Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

national news

McCain speaks truth to … fraud

U.S. Sen. John McCain remains in strong voice and for that I am grateful.

Donald John Trump congratulated Vladimir Putin on his re-election as Russia’s president. The message didn’t go down well with the stricken Republican senator from Arizona, who is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer.

McCain issued a statement that read in part, according to The Hill: In a statement, McCain called Trump’s phone call to Putin an insult to “every Russian citizen who was denied the right to vote in a free and fair election to determine their country’s future.”

“An American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections,” McCain said.

Did the president discuss with Putin the questions about Russian meddling in our 2016 presidential election? Did he mention a word to him about his support of Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad? Did he bring up the murder of journalists or the poisoning of a former Soviet spy and his daughter?

Oh, no! He wouldn’t go there. Instead, he “congratulated” Putin, despite some serious reporting about election fraud.

McCain said more about Trump’s call to Putin: “And by doing so with Vladimir Putin, President Trump insulted every Russian citizen who was denied the right to vote in a free and fair election to determine their country’s future, including the countless Russian patriots who have risked so much to protest and resist Putin’s regime.”

Trump is so very tough on American law enforcement officials, on critics here at home and even on allies abroad. Yet he soft-pedals his comments on Putin?

Shameful.

International news, national news, political news

Press flack keeps insulting the public’s intelligence

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders fielded a direct question today from a member of the White House press corps: Is Russia a friend or foe of the United States?

Her answer defies all logic and it insults the intelligence of Americans across the board.

Sanders said “it is up to the Russians to decide” if they are going to be friendly or unfriendly toward the United States. Such a goofy response causes many of us out here to say: What the … is she talking about?

I need to remind Sanders what her boss, Donald John Trump, used to say about “identifying our enemies.” While running for president, Trump excoriated President Barack Obama for refusing to identify “Muslim terrorists” by name. Obama’s response was that we are not at war with Islam, but we are at war with those who are mass murderers of Muslims.

Why, then, does the current president identify Russia as a supreme foe of this country? Why does his press flack sing from the White House song book that refuses to identify our adversary — by name!

The Russians have all but declared war on our electoral system. They have sown discord, dismay and discontent among Americans, many of whom have lost total and unvarnished faith in our nation’s election system.

The Russians and their president, Vladimir Putin, are not our friends. Putin is a trained spook. He once ran the Soviet Union’s spy agency. He is, in the words of former Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly, “a killer.” Putin has sanctioned the murder of journalists and anyone who dissents from his public policy.

This man is a friend? It is up to the Russians to “decide” if they are our friend?

Listen up, young lady: You insult our intelligence constantly by spouting such idiocy.

International news

Welcome to center stage, Mike Pompeo

Can there be a more complicated set of circumstances awaiting the next secretary of state?

Donald Trump tweets the firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He tweets it, I’m tellin’ ya. Tillerson said he doesn’t know why he was canned. The president then said he’s going to nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo to be the next top diplomat.

Oh … and this is occurring while the United States is beginning to prepare for a potentially historic summit between Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Tillerson today thanks everyone under the sun for the opportunity to serve as secretary of state. Well, almost everyone. He doesn’t thank Trump. Um, I’m betting Trump and Tillerson aren’t going to talk much to each other going forward.

Pffeww!!

I’m worn out — and I’m out here in the Flyover Country peanut gallery.

Pompeo also happens to one of those intelligence experts who believes the Russians meddled in our 2016 presidential election. He has said so on the record. He joins a distinguished list of officials: the director of national intelligence, the head of the National Security Agency, the president’s national security adviser (who well could be the next one out the door). They’ve all said the same thing: The Russians did it and they all contradict the idiocy spouted by the president, that if Vladimir Putin says he didn’t do it, then that’s good enough.

I sincerely hope someone on on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which must vote to confirm Pompeo, asks him directly — once more — whether he still believes the Russians meddled in our election.

And with equal sincerity, I hope the Senate wastes little time in getting Pompeo confirmed. He’s got a full plate waiting for him when he takes over.

I mean — crap! — he’s got to prepare the president for this summit with Kim Jong Un. I’ll also have to hope Donald Trump will listen to what the new guy has to say.

International news, military news

Russia remains off Trump’s danger-zone radar

I want to join the chorus of Donald J. Trump’s critics who cannot fathom why the president of the United States cannot bring himself to say anything critical about Vladimir Putin, the strongman who runs Russia.

Putin this past week announced the unveiling of weapons systems he said would neutralize the U.S. missile defense systems. His aim seems to be able to strike the United States of America whenever he felt like it.

The response from Trump? Nothing. Not a frigging sound! He isn’t challenging Putin’s assertion of military superiority the way he has done, say, with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

What the hell is the matter with this guy, the president of the United States?

I endorse the view put forward late this past week from a retired U.S. Army general, Barry McCaffrey, who contends that Russia in reality is nothing more than a developing Third World country. It economy is smaller than California’s economy, McCaffrey said; Russia’s standing army is inferior; it has a population that is less than half of that of the United States; its submarine and surface-missile weapons systems essentially are a joke, he said.

In no way, according to McCaffrey — a Vietnam War combat veteran who had a major command during the Persian Gulf War — would Russia dare launch a first strike against the United States.

Where is the “Little Rocket Man” epithet that the president could use against Putin? Why doesn’t he tweet some idiotic rejoinder about how his “button is bigger” than the one at Putin’s fingertips?

Good grief, man! Has the Russian strongman cast some sort of spell over the president of the United States?

Or … is there validity to reports of something fishy involving Trump’s business dealings in Russia?

Oh, I forgot. Trump said he has “no business activity” in Russia. No deals have been struck.

And we are supposed to believe him? Sure thing.

International news

Actually, Obama did act on Russian meddling

Donald Trump went on a Twitter tirade over the weekend and in the process he managed to tweet out yet another lie.

I know. It’s just so hard to believe. Right? Actually, well … no. It isn’t. It’s Trump’s modus operandi.

While he was blasting former President Barack H. Obama, Democrats, the FBI, Hillary Clinton, H.R. McMaster and the media in the wake of the indictments over the Russian election meddling, the president accused his predecessor of doing nothing about the Russians.

Actually, sir, President Obama did do something.

I feel the need to remind Trump of that. Except that he knows it already, which makes his misstatement yet another outright lie.

Obama looked Russian strongman Vladimir Putin in the eye and told him to quit interfering in our electoral process. Then the president signed an executive order that booted several Russian diplomats out of the country, forced the closure of Russian diplomatic property and imposed strict economic sanctions on the Russians.

He sought to punish the Russians for doing what the intelligence community has confirmed what they did.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted several Russians and three Russian companies for their role in the 2016 election interference. Both houses of Congress approved — with overwhelming majorities — toughened sanctions on Russia, only to have the president decline to agree to them.

In that light, Donald Trump has the gall to say that Barack Obama has done “nothing” to punish the Russians?

Liar.

national news

Now this: Mueller indicts Russians for meddling

Let’s see. If we’re keeping score, the tab is piling up against Donald Trump’s claim that the Russians didn’t interfere in our 2016 presidential election.

The nation’s top spooks, the folks who run our intelligence agencies, say in unison that the Russians meddled in our election.

Now, today, we get word that special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russians and three Russian companies for — drum roll! — interfering in our election.

But … the president of the United States is willing to take the word of a former KGB boss, Vladimir Putin, that he didn’t do what our intelligence experts say he did. Donald Trump is the lone denier in all of this.

To be clear, the indictments don’t suggest any collusion from the Trump campaign. The president might take some solace in that knowledge, although there’s still more to be determined by Mueller’s legal team as it pores through all the material that has piled up.

Nor do the indictments say that the Russian hackers’ activity actually affected the outcome. They did not determine the outcome. I get that, too.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who announced the indictments, said the Russians did accomplish their mission in their meddling, which was to cause “discord” and to throw doubt over our nation’s electoral process.

When will the president ever acknowledge what is now widely known? My hunch: He’ll take his denial with him to the grave.

Weird.

International news, national news

Putin can declare: Mission Accomplished

I don’t know to say “Mission Accomplished” in Russian.

However, I am certain that somewhere in the Kremlin or wherever he hangs out these days, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is able to declare victory in his effort to disrupt the U.S. electoral system.

I don’t know if the Russian goons who hacked into our election system actually affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential contest. To be honest, I doubt that the interference had a tangible, demonstrable impact. I doubt that the Russian meddling by itself elected Donald John Trump as our president.

Putin, though, shouldn’t concern himself with that precisely. He should be happy as the dickens at what he has been able to accomplish.

He has sown doubt in our electoral process. He has shrouded our system under a cloud of doubt. He has thrown the U.S. Congress into a tizzy as it does battle within itself over how to deal with the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and his investigation into this very disturbing matter.

Putin has wrenched the White House, indeed the president himself, into spasms of apoplexy. Trump has lashed out at the FBI, the Department of Justice, the attorney general, his deputy AG, the nation’s intelligence community, at congressional Democrats and even a few congressional Republicans.

The president says he’ll talk to Mueller “under oath.” His lawyers are advising him not to do it.

If you’re Vladimir Putin, you must be laughing with your fellow spies and former spies at what you have accomplished.

Putin has done what should have been impossible. He has infected our electoral system with with doubt over what we have considered to be a sacred trust.

And the more the president continues to deny Russian involvement in this meddling the more he does — in the words of U.S. Sen. John McCain — “Putin’s work for him.”

Just remember that Vladimir Putin once was the chief spook within the Soviet Union’s own massive spy network. He hasn’t forgotten the tricks of his trade.

International news, national news, political news

When will POTUS ever recognize the Russia threat?

I guess there’s not a single thing I do can do except keep yapping out loud about it. So, therefore, I will.

When is the president of the United States going to acknowledge publicly what many of his fellow Americans already know: Russia threatens our sacred political process.

Instead, Donald John Trump Sr. continues to disparage our law enforcement agencies, our counterintelligence organizations, our criminal justice system, our key protectors.

Trump ratcheted up that criticism of our law enforcement agencies today by allowing the release of a Republican-authored memo that accuses the FBI of bias in its investigation into Russian hacking of our electoral process.

The president attacked the leadership of the FBI and the Justice Department. Oh, sure, he managed to say a good word about the “rank and file” within the FBI. The men and women on the front line, though, work for the very leadership that Trump has continued to criticize, undermine and — some might argue — defame.

I won’t accuse the president of defaming the FBI and DOJ leadership, but I keep returning to a fundamental question: When is the president going to admit in the open that Russia is a bad actor?

Russian President/strongman Vladimir Putin is no “friend” of the United States. I don’t know this as fact, but I cannot believe for an instant that the former KGB boss thinks as highly of Trump as the president says he does. A large part of me believes Putin is laughing his backside off at the confusion, chaos and controversy he has delivered to the United States as a result of the Russian meddling in our 2016 presidential election.

Putin committed an act of aggression against this country and for the life of me, I cannot accept why the president of the United States refuses to call that aggression what it is.

I have my share of theories as to why he remains quiet on Russia. I maintain my belief that Americans deserve to see the president’s full tax returns and financial disclosure. They very well could tell us plenty about the president’s reluctance to call the Russians out.

Donald Trump’s silence is deafening in the extreme.

legal news, national news

FBI doesn’t deserve bashing from POTUS

Maybe my memory is failing me. Or maybe it isn’t.

I’m having trouble remembering the last president of the United States to disparage the nation’s foremost law enforcement agency, the FBI.

Therein is where Donald J. Trump is doing things so very differently from his predecessors. He’s calling the FBI a lot of names. He alleges that morale is in the crapper; he says its leadership is in shambles; he is saying the FBI needs to be rebuilt.

Oh, and he’s calling the FBI’s role in the examination of Russian interference in our 2016 presidential election a “sham” and a “Democratic hoax.”

I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of an FBI agent. How would I like working for a government being run by a head of state and government who is so distrustful of my agency?

Trump keeps savaging FBI

If the president is going to contend that morale is so lousy, perhaps he is playing a major role in flushing it down a sewer hole.

He’s also been disparaging the attorney general, whose agency — the Justice Department — controls the FBI. Trump dislikes that AG Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia-election meddling probe, as he should have done. The president’s reaction has been to send signals that Sessions’s time as AG might be dwindling.

Of course, there’s also the issue of Trump questioning the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia did meddle in the election and that Vladimir Putin issued the order to do it. Putin told the president he didn’t meddle — and that denial from the former head of the Soviet spy agency is good enough for Donald Trump.

Strange. Very strange.

International news

Take it easy with the ‘P-word,’ Mr. President

Donald John Trump isn’t known for possessing any sense of circumspection. He kind of blurts words out without thinking of how they might sound.

Such as when he endorsed Roy Moore in his race to become the next U.S. senator from Alabama. He said he doesn’t want a “puppet of Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer” to serve in the Senate, referring to the Democrat in the race, Doug Jones.

Imagine the president calling anyone a “puppet.” How can someone who many of us believe is a puppet of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin hang that pejorative tag on another politician?

The Russian government, which Putin runs with an iron fist, interfered in our 2016 election. Intelligence analysts believe Putin wanted Trump to defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton. Trump has refused to acknowledge publicly what the nation’s top intelligence agencies have said already about Putin’s involvement in meddling in our electoral process.

Other analysts contend that Putin is playing Trump.

Let me think for a moment.

Isn’t that how someone manipulates a political puppet?