Morning Reads for Friday, January 13, 2017

All of the Faux Russian Hacking outrage is comical, really. All nations do it to one another. As an example, back in the day the PDB (Presidential Daily Brief), which I have actually held in my hands on numerous occasions in my former life, would contain details of phone intercepts from many of our adversaries that had been vacuumed up by our buddies at the NSA. Now, that is hacking of the first order. Listening in on Gorbachev or Shevardnadze riding around in their Zils was all the rage. The Stuxnet Virus? We built that little baby and it was dropped into the works in Iran’s nuclear program. Don’t believe a word of what you hear from anyone saying we are in a “woe is us” scenarios with regard to everybody stealing our sh*t. It simply ain’t true.

Matter of fact, as nation states, there were only and handful of our allies we DID NOT spy on. Everyone else was fair game. Remember everybody with their boxers in a bunch when Merkel discovered we were intercepting her cell phone calls? She was pissed to be sure but it wasn’t news.

It’s not news now either.

Russia or whomever did hack the DNC. Truthful emails from the Dem side were, indeed, leaked. That info was embarrassing to them. People may very well have included that info in their decision making process. Were those revelations the key point in Trump’s win? Doubtful. He was drawing tens of thousands to his rallies before all of this broke, in fact, he was doing so since Day One.

Hillary was undeniably a horrid, arrogant candidate. And unlike Gore’s race, this one wasn’t even electorally close. There was not even an “If she’d only won Tennessee” moment.

I’m of the opinion that Biden or even Sanders would have done better that Hillary against Trump.

Continuing the “Russian Hack” mantra is not helpful to the Dems. It reinforces a sore loser label and people won’t easily let that go in 2018.