Google's Schmidt Drew Up Draft Plan For Clinton In 2014 (itwire.com) 418
New submitter troublemaker_23 writes: Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet, submitted a detailed draft to a key Clinton aide on April 15, 2014, outlining his ideas for a possible run for the presidency and stressing that "The key is the development of a single record for a voter that aggregates all that is known about them." The ideas, in an email released by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, were sent to Cheryl Mills, former deputy White House counsel to Bill Clinton. Mills forwarded it to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, campaign manager Robby Mook and Barack Obama's 2012 campaign manager David Plouffe. The email is one of a trove from Podesta's gmail account that was obtained by WikiLeaks. About two weeks prior to this, Podesta wrote to Mook that he had met Schmidt and that he (Schmidt) was keen to be the "top outside adviser." In the April 15, 2014 email, Schmidt emphasized that what he was putting forward was a draft, writing, "Here are some comments and observations based on what we saw in the 2012 campaign. If we get started soon, we will be in a very strong position to execute well for 2016." It was titled "Notes for a 2016 Democratic campaign." He divided his comments into categories such as size, structure and timing; location; the pieces of a campaign; the rules; and what he called the key things. With regard to size, structure and timing, Schmidt wrote: "Let's assume a total budget of about US$1.5 billion, with more than 5000 paid employees and million(s) of volunteers. The entire start-up ceases operation four days after 8 November 2016." As to location, he did not like the idea of using Washington DC as a base and was keen on low-paid workers. "The campaign headquarters will have about a thousand people, mostly young and hard-working and enthusiastic. It's important to have a very large hiring pool (such as Chicago or NYC) from which to choose enthusiastic, smart and low-paid permanent employees," he wrote. "DC is a poor choice as it's full of distractions and interruptions. Moving the location from DC elsewhere guarantees visitors have taken the time to travel and to help."
This is a good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
This plan of spying on voters and recording their life history is an excellent thing as long as it benefits a candidate with a (D) next to her name. It just shows that the Democrats are pro-science higher beings of pure energy that descended from a higher plane of existence for us to worship.
If Trump had done that he'd be worse than Hitler (again).
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Call me pessimistic, but the war against privacy (and the "prove your innocence" movement in general) is exactly why I've given up caring about the future of humanity. What we are seeing today is only the tip of the iceberg. It's going to be far worse than we think. The future of humanity will be defined by a top-down hierarchy of power and complete lack of respect for individuality -- not unlike the military. The fact that even the subject class is now effectively chanting "privacy is dead" says it all. Th
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's going to be no place for a person like me who believes in individual sovereignty.
Why do you think that is? Could it be because so many so-called "conservatives" have abdicated that sovereignty so willingly every time the governing class told a scary story? "OMG! Same sex marriage?! Let's have the government decide who can be married and who can't. OMG! Women can choose what to do with their own bodies? That's not right. We need the government to step in and take that right away. OMG! Teh terrorists! Please make us safe. We don't care if you piss all over The Bill of Rights, just make us feel like you're doing something that matters."
And no, you libertarians don't get off the hook, because you tools have aligned yourselves with the Conservatives far more often than not. The result is that your rights, as a citizen, have been supplanted by corporate power.
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Just FYI, the anti-abortion position is not about controlling the bodies of women. It is about stopping murder. And the pro-abortion position is not about freedom for the bodies of women, it is about murder too.
See, for example, the pro-abortion camp's reaction to a proposal in Italy not long ago to replace third trimester abortions with surgical delivery, incubation, and when successful, adoption. I'll give you a hint, the pro-abortion camp was absolutely fucking outraged that anyone would suggest that
Natural outcome of high population (Score:3)
I think this is ultimately the natural outcome of high populations.
High populations create the need for ever more organized structures and ever more rigid discipline to enforce adherence to these structures. Resistance to these structures is also an inevitable outcome which feeds back into the increasing need for more more rigidity, surveillance and control features to prevent disruption to the organizational structure.
Of course we've passed the point in many cases where the level of organization and organ
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Democrat Party
DRINK!
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Yes, Democrats are pro-science. Republicans are only pro-science when it's conveeenient. They're downright Lysenkoist when scientific findings inconvenience either their fat-cat backers or their useful idiots in the pulpits.
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yesterday, I heard on NPR (I believe it was a climate forum) one of the talking "experts" opined "well, basically, white people are the problem" followed by chuckles and murmurs of assent.
I'm curious in what context such a statement (changing any other ethnicity, or special interest group) could be uttered without the speaker immediately (& rightly) being castigated and socially outcast?
"well, basically, black people are the problem".
"well, basically, gays are the problem".
"well, basically, jews are the problem".
EDIT: aha found it.
http://www.mprnews.org/story/2... [mprnews.org]
"Climate One program at the Commonwealth Club of California, recorded Oct. 21, 2016. Greg Dalton, moderator." 7:58+
"Truthfully...white people are the problem"
And damn you all for making me listen to that crap AGAIN to find it.
Horse shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop trying to justify propaganda and propagandists. Schmidt has used the platform to attempt to sway the election. The same thing Twitter and Facebook have done, as well as main stream media. People are sick of it, and we can see the game being played all over.
Google performing "Science" would require UNBIASED positioning, not purely biased in favor of Democrats. You can not by definition perform science with a one sided bias.
Google search for months has provided biased results in search results and pre-fetching strings. Typing in "How do I vote" showed "For Hillary" as the top search entry for months, and Donald Trump did not show in the search results even if you typed in "for Donald" or "for Trump".
I get it, you Progressive Leftists hate losing. You don't care that Donna Brazil is empty of morality and has no problem cheating as long as the candidate the party oligarchs wants is elected. The only reason she was fired from CNN was that she got caught, not that she was devoid of ethics. No problem with scum like Bob Creamer sending provocateurs to Sanders and Trump rallies because it makes their candidate look better and opponents look bad. That scumbag had 340+ visits to the White House and 50 visits with the President, and you refuse to question how much the President actually knows about the corruption. You have no problem with the Attorney General meeting a potential witness and husband of the subject of 18 separate USCs days before her Directory of the FBI decided not to allow prosecution of any charges, and have not demanded that the AG step down for malfeasance.
You don't have a problem with it, but a huge number of the Public does. We do not support corrupt oligarchs and have no illusions that we somehow benefit from them. Trump burning down a huge portion of a corrupt Government is a solid option at this point. The alternative is to have a civil war, which we should all agree would be very bad for all of us.
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
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You've proven his point quite well. Thank you.
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I'm white but definitely not upper middle class. In fact, isn't owning your own house a basic trapping of being middle class? I regard myself as working class, if it matters.
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There is a good reason to be fearful.
There is a good reason to be fearful, but not a good reason to be manipulated by those pedaling fear. The politicians pushing Brexit were exposed in the days after the vote because of their lack of a plan on how to accomplish the Brexit. Pedaling fear is a good way to win elections, but it is a very poor way to govern.
UK voters had no idea what they were voting for with Brexit, which literally means every single voter who voted for it was hopelessly either uninformed, misinformed, or acting in their own sel
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Rational choice? Did the people who had been routinely screwed over by the Westminster Parliament for decades make a rational choice to give more power to Westminster and remove one of its most significant checks? Did people close to the poverty line make a rational choice to vote for an increase in food prices (or was it the nice £200m overnight bonus for Rupert Murdoch's brother in law's investments that they were making their rational choice for)?
The entire reason that we have a representative democracy is that issues are complex and very few people have the time to be sufficiently well informed to make good choices. We elect people who are supposed to work full time to understand the issues and make the rational choices for us that we would have made if we had time to investigate the issues.
No one in the Brexit referendum made a rational choice because we weren't given two rational options to pick. Remain wasn't too bad: it was a vote for the status quo, which has both good and bad aspects. Leave was a vote for some totally unspecified other thing - is it better, is it worse? No one knew because no one actually stated what the other thing was and even three months later it looks as if we still don't know.
The only sad thing is all of the people who thought they were voting against the establishment when they voted leave.
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There is one thing that is in common for you types: your insistence that the "other" side was misinformed or manipulated and too ignorant to understand. You just can't comprehend that others made a rational decision based on their worldview.
Explain to me what Brexit voters were voting for. Were they voting for a "Hard Brexit" or a "Soft Brexit"? Were they voting for access to the single market similar to Norway, or for more autonomy like the US? Did they want complete control over immigration, or accept EU control of immigration in order to keep the single market?
You are lying if you claim anyone knew what they were voting for. This is not an opinion, it is a fact. Because the UK still doesn't know what type of Brexit it wants. If the Brexit s
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Ah, yes the old "they had no idea what that meant". "They are ignorant". But of course YOUR SIDE was well informed and enlightened. Disgusting.
You keep saying this like one side could never be more informed than the other. I laid out an actual argument for why one side is more informed, but instead of either refuting it or acknowledging its accuracy, you fall back on claiming I have bias without supporting arguments. And then you throw in inflamatory language such as "disgusting" thinking this can substitute for an actual argument.
There is a difference between voters who vote for a platform with actual concrete plans, and voters who vote based on
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There is a good reason to be fearful. That is why you guys don't understand: fear is a damn good reason, especially when you are near the bottom of the economic latter.
ladder?
But no it's not. It's *a* reason, and a reason people act, but acting on uthinking fear is a terrible idea. If you fear something legetimate, that's a decent point, but simply going on fear is a terrible way to make decisions.
And look what it'll yield for those people near the bottom: it's taking the EU, which gives a rather large amou
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These people DO fear something legitimate (legetimate?), in their eyes.
That's borderline tautology. While it happens it's rare for people to acknowledge that their own fear of something is misplaced.
but people like you are CONVINCED that they made the wrong decision
Yes.
, because you don't agree with their reasons
Well some of the reasons are not matters of opinion, they were "facts" which turned out to be out-right lies. Like for example the 350 million which would go to the NHS.
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It's interesting that you feel able to pigeon-hole most people on this web site and explain what their views and motives are. Are you capable of seeing your error? Most people on this website are not from the UK, and could not give two shits about brexit.
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Re:Like fear of the brown people... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's interesting that you feel able to pigeon-hole most people on this web site
To be fair, AmiMoJo pigeon-holed himself by spamming comments on SJW stories. We arent talking about 2 or 3 posts per SJW story here, we are talking 20 or 30.
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I know full well that if/when I lose my current job, I will find it very, very hard to find a similar opportunity. Age, education, and shrinking work forces will put me at great risk of taking a 60% pay cut, permanently. This is the reality for knowledge workers over the age of 40 in the US.
Fear? I'm betting you don't really know it either. My mom grew up in immediate post-Depression America, lurched into WWII, and was married in the height of the post-WWII prosperity that made everything so easy. Until she
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That offends people, but I don't understand why.
Because being offended is self-empowering and acting offended sends a social signal that affirms your class/tribal identity.
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you are fearful of unchecked immigration as it affects you and your family directly.
Which is why they voted for declared racists... you know... cause racism is fine compared to a theoretic possibility of economic discomfort - regardless of the facts.
Oh... wait... no it isn't. That's using fear and selfishness as an EXCUSE for racism.
Most people will actually go "What the fuck? You want me to go join the racists because THEY say I'll be doomed if I don't? Fuck those cunts! I'd rather go poor and hungry than join them."
The only reason Brexitters "won" (then promptly regretted it and wanted a
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If you are a lower/middle class person in the UK, you are fearful of unchecked immigration as it affects you and your family directly
And yet, in polling, the people who are most opposed to immigration are the ones who live in areas with the least immigration.
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And yet, in polling, the people who are most opposed to immigration are the ones who live in areas with the least immigration.
Yeah, you want to know what's funny about that? They didn't look at the demographic shift in those areas or they ignored it because it tells an interesting story. Those were people who were pushed out of the areas that they lived in, and now live in those other areas that "don't have areas with high immigration." You can even see the trend using the ONS's own data. [ons.gov.uk] But the media, and I know the exact article you're talking about is all over it but only telling half the story. They also don't count the
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I wonder if he didn't want to go the post-factual route for some kind of moral reason, or if he just didn't foresee the rise of anti-intellectualism and post-truth politics. It's similar to the mistake that the Remain campaign made during the Brexit referendum - they assumed that reason and addressing people's concerns, which they worked very hard to understand, would work. They had all the profiling and polling data, the focus groups. They heard people saying that they wanted hard data, factual information and the truth. They just didn't realize that what people really wanted was to have their existing views validated and to be told it's not them, it's the world that's wrong.
You bring up the Brexit in almost every post. You present it as "the ignorant racist masses voted with their irrationally", while in truth the rulers got their asses handed to them. You want to spin the brexit as some sort of bad thing, but time will tell - thus far all of the doom and gloom has failed to materialise.
In this case there is apparently a very real possibility that the ruling class will get a bloodied nose. You appear to think that all of the ruled classes should be concerned about the well-bei
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When you say that the doom and gloom has not materialised yet - do you understand that brexit has not yet happened?
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while in truth the rulers got their asses handed to them.
Christ Alive you've really had the Johnson shoved down your throat as it were and swallowed every last bit of it.
I really don't know how you could class Johnson, Gove, Davis, Fox, May and so on as "not the rulers". They are all/were very high up Tories during a Tory government, a.k.a, rulers.
thus far all of the doom and gloom has failed to materialise.
You do realise we haven't actually left yet. Eh facts, schmacts.
In this case there is apparently
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while in truth the rulers got their asses handed to them.
Really? So Murdoch didn't make millions and the career politicians didn't just get a license to remove one of the few checks on their power? I must have been in a different UK to you.
You want to spin the brexit as some sort of bad thing
Let's see, we're trying to negotiate trade agreements with 27 countries that all want us to fail. That's not going to go well. Ah well, at least we can still negotiate good deals with the USA and China, after all a large trading block like the EU managed to negotiate TTIP, I'm sure the UK at a tenth the size will get far be
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The BBC did a series of interviews about Brexit recently. They just recorded too people talking, no editorialising. It's part of a project to record ordinary people's thoughts on important historical events: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01cqx3b
Anyway, have a listen to a few of them. It's remarkable how many Brexit supporters come out with some variation of "I'm not racist, but..." and seem to be very defensive when talking about their reasoning. Stats do show that racist incidents have risen since the vote, an
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This is a valid point. All of these reactionary movements are being driven by fear. Fear is being prompted by economic uncertainty and hardship. Hardship comes from the lack of living wages and also meaningful, rewarding (not just financially) work.
I think it was this site that had an article a while back that said a significant portion of UK residents felt their jobs were meaningless.
Mostly it's hardship. We have a top-heavy economic system that is simply not delivering wealth and prosperity to the ave
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SJW
DRINK!
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Well you could call them a political and moral authoritarian. Would that make you feel better? After all, they subscribe to the idea that "ideas outside of the groupthink" is fascism.
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After all, they subscribe to the idea that "ideas outside of the groupthink" is fascism.
Ah it's "Mashiki makes shit up day" today, otherwise known as [checks calendar] Tuesday. Basically the bulk of your debating tactic is to make up stuff that people have done, get very cross about it, then post random links to irrelevant things when challenged.
I now invite you to post some links to support your arguments.
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Fascinating how your butthurt over Brexit somehow makes you the only person qualified to comment on an election in a completely different country than the U.K.
Did you miss that part of elementary school where they taught you that the U.S. is an independent country?
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They don't have elementary school in the UK, that's more of an American thing...
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I would sooner believe that the Brexit deniers ultimately blame the US. We've not yet embraced the EU and gone full socialist.
We're facing a similar decision point next week.
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Post-factual politics originated in the US. The UK imported the idea from you guys, it's just that we happened to go first with the vote and I'm saying you should take note of how badly it went.
Regardless of if you support Brexit or not, it's undeniable that the Leave campaign went all out on the anti-intellectualism, "there are no facts, no truth" angle, and it's undeniable that Trump uses many of the same tactics. That wall he promised is about as likely as the £350m/week for the NHS we were p
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:5, Funny)
SJWs
DRINK AGAIN!
Bloody hell, that guy who started the "SWJ drinking game upthread" is going to have a lot to answer for.
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And "corporations".
that's pretty evil (Score:5, Insightful)
What the fuck happened to "Don't be evil" ?
This is a return to McCarthyism plain and simple.
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What the fuck happened to "Don't be evil" ?
This is a return to McCarthyism plain and simple.
The same thing that happens to most people when they believe they have unbelievable amounts of power. They use it for their own personal gain, and fuck everyone else over to gain more of it. Google has long since said fuck you to everyone else, especially the "plebs" who don't follow their ideology. Now get down on bended knee and kiss the ring, follow their ideology, support their 63 genders and whatever else. Or they'll use that information to destroy you.
Re:that's pretty evil (Score:4, Insightful)
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It was deprecated about the time that they introduced the opt-out village: http://www.onionstudios.com/vi... [onionstudios.com]
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Is that the best we get from Wikileaks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone is talking about this as if Eric Schmidt's involvement in this was somehow equivalent to Google being involved. Yes, Google is an ad company, and whatever else it may be, running for President is an ad campaign. I would hope Schmidt had some good experience with that. From what I can see the plan doesn't look appreciably different than what the Democrats fielded in 2012. Perhaps it's a little heavier on the profiling aspects, but there's no reason to believe they were talking about acquiring that data illicitly, or that anything actually happened as a result of this proposal. It looks like it would be an effective strategy. Maybe it's too effective or too intrusive to the point where we need some law prohibiting the mass collection of data, and maybe that would even be possible. At the moment however, there seems to be little reason to froth about this.
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"key is the development of a single record for a voter that aggregates all that is known about them".
If you don't think that data would come from Google you might be interested in a bridge I have for sale.
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There is a big difference between "backing" and supporting a candidate with the resources of one of the biggest and most advanced companies in the areas of big data, analytics, publishing, and advertising.
I forget, why is this relevant? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, a private citizen supported a candidate and offered free advice? Shocking. How many big corporations out there donate money because "they are people too"? There is nothing of interest here other than to have a bunch of Trump supporters try to claim that the election is rigged and this is proof that Google is rigging it for "Crooked Hillary". It amazes me that people are so gullible they can be spoon fed any piece of information that fits the party's agenda. I'm voting for Clinton because she is the better of my two choices (and the other one is a moron). End of story. This crap does nothing but fire up the base.
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Re:I forget, why is this relevant? (Score:4, Insightful)
A couple of observations:
1. Wait. I thought Republicans were the party of big business. Schmidt must have gotten confused, right?
2. Wait. He's wanting "low paid workers". I though the Democrats were all about paying more? And making sure women had pay equity with men, right? $15 minimum wage? I mean, he wants to pay above minimum wage, right?
You're the one who's been spoon-fed the party's agenda, as usual.
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A couple of observations:
1. Wait. I thought Republicans were the party of big business. Schmidt must have gotten confused, right?
Much of the tech industry leadership leans Democratic, mostly because they grew up in northern California.
2. Wait. He's wanting "low paid workers". I though the Democrats were all about paying more? And making sure women had pay equity with men, right? $15 minimum wage? I mean, he wants to pay above minimum wage, right?
No, like any good Democrat he wants *other people* to pay above minimum wage :-)
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Much of the tech industry leadership leans Democratic, mostly because they grew up in northern California.
It's not relevant - most industry leadership leans Democrat. They offer the most bang for the buck.
With Clinton as the Democrat candidate for POTUS I think we can drop the pretense that the Democrats aren't the party of big business.
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1) You seem confused. Democrats are not anti-big business. What do you think, that breaking up big businesses into medium and small business is part of democrat's agenda? There are big corporations that support democrats, and heads of big corporations too (Buffett is one of the prominents, Schmidt too), and it is not because they hate themselves. They are just fine with nullifying Citizens United and measures that seem anti-corporation to republicans, because it is the sane thing to do and it wouldnt hurt t
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Young, enthusiastic and low paid implies either outright stupid or fully in the tank for Hillary (outright stupid).
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Before you vote for Clinton, google Whitehouse Travel office. The Clintons destroyed the life of a long time government employee to try to benefit their cronies. If you are good with this type of action, by all means vote Clinton.
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Nobody is saying that he doesn't have a right to back whoever he wants to.
At the same time, voters should be aware of what's happening, and the fact that the company that serves much of their news, advertising, and information may be politically biased and motivated.
My google record (Score:2)
The key is the development of a single record for a voter that aggregates all that is known about them
I love to think what Google knows about me if they've tried this on me. From my emails and chats with my wife it's clear I'm an anarchist, a pacifist, I don't believe in Democracy, I don't vote, I want states to be allowed to secede (but I don't necessarily want to secede - I just want it to be allowed), and I want the same for counties, cities, and households. Processing my political record at Google probably trips all kinds of alarms.
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You reply to this...
The key is the development of a single record for a voter that aggregates all that is known about them
...with this...
it's clear I'm an anarchist, a pacifist, I don't believe in Democracy, I don't vote
It doesn't apply to you, then.
Google's advice is actually quite an improvement, since it also excludes tracking of children, criminals, non-Americans and every other person inelligable to vote in the US election Quite a lot better than the current situation.
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From dictionary.com, emphasis mine:
noun
1.
a person who votes.
2.
a person who has a right to vote; elector.
It is, in fact, very useful information that the OP is a voter who does not vote. Depending on his reasons not to vote he can either be swung to one side or should be ignored entirely so you don't waste resources needlessly.
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Why not just outsource it to China (Score:2)
Yeah (Score:2)
The only way to defend is to poison the data set (Score:2)
This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama was doing this in 2008, and the Republicans have their own big data operations, too.
The fate of Brendan Eich becons for Schmidt (Score:2, Insightful)
When Brendan Eich's backing of a popular, but ultimately-losing political movement came to light, Mozilla — undoubtedly pressured by Google, who provides 90% of its money [slashdot.org] — forced [theatlantic.com] the inventor of Javascript to voluntarily [mozilla.org] step down.
The ongoing collapsing of Her Beautiful Wickedness is no dissimilar — although reasonably popular and, some would say, even with a reasonable chance of getting the same 52% of the vote that Brendan-backed Proposition 8 has gathered, Hillary may lose on legal gr
And... (Score:2)
Recommendations on big data (Score:2)
Dyslexia acting up again (Score:2)
I first misread that as "... Drew Up Daft Plan..."
Then I realized, that's probably the case anyway.
Benjamin Franklin and American politics today. (Score:5, Insightful)
Prior to the signing of the final draft of the American Constitution on the last day of the Constitutional Convention in September 1787, Franklin had a speech of his delivered, by James Wilson, because he was too ill at the time to deliver it himself. In the speech he protested the fallibility of the Constitution and of the document he said:
In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.
Keep in mind that Franklin probably didn't mean the people were criminal, only that some powerful segments of the population manipulating things to corrupt them, like reducing education, interfering with the press, sabotaging government functions so they are ineffective and many other things. Being a third party to these elections and effectively disinterested in the result I tend to wonder what damage is being done to the office of the President by the way the campaigns seem to tear each candidate into pieces and I wonder if that is the canary in the cage.
Franklin seems to have been able to predict this moment, and please don't take that as a criticism of your country, however isn't that a sign to look to the type of things Franklin was trying to warn everyone about back when the US constitution was framed?
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yet all that meddling has led to a society where many black families are even worse off than if government had not first enabled and then "reformed" all that racism in the first place.
Blame the Nixon-era War on Drugs for the destruction of black family life. By incarcerating large swathes of young black men and forcing mothers to be sole income earners, black children grow up impoverished and lacking a paternal influence in their lives. They grow up to repeat the vicious cycle. No single thing has done more to erase decades of minorities' economic and social progress than the WoD. It's the new Jim Crow.
Young, low-paid (Score:2)
If there is any doubt about the reasons behind their H-1B desires, this should set it to rest.
SQUIRREL!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, don't pay attention to the emails of the lying crook Hillary!
Go chase that RUSSIAN SQUIRREL!!!!
It's RUSSIAN!!!!!
Gawd, how much more evidence do you need to figure out what the Democrat Party thinks of its voters? Screwing Bernie over wasn't enough?
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They only became 'date rapes' when they found out about each other.
and yet... (Score:5, Informative)
And yet when you get down to it, it's always the progressives and liberals who turn violent when they don't get their way.
Every time.
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And yet when you get down to it, it's always the progressives and liberals who turn violent when they don't get their way.
Every time.
[citation needed]
(Good fucking luck with that.)
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Look hard enough, and you will find insurgents and terror actors who have more in common with the Right than the Left.
They will be fewer than those who the Left claims to support, less organized and sponsored, and less effective. They damage their own kindred movements more than they benefit.
The Left is a worldwide, organized force. The Right is not so organized. And the Left will use violence for almost any affront. The Right tends to stew until it's too much.
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[citation needed]
(Good fucking luck with that.)
Environmentalists? ALF? ELF? Sea Shepard? Earth First? Well that's a start. Then we can move onto the political groups. FLQ, Weather underground(WUO), more modern stuff like Antifa, BLM, to just name a few. Then we can get into the various flavors of the anarchist groups that put those claims. Then there's the agent provocateur stuff, that if you've been paying attention to in the current US election...which has come from "arms reach" liberal organizations. Haven't even touched on the ones in Europe
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"Don't be evil", amirite?
Re:and yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Don't be evil", amirite?
Silicon Valley is no longer part of the USA. They are billionaires that make money off the backs of visas, fail to pay taxes, and destroy American jobs. No different than Wall Street, which has bought off Clinton.
Re:and yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not any more. "Don't get caught" is the new mantra.
And as they find the insurgents that expose them, the algorithms will be tuned to crush opposition.
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"Don't be evil", amirite?
I'm not sure what would be "evil" about supporting a particular party or candidate. What did YOU think happens when a political campaign is started? What did you think the people involved communicate to each other? Only dates and addresses and cookie recipes for blue or red colored cookies?
Re:and yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, if you are paying attention, the GOP Establishment/NeoConservative Leadership is much more inclined to go along with the Democrat leadership. It's;
- Simpler. So hard to have to make your point in a hostile media environment, and social media just isn't useful when you are trying to 'explain'.
- Effective. If you're facing non-citizen voters in states that are already pro-Left, then why bother?
- Avoids dealing with your own party rank and file. If you're unable to corral your own party's representatives to pass legislation, why bother? Just go along.
- Preserves your power and influence. the risk of taking a stand on principle is that those who disagree with you may choose some other candidate to support. Running a serious primary campaign is just so hard. Much easier and less risky to spend that time punishing your enemies and rewarding your allies. On both sides of the aisle.
But to your point, I'm unaware of Right/Conservative/GOP violence, but then I rely on non-mainstream media for some of my news, so I miss a lot of propaganda. So other than FBI conspiracies and KKK (AKA Democrats [adl.org])
As a self-identified Republican, I no longer support the Republican legislative leadership. Priebus I support because he's been doing his job, perhaps with little enthusiasm, but doing it. Trump is the cure to the Republican leadership failure, which began in 1981 with Reagan's takeover of the Conservative movement, then GHW Bush's failed re-election, and has continued despite presidential election successes intervening. 35 years of failed GOP leadership has left us with a party that is led by and populated with elected officials that prefer to go along with the opposition for a variety of reasons, but largely because they have no vision for our nation nor their own political movement. and they have not considered the Conservative wing of the GOP to be a 'movement' for a long time. They have caved, fearing an immigrant swell that could lead to an insurmountable Democrat majority for the foreseeable future, a hostile media that will never be placated by surrender, and a transition to a social media dominated culture that concentrates real media power in corporations that can hide behind algorithms and opaque business practices, the subject of this thread, and wield overwhelming influence without their users recognizing their near-absolute control over the hearts and minds of most of the population.
I expect Trump to burn down the GOP house. It needs to be renewed, and with fire and water, not long knives and moves in the dark. And our nation needs a wakeup. We are changing, and in the midst of a soft revolution. There are changes being made that should be discussed and approved, but the forces for those changes do not care for law and justice, save for their own self-defined goals, which they change at their whims. You may agree with them, and I understand, but my caution to you is this - Today it's to your favor. Tomorrow, it may not be, and you will be bulldozed by the same forces that you applaud today. No rules, no justice.
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the Republican leadership failure, which began in 1981 with Reagan's takeover of the Conservative movement,
wtf!? When was this talking point memo - that invalidates every other talking point from the past 3 decades - circulated for dissemination on rightwing talk shows?
Re: and yet... (Score:2)
I figured this out on my own in 2015. Not everyone on /. has to be led to the well.
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There are two common threads running through politics:
1) Making the population easier to govern.
2) Retaining incumbent power.
Focusing on divisive issues (important/necessary though they may be) makes the natives restless and more difficult to govern, thus undermining 1 above.
Divisive issues forces incumbents to pick a side which might cause them to lose votes ("I was for it before I was against it"), thus undermining 2 above.
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Bread and Circuses.
Not exactly a new idea.
Re:and yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're facing non-citizen voters in states that are already pro-Left, then why bother?
"Non-citizen voters" is an oxymoron. And please, no snarks about undocumented immigrants going to the polls. The last thing they want to do is something that could reveal their lack of status. Besides, voter fraud is nowhere near the problem some claim it to be.
I rely on non-mainstream media for some of my news, so I miss a lot of propaganda.
From the rest of your post, it sounds like you have marinated in propaganda, just from an alt source.
Re:and yet... (Score:5, Informative)
However, they most certainly don't "just go with the opposition". Congress has managed to do far less [govtrack.us] since 2011 due to all of the infighting. Have you not seen the headlines about the Republican house trying to cut funding to the Democratic majority FCC? What about the Republican house trying their damnedest to pass laws that have side-notes to cut funding to Obamacare?
"If it's something Obama supports, we must stop it!" has been the GOP mantra for 8 years now.
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I'm sure he's got various houses in other countries he can move to.
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