Did Russia Hack the Election?

In the continuing post election fake news trend, “Russia hacked election” gets over 45 million hits on Google. Russian hacking as been going on for quite a while and it would be no surprise that the Russians would want to hack both political parties. They are bad actors on the world stage and they are adversaries. However, just a couple of points:

* The hack allegedly occurred in the March-April time frame. Long before Trump was assured of the nomination and when almost every talking head, poll, and jackass was proclaiming it would be impossible for him to win. So the intent could hardly be to help Trump.

* The Wikileaks data was not a hack; it was an inside job according to the people who would know, Wikileaks. Assange has said this for months.

* That doesn’t mean the Russia hack didn’t happen, just that it’s not the source of the Wikileaks material. This makes sense as I would imagine that Russia would rather keep that info close to the vest rather than devalue it by releasing it.

* So Russian hacking (which is a big issue) and the Wikileaks data dump, seem to be unrelated issues. I’m open to new information on this, but when the CIA refuses to brief Congress on the issue, forcing a cancellation of a scheduled hearing, my BS meter goes off.

* Hillary Clinton actually won the popular vote by 2.8 million votes.  So, in what sense was the election hacked?  Were the Wikileaks disclosures designed to only affect certain counties in 4 or so States?  Good Grief…

I honestly have a hard time believing anything the media says anymore; particularly when they are trying as hard as they have been to push this narrative. It’s like the #fakenews nonsense. Simultaneously every major newspaper and every major news network suddenly made this non story of fake news a 10 day long major blockbuster.

My Prediction:  Now that the Electoral College Debacle is over, the next fake news spasm will be “conflicts of interest.”  Stay tuned to your local fake news media outlet for further coverage.

Kathleen Parker Crossing the Rubicon

On December 19^th the Electoral College votes for President.  This is the real Presidential election, so believe it or not, it’s still not over. And until it is, we’re going to be subjected to #nevertrump antics to keep pulling out last ditch efforts to rewrite the election. To that end, electors are getting death threats and many more are being tracked down for intimidation efforts.  This seems to be rather unprecedented and I can’t recall electors being under quite this much pressure, even during 2000’s Bush-Gore slugfest.

Enter “conservative” columnist Kathleen Parker.  As a card carrying member of the establishment, her version of conservatism is s showing “growth” by rejecting bit by bit, conservatism.  However the rise of Trump and the establishment reaction of #nevertrump gives an opportunity to give a clean break.  Give it a few years and formerly conservative columnists will be cranking out columns indistinguishable from their leftist counterparts.  Did George Will write this or Eugene Robinson?  I can’t tell any longer.

But worse than the ideological evolution of #nevertrump is the frantic nature of it, as Parker demonstrates in her column, “The Electoral College Should be Unfaithful” in which Parker argues that faithless electors should overthrow the results of the election:

“Most important among the founders’ criteria for a president was that he (or now she) be qualified. Thus, the electoral college was created as a braking system that would, if necessary, save the country from an individual such as, frankly, Trump.”

That’s not why the founders added the Electoral College.  They actually remembered that the United States is a federation, not a unitary country.  But we’re talking hysteria here so never mind…

“It is worth noting that 50 former Republican national security officials and foreign policy experts co-signed a letter saying that Trump would be a “dangerous president.” Do we simply ignore them?”

Yes we do.  These are mostly Bushies who have been wounded by Trump’s rejection of their Iraqi Invasion.

“At least one Republican elector, Christopher Suprun, has decided to pay heed. In an op-ed in Tuesday’s New York Times, Suprun, a paramedic in Texas, outlined all his reasons for not rubber-stamping Trump, saying he owes a debt not to his party but to his children. He urged others to join him.”

Suprun may not be the greatest example of principled opposition.  In his Op Ed, he listed Trump’s attacking of Saturday Night Live as a sticking point with him.  Talk about a superfan!  But Suprun seems more like a ringer as his PR firm is the one founded by communist and former Obama administration green jobs czar Van Jones.  So maybe not the best example to use…?

“Electors are scheduled to meet Dec. 19 in their respective states to cast their final ballots. If there are 37 Republicans among them with the courage to perform their moral duty and protect the nation from a talented but dangerous president-elect, a new history of heroism will have to be written.  Please, be brave.”

So there you have it.   A call to overturn the elections, but I wonder, oh fair Kathleen, what will that “bravery” cost the country?

The odds of this are extremely low of course, but think what it would mean to have electors threatened, bribed, or intimidated into changing their votes so that it alters a Presidential election?  Whoever the electors anointed as President would have no legitimacy, and Trump supporters who always thought that the “establishment” would never let a real swamp draining reformer into office would be vindicated.  But the damage would exceed whatever happened over the next four years.

It would be a permanent scar on the body politic. Presidential elections would become meaningless since anyone who can get to the electors can anoint the next President.  When governments lose all political legitimacy, crazy things can happen. With the Soviet Union, and the Eastern Bloc nations, it was relatively peaceful.  For Yugoslavia, it was not.  But in any case, our government would lose legitimacy. To paraphrase Hemmingway, gradually, then suddenly.

So a warning to Parker and other shortsighted pundits, who on November 4^th insisted that everything will be fine no matter who wins, and now want to overthrow the government, once you pull out that particular string, it will never go back in.

 

 

 

 

 

Anand Giridharadas in Fear

Our old buddy Anand Giridharadas was back on Morning Joe, and boy how the tables have turned. I wrote in October how New York Times writer Giridharadas, on a Morning Joe appearance, couldn’t wait for the post election score settling with his arch enemy, white men.

“I think the people who went that way and that Trump movement and perhaps supported things about women they don’t actually support or supported things about bashing Muslims that they don’t in their deepest of hearts support, need to think about the fact that globalization and all of that was hard on everybody. It wasn’t just hard on White guys. For some reason, women lost their jobs in globalization, Black and Brown people lost their jobs in globalization, and managed not to lash out. I think there needs to be a reckoning, frankly, with white manhood in this country.”

But now the tables have turned, and with a Trump victory, Giridharadas has gone from a Brownshirt inciting a Caucasian Kristallnacht to shivering in fear in a Dutch attic.  Enjoy:

When Joe Scarborough has to be the voice of reason, “Hitler is not coming back,” then you know that someone’s gone off the deep end. But however much I’m enjoying the schadenfreude of Giridharadas having a special snowflake breakdown on television, it serves as a reminder that however much he now fears internment camps, Muslim banning, and all the rest, he’s the type of person who either thinks that you have your hands on his throat, or he’s going to have his hands on your throat.  If the tables had been turned, and Hillary had won, he would have been the first one urging internment camps and whatever final solution he feels appropriate to handle that pesky white male problem.

Demography is destiny and eventually the Democrats will be back in power.  And when they are, there will be Anand Giridharadas and others like him urging on their own pogrom.