Dear Vladimir Putin, caucus99percent.com Wants to be Paid

By all accounts, you and your country bought $100,000 of Facebook ads to defeat Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump. We feel your money could be better spent supporting our blog.

For one thing, both American political parties vastly outspent you last year. Trump alone spent Two Million Dollars ($2,000,000) on Facebook ads not to mention all the time and money he and the GOP used spreading his message online.

Parscale also deployed software to optimize the design and messaging of Trump’s Facebook ads. Describing one such test, the Wall Street Journal reporter Christopher Mims writes that “one day in August, his campaign sprayed ads at Facebook users that led to 100,000 different webpages, each micro-targeted at a different segment of voters.” In total, Trump’s digital team built or generated more than 100,000 distinct pieces of creative content.

Following Trump’s official nomination as the Republican Party presidential candidate in July 2016, Parscale was tasked with building and scaling the campaign’s digital targeting capabilities. One main supplier of Trump’s data was the Republican National Committee. (RNC Chairman Reince Preibus famously invested more than $100 million dollars into the party’s data and infrastructure capabilities since Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss.)

Clearly Trump and the Republicans, as well as Hillary Clinton and the Democrats make your efforts on Facebook look puny and insignificant.

A pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC proudly announced that it will spend $1 million to dig into Facebook, Reddit, Instagram and Twitter to start setting people straight about Hillary Clinton.

The project is called Barrier Breakers, and the money will fund a task force to "push back against attackers" and support those who support Clinton.

And what did it get you in the end? Despite Trump's claims that he would take a less confrontational approach to relations with Russia, since his election his actions have not reflected his campaign promises regarding the use of our military to intimidate your country. Clearly, President Putin, you've been sold a bill of goods by Mr. Trump.

Now caucus99percent.com is no fan of Donald Trump and his foreign policy goals, which, to be fair, are starting to look a lot like the same policies Hillary Clinton advocated when she ran against him. We almost universally oppose US government actions that might lead to inciting a war with any other country, except as a matter of last resort. Considering the US Government's military and intelligence services budget exceeds your nation's spending on defense by at least 1000% (if not much more), we suspect that you might very well share our goals.

So, if you want to spend money influencing American foreign policy to be less militaristic and destabilizing, might we suggest you donate a reasonable sum to our site to spread a message of peaceful coexistence and cooperation as opposed to military confrontation? Something in the range of $100,000, which you clearly wasted on last year's Facebook ads, ought to be a good starting point.

After all, not only do we have an operational website up and running, but we promote our views on other social media platforms, too, including Facebook, Twitter and reddit, as well. With more money available to us, caucus99 could spread our progressive message of a less militaristic US foreign policy while also pushing for lower defense spending by the US government. This would, of course, include advocating for the election of American politicians who support these goals.

Any funds you can send us would go a long way to advancing our mutual interest in a more peaceful world, or at least one in which the United States is less likely to use military force as a first resort rather than diplomacy with respect to how it conducts its foreign relations with other nations.

Please consider a yearly donation of at least $100,000 (though we wouldn't turn down more) at your earliest opportunity. We'd appreciate any donation from you that would help us support the worthy progressive causes we espouse.

Ps. I'm sure some of your advisors might have told you that you should be spending your time and efforts on more Facebook ads and other online platforms. Considering what that strategy has gotten you to date, I believe you can recognize the rare opportunity that supporting a left wing progressive site such as caucus99percent.com represents.

Thanks in advance,

Steven D

The views expressed in this essay are solely those of its author, and do not necessarily represent those of the management and financial supporters of caucus99percent.com or any of its members.

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detroitmechworks's picture

Sending weapons, money, and advisors...
While simultaneously telling their citizens that the dissidents are freedom fighters, who are ONLY trying to govern themselves...

These facts about Russia would apply.

1: They would Probably be telling the TRUTH. Considering how much use voting does in this country.
2: Would be only doing exactly what the US has been doing around the world in any country that we choose.
3: The equipment would WORK. The point of Russian equipment is to work for the average grunt without much training. NOT to make a profit for contractors.

It's probably why the US invests such huge amounts of money into convincing their citizens that Russia is EVIL INCARNATE.

Russia won't make anybody rich, but could quite possibly make a LOT of 1%ers poor.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

As a certified Putin Puppet(tm), I can tell you that Kremlin Kash is the best.

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dervish's picture

@gjohnsit the Kossacks told me so many times. Vashe zdorovia!

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

earthling1's picture

On a message of better relations with Russia.
Russia responds with an ad campaign on Facebook encouraging better relations.
And TPTB go ape shit. Like shoving a stick into a hornets nest.
I never realized the threat of peace could draw such vehement opposition.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

@earthling1 The few interviews of Oliver Stone I saw were all pretty hard on him for even speaking to Putin. Stone was very clear that his intention was to get the measure of Putin by understanding what he was about, not engaging in insult and verbal attacks. In Stone's interview with Colbert, Stone blurted out a question something like "is diplomacy bad now?" Your quote perfectly summarizes what is happening regarding Russia:

I never realized the threat of peace could draw such vehement opposition.

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earthling1's picture

@MrWebster
the lessor offering up "I looked into his eyes and saw his soul" moment with Putin.
Where was the backlash then?
WTF changed?
We can't just say Bush was a dumbass because that would imply Trump is not.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

snoopydawg's picture

@earthling1

A lot of people have decided that he wasn't so bad afterall. Not when he's compared to Trump.
Ellen had him on her show and tweeted out a picture of her hugging him. Sweet picture.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@earthling1

...We can't just say Bush was a dumbass because that would imply Trump is not. ...

Just to mention, the two are not mutually exclusive. Especially since both like attacking other people's countries to steal their stuff, stealing their own people's stuff and rights to do it in the first place. And both have Cheney running the Vice Presidency and, I would presume, both Presidents.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/dick-cheney-trump-surrogate-232746

Cheney emerges as surprise Trump surrogate

The president-elect trashed his foreign policy during the campaign, but they've found common cause in Rex Tillerson.

By ELIANA JOHNSON

12/16/2016 01:44 PM EST

During the campaign, Donald Trump trashed the hawkish foreign policy of the second Bush White House. But now, he and his team are relying on the man most closely identified with that regime — Dick Cheney — to help ensure that Rex Tillerson is confirmed next year as Trump's secretary of state. ...

...It’s a scenario no one could have possibly foreseen: that one of the key architects of the Iraq War, which Trump slammed on the campaign trail, is now being enlisted as an emissary for a man Trump wants to help steer his ship of state. ...

...And indeed, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio received a call from the former vice president earlier this week. The goal: “To move Marco the right way,” according to a source familiar with the conversation. Rubio will cast a pivotal vote on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which must approve the nomination before it proceeds to the full Senate.

The former vice president is also in close contact with senior Trump aides. Cheney speaks frequently with the vice president-elect, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who himself serves as a liaison between the president-elect and Capitol Hill, and who has said he hopes to model his vice presidency on Cheney’s. ...

Wall St. wanted either outcome of a Bush/Clinton Presidential race; looks like they and the other Psychopaths and Parasites That Be have managed to recreate pretty much what they wanted in the first place. Something that nobody sane would or could want...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Lookout's picture

Putin for Trump?

Nah, they wouldn't go for it.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout Putin, unlike the democrats, knows how to win American elections. For just $100K in FaceBook ads, he won the election on the cheap.

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@MrWebster

AND he managed to hack the Electoral College!

Damn clever, these Russian Supermen...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Cassiodorus's picture

GO BACK TO RUSSIA WHERE YOU OBVIOUSLY CAME FROM!

/snark

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

snoopydawg's picture

This just shows how silly this Russian propaganda is. The fact that after over a year has gone by, there has been no proof that they interfered with the election. Even if they proved that Russia bought ads on Facebook, so what? As you have shown, both parties did the same things as Russia supposedly did. I'm sure that the ads that the RNC bought said something horrible about Hillary, just like the DNC ads said the same things about Trump.
This also neglects that Obama let this happen because he said that he was aware of this. However, he also said that there wasn't any proof that this happened. Gee, if you can't believe him, why would anyone believe Mueller?

The Mueller investigation is not going to show a damn thing about Trump colluding with Russia to win the election.

The Donald Jr. meeting he went to thinking that he would get some information about Hillary's Russian connections isn't illegal as far as I know.
Both the RNC and Hillary's campaign paid the ex British spy Steele to get information about Trump's activities in Russia. This is where the Golden Showers repot came from.
I don't see any investigations into this.

As others have stated, James Clapper is running this disingenuous disinformation campaign. Remember him? He was one of the Obama's administration's head of an intelligence agency who committed perjury during his congressional hearings. But they want people to trust him just because he says so? Pass.

Onwards to fantasy land. Barbra wrote an op-ed about how things would have happened if Herheinous had been elected president.

What Might Have Been In 2017 Had Hillary Clinton Won

President Hillary Clinton would have worked with Congress (yes, even a Republican Congress) to place Obamacare on firm footing for the future.

Hillary would have developed an employment program to repair our infrastructure
Any tax reform program would have benefitted the middle class, ensuring that the wealthy, Wall Street and corporations paid their fair share.

Rather than eviscerating the State Department and ranting and raving at the United Nations, President Hillary Clinton would have promoted diplomacy. American’s rivals abroad would have respected and worked with President Hillary Clinton. The Russians knew her well, and feared her enough to work hard to undermine our electoral processes. They knew that a President Clinton would have opposed continued Russian aggression in Ukraine or the Baltic States and would have pushed back hard against interference in our elections and those of our European allies.

Immigrant fathers and mothers and their children who had worked hard for years, and tried to contribute, would not be rounded up and put in jail. President Hillary Clinton would have treated immigrants with dignity and respect, acknowledging that we comprise a nation of immigrants. Her policies would have protected the vulnerable young “Dreamers” from threats of inevitable deportation.

Merrick Garland, a moderate and universally respected Appeals Court Judge, who spent most of 2016 waiting in vain to be approved by the Republican-dominated Senate, would be on the Supreme Court. Instead, Senate Majority Leader McConnell’s cynical plan of delay and obstruction worked last year, and now we have Justice Neil Gorsuch, who smiled and obfuscated his way through the Senate confirmation. We now have him and his reliably extreme conservative vote for the rest of his presumably long life.

Funny, right? On the issues that Hillary would have worked for, I have to ask why didn't Obama do any of them?
He actually deported more immigrants than any other president.
He could have passed single payer health care, but he didn't.
He could have passed an infrastructure bill, but he didn't.
I don't think that Hillary would have passed a tax reform bill that would have actually helped mainstream Americans based on Bill's past actions because he was going to be put in charge of economics.
This country was actually the ones who were the aggressors in Ukraine, not Russia, but I'm sure that Hillary would have continued pushing this propaganda. Hey, it worked for Obama.
The fact that Garland isn't on the Supreme Court can be laid at Obama's feet. He was the one who let the republicans block his appointment. Obama could have made him a reces appointment. Sure, he would have only served for 18 months until he had to be confirmed again. But he would have been able to rule on some important cases during those 18 months.

Barbra, I have no idea why you think that Herheinous would have done any of these things since Obama never tried to do it. This is how the democrats roll these days, sorry to tell you this.
But it's a nice fantasy, isn't it? I know how you feel. This are the same things that I thought Obama would do when I voted for him in 2008.
BTW, didn't you pay attention during the previous 8 years when Obama was the president?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg

Hey wait, Mad Bomber 'Can't we just drone him?' Fracking Queen Hillary - who sent terrified and dislocated refugee children back to a war-torn country to quite possibly die even before getting there, in order to send a message to their dead-or-alive parents hoping to at least save their kids by sending them to safety - the message evidently one that America is run by virulent psychopaths like herself - was supposed to do what?

We're supposed to believe Her would have been better than Trump in what way - faster and less-drawn-out global extinction of life on the planet? The writer of that needs help... actually, we all do, if in a different sense.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

snoopydawg's picture

@Ellen North

the way they do. We are well aware of what Obama did during his tenure, and we know what Hillary has done for her entire political career. The only thing that she did to help women and children was to set up the children's health care. Everything else she did made their lives more difficult. I'm not going to rehash her history because we know it.
I just don't understand why others don't see those two in the same light.
Obama has an 80% approval rating even though he didn't make many of our lives better. So many people say that their lives are worse off since his presidency while the rich got richer. People's insurance premiums went up every year since the ACA was passed, but their wages stayed stagnant.
People were upset with the republicans who were willing to see 28 million lose their health insurance, yet why didn't anyone complain that the ACA left almost that many without insurance altogether? Bush invades Iraq on false pretenses and the whole world protests against it. Obama invades Libya on false pretenses and the world yawns. Explain this to me.
And Herheinous was going to continue what he started.
Sigh

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg

All that comes to mind at the moment is that saying about how people will believe anything, if their paycheques depend upon it. And all of those troll hirings through the Clinton campaign. And the Clinton enemy lists. And you know the rest...

Building up a great collection of swears as I have a feeling that I'll need a good stockpile shortly.

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0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

@snoopydawg people can’t see Obama and Her for what they really are because they’ve invested so heavily into the Dems being”the good guys”. If they accept that they’re just a slightly different flavor of bad, it means one has to more or less reevaluate their entire political beliefs because those two are the faces of the party. That’s more introspection than I think most people can handle, so it’s easier to just continue on with “go team blue!”.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Whoa, nice prospectus!

But can't Putin simply pay off the current political lackeys? After all, a few thousand in political donations can often buy corporations a license to kill from some of these, so perhaps they could be paid off to 'live and let live' as well?

up
0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.