There are too many stupid people, and the terrifying force of their collective stupidity is being amplified as never before. Amplified by stuff that was made by smart people. [….]

NYT Reader:
Regardless of the Russian hacking and Trump's literal call to Russia to hack HRC- the real damage came from Comey.

Comey should be investigated for his role in this election debacle. Harry Reid has been clear that Comey affected this election and should be prosecuted for violation of the Hatch Act. It is clear that Comey had an intense personal dislike of HRC and did his best to undermine her on more than one occasion.

This election has so many irregularities and stinks to high heaven. The Electoral College needs to do the right thing and vote for HRC who received close to a 3 million lead in the popular vote. The majority of the American people did not want Trump to win- and now, I am certain that there are many Trump voters who have a lot of remorse for their vote and had no idea that Trump was indeed a Putin puppet, etc. Of course, there were plenty of warning signs they should have paid attention to- but that's another story. […]

Excerpts:

Many of Mrs. Clinton’s closest aides believe that the Russian assault had a profound impact on the election, while conceding that other factors — Mrs. Clinton’s weaknesses as a candidate; her private email server; the public statements of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, about her handling of classified information — were also important.

While there’s no way to be certain of the ultimate impact of the hack, this much is clear: A low-cost, high-impact weapon that Russia had test-fired in elections from Ukraine to Europe was trained on the United States, with devastating effectiveness. For Russia, with an enfeebled economy and a nuclear arsenal it cannot use short of all-out war, cyberpower proved the perfect weapon: cheap, hard to see coming, hard to trace.

Though Mr. Assange did not say so, WikiLeaks’ best defense may be the conduct of the mainstream American media. Every major publication, including The Times, published multiple stories citing the D.N.C. and Podesta emails posted by WikiLeaks, becoming a de facto instrument of Russian intelligence.

Mr. Putin, a student of martial arts, had turned two institutions at the core of American democracy — political campaigns and independent media — to his own ends. The media’s appetite for the hacked material, and its focus on the gossipy content instead of the Russian source, disturbed some of those whose personal emails were being reposted across the web.

“What was really surprising to me?” Ms. Tanden said. “I could not believe that reporters were covering it.” […] NYTimes

Thurs. Dec. 15th, 2016

"Media Ponders Its Own ‘Guilt’ For Covering Leaked Emails During Election"

Say the word ‘Wikileaks’ around some DC-based journalists, and they’ll probably develop a fast twitch. The Wikileaks Documents Dump of 2016 caused a lot of consternation among reporters and with good reason. The documents, whether they were DNC emails or John Podesta’s emails, all painted Hillary Clinton in a negative light.

It is, for this reason, some journalists are questioning whether or not media outlets should have covered the Wikileaks documents and struggled with how to cover them and to what degree. Elise Foley of The Huffington Post tweeted this yesterday:

"NYT acknowledging its part (along with most of the media) in this whole thing" http://nyti.ms/2hsd1Ac

"The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S."

H/T: RedState

RS Reader:
Upset about possibly being a de facto instrument of Russian intelligence.

TAC Reader:
I think the issue here is not so much that Russia tried to influence our elections — they are not our allies — but that they may well have succeeded. That’s on us, and it’s an embarrassment.

It’s not just a failure to use email correctly, it’s a failure to sift through useful and useless information, to interrogate the source of that information and its motives. That we let ourselves become not just victims but puppets of espionage is scandalous. It does make us look like a “3rd world banana republic”, and to my mind it does call into question the legitimacy of this election. […]

We look like a “3rd world banana republic.”

Honestly, I can't tell you how many times that same thought has crossed my mind since election night….smh.