Of course, Russians are the good guys

Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post reports that U.S. Intelligence says Russian military spies hacked several hundred computers used at the PyeongChang Olympics. The Russians tried to make it look like the attack came from North Korea. One consequence was that attendees of the Opening Ceremonies were unable to print tickets, leaving seats empty. The attack was apparently in response to Russia being banned from the games due to doping violations.



Heidi Moore is a news columnist and an advisor to newsrooms. In a Twitter thread she discusses the possibility of collusion between the nasty guy and Russia. She took on this task because of so many people refusing to believe collusion is possible. Here’s her conclusion:

My theory is this: For many in the media to accept that Trump colluded (and that Bernie Sanders had Russian help from the Internet Research Agency, as Mueller suggests in his indictment of Friday) means that Trump was a bad candidate who achieved the presidency illegally. This is hard to accept as a baseline: That we allowed an illegitimate president to take over.

More importantly, to believe Trump colluded makes it *impossible to believe* that Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate. And many in media made their names in 2016 saying she was.

… To believe that Trump colluded means accepting that Hillary Clinton was not the primary mover of some evil Clinton scheme to take over the White House through email servers, but that she was absolutely screwed by outside forces. … hating Clinton was also the last acceptable outlet for open misogyny in political media. … So, IMO, that is what "skepticism," of Trump's collusion, in this case, is really code for: "We don't want to admit we were wrong all along about Hillary Clinton's candidacy."

This is scary:

There is such a thing as a U.S. Cyber Command that (I guess) is part of the military and investigates and works to prevent cyber attacks on America. The nasty guy, as commander in chief, has not authorized the Cyber Command from attempting to stop Russian influence on this year’s elections. This news came out in a hearing at the Senate Armed Service Committee.

Matt Masterson is, or was, the cyber-security expert commissioner on the Elections Assistance Commission. House Speaker Paul Ryan decided not to extend Masterson’s tenure on the Commission as cyber-security is becoming a top priority.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville says:

Nothing to see here. Just the president refusing to issue Cyber Command to take action over Russian meddling in our elections and the Speaker of the House refusing to extend the tenure of an Election Commissioner whose expertise is cyber-security.