GatewayRedbirds.com

When Popick first reached out to the Trump campaign about performing, he spoke with various people including former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. His understanding from the campaign was that the Kids would make two appearances in Florida, where Popick lives. The first event didn't come to fruition, and Popick says he asked for $2,500 in payment for the second performance, in Pensacola. The campaign made a counter-offer: How about a table where the group could presell albums? Popick took the deal.

When they arrived at the venue, though, there was no table, Popick says. The result was "complete chaos," he said. "They clearly had made no provisions for that."

Popick, believing that he was owed some alternate compensation, tried to contact the campaign afterward, without luck. In addition to costs spent on promotional materials for the nonexistent table, Popick says, he also lost several promotional opportunities due to confusion over his relationship with the campaign.

* “Real-world” authorities, from the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia to FBI sources to international security experts, say that the forensic evidence indicates the Russians. No independent authority strongly suggests otherwise. (Update the veteran reporters Shane Harris and Nancy Youssef cite evidence that the original hacker was “an agent of the Russian government.”)

* The timing and precision of the leaks, on the day before the Democratic convention and on a topic intended to maximize divisions at that convention, is unlikely to be pure coincidence. If it were coincidence, why exactly now, with evidence drawn from hacks over previous months? Why mail only from the DNC, among all the organizations that have doubtless been hacked?

* The foreign country most enthusiastic about Trump’s rise appears to be Russia, which would also be the foreign country most benefited by his policy changes, from his sowing doubts about NATO and the EU to his weakening of the RNC platform language about Ukraine.

None of this is proof. But it is a vivid manifestation of a long-building reality: the chaos that can be unleashed in the new era in which everything is known and anything can be leaked. Concern about these effects goes beyond party. The very conservative defense figure Edward Timperlake wrote about it recently. In Slate, Franklin Foer says the DNC episode is “Watergate, but much worse.” Paul Waldman of the WaPo writes to similar effect. Thomas Rid, a security expert at King’s College, London, says that because “all signs” indicate Russian involvement the U.S. should respond:

American inaction now risks establishing a de facto norm that all election campaigns in the future, everywhere, are fair game for sabotage—sabotage that could potentially affect the outcome and tarnish the winner’s legitimacy.

wart57 wrote:Don't look at what was in the e-mails, look at who hacked in to the server to find that e-mail. Pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain.

wart57 wrote:Don't look at what was in the e-mails, look at who hacked in to the server to find that e-mail. Pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain.

Radbird wrote:

wart57 wrote:Don't look at what was in the e-mails, look at who hacked in to the server to find that e-mail. Pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain.

Does that mean we shouldn't care how it occurred, why it occurred, who was involved? Pay no attention, it was only the Ruskies.

The content of the emails has been scrutinized. Bad [expletive] in them? Yep. Dems took a hit for it too. Rightly so. Would that kind of [expletive] be found in RNC emails? Don't know because nobody targeted them. But I imagine there might have been just a few things said about the nominee that the GOP would not like to have leaked.

heyzeus wrote:

wart57 wrote:Don't look at what was in the e-mails, look at who hacked in to the server to find that e-mail. Pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain.

The emails definitely show that the DNC wanted Hilary to win, and the DNC was sending out messaging to the media to support their preferred candidate and denigrate Sanders. I don't think that should've been the role of the DNC, but politics is pretty gross.

Can you imagine what the RNC was saying in its emails about its efforts to prevent a Trump nomination? Again, not to say what the DNC was doing with Sanders was right (recall, the Sanders campaign filed a lawsuit against the DNC to obtain voter data/info that it was witholding to him). Just that it's not uncommon.

Given that Trump's funding for his commercial projects comes from Russian oligarchs with Putin ties, he's said he really admires Putin, has now said that as president he wouldn't defend NATO allies that Russia has its eyes on, and the hacker is a Russian affiliate, it's a reasonable question as to who hacked the server, and why.