Email and Foreign Election Influence

The best advice I have ever given was to a friend and newly elected city councilwoman.

Never put anything in an email you wouldn't want to see posted on a bulletin board in the city hall lobby.

That was a couple decades ago and the advice is even more relevant now. Email is convenient but so is every other fucking booby trap ever invented. It is no place for ill-considered musings or secrets. No firewall is a certain defense against hacking The DNC learned nothing from Watergate (Republicans like spying) and Battlestar Galatica (isolate your computers from the web).

Trump's Best Friend.

Which brings us to the indisputable fact that the Russian government is trying to influence the US election in favor of Donald Trump. Trump's ties to Russia are deep. His campaign manager is a known Russian agent and Trump's financial stability is tied to massive loans from Russian banks. Trump has gone so far as to openly suggest he would stand by passively and allow a Russian invasion and conquest of NATO eastern European countries as Putin rebuilds the old Soviet Empire.

This is not the first time an American presidential candidate conspired with a foreign government to help his election. In 1980, the Reagan campaign held secret negotiations with Iran's mullahs. Iran agreed to hold until after the election the embassy hostages they had taken, thereby making them a debilitation millstone around President Carter's neck, in return for billions of dollars in weapons.