{"id":18651,"date":"2016-12-16T19:07:31","date_gmt":"2016-12-16T19:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=18651"},"modified":"2016-12-16T19:07:31","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T19:07:31","slug":"smooth-transition-running-into-serious-bumps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=18651","title":{"rendered":"Smooth transition running into serious bumps"},"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\/russian-hacker.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-18652\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/russian-hacker-300x165.jpg\" alt=\"russian-hacker\" width=\"300\" height=\"165\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/russian-hacker-300x165.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/russian-hacker-672x372.jpg 672w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/russian-hacker.jpg 728w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There goes my trick knee again. It&#8217;s throbbing. My gut is grumbling. My fingers are tingling.<\/p>\n<p>Something is telling me that the &#8220;smooth and seamless transition&#8221; from the Obama administration to the Trump administration is going to become a lot less smooth and seamless.<\/p>\n<p>Why? Gosh. Let me think. Oh! It&#8217;s that Russian hacking thing, I reckon.<\/p>\n<p>Donald J. Trump is dismissing &#8212; and dissing &#8212; the intelligence community&#8217;s assessment that Russian spooks hacked into our cyber network and sought to affect the presidential election.<\/p>\n<p>President Obama, meanwhile, is declaring his intention before he leaves office in a little more than month to strike back at the Russians.<\/p>\n<p>Who&#8217;s reacting correctly here, the president or the president-elect?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to go with the man who&#8217;s still on the watch in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n<p>Trump&#8217;s stated view that the CIA is all wet and his belief that the Russians didn&#8217;t do anything wrong is a profoundly dangerous posture to take, given what we know about Russian President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s\u00a0world view and his demonstrated ability to commit atrocious mischief whenever the opportunity presents itself.<\/p>\n<p>Barack Obama is planning to take action against the Russians, while\u00a0hoping for\u00a0an easy handoff to the man who&#8217;ll succeed him.<\/p>\n<p>The transition could be made a lot smoother if the new guy, Trump, would accept what the\u00a0intelligence community already knows. The Russians aren&#8217;t our friends and they aren&#8217;t likely to become friends if they detect they have a patsy sitting behind that big desk in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n<p>My hope, of course, is that the president retains the dignity he has brought to the office and ensures as smooth a transition as possible. If only, though, this Russian hacking matter hadn&#8217;t gotten in the way.<\/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>There goes my trick knee again. It&#8217;s throbbing. My gut is grumbling. My fingers are tingling. Something is telling me that the &#8220;smooth and seamless transition&#8221; from the Obama administration to the Trump administration is going to become a lot less smooth and seamless. Why? Gosh. Let me think. Oh! It&#8217;s that Russian hacking thing, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=18651\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Smooth transition running into serious bumps<\/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":[5,13,14],"tags":[540,989,1424,6736,5125],"class_list":["post-18651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-cia","tag-donald-trump","tag-russian-hackers","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18651","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=18651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18653,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18651\/revisions\/18653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}