{"id":18641,"date":"2016-12-16T14:12:51","date_gmt":"2016-12-16T14:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=18641"},"modified":"2016-12-16T14:12:51","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T14:12:51","slug":"potus-planning-to-take-final-shot-at-russians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=18641","title":{"rendered":"POTUS planning to take final shot at Russians"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/obama_putin.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-18646\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/obama_putin-300x194.jpg\" alt=\"obama_putin\" width=\"300\" height=\"194\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/obama_putin-300x194.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/obama_putin-768x496.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/obama_putin.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Donald J. Trump doesn&#8217;t believe the findings of the CIA and other intelligence officials that Russia sought to influence the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll presume, therefore, that he won&#8217;t take any action against them.<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s the thing, dear reader: We have a president on duty who <em>does<\/em> believe the CIA analysis, who has expressed outrage at the idea of foreign intervention in our electoral process &#8212; and who has vowed that he will act &#8220;in our own time&#8221; to retaliate against the hacking nation.<\/p>\n<p>President Obama is in office until Jan. 20. It is sounding increasingly likely that he&#8217;ll do something to punish the Russians for what the CIA and others have said they&#8217;ve done. The specifics of what they did remain unclear, but the president&#8217;s longtime adversary, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, also appears complicit in what has transpired.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/politics\/obama-says-%E2%80%98we-will%E2%80%99-retaliate-against-russia-for-election-hacking\/ar-AAlCY8m?li=BBmkt5R&amp;ocid=spartandhp\">http:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/politics\/obama-says-%E2%80%98we-will%E2%80%99-retaliate-against-russia-for-election-hacking\/ar-AAlCY8m?li=BBmkt5R&amp;ocid=spartandhp<\/a><\/p>\n<p>My guess would be that Obama will act in ways that might be difficult to undo. Trade sanctions? Diplomatic pressure? Retaliatory hacking of Russian cyber activity?<\/p>\n<p>Obama said on National Public Radio this morning that some of the options being considered would be public and would be reported; other options might be done in secret. That&#8217;s the beauty &#8212; if you want to call it such &#8212; of being in charge of a vast intelligence network that can do these things undercover, out of sight.<\/p>\n<p>The Russians need to know that what they did cannot be tolerated by any government, let alone by the United States of America.<\/p>\n<p>If the new president is going to dismiss the fact-based information gathered by the CIA, then it falls on the current president to act while he still has the stroke to do so.<\/p>\n<p>Go for it, Mr. President!<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donald J. Trump doesn&#8217;t believe the findings of the CIA and other intelligence officials that Russia sought to influence the 2016 presidential election. I&#8217;ll presume, therefore, that he won&#8217;t take any action against them. But here&#8217;s the thing, dear reader: We have a president on duty who does believe the CIA analysis, who has expressed &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=18641\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">POTUS planning to take final shot at Russians<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[74,540,989,1424,6755,5125],"class_list":["post-18641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","category-uncategorized","tag-2016-election","tag-barack-obama","tag-cia","tag-donald-trump","tag-russian-hacking","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18641"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18647,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18641\/revisions\/18647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}