"Honeymoons," Hacks, Halfwits And Haters

     The campaign trail has gotten interesting, in much the same manner as the trail over Donner Pass. The campaign of Kamala Harris a basking in mostly-positive press, which the pundits have labeled a "honeymoon" and are whispering like the fellow behind a general being feted in ancient Rome, "This, too, shall pass."

     They're probably right.  All politicians have feet of clay -- all, one hundred percent, each and every one.  Being human, your guy or gal has done something stupid, thoughtless or awful, something suspect or shady at some point in their life.  Maybe a little, maybe a lot; maybe on purpose, maybe unknowingly.  But they did it, and it probably will come out.

     Meanwhile, some entity, probably Iran (who are known to be up to something) is probing the Donald Trump and Harris campaigns, looking to hack in.  Somebody succeeded with the GOP, and the buzz is that Roger Stone fell for the kind of trick your IT department warned you about: a plausible-looking email with a link in it.  The ancient wisdom claims that nobody's easier to trick than a trickster and Stone certainly qualifies; but he's also in an age group that gets tripped up by online scams.*  Social media's all abuzz that news providers who were given some of the hacked material aren't sharing it; but they've been burned before and they're still stinging over it.  They have decided it's better to report solemnly on those wicked folks who tried to sell stolen information than to look like a tool of some foreign interest.

     Over on X, Elon Musk has once again staged a failstacular for a political candidate he favored, almost exactly as he did for Ron DeSantis.  Here's a tip: when you fire most of the engineers, you may find you can't pull off the big-deal, high-visibility stunts.  There's no Buck Rogers without an army of Dr. Zharkovs behind the scenes making the magic happen.  It turns out that unlike building rockets to outer space, a social media company doesn't attract a pack of talented people willing to work long hours under bad conditions for industry-average wages.

     And I have to tell you, there's plenty of criticism of both party's offerings for the act in the center ring this November.  While Kamala Harris doesn't attract the same kind of loathing Hillary Clinton drew out, the people who don't like her really don't; and Donald Trump's detractors are legion.  I'll never like him, and while I find his personality and behavior repugnant, my primary objection remains as it has always been: he's the distilled essence of every bad manager I ever worked for, men who wrought chaos, caused turnover, dissension and discontent in underlings, and treated everyone who was fool enough to work for them as fools indeed, and disposable to boot.  I don't think that's any way to run a country, and I thought very little of his previous attempt at the job.  I'd vote for a guy who wears a boot on his head, if I thought he had the best chance of preventing another Trump Presidency.
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* Here's free advice to everyone's campaign for political office: keep the old people isolated from the Internet.  Yes, this is harsh and condescending, but they'll never click on a bad link in a printed out email and compromise the servers holding all your important data.  If you can't do that, stop putting the actionable/salacious/vulnerable stuff online!  Make the bad guys have to show up in person and pop a lock to get at it, and they may remember Watergate and think twice before proceeding.