Random comments today:
"NEW YORK (AP) - MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday."
"David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, had come forth and identified himself as the source of a Fox News Channel story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent. isenstadt identifies himself on a blog as a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. Yet neither he nor the institute exist; each is part of a hoax dreamed up by a filmmaker named Eitan Gorlin and his partner, Dan Mirvish."
Duh. It's just not possible that a grown woman who has been as successful as Governor Palin is would not know basic facts. The story stunk on the face of it, with one anonymous source citing unbelievable rumors in a climate of political backbiting at the tail end of a hate campaign. Sheesh.
I taught my third graders today about the countries in the continent of Africa. Sheesh. Again.
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I just have really hard time watching old 80s tv shows. The Golden Girls, The early Cosby Show episodes ... funny, well done, good writing. So what's the problem? Horrors - the fashion. Shudder. It looks really really bad twenty 25 years out.
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Last Thursday was the last day of school for the week. Friday was Halloween. Of course Thursday was full of merriment with Halloween parties and costumes and talk of 'when can we eat the cupcakes?' The kids dressed up. But so did the adults at school. All of them. Way up. I was not dressed in any sort of a costume. One little first grader asked, "What did you come as?"
"I came as the mean old substitute." Laughter.
Today I was back at the school subbing in a third grade. The first graders from last Thursday's class passed me in the hall. "Look!" Said one boy. "It's the mean old substitute!"
The para-pro cracked up. I did too. Yup, that's me. The mean old sub. LOL
Showing posts with label Governor Sarah Palin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Governor Sarah Palin. Show all posts
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
Judging Who is Smart
Judging Who is Smart
By Randall Hoven
Apparently, the skill most highly prized in a President is articulateness in extemporaneous public speaking. In fact, it is so highly prized, it is considered a necessary condition to assume the Presidency, and probably even a sufficient one. At least if you believe Big Media and an ever-increasing herd of conservative pundits.
I use Sarah Palin as an example. Throughout her life, she was chosen by her peers for leadership roles.
* In high school she was chosen to be captain of the basketball team. Her team won the State Championship when she was captain. In fact, she sank the winning shot in the championship game - with a broken ankle.
* In high school she was chosen as leader of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
* When she showed up at PTA meetings in support of her own children's education, her peers said she should run for councilman. She did and she won.
* As a councilwoman, her peers said she should run for mayor. She did and she won.
* As mayor, her fellow mayors thought she should be President of the Alaska Council of Mayors. She won that election too.
* The Alaska governor appointed her as chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
* Her peers thought she should run for governor. She did and she won.
* John McCain selected her to be his Vice Presidential running mate.
Just for grins, count the word "won" in the above list.
At every step, she did not push her way up; she was pulled up. And not by the rich or powerful. She had no champion or mentor, no big-money backers. She was simply recognized for her competence, integrity and leadership by people who weren't finding it elsewhere.
Her years as councilwoman, mayor and governor add up to 12 years of elective office, one year more than Barack Obama has had. Her years as mayor and governor add up to eight years of executive experience in public office, compared to zero for both Obama and Biden.
All that, plus beauty queen, hunter, fisher, bush-pilot, etc., yet she's written not a single autobiography.
Is Sarah stupid? In high school she was in the National Honor Society. She was inducted into the Sigma Beta Delta Honor Society as a student at Alaska Pacific University. She graduated from the University of Idaho. The only factoid that I can find that would indicate any stupidity on her part is that her college major was journalism. But that does not necessarily make you stupid.
Since she has eight years experience in elected, executive office, we should know how stupid she is by how much she screwed up in those positions, right? Trouble is, she didn't screw up. In fact, her popularity has been in the 80-90% range, the highest of any public office holder in the country.
Is being Governor of Alaska or being chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission just a sort of easy gig, something a stupid person could sleep-walk through, like, say, voting "present" 130 times in the state legislature? As governor she negotiated a gas pipeline deal that had been held up for years. She had to negotiate with Big Oil and with Canada to do that, by the way. And Big Oil was not happy with the deal. I guess just any stupid person could do that.
In recent years Alaska produced 20% of all the oil and gas produced in the US. You think there might have been some pressure in such positions, given Big Oil, big money, crony politics, environmental and business regulations, and international trade were involved? Sarah resigned from the Oil & Gas Commission at one point to protest the ethics of a fellow Republican. That Republican later resigned his position and paid a fine.
Was she stupid for that? Could you imagine, say, Joe Biden resigning from an influential commission because a fellow Democrat on it had questionable ethics? (Hint: he's still in the Senate, where he chaired the Judicial Committee for 16 years.)
Maybe some people think Sarah's stupid or incompetent from what they saw on the internet or forwarded email. If so, take two aspirin and try Snopes.com.
* A black man fathered Bristol Palin's baby? FALSE.
* That list of books she banned from the Wasilla library? FALSE.
* Piper Palin flipped off a little boy? FALSE.
* That picture of Sarah in a bikini holding a rifle? FALSE.
* Quotes from Sarah concerning Creationism? FALSE.
* That quote from the transcript of her interview with Katie Couric? FALSE (It was really from Saturday Night Live.)
* And that report card showing Sarah getting low grades and an SAT score in the Paul Wellstone range? FALSE .
Her biggest gaffe? Changing her mind on the bridge to nowhere. Her biggest scandal? Getting a state employee fired for the possible reason of not firing a state trooper who drank on the job, tasered Sarah's 10-year-old nephew, and threatened to kill her father. Even if she did it for exactly those reasons, she committed no crime. This, in a state swimming in Big Oil money and federal grants. The guy who hacked into her private email account could not even find anything "juicy," despite his best efforts to do exactly that. On the clean scale, Sarah is pegged at "squeaky." They have to make stuff up to get even close.
By everything we know about Sarah Palin that is factual and verifiable, she is intelligent, honest and competent. So why then do so many people think she isn't? The answer boils down to one and only one thing: her extemporaneous public speaking. The Couric interview. The Gibson interview. The VP debates.
We can illustrate with examples. Below is an excerpt (a real one) from the VP debates that I received in a forwarded email from someone who used it to prove how stupid Sarah is. My version is taken from CNN.
Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.
(It was CNN that did not capitalize the "G" in "God", not me.)
Here is what the ellipsis ("...") in the email left out.
I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he's a schoolteacher, had been for many years.
So let's parse Sarah. She used "again" twice in the same sentence. She said "preferenced" when she meant "prefaced" (one supposes). She said "doggone it," "God bless her" and mentioned "heaven." She gave a "shout out." She said "needed" when we're sure she meant "need." She said, "I know education you are passionate about," which is a little too close to the sentence construction of Yoda in Star Wars. And that last sentence, the tenses are all over the place and the subject is a little hard to find.
So you see, Sarah is just not articulate. It took her 11 sentences to say teachers should be paid more. Barack Obama could have done that in as few as eight sentences, with perhaps as few as five of them being about himself, and with much better tense agreement and with zero doggone-its. (But he might have mentioned his grandmother.)
Now let's look at Joe Biden in that same debate.
Here's what the president said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, "Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them." What happened? Hamas won. When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it." Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.
You'll notice that each of Joe's sentences has a subject and matching verb. Tenses match. He used short, clear constructions such as "What happened?" and "Hamas won."
The only problems with Joe's excerpt here is that Hezbollah was never kicked out of Lebanon, by anybody, much less the US and France, and that no one, including Barack or Joe, recommended NATO control Lebanon. That would have been far-fetched, actually. (But what do I know? Joe chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.)
Unlike Sarah, who took 11 sentences to say teachers should be paid more, Joe took only nine sentences (by my count) to make multiple untrue statements and to express his view against elections in the West Bank. That efficiency of language is a hallmark of smart people.
You see? Sarah is not articulate enough to be President. Her experience in elected office, her experience in executive elected office, her being in honor societies in both high school and college, her being repeatedly encouraged to take on leadership roles by her peers, her successes as objectively measured -- none of that matters. She just sounds a little too, um, low class and a little too, uh, religious. She isn't a lawyer. And she hasn't even written an autobiography yet! (Then again, maybe neither has Obama.)
To be serious for a moment, when we treasure smooth talking over everything else, including truthfulness, what we will get is demagoguery and then tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson said, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." Now that's articulate. And scary.
By Randall Hoven
Apparently, the skill most highly prized in a President is articulateness in extemporaneous public speaking. In fact, it is so highly prized, it is considered a necessary condition to assume the Presidency, and probably even a sufficient one. At least if you believe Big Media and an ever-increasing herd of conservative pundits.
I use Sarah Palin as an example. Throughout her life, she was chosen by her peers for leadership roles.
* In high school she was chosen to be captain of the basketball team. Her team won the State Championship when she was captain. In fact, she sank the winning shot in the championship game - with a broken ankle.
* In high school she was chosen as leader of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
* When she showed up at PTA meetings in support of her own children's education, her peers said she should run for councilman. She did and she won.
* As a councilwoman, her peers said she should run for mayor. She did and she won.
* As mayor, her fellow mayors thought she should be President of the Alaska Council of Mayors. She won that election too.
* The Alaska governor appointed her as chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
* Her peers thought she should run for governor. She did and she won.
* John McCain selected her to be his Vice Presidential running mate.
Just for grins, count the word "won" in the above list.
At every step, she did not push her way up; she was pulled up. And not by the rich or powerful. She had no champion or mentor, no big-money backers. She was simply recognized for her competence, integrity and leadership by people who weren't finding it elsewhere.
Her years as councilwoman, mayor and governor add up to 12 years of elective office, one year more than Barack Obama has had. Her years as mayor and governor add up to eight years of executive experience in public office, compared to zero for both Obama and Biden.
All that, plus beauty queen, hunter, fisher, bush-pilot, etc., yet she's written not a single autobiography.
Is Sarah stupid? In high school she was in the National Honor Society. She was inducted into the Sigma Beta Delta Honor Society as a student at Alaska Pacific University. She graduated from the University of Idaho. The only factoid that I can find that would indicate any stupidity on her part is that her college major was journalism. But that does not necessarily make you stupid.
Since she has eight years experience in elected, executive office, we should know how stupid she is by how much she screwed up in those positions, right? Trouble is, she didn't screw up. In fact, her popularity has been in the 80-90% range, the highest of any public office holder in the country.
Is being Governor of Alaska or being chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission just a sort of easy gig, something a stupid person could sleep-walk through, like, say, voting "present" 130 times in the state legislature? As governor she negotiated a gas pipeline deal that had been held up for years. She had to negotiate with Big Oil and with Canada to do that, by the way. And Big Oil was not happy with the deal. I guess just any stupid person could do that.
In recent years Alaska produced 20% of all the oil and gas produced in the US. You think there might have been some pressure in such positions, given Big Oil, big money, crony politics, environmental and business regulations, and international trade were involved? Sarah resigned from the Oil & Gas Commission at one point to protest the ethics of a fellow Republican. That Republican later resigned his position and paid a fine.
Was she stupid for that? Could you imagine, say, Joe Biden resigning from an influential commission because a fellow Democrat on it had questionable ethics? (Hint: he's still in the Senate, where he chaired the Judicial Committee for 16 years.)
Maybe some people think Sarah's stupid or incompetent from what they saw on the internet or forwarded email. If so, take two aspirin and try Snopes.com.
* A black man fathered Bristol Palin's baby? FALSE.
* That list of books she banned from the Wasilla library? FALSE.
* Piper Palin flipped off a little boy? FALSE.
* That picture of Sarah in a bikini holding a rifle? FALSE.
* Quotes from Sarah concerning Creationism? FALSE.
* That quote from the transcript of her interview with Katie Couric? FALSE (It was really from Saturday Night Live.)
* And that report card showing Sarah getting low grades and an SAT score in the Paul Wellstone range? FALSE .
Her biggest gaffe? Changing her mind on the bridge to nowhere. Her biggest scandal? Getting a state employee fired for the possible reason of not firing a state trooper who drank on the job, tasered Sarah's 10-year-old nephew, and threatened to kill her father. Even if she did it for exactly those reasons, she committed no crime. This, in a state swimming in Big Oil money and federal grants. The guy who hacked into her private email account could not even find anything "juicy," despite his best efforts to do exactly that. On the clean scale, Sarah is pegged at "squeaky." They have to make stuff up to get even close.
By everything we know about Sarah Palin that is factual and verifiable, she is intelligent, honest and competent. So why then do so many people think she isn't? The answer boils down to one and only one thing: her extemporaneous public speaking. The Couric interview. The Gibson interview. The VP debates.
We can illustrate with examples. Below is an excerpt (a real one) from the VP debates that I received in a forwarded email from someone who used it to prove how stupid Sarah is. My version is taken from CNN.
Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.
(It was CNN that did not capitalize the "G" in "God", not me.)
Here is what the ellipsis ("...") in the email left out.
I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he's a schoolteacher, had been for many years.
So let's parse Sarah. She used "again" twice in the same sentence. She said "preferenced" when she meant "prefaced" (one supposes). She said "doggone it," "God bless her" and mentioned "heaven." She gave a "shout out." She said "needed" when we're sure she meant "need." She said, "I know education you are passionate about," which is a little too close to the sentence construction of Yoda in Star Wars. And that last sentence, the tenses are all over the place and the subject is a little hard to find.
So you see, Sarah is just not articulate. It took her 11 sentences to say teachers should be paid more. Barack Obama could have done that in as few as eight sentences, with perhaps as few as five of them being about himself, and with much better tense agreement and with zero doggone-its. (But he might have mentioned his grandmother.)
Now let's look at Joe Biden in that same debate.
Here's what the president said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, "Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them." What happened? Hamas won. When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it." Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.
You'll notice that each of Joe's sentences has a subject and matching verb. Tenses match. He used short, clear constructions such as "What happened?" and "Hamas won."
The only problems with Joe's excerpt here is that Hezbollah was never kicked out of Lebanon, by anybody, much less the US and France, and that no one, including Barack or Joe, recommended NATO control Lebanon. That would have been far-fetched, actually. (But what do I know? Joe chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.)
Unlike Sarah, who took 11 sentences to say teachers should be paid more, Joe took only nine sentences (by my count) to make multiple untrue statements and to express his view against elections in the West Bank. That efficiency of language is a hallmark of smart people.
You see? Sarah is not articulate enough to be President. Her experience in elected office, her experience in executive elected office, her being in honor societies in both high school and college, her being repeatedly encouraged to take on leadership roles by her peers, her successes as objectively measured -- none of that matters. She just sounds a little too, um, low class and a little too, uh, religious. She isn't a lawyer. And she hasn't even written an autobiography yet! (Then again, maybe neither has Obama.)
To be serious for a moment, when we treasure smooth talking over everything else, including truthfulness, what we will get is demagoguery and then tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson said, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." Now that's articulate. And scary.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Who did the Palin e-mail hack? Ctunnel can find out
The upshot is that there was nothing in her e-mail bin that was incriminating. According to this story, once the kid found that out, reality set in. Like "FBI" and "SECRET SERVICE." I hope they prosecute, if this is really the guy. Read through, it's intersting, and informative. Language warning:
The story behind the Palin e-mail hacking
By Michelle Malkin • September 17, 2008 07:31 PM
This afternoon, I mentioned an infamous group of hackers whose Internet bulletin board was the gathering place for those who bragged about and publicized the Sarah Palin private e-mail hacking.
A tech-savvy reader who monitors the hackers’ site e-mailed me a detailed explanation of how it went down, who was responsible, and how someone with a conscience warned a friend of the Palin family of the crime (language warning):
I missed the original incident, but monitored the discussion and repostings afterward to see what I could learn about what had happened and who was responsible.
There are several misconceptions and errors in most accounts of this story, including your post. Most significantly, the perpetrator(s) were not members of an infamous group of hackers. I don’t blame you for misunderstanding this, because in all the media coverage regarding the war with Scientology the media has completely failed to explain what Anonymous is.
Anonymous is not exactly a group. It is people using the umbrella of a web discussion board for cover to be as offensive, funny, strange, or whatever as they want.
Here’s the short version: there is a site called 4chan.org. It is an image posting site based on a popular Japanese site. The site contains multiple boards, each of which is dedicated to a particular subject. The most notorious of these boards is called /b/. /b/ is the board dedicated to random images. /b/tards, as its denizens are called, are interested only in their own amusement. Their sense of humor runs the gamut from sick to cruel to merely strange. Lolcats, as made famous by http://www.icanhascheezburger.com, originated on /b/. A lot of memes start there. There is a lot of racist humor — pictures of excited and happy black people in proximity to fried chicken abound. There is a lot of pornography. Sometimes it’s child pornography, although posting that is moderator grounds for banning — no, it’s not a pedophile ring; /b/tards post it because they think doing so is funny.
4chan does not log participants. Most people don’t use or have usernames, and post instead as “Anonymous.” And every so often, a number of /b/’s anonymous denizens decide to make somebody’s life hell. Sometimes it’s a random person who offends /b/’s sense of propriety. Sometimes it’s a forum dedicated to a serious topic. Sometimes it’s Scientology. And Tuesday, it was Sarah Palin. Or it would have been.
Sarah Palin’s email account was hacked by one person. Not a group.
This person read her emails, then posted the username and password on /b/. This happened at about 4 in the morning on Tuesday. The idea was that the sea of Anonymous /b/tards would download the emails, upload porn, and cause all manner of mischief. Anonymous is not a group of hackers. Anonymous is more like gremlins. They are hyperactive adolescents in search of amusement and joy, which they often get by upsetting people and making messes. That’s what was happening here. Anonymous did not hack the account. A hacker tried to throw Sarah Palin to Anonymous. Not all of Anonymous was having it. One person threw a crowbar in the works. Other /b/tards were displeased to miss a chance at the lulz. The moderators stepped in. The thread was deleted.
Later, other individuals created threads reposting screencaps of emails and the inbox, and put together a collection of these files. All mentions of these were purged by the moderators. So then some bright /b/tards decided to email what little stuff they had to the media.
That’s pretty much it.
This afternoon, in a thread that was later deleted, an individual claiming to be the original poster gave his account of what happened. I’ve attached screencaps. Here’s the text. The original poster used the name “rubico.” The linked email address for the poster was rubico10@yahoo.com.
This is what rubico said:
rubico 09/17/08(Wed)12:57:22 No.85782652
Hello, /b/ as many of you might already know, last night sarah palin’s yahoo was “hacked” and caps were posted on /b/, i am the lurker who did it, and i would like to tell the story.
In the past couple days news had come to light about palin using a yahoo mail account, it was in news stories and such, a thread was started full of newfags trying to do something that would not get this off the ground, for the next 2 hours the acct was locked from password recovery presumably from all this bullshit spamming.
after the password recovery was reenabled, it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)
the second was somewhat harder, the question was “where did you meet your spouse?” did some research, and apparently she had eloped with mister palin after college, if youll look on some of the screenshits that I took and other fellow anon have so graciously put on photobucket you will see the google search for “palin eloped” or some such in one of the tabs.
I found out later though more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower…
>> rubico 09/17/08(Wed)12:58:04 No.85782727
this is all verifiable if some anal /b/tard wants to think Im a troll, and there isn’t any hard proof to the contrary, but anyone who had followed the thread from the beginning to the 404 will know I probably am not, the picture I posted this topic with is the same one as the original thread.
I read though the emails… ALL OF THEM… before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor…. And pictures of her family
I then started a topic on /b/, peeps asked for pics or gtfo and I obliged, then it started to get big
Earlier it was just some prank to me, I really wanted to get something incriminating which I was sure there would be, just like all of you anon out there that you think there was some missed opportunity of glory, well there WAS NOTHING, I read everything, every little blackberry confirmation… all the pictures, and there was nothing, and it finally set in, THIS internet was serious business, yes I was behind a proxy, only one, if this shit ever got to the FBI I was fucked, I panicked, i still wanted the stuff out there but I didn’t know how to rapidshit all that stuff, so I posted the pass on /b/, and then promptly deleted everything, and unplugged my internet and just sat there in a comatose state
Then the white knight fucker came along, and did it in for everyone, I trusted /b/ with that email password, I had gotten done what I could do well, then passed the torch , all to be let down by the douchebaggery, good job /b/, this is why we cant have nice things
The “white knight fucker” was the /b/tard who thought that going through Sarah Palin’s email wasn’t cool. He logged in, changed the password, and sent an email to a friend of Palin’s warning her and letting her know the new password. Unfortunately, he then posted a screenshot of this email to let the other /b/tards know their fun was over. He failed to blank the password, and they all tried to log in and change the password — which tripped the automated Yahoo! freeze. Since then, the account has been deleted. “Rapidshit” refers to rapidshare.com — i.e., rubico wanted to download the emails, put them into one file, and put that file up on rapidshare for /b/tards and the world at large to download. But he panicked, or didn’t know how to download the emails, and so pawned that task off on Anonymous, which he didn’t realize wasn’t monolithic and in his favor.
As Paul Harvey would say, “And now you know…. the rest of the story.”
The story behind the Palin e-mail hacking
By Michelle Malkin • September 17, 2008 07:31 PM
This afternoon, I mentioned an infamous group of hackers whose Internet bulletin board was the gathering place for those who bragged about and publicized the Sarah Palin private e-mail hacking.
A tech-savvy reader who monitors the hackers’ site e-mailed me a detailed explanation of how it went down, who was responsible, and how someone with a conscience warned a friend of the Palin family of the crime (language warning):
I missed the original incident, but monitored the discussion and repostings afterward to see what I could learn about what had happened and who was responsible.
There are several misconceptions and errors in most accounts of this story, including your post. Most significantly, the perpetrator(s) were not members of an infamous group of hackers. I don’t blame you for misunderstanding this, because in all the media coverage regarding the war with Scientology the media has completely failed to explain what Anonymous is.
Anonymous is not exactly a group. It is people using the umbrella of a web discussion board for cover to be as offensive, funny, strange, or whatever as they want.
Here’s the short version: there is a site called 4chan.org. It is an image posting site based on a popular Japanese site. The site contains multiple boards, each of which is dedicated to a particular subject. The most notorious of these boards is called /b/. /b/ is the board dedicated to random images. /b/tards, as its denizens are called, are interested only in their own amusement. Their sense of humor runs the gamut from sick to cruel to merely strange. Lolcats, as made famous by http://www.icanhascheezburger.com, originated on /b/. A lot of memes start there. There is a lot of racist humor — pictures of excited and happy black people in proximity to fried chicken abound. There is a lot of pornography. Sometimes it’s child pornography, although posting that is moderator grounds for banning — no, it’s not a pedophile ring; /b/tards post it because they think doing so is funny.
4chan does not log participants. Most people don’t use or have usernames, and post instead as “Anonymous.” And every so often, a number of /b/’s anonymous denizens decide to make somebody’s life hell. Sometimes it’s a random person who offends /b/’s sense of propriety. Sometimes it’s a forum dedicated to a serious topic. Sometimes it’s Scientology. And Tuesday, it was Sarah Palin. Or it would have been.
Sarah Palin’s email account was hacked by one person. Not a group.
This person read her emails, then posted the username and password on /b/. This happened at about 4 in the morning on Tuesday. The idea was that the sea of Anonymous /b/tards would download the emails, upload porn, and cause all manner of mischief. Anonymous is not a group of hackers. Anonymous is more like gremlins. They are hyperactive adolescents in search of amusement and joy, which they often get by upsetting people and making messes. That’s what was happening here. Anonymous did not hack the account. A hacker tried to throw Sarah Palin to Anonymous. Not all of Anonymous was having it. One person threw a crowbar in the works. Other /b/tards were displeased to miss a chance at the lulz. The moderators stepped in. The thread was deleted.
Later, other individuals created threads reposting screencaps of emails and the inbox, and put together a collection of these files. All mentions of these were purged by the moderators. So then some bright /b/tards decided to email what little stuff they had to the media.
That’s pretty much it.
This afternoon, in a thread that was later deleted, an individual claiming to be the original poster gave his account of what happened. I’ve attached screencaps. Here’s the text. The original poster used the name “rubico.” The linked email address for the poster was rubico10@yahoo.com.
This is what rubico said:
rubico 09/17/08(Wed)12:57:22 No.85782652
Hello, /b/ as many of you might already know, last night sarah palin’s yahoo was “hacked” and caps were posted on /b/, i am the lurker who did it, and i would like to tell the story.
In the past couple days news had come to light about palin using a yahoo mail account, it was in news stories and such, a thread was started full of newfags trying to do something that would not get this off the ground, for the next 2 hours the acct was locked from password recovery presumably from all this bullshit spamming.
after the password recovery was reenabled, it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)
the second was somewhat harder, the question was “where did you meet your spouse?” did some research, and apparently she had eloped with mister palin after college, if youll look on some of the screenshits that I took and other fellow anon have so graciously put on photobucket you will see the google search for “palin eloped” or some such in one of the tabs.
I found out later though more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower…
>> rubico 09/17/08(Wed)12:58:04 No.85782727
this is all verifiable if some anal /b/tard wants to think Im a troll, and there isn’t any hard proof to the contrary, but anyone who had followed the thread from the beginning to the 404 will know I probably am not, the picture I posted this topic with is the same one as the original thread.
I read though the emails… ALL OF THEM… before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor…. And pictures of her family
I then started a topic on /b/, peeps asked for pics or gtfo and I obliged, then it started to get big
Earlier it was just some prank to me, I really wanted to get something incriminating which I was sure there would be, just like all of you anon out there that you think there was some missed opportunity of glory, well there WAS NOTHING, I read everything, every little blackberry confirmation… all the pictures, and there was nothing, and it finally set in, THIS internet was serious business, yes I was behind a proxy, only one, if this shit ever got to the FBI I was fucked, I panicked, i still wanted the stuff out there but I didn’t know how to rapidshit all that stuff, so I posted the pass on /b/, and then promptly deleted everything, and unplugged my internet and just sat there in a comatose state
Then the white knight fucker came along, and did it in for everyone, I trusted /b/ with that email password, I had gotten done what I could do well, then passed the torch , all to be let down by the douchebaggery, good job /b/, this is why we cant have nice things
The “white knight fucker” was the /b/tard who thought that going through Sarah Palin’s email wasn’t cool. He logged in, changed the password, and sent an email to a friend of Palin’s warning her and letting her know the new password. Unfortunately, he then posted a screenshot of this email to let the other /b/tards know their fun was over. He failed to blank the password, and they all tried to log in and change the password — which tripped the automated Yahoo! freeze. Since then, the account has been deleted. “Rapidshit” refers to rapidshare.com — i.e., rubico wanted to download the emails, put them into one file, and put that file up on rapidshare for /b/tards and the world at large to download. But he panicked, or didn’t know how to download the emails, and so pawned that task off on Anonymous, which he didn’t realize wasn’t monolithic and in his favor.
As Paul Harvey would say, “And now you know…. the rest of the story.”
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