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A Brief History of “Hacked” Elections
The effort to overturn the presidential election result has hit its stride. Christine Pelosi is leading the charge, although she claims to Neil Cavuto that she is simply trying to uncover the truth. Lest anyone be in doubt, a handful of liberal actors has assembled – as they have a tiresome habit of doing – to make a direct plea to the electors to change their votes. The impetus for all this, they claim, is that the election was “hacked” by the Russians. This line insinuates, without actually saying it, that voting machines were hacked. What was actually “hacked” was an email account, which everyone (including Donald Trump) knew was happening long before election day. What is forgotten by these crusaders for truth is that this is not the first time an election was “hacked.” It’s just the first time they decided to care about it.
In 2008, a Republican’s email was hacked, two months before the election. The target was Sarah Palin. She was not some campaign staffer or a party official, but the VP nominee. The perpetrator was David Kernell, the son of a Democratic state representative. Among other things, Kernell released Palin’s family photos, and the home addresses of some of her contacts. These are details more personal, and frankly more dangerous than anything the Russians were able to unearth in 2016. The information was later posted by WikiLeaks.
The press at the time had a lot to say about this incident, mostly taking the opportunity to criticize Palin for her use of a YAHOO email account. There was nothing damning, no backstabbing, so snide comments about her own voting base, although the press did note that Palin liked to type in all caps when she got excited. What is not found in any of the coverage by the Washington Post, The New York Times, and Slate, just to name a few, is any condemnation of the hacker. Nor is there any hand-wringing after the election about how this might have influenced the result.
To put a finer point on it, Palin was a higher ranking official than anyone hacked in Clinton’s campaign. The perp was not a Russian trying to sew chaos, but a member of the other political party deliberately trying to influence the result. The fallout of the emails as it turned out was not particularly damaging, because they revealed that Palin was the same person in private that she was in public. I do not condone Russian hacking, but I do wonder if the damage of those hacks would have been mitigated had Clinton and her staffers not had a public face and a private face. Put another way, had the emails shown Clinton and her staffers to be kindhearted and misunderstood, would anyone be complaining about hacking today?
Published in Politics
Oh, you mean their trying to divert attention from their own ugliness?? Very good points, True. I didn’t remember the hacking of Palin’s email. And the fact is, they may have hacked in but (in true Sarah Palin form), THEY DIDN’T AFFECT THE TALLY OF VOTES!!!!
Palin said “I can see Russia from my house”*
The Russians said, “We can see Hillary’s emails in her house”
The selection of Christine Pelosi makes me wonder if they’re not completely serious about this. I mean, can you think of a single person less suited for this effort? She’s a) a person no one heard of before last week, and b) the daughter of the one Democrat that all Democrats hate. What? Was Chaka Fattah not available?
Looks as if Huckabee also has concern, truly a bipartisan issue now.
Don’t forget that in the same year the head of an Ohio state government department had one of his employees hack their own database to look for information to use against Joe the Plumber.
They only care about it now. Even when it was occurring they couldn’t be bothered to care.
“…no way of differentiating the call I just received from a prank call.”
That is how disinterested they were, they did not even bother to try. Heck FBI headquarters is a bit under two miles from the DNC, they couldn’t even be bothered to have someone walk over there on their lunch break to confirm. They were that indifferent.
The point of this is to open an investigation into the hacking. Since they are claiming that the hacking had to do something with Donald Trump this means he, his campaign, those that work for it as well as his donors/supporters will also need to be investigated. That is what this is about.
Perhaps the Russians considered Hillary inevitable and just wanted to damage her before she assumed office, and now they’re just as freaked out as all the Democrats are.
Why waste your blackmail material? It would be more valuable when she is President.
Is it blackmail material? Even with all the revelations Clinton almost won the presidency, seems like pretty weak sauce for leverage once she is already in office.
I’ve wondered a little if this stuff isn’t all hacked all the time anyway, but this year the dems were so cocksure they lowered the mask orders of magnitude more than they normally would in their communications. Surely this isn’t the first time our enemies have been successful in their intel gathering operations, so this time there had to be something different.
What a babe! She would have been the most delicious VP ever.
It wouldn’t have been wasted if they had more material in reserve to be sprung later if and when needed. That’s how blackmailers work.
The Kremlin plays chess while our intelligence establishment plays checkers.
Nor was there any hand-wringing after the 1996 Gingrich cell phone hack. There was absolutely no condemnation of the hackers (who were later fined for breaking the law), but plenty of media focus on the hacked material. By the same standards, whoever exposed the DNC/Podesta material would be celebrated.
Amen to that!
If that’s the case, they were a little too clever and lost the value of what they held in reserve. Just one minor release would have been enough, not the steady drip that happened.
Why would the Kremlin even want to derail her is the question I always come back to when this idea is floated. The Obama administration/Clinton foreign policy has been an absolute bonanza for Russia. In what foreign policy goal have they been in the least deterred?
Do not bother answering as we already know the answer, absolutely none. Yet for some reason the spymasters of the Kremlin wish to trade this guaranteed surety for a complete wild card such as Trump simply because he has made some nice quotes about Putin? Are you kidding me? What adult could possibly entertain this notion?
Democrats are not susceptible to blackmail. Most Republicans are susceptible to blackmail. Donald Trump is an exception.
There is no way anyone could blackmail Hillary.
Re Christine Pelosi, indeed I had not read or heard about her before and my first thought on seeing her name was, “Huh? Dontcha mean Nancy?” before realizing the simple explanation of nepotism. Nancy’s pretty old. Christine must be in her 40s or 50s. Time for the youngster to get a name so she can get her own congressional seat…
Another Pelosi–another daughter?–makes docus showing how bad, bad, bad Tea Party types are!
They may have been too clever, or more likely they didn’t anticipate Trump’s upset victory. But they of course had a backup plan, which is currently being played out. They must enjoy watching the attacks on our constitutional electoral system and the public bickering within our repeatedly embarrassed intelligence establishment being played out in the media.
Is this not the Pelosi off spring who was thrown in the middle of Obamacare propaganda push because she was a film maker and now with OC she could pursuit her passion for film making without worrying about health insurance.
There should absolutely be an investigation into foreign influence in US elections after the inauguration. It should start with the Clinton foundation and the multiple millions of dollars “donated” from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Russia etc. Then it should expand to the millions of dollars donated to the Obama campaign from overseas in 2008 and 2012 via illegal donations.
The leaks provided hard copy evidence that Podesta and others in the campaign are exactly the low life cheating sc-mbags we always knew they were.