Trump not smart.

However, Mitch McConnell is... when told before the election about the Putin playbook, Mitch blocked investigation and retaliation so that his wife could get appointed to Trump's cabinet as Secretary of Transportation.

Mission accomplished, Mitch. Chow down, patriot.

Priceless.

"Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Unless you catch "hackers" in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn't this brought up before election?
5:21 AM - 12 Dec 2016"

Why wasn't this brought up before election? Whaaaaa? Let's show him the transcripts of his very own words uttered during the debates - where he discussed Putin's involvement in our election.

One no longer needs to wonder why Donald J. Trump does not bother with Presidential Daily Briefings; he can't remember anything he is told or that he has said anyway. Remember promises to "drain the swamp"?

Trump: "like a smart person"

It wasn't brought up before the election because Hillary Clinton did not want to draw attention to how the DNC in collusion with the Clinton campaign undermined Bernie Sanders candidacy. He never had a chance. The two chief conspirators on the DNC were Debbie Wasserman Shultz and Donna Brazille.

"It wasn't brought up before the election"

Whaaaa????

You have a Trumpian memory! Fantastic! Bigly Smurt! Yuuuge Memory! Nothing to see here! Do not look behind the curtain! Would you like the transcripts of Trump being asked about it in the debates? Or links to the news being reported, such as 17 American intelligence agencies know it was the Russians doing the hacking...

*******************

"Yes, 17 intelligence agencies really did say Russia was behind hacking"
Eliza Collins , USA TODAY

"Donald Trump’s claim that the United States has "no idea" who is behind recent email hacks is just not true.

The fact-checking website Politifact says Hillary Clinton is correct when she says 17 federal intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia is behind the hacking.

“We have 17, 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyber attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin. And they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing,” Clinton said during Wednesday's presidential debate in Las Vegas.

Trump pushed back, saying that Clinton and the United States had “no idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else.”

But Clinton is correct. On OCT. 7, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement on behalf of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The USIC is made up of 16 agencies, in addition to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence."

The faux-Bernie troll loves to pretend it was all about the DNC. Trumpian!

Nothing to see here! Do not look behind the curtain!

Why wasn't it brought up before the election?

Newsflash: It was. I remember Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Donna Brazil and John Podesta complaining about Russian hacking ... instead of defending their own words in those emails.

pogo -- " I remember Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Donna Brazil and John Podesta complaining about Russian hacking ... instead of defending their own words in those emails."

False equivalency, much?

17 agencies offer undisputed reporting of Russian espionage attacks on an American election and these posters blame it on Clinton and Podesta? What is it with kids these days?

If they were around in The Cold War they would understand how serious this is! Kids have no sense of history or the gravity of the situation! No wonder Trump won.

Stop:

guess I'm dense. Where's the "false equivalence?"

I believe it was 17 agencies that approved the uranium deal w/ Russia, under Obama.Clinton,

pogo -- " I remember Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Donna Brazil and John Podesta complaining about Russian hacking ... instead of defending their own words in those emails."

False equivalency, much?

Clumsy deflection because no one drew an equivalence. I was addressing the false assertion that no one brought this issue up before the election. That's factually untrue. LOTS of people brought it up - I named four of them.

Alexander Hamilton on foreign (Putin) espionage and the role of the electoral college:

"These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?"

Perhaps the young'uns posting above will say this is also Podesta's fault; that Russia is really swell (trying to use your kid talk); give our highest office to whom Putin worked so hard to cultivate along with his Exxon award winning friend Web Link , and Flynn, that dinner companion of Putin/Stein Web Link

... but please, kids, argue among yourselves while Rome burns.

And as it seems you're too busy pounding loose granular substances, to identify the source of the nom de plume: that was Trumps own quote.

Forget pounding sand. The electors should be briefed by the CIA on all relevant data. Briefing by the AG and SecState on illegal conflicts of interest.

And briefed by their own morality pond possibly choosing a man who freely chose Bannon.

Ugh.

Russian espionage by Vladimir Putin is an act of war. Anyone blocking investigators for political reasons is a traitor.

Anyone trying to bypass sanctions for greed is also a traitor, albeit for greed.

I wonder if people had the same reaction to our government's interference with other elections... like the one in Israel less than a year ago and President Obama's explicit anti-Brexit comments.

Even the Washington Post recently noted the USA's long history of interfering in foreign elections.

Web Link

Apparently, Vladimir Putin is gaining popularity among those identifying themselves as Republican:

Web Link

"Okay, pogo, who exactly is paying you for putting posts that make no sense -- Donald Trump, or Vladimir Putin?"

Seriously? That's the best you got? "someone" is paying POGO to post questions of the liberal agenda? Really? I know POGO and "conservative" he is not. Libertarian is more like it. And like him, we are just looking for things to be factual as opposed to partisan. We know your partisan leanings and your total inability to look at things without your liberal filter.

And here comes the attack. Go ahead.

@Menlo Park: other -- Stop it. Just stop it.

You folks have been bending over backwards trying to excuse everything that has come out that shows that the incoming administration is not what it says it is.

And as for "And like him, we are just looking for things to be factual as opposed to partisan" -- if you really think anyone is buying that, I have some beachfront property in Kansas I'd like to sell you.

Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, and associate of Julian Assange, said on the record that he flew to Washington, D.C. to personally obtain the Clinton e-mails for Wikileaks. He said he had a secret rendezvous with a covert DNC source near American University similar to the ones Bob Woodward had with ‘Deep Throat’ during the Watergate scandal. The leaker’s motivation was “disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the DNC’s rigging of the Democratic primary against Bernie Sanders”. Murray said that his source had legal access to the information and emphasized that the e-mails came from leaks inside the DNC and not from Russian hackers. Murray was relieved of his post as British ambassador amid allegations of misconduct.

It is interesting how the Clintons and their cronies lauded ‘Deep Throat’ for his patriotism during Watergate and are now excoriating Wikileaks for publically revealing their unethical behavior. It stinks of hypocrisy. But that’s the Clintons for you. Bernie Sanders is honest. Hillary is a pathological liar.

Russian apologists in our towns. Who knew? Kids these days - no sense of Cold War history, nor respect for murderous KGB dictators.

Search Obama *interfered in Israel election* and the top sites are Washington TIMES, Breitbart, Newsmax, CNS, etc.. It's a fairy tale. A former Obama guy went over there. Rubio bought into that meme and got Three Pinocchios from WaPo for his overheated rhetoric and this "mostly false" Web Link

Israel is getting thirty eight (38) BILLION in taxpayer dollars over the next decade for weapons.

Mr. Pogo should get his hair colored - his roots are showing... Breitbart, Newsmax, CNS, etc..

Wow. Now that's a level of deflection breathtaking even for trolls.

Someone openly posits that Russia's interference "IS AN ACT OF WAR" and those that question it are "TRAITOR(S)." Even question it? Well, that would include almost every member of the current administration, wouldn't it? Newsflash, Chief: I don't want anyone interfering with our elections, either.

But my question is that if it is wrong for a foreign government to interfere with OUR election, ISN'T IT EQUALLY WRONG FOR OUR GOVERNMENT TO INTERFERE WITH ANOTHER COUNTRY'S ELECTION?

This is not a theoretical or academic question. As both the Washington Post link (from THIS WEEK) and I pointed out, it has happened twice THIS YEAR - once in Israel where both our State Department and President Obama's political operatives actively worked to defeat the Prime Minister (yeah, that's called interference...); and in Great Britain where President Obama warned the Brits not to support Brexit by erroneously telling them they would "go to the back of the line" on trade. You know, the President of the United States warning British voters might just change some votes. (turns out it did...)

I can only imagine the howls if Putin so vocally and openly threatened Americans not to support Hillary.

Pot, meet kettle. So where's the outrage?

"But that’s the Clintons for you. Bernie Sanders is honest."

The Clintons do not run the 17 intelligence agencies that reported the Russian espionage. And Bernie wants this investigated.

Oh, and here's the news story from that infamous right wing blog, Politico.

Web Link

It states that the money from the State Department (note the QUOTES) "was later used for a campaign opposing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015, according to a BIPARTISAN (EMPHASIS ADDED) Senate investigative report released on Tuesday." The report was authored by one Republican and one Democrat.

But the point can't be about the source because the esteemed Washington Post noted about a dozen similar instances - all of which are conveniently ignored.

No one is defending Putin. But unlike the partisans on this blog who blame their unexpected defeat on everything and everyone but their own candidate, I choose to condemn BOTH.

I am only asking why there isn't similar outrage for our country's own actions?

I can hardly wait for the deflections.

When our government interferes it's wrong,

When our media interferes that's terrifying,

(CNN, Brazil, Debates, DNC, Primaries, Sanders, New York Times, Podesta, Collusion)

"blame their unexpected defeat on everything and everyone but their own candidate"

Where in this blog did that happen?

This is about Trump needing to have this all aired out immediately, so that it does not fester during his term(s). Every foreign policy decision will be viewed in light of Russian espionage in American elections.

Example: if Trump rescinds the current sanctions in place because of Putin and the Ukraine, without resolving all this, it will look like payback on Putin's espionage, with a bonus to Exxon and their half Trillion Dollar deal in limbo.

You youngsters haven't been around long enough to know the history of the Cold War, Russia's interference in European democracies or all of Putin's atrocities (100,000 dead in Chechnya, blowing up apartment buildings. etc..)

Putin apologists. Amazing.

"@Menlo Park: other -- Stop it. Just stop it."

I will if you will.

The CIA hasn't been a real intelligence agency since 1992. For 24 years it has been a bunch of ivy league stumblebums who need both hands to find their rear ends. Since 1992 there has been a steady stream of intelligence failures making the United States the laughing stock of the world. The Sûreté Nationale and Mossad can run circles around the Langley Libtards. Obama politicized the Justice Department, parts but fortunately not all of the FBI, and the CIA.

Everyone is complaining about the hacking when there was no hacking only leaking from a source within the DNC. My question is why has the Obama Administration been so blatantly incompetent in preventing cyber espionage?
And Why does it make up lies about the Russians? The answer is obviously to deflect attention from its ineptness.

Julian Assange has admitted that it was not a State (i.e. Foreign Government) sponsored group. He affirmed that it was an individual who did the transfer of leaked, not hacked, documents. The Clintons are trying to divert attention from two glaring facts:

1) Hillary conspired with the DNC to undermine the Sander's Campaign and rig the primary so Sanders would lose, and

2) The DNC and the Clinton campaign engaged in continuous illegal and unethical behavior during the primary and general election campaigns.

Now Hillary and the DNC are petulantly crying that their egregious conduct doesn't count because someone did not get their permission to blow the whistle on their dishonesty and corruption.

Get out the violins. Josh Ernest, the klutzy clown posing as a White House Press Secretary, whose boss pressured the CIA to promote this ridiculous nonsense that the Russians were behind so called hacking when in fact the Obama Administration was so incompetent that it could not catch the person responsible for the leaking.

Well I have news for you the Russians weren't responsible for Hillary Clinton's reckless behavior with regard to her server and her catastrophic foreign policy that increased violence in the Middle East and laid the foundation for the meteoric rise of ISIS (the Junior Varsity) either.

It was the DNC's misfortune that it had at least one person with a conscience who did not agree that Hillary's and the DNCs corrupt conduct was acceptable; that Bernie Sanders deserved the chance to compete on a level playing field. That person leaked the Clinton's and DNC's dastardly deeds to a third party, who was not working for the Russians, who in turn passed the information to Julian Assange.

Talk about fake news. Obama is one of the biggest promoter of fake news.

The Putin Proponents are out in full force! Note how he "liked" his comment 18 times in the short time that it was viewed by few other readers.

Watch the cowards apologize for Russia and it's murderous dictator, deflect and assign blame to ridiculous theories, babble on and on. He calls it a leak, when it was an act of espionage.

"Talk about fake news." Take your head out of the sand.

SEVENTEEN (17) US intelligence agencies say it was Russian espionage attacking America and our election system.

Today, the FBI agreed completely.

Putin is now one of the richest men in the world (est $80 billion in theft from his country) and the most powerful (he needn't worry about election or legislative branches, nor a constitution and has the former KGB at his beck and call.) He is a murderous dictator.

And above you have the Russian Apologists, posters who put party before country. They are too weak to defend America - they decide to listen to Fox and run and hide from Putin. Them they call it fake news.

Fake news? SEVENTEEN (17) US intelligence agencies AND THE FBI say it was Russian espionage attacking America and our election system.

Do not listen to these cowards. They are unworthy of citizenship. They will not fight for their country against Russian espionage, instead burying their head in the sand. Disgraceful. Utterly disgraceful.

Obama spoke one truth today - Obama: 'Reagan Would Roll Over In His Grave' over current GOP fondness for Putin and Russia

These illiterate youngsters need turn off Fox and pick up a history book - do a search on "Cold War". Then read up on The Gipper - Ronald Wilson Reagan, the man who won the Cold War.

For shame!

I feel much better after hearing Obama told Putin

"to cut it out"

"I feel much better after hearing Obama told Putin "to cut it out" And the reports say all the hacking happened before, and not after, Obama talked to Putin. You think Trump will tell Putin to stop anything? Putin owns Trump. Putin will withdrawal all that Russian oligarch money backing Trump - the money that Eric Trump said bailed Trump out of bankruptcy in the 2008 real estate crash.

Funny about the misplaced outrage. Blame Obama. Blame the DNC. Laugh at Podesta. All while a former CIA chief called Putin's espionage the "political equivalent of 9/11."

So much for these posters caring about national security. Now, please, continue to cut and paste some falsehoods from the Trump transition team. (I heard a couple whoppers over the last couple days. Trump has to denounce this and tell America what he will do - at a minimum, far more stringent sanctions.

Yeah, right. Don't bet on it. Trump's first sloppy wet kiss will be to remove sanctions on Putin.

Obama knew about the hacking since 2015, Why didn't he bring it up or do anything about it before the election.

Obama told Trump

"I'd advise Mr. Trump to stop wining and go try to make his case to get votes "

Good advice, he did,

You guys are the type that blame the girl, amirite? Who's the criminal here...

This meme has been disproved so many times that I start to wonder if these Putin Proponents are even capable of simple literacy - "Obama knew about the hacking since 2015, Why didn't he bring it up"

Joint Statement, Oct. 7: The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) (the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations...

Of course, the lamestream media decided that they would run with the Crooked Hillary, and, omigosh, another server story.

Also on 7 October? Trump tape released where Trump personally brags he serially sexually assaults women by "grabbing their p***ies" and more.

So maybe Putin owns much Trump debt. What if Putin owns something else? Remember that Miss Universe contest in Moscow a couple years ago? The source of all those Trump Word Salad jokes with the 'Russian dressing' punchline?

Think a former KGB agent could catch (or manufacture) a little film of narcissist Trump in a compromised position? See how that's done? Two can play this speculation game. Or we can stick with facts.

Fact: tyrannical kleptocrat, murdering dictator, avowed enemy of America Vlad Putin ordered a Russian espionage attack on America's election system, on Democracy itself. Do not listen to the Russian apologists with no awareness of history or the current world order. Do listen to the professionals - former CIA chief: the "political equivalent of 9/11"

Don't listen to the cowards - the Russia Apologists.

So Putin hacked the Clinton campaign and DNC e-mails Then he gave them to wikileaks to disseminate so he could blackmail Trump with a video when he became President, so Putin could rule the world? Are you serious?

I imagine Putin shaking in his sable hat at the thought of HRC winning the Presidency. "I'm doomed if she wins" he may have said. "We must come up with a diabolical plan to make sure that dimwit Donald Trump wins this election!". Time passes and they determine a good first step is to hack the DNC computers. Finding it surprisingly easy to do so because of the private server being used for top secret correspondence they hit the jackpot. A treasure trove of embarrassing Podesta emails, evidence of Ms. Brazile passing debate questions to HRC, and the coup de grace - evidence that the DNC conspired against Bernie Sanders so that HRC would be the Democratic candidate.

The next steps are easy - get the information to Julian Assange and have him drip it out of his Embassy day after day after day. Voila' - Trump wins.

But - the Russians don't stop there. Showing their true brilliance, they predict that Donald Trump will win the critical states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania by a total vote difference of only around 80,000 votes across the 3 states. So what do they do? They manipulate our election further so that HRC wins the popular vote by almost 3,000,000 million votes but they make sure the extra votes don't come from Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania! Now that's genius!

Got to hand it to them - clever people.

I think you're right, but don't forget they had to send in kgb spies to hack the vote again during the recount.

They're now leaning on the electoral voters this weekend to make sure they vote for Trump on monday.

Pretty cagey those Russians

Laughing about a Russian espionage attack.

Okaaaaay.

Putin Appeasers. Right here in America. Russian Sympathizers.

Listen to Real Americans that call for immediate independent investigations: Senator John McCain. Senator Marco Rubio. Senator Lindsey Graham.

SEVENTEEN (17) US intelligence agencies AND THE FBI say it was Russian espionage attacking America and our election system.

The attack Appeasers above put party before patriotism. Cowards. Reagan no longer rolling over in his grave - he's spinning with anger.

Fools be clowning about an espionage attack on our democracy. Must be some of those authoritarian alt righters that hide in the shadows.

@ Ethical

And the DNC conspiracy to undermine a legitimate candidate in Bernie Sanders was also an attack on our Democracy. These attacks are to be expected from Foreign adversaries. When they come from our own citizens it's treason.

I like how the Menlo Voice allows discussion and goes places the Palo Alto Online seems to dread and delete - tip of the hate to the Menlo Voice.

That said, I have trouble figuring out just what is our problem here in America these days. How could we have let a imbecilic tool of the billionaire class get to this point, and day after day assign people into the government as if it were a reverse SNL sketch that only goes to the rich and powerful fractional percent.

Tweets the other day writing the word "president" when he meant "precedent". There is a guy that is up all hours of the day, and doctors will tell us that over time this puts the guy in an almost hallucinatory state of consciousness. He doesn't go to briefings ... and one has to wonder why, Perhaps he does not want to people in the briefings to see how unable he is to function as a coherent human being in a real job as opposed to a plutocratic dictator who has people falling all over each other to make him feel good about being nuts.

Hamilton was right, this is a creature manufactured by the very swamp itself sent to impersonate a human being, and like a Trojan Horse, with the backing of the mob, and the media and psychopathic wing of the Republican party sent in to unlock the gates of the US government for all the other swamp nasties.

One can only hope and pray that the Electoral College will do the patriotic and courageous thing and push him out as the unqualified bounder from the plutocracy that he is. The biggest enemy of the USA today is these monsters from within our own country.

The best the Putin Appeasers have is "conspiracy to undermine a legitimate candidate in Bernie Sanders". The Russian Sympathizers defend a foreign espionage attack on our country and deflect to Bernie.


Bernie: "But for Donald Trump to summarily dismiss all of this (Russian espionage) makes no sense to me at all."
Bernie: “And once we get the facts, I think we go forward. But the word has got to go out to Russia, any other country on Earth, that we are going to protect our democracy, that cyber-security is very, very dangerous stuff, and we will not tolerate other countries interfering in the democratic process in this country.”


Bernie Sanders thereby proves he is far more patriotic in protecting America than the Putin Appeasers and Russian Sympathizers who seek to give away American Freedoms.

Putin Appeasers: Look! Over there! It's something shiny! Squirrel! Bernie!

Bernie: We Will Not Tolerate Espionage

Listening to a guest host for the Beck show - the sheriff. Even he doesn't get it - wants to talk about how Putin didn't make Trump the winner. Not about winners and losers.

About Russia attacking our electoral freedoms.

If you are truly naive enough to think all developed countries don't influence elections, then I can't help you. I doubt the same outrage would be discussed if the dems' won,

I admit I was too naive to think an American mainstream news network (CNN) would attempt to influence an election outcome in our own country under the cover of a 1st amendment free press by cheating on a national Presidential debate.

Donna Brazile gave debate questions to Clinton before the debates.

Isn't that illegal?