Russian cyberhacking, and our election. What's the most important lesson?

Russia Today: Not your grandfather's Russia. At least, not in every way. Some things haven't changed much, others have changed a lot. Check out Moscow's new business district:


Financially things are changing rapidly. With the end of the cold war they now have access to much more technology, science and information resources than before. So, could the Russians have hacked our election, to influence the outcome? This NYT hit piece tries to establish that. Much of it is quite irritating:

[...] Yared Tamene, the tech-support contractor at the D.N.C. who fielded the call, was no expert in cyberattacks. His first moves were to check Google for “the Dukes” and conduct a cursory search of the D.N.C. computer system logs to look for hints of such a cyberintrusion. By his own account, he did not look too hard even after Special Agent Hawkins called back repeatedly over the next several weeks — in part because he wasn’t certain the caller was a real F.B.I. agent and not an impostor.

“I had no way of differentiating the call I just received from a prank call,” Mr. Tamene wrote in an internal memo, obtained by The New York Times, that detailed his contact with the F.B.I. [...]

No way of differentiating the call? What complete and utter Bullshit. You ask the caller for their phone number, and tell them you will call back. Then you check the number on-line to see if it is a number from the place they claim they are calling from. You can even call the FBI and ask them if it's one of their numbers, and if the caller works for them. Even idiots and morons know this.

The article is full of shit like this. The truth is, they couldn't be bothered to take it seriously. Not until AFTER they lost the election. Rather than blame the unpopularity of their candidate and numerous other factors, they are looking for any excuse they can find to put the blame elsewhere, AND try to invalidate the election because they didn't get the result they wanted. And look at this BS:

[...] By last summer, Democrats watched in helpless fury as their private emails and confidential documents appeared online day after day — procured by Russian intelligence agents, posted on WikiLeaks and other websites, then eagerly reported on by the American media, including The Times. Mr. Trump gleefully cited many of the purloined emails on the campaign trail.

The fallout included the resignations of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the chairwoman of the D.N.C., and most of her top party aides. Leading Democrats were sidelined at the height of the campaign, silenced by revelations of embarrassing emails or consumed by the scramble to deal with the hacking. Though little-noticed by the public, confidential documents taken by the Russian hackers from the D.N.C.’s sister organization, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, turned up in congressional races in a dozen states, tainting some of them with accusations of scandal. [...]

So the problem was not that the DNC was involved in activities that led to scandals, it was that Russian hacking exposed the scandalous activities to the American public?

Before the election, the Democrats in power assured us that Russian hacking was not a problem, that our election was secure and fair. Now that they have lost the election, they are saying the exact opposite. So were they lying to us then, or are they lying to us now? Either way, they are lying.

No matter what the Russians did or did not do, the fact is the Democrats are weak on national security issues, and people are sick of their lies, including people in their own party. The more these articles go on about how bad the hacking was, the more incompetent those in charge would appear to be.

Is the most important lesson from all this, that the Russians influenced our election, or that the people in charge of our government are incompetent liars that will say anything to stay in power, and need to be replaced? You decide.