Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Last Call For The Long, Hot Summer Of Trump

Understand that state polling at this juncture is notoriously inaccurate this far out in front of the unifying conventions in July, and the fact that most Americans simply don't pay attention to the presidential contests until afte Labor Day.

Having said that, if this is even remotely close to being true in November, holy Christ.



I can understand Arizona being moderately in play and even Missouri, but South Carolina? Georgia? Mississippi? FREAKING KANSAS?  No, odds are extremely good that these polls are just statistical noise at this point, and that changing the electoral map by more than three or four states from 2012 is not going to be very likely, even in this election.

But...not impossible.


Hack The Planet

Somewhere, Vlad Putin is burning hundreds of calories laughing at America again, and deservedly so.

Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach. 
The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC’s system they also were able to read all e-mail and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts. 
The intrusion into the DNC was one of several targeting American political organizations. The networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies, as were the computers of some GOP political action committees, U.S. officials said. But details on those cases were not available. 
A Russian Embassy spokesman said he had no knowledge of such intrusions. 
Some of the hackers had access to the DNC network for about a year, but all were expelled over the past weekend in a major computer clean-up campaign, the committee officials and experts said.

The DNC said that no financial, donor or personal information appears to have been accessed or taken, suggesting that the breach was traditional espionage, not the work of criminal hackers.

Let's face it, Putin has all the information he wants on Hillary Clinton already. And who would have better dirt on Trump than the DNC? Saves you the time from having to gather it yourself.  Of course the Russians want to know everything they can about American politicians.

The intrusions are an example of Russia’s interest in the U.S. political system and its desire to understand the policies, strengths and weaknesses of a potential future president — much as American spies gather similar information on foreign candidates and leaders. 
The depth of the penetration reflects the skill and determination of the United States’ top cyber adversary as Russia goes after strategic targets from the White House and State Department to political campaign organizations. 
“It’s the job of every foreign intelligence service to collect intelligence against their adversaries,” said Shawn Henry, president of CrowdStrike, the cyber firm called in to handle the DNC breach and a former head of the FBI’s cyber division. He noted that it is extremely difficult for a civilian organization to protect itself from a skilled and determined state such as Russia.

And it's not like we don't engage in the same activities against other world leaders, guys.

The question is why leak the news now?  Pretty sure we'll find out when the other shoe drops during the campaign. I mean, if you're Trump, getting your good buddy Vlad to steal the DNC's oppo research on you is brilliant.  It's like Watergate, only totally legal. You think maybe this is about Trump throwing the newspaper out yesterday?

I'll tell you who looks like the loser in all this: Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Can this finally be the excuse to get rid of her?

Once A Birther, Always A Birther

Donald Trump wasted no time Monday morning implying that President Obama allowed this weekend's slaughter in Orlando to happen on purpose, for political reasons, because Donald Trump is essentially an awful human being.

"He doesn't get it or he gets it better than anybody understands. It's one or the other," Trump said of Obama on "Fox & Friends," speaking on the phone. "And either one is unacceptable, No. 1, and No. 2, calling on another gun ban, I mean, this man has no clue. First of all, the shooter was licensed. So he went through all the procedures, he was fully licensed to have a gun. So he would have passed the test that the president would have thrown up there. It's so ridiculous. You know, this is a, this is a mentality, this is a state. And you have thousands of shooters like this with the same mentality out there in this country, and we're bringing thousands and thousands of them back into this country, and into the country every year." 
Trump defended a much-criticized tweet he sent on Sunday, saying, "Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism." 
"No, no, no, I'm getting thousands of letters and tweets that I was right about the whole situation," he said. "I mean, I've been right about a lot of things, frankly." 
And Trump again implied that the president was not a trustworthy leader when it comes to fighting terrorism. 
"We're led by a man who is a very -- look, we're led by a man that either is, is not tough, not smart, or he's got something else in mind," Trump said. "And the something else in mind, you know, people can't believe it. People cannot -- they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the ways he acts and can't even mention the words radical islamic terrorism. There's something going on. It's inconceivable."

Trump is basically garbage, but implying that President Obama is bringing "thousands" of Omar Mateens into America on purpose is just ridiculous. Mateen was a US citizen, period.

Sure isn't going to stop the Republicans, who again will tell you that a deadly terror attack is "good for Trump in November".

That's something you might want to reconsider, guys.

StupidiNews!