off the rails not understanding who and what the enemy is. The enemy is fascism. Not the overt kind as in Italy ended in and by WWII, but the fascism that underlies all that is not freedom: the use of force in and by politics and the advocacy of such.

The West--implicitly at least--is at war not against the Muslim religion--that's a war that can't be won--but against any fascist manifestations from same. The left is against this war because it is for fascism--as long as they aren't Nazis. (Never mind the past connection between Nazism and the Arab world.) That is the left is against freedom, except its own freedom to control and rule in the name of its righteousness, now without any of the intellectual pretensions they saturated the culture with in the 1930s through most of the 1960s.

--Brant

He’s not seeking an expanded war on drugs. He is at war with the elites and CIA who run and profit from the opiate trade. (Currently) respected elites own things like MS 13. All the death penalty talk, he is talking to them.

President Trump’s executive order of December 21, 2017 declared a national emergency, naming human trafficking and seizing assets of people all around the world. The people who can arrange for transportation of a hundred child sex slaves around the globe can move opiates around, too, and they surely do. So these are intertwined businesses, same people.

By now, many arrests have been made.

Trump is just starting a national conversation about exactly who in the trade deserves what. Just introducing the idea before trials start. He expressed heartfelt sympathy for addicts, people who overdose and their families in many rallies throughout 2016, so he isn’t talking about users, nor the child soldiers pressed into the streets. He’s talking about people who wear suits and run it all.

[Brant Gaede]

Remains to be seen.

I can't figure out how you see so much.

--Brant

[Jon Letendre]

 

Donald J. Trump

 

@realDonaldTrump

 

 

AUSTIN BOMBING SUSPECT IS DEAD. Great job by law enforcement and all concerned!

4:28 AM · Mar 21, 2018

[Jon Letendre]

 

Donald J. Trump

 

@realDonaldTrump

 

 

I called President Putin of Russia to congratulate him on his election victory (in past, Obama called him also). The Fake News Media is crazed because they wanted me to excoriate him. They are wrong! Getting along with Russia (and others) is a good thing, not a bad thing.......

12:56 PM · Mar 21, 2018

[Jon Letendre]

 

Donald J. Trump

 

@realDonaldTrump

 

 

.....They can help solve problems with North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, ISIS, Iran and even the coming Arms Race. Bush tried to get along, but didn’t have the “smarts.” Obama and Clinton tried, but didn’t have the energy or chemistry (remember RESET). PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH!

1:05 PM · Mar 21, 2018

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

A couple of things to show the irrelevance of the media to Trump supporters.

First, from a girl I admire a lot, Candace Owens:

Top 3 concerns of Americans:
1) Immigration
2) Jobs
3) Schools

Top 3 headlines on @CNN in 2018:
1) Russia
2) Stormy Daniels
3) Diet Coke@realDonaldTrump should put them on payroll for the 2020 re-elect.

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) March 22, 2018

Right on, Candace.

Next from Rush Limbaugh earlier today.

How to Fight Back? Stick with Trump and Turn Off the Media

From the transcript (my bold). Rush is talking to a female caller who is a Trump supporter and an evangelical:

Quote

CALLER: — ... the mainstream and the deep state and everybody is out to get him, but practically what are things that we can do, the people who support Trump because we know he’s doing a good job —

RUSH: Just keep supporting him. I’m telling you, you may think that’s not enough, but I can’t tell you how huge it is. You keep supporting him and you tell everybody every chance you get that you’re supporting him. And when the name Stormy Daniels comes up, you go (raspberry), “I don’t care.” And they say, “But you’re an evangelical.” “Well, that’s her problem the way she lives, not mine. I’m not gonna let you or anybody else tell me that I supported the wrong guy. You throw Stormy Daniels at me, you can throw anything you want and it doesn’t matter, I support Trump.”

And every one of you that voted for him, I’m telling you, you have to remain in his camp, you have to be as energetic and vocal for him today as you were during the campaign because that’s pretty much all we’ve got. They’re never gonna stop using the Stormy Danielses--and the Stormy Danielses, they’re never gonna stop popping up. And Robert Mueller is not gonna go away. And the Drive-By Media isn’t gonna go away.

And I’ll tell you something. You may not know this, Laurie. But your loyalty to Trump, your unwavering support, I can’t tell you how that irritates and angers the media. You keep it up and you’ll never see evidence of it, but you’re driving them crazy that they cannot change your mind.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’m gonna remind you of something else, all of you Trump supporters, and everybody else, what can you do? Stop watching and consuming mainstream media news. Try it for a week and see if you don’t have an altogether different outlook on your life.

That about sums it up. Not just for evangelicals, either. That last paragraph is especially important. I've tried it and, surprise surprise, I got some work done. I was, also, my old happy self instead of constantly pushing away a nagging anxiety.

The fact is, persuasion-wise, the mainstream press is totally irrelevant to Trump supporters except as a minor irritation like athlete's foot.

How are the mainstream media going to convince a major portion of the country of anything when those folks don't even listen to this media anymore? You can only persuade when your message is looked at or heard.

The fake news media only have themselves to blame. Their schtick of acting like whores, but claiming virginal integrity doesn't play well anymore. Yet they keep doing it.

Ho hum...

Their lack of relevance couldn't happen to nicer people.

 

Michael

[Jon Letendre]

I haven’t watched any news television in over two years. 

[Jon Letendre]

Joe has fought through children resisting his fondling, but that’s about it.

 

Donald J. Trump

 

@realDonaldTrump

 

 

Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy. Actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically, and yet he threatens me, for the second time, with physical assault. He doesn’t know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way. Don’t threaten people Joe!

4:19 AM · Mar 22, 2018

[Jon Letendre]

He’s a lover, not a fighter.