Obama on Russia: Who can?????t Forget!

[_Maksutov]

Chap Wrote...In military and economic terms, Russia is certainly nothing like a potential direct adversary to the US with the ability to bring real force to bear in confrontation with the US itself or with those allies that the US must support in order to protect is core interests. That kind of threat lies elsewhere - sometimes in the kind of asymmetric warfare conducted by a series of Islamist groups, most recently DAESH, and perhaps in the future the PRC.

It is precisely because of its inability to confront the US directly as it once did that Russia is devoting resources to subverting the political processes of the US and other advanced western countries. It's the ideological equivalent of germ warfare, it's cheap, and it's hard to detect. One of their great recent successes was of course the election of Donald Trump, who together with his team openly welcomed the assistance he got from Russian state surrogates, and (contrary to the unanimous advice of his intelligence services) has said he accepts Putin's denials of Russian interference. He also, as we know, lied about having had any Russian business deals in contemplation, when as we now know he was planning a Trump Tower in Moscow with a penthouse suite for Putin on top of it. Obama is not the problem ...

So you figured out Russia tries to subvert our geopolitical agenda , but Obama's White House couldn't? Also like you, Romney figured it out. The clip begs the question; what was Obama's understanding of Russia...did he think they were stagnant and incapable of undermining out global agendas? Shall be just write this off as "O'well we missed that one?"

Apart from anything Trump may have done, or not done, Obama dropped the ball, and left the door open for any Russian subversion.

Their greatest success was planting a seed, that folks are running with to tear our previous political climate to shreds.

In effect, Trump promised to drain the swamp, which is happening before our eyes, however I am not sure Trump is doing this, at least directly, it seems that it is imploding from within becasue of the hate folks have for Trump. Putin is sitting at his desk, with his legs crossed on the desk, laughing his rear off.

Wow, that's a total reimagining of reality. You should write for the comic book movies.

Why did Putin want Trump, Markk?

Where are your actual sources for all of your whataboutism about Obama's role in this? How about putting up something to back your fantasy? We can look in the report and find all kinds of dishonesty and crap that is now officially documented.

Have you read the report, Markk? I'm more than half way in and there is plenty here to convict Trump of crimes if you could indict a sitting president. That has nothing to do with Obama. That's about Trump. Try and focus on Trump long enough to see him. Or go running off in every other direction because you can't or won't face documented facts. Bring up Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Obama, Clinton, anyone else but the person in spotlight who got busted.

Your dude is "draining the swamp"? My God. Really? Are you that deeply up his ass that you can't recognize lies, deception, threats, revenge, Sopranos-type behavior at the center of our government, for the benefit of his own wealth and to the benefit of foreigners? The FBI saw it. It's all there, Markk. Keep trying to change the subject. Keep trying to run away. Keep repeating the lies of a liar. Keep defending him. Keep telling the rest of us that we're the swamp when we're trying to get the truth and your boy is trying to hide it. Keep on lying about what happened, Markk. That's exactly what you're doing.

[_EAllusion]

Russia wouldn't be a significant threat to the United States if not for GOP complicity in election interference. I don't remember Romney claiming that a Republican-Russian alliance is the United State's greatest geopolitical threat. If he did, I'd give him mad props.

As it stands, the contours of the dispute was Romney's foreign policy advisers were neo-conservatives who have have been obsessed with being cold war hawks since their rise in the 1960's and this colored their sense of the overall threat of Russian expansionism. Meanwhile, Obama thought that China was where the US should be directing its aims given the nature of authoritarianism in China and it's inevitable superior economic positioning to the US. What I think it is reasonable to say about that is that while the neo-con's Soviet obsession was from another time, Romney was right to be more concerned about Russian expansionism than Obama's dismissive comment allows. At the same time, China is where the US should be directing its interests as it is by far the biggest looming threat if not for the fact that our own Republican party and its willingness to overlook Russian attacks on our nation if they perceive it benefiting them is the bigger near-term threat to America as a functioning liberal democracy.

[_EAllusion]

These Russian operatives should become campaign consultants. They only had to spend $100,000 on Facebook ads and $8,000.00 on Google against the almost $Billion Clinton had in her coffers and they were able to beat her. Is the American public that gullible or is it something else that caused Clinton to lose? Oh yeah, these Russians supposedly got emails that told the truth about Clinton and how she was really beholden to Wall Street and conspired with the DNC against Sanders.

How much free media did the criminal hacking of the Democratic party get? I remember it being more than a 100k worth.

[_Brackite]

I didn't click on Bach's YouTube link. Does it have something to do with this CNN opinion article??

Mueller's report looks bad for Obama
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/04/19/opinio ... 176559%2F4

[_Markk]

Wow, that's a total reimagining of reality. You should write for the comic book movies.

Why did Putin want Trump, Markk?

Where are your actual sources for all of your whataboutism about Obama's role in this? How about putting up something to back your fantasy? We can look in the report and find all kinds of dishonesty and crap that is now officially documented.

Have you read the report, Markk? I'm more than half way in and there is plenty here to convict Trump of crimes if you could indict a sitting president. That has nothing to do with Obama. That's about Trump. Try and focus on Trump long enough to see him. Or go running off in every other direction because you can't or won't face documented facts. Bring up Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Obama, Clinton, anyone else but the person in spotlight who got busted.

Your dude is "draining the swamp"? My God. Really? Are you that deeply up his ass that you can't recognize lies, deception, threats, revenge, Sopranos-type behavior at the center of our government, for the benefit of his own wealth and to the benefit of foreigners? The FBI saw it. It's all there, Markk. Keep trying to change the subject. Keep trying to run away. Keep repeating the lies of a liar. Keep defending him. Keep telling the rest of us that we're the swamp when we're trying to get the truth and your boy is trying to hide it. Keep on lying about what happened, Markk. That's exactly what you're doing.

Increased Ad hom's is now the agenda, I get that, but calm down for a moment.

Did you listen to the video link in the OP? Obama was playing down Russia's capabilities, and being very cavalier, and frankly naïve. He was Commander and chief and it happened on his watch, no one else's.

Do we ignore this or do we fix it?

Mak wrote...
Where are your actual sources for all of your whataboutism about Obama's role in this?

Well, the facts are the Russians interfered with the election, I suggest maybe you can show me how he is blameless in this happening on his watch...again the link above is clear he was naïve, and there are other links that would support this one.

Your dude is "draining the swamp"?

Well, it is being drained, on both sides of the aisle...and if you go back and read what I wrote you might understand my point in my stating he did so more in a indirect way.

The Bush/s and Clinton/s reign of power are done. Pelosi, Ryan, Cruz, and others are on the decline. The status quo of the past 28 years...from Bush the elder through Obama is Gone and Done, at least from my perspective. If the election had gone as planned by the statues quo, either Jeb or Hilary would be in the White House. Whether you accept this or not, it was because of Trump and the fuel behind much of it is people like you embellishing the Trump Russian connection.

The only chance to semi bring it back is Biden, but that may be a stretch, we will have to wait and see.

And as far as him being "my dude"... no he is my President, I wish we would have had other options, he is very hard to defend when he act's like a little kid...but if you need that to be otherwise, and you need him to be my dude, I understand.

Do you think it might be a good idea for an investigation to see where we failed in letting Russia get so close under Obama, or maybe even Bush or further back...so we can fix the holes in our system?

[_subgenius]

Why did Obama always “miss it”?

Why are your posts always stupid?

Now i know how you guys feel when KG posts...

[_Maksutov]

Wow, that's a total reimagining of reality. You should write for the comic book movies.

Why did Putin want Trump, Markk?

Where are your actual sources for all of your whataboutism about Obama's role in this? How about putting up something to back your fantasy? We can look in the report and find all kinds of dishonesty and crap that is now officially documented.

Have you read the report, Markk? I'm more than half way in and there is plenty here to convict Trump of crimes if you could indict a sitting president. That has nothing to do with Obama. That's about Trump. Try and focus on Trump long enough to see him. Or go running off in every other direction because you can't or won't face documented facts. Bring up Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Obama, Clinton, anyone else but the person in spotlight who got busted.

Your dude is "draining the swamp"? My God. Really? Are you that deeply up his ass that you can't recognize lies, deception, threats, revenge, Sopranos-type behavior at the center of our government, for the benefit of his own wealth and to the benefit of foreigners? The FBI saw it. It's all there, Markk. Keep trying to change the subject. Keep trying to run away. Keep repeating the lies of a liar. Keep defending him. Keep telling the rest of us that we're the swamp when we're trying to get the truth and your boy is trying to hide it. Keep on lying about what happened, Markk. That's exactly what you're doing.

Increased Ad hom's is now the agenda, I get that, but calm down for a moment.

Did you listen to the video link in the OP? Obama was playing down Russia's capabilities, and being very cavalier, and frankly naïve. He was Commander and chief and it happened on his watch, no one else's.

Do we ignore this or do we fix it?

Mak wrote...
Where are your actual sources for all of your whataboutism about Obama's role in this?

Well, the facts are the Russians interfered with the election, I suggest maybe you can show me how he is blameless in this happening on his watch...again the link above is clear he was naïve, and there are other links that would support this one.

Your dude is "draining the swamp"?

Well, it is being drained, on both sides of the aisle...and if you go back and read what I wrote you might understand my point in my stating he did so more in a indirect way.

The Bush/s and Clinton/s reign of power are done. Pelosi, Ryan, Cruz, and others are on the decline. The status quo of the past 28 years...from Bush the elder through Obama is Gone and Done, at least from my perspective. If the election had gone as planned by the statues quo, either Jeb or Hilary would be in the White House. Whether you accept this or not, it was because of Trump and the fuel behind much of it is people like you embellishing the Trump Russian connection.

The only chance to semi bring it back is Biden, but that may be a stretch, we will have to wait and see.

And as far as him being "my dude"... no he is my President, I wish we would have had other options, he is very hard to defend when he act's like a little kid...but if you need that to be otherwise, and you need him to be my dude, I understand.

Do you think it might be a good idea for an investigation to see where we failed in letting Russia get so close under Obama, or maybe even Bush or further back...so we can fix the holes in our system?

So you won't put up anything. But you can accuse me of ad-homs. Right.

You didn't read it. But you made up all kinds of stuff about it. That's not an ad hom, that's a fact, you're lying just like Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied about Comey. Lying is the only way you can defend it. I understand. Keep trying to change the subject. Yeah, we can talk about Obama. We can talk about Bush 43 and Bush 41. We can talk about Clinton. We can talk about Reagan. We can talk about Nixon. We can talk about everybody except the man who is president, who needs action to contain, right now.

Do we need to go back and look at both parties? Hell yeah. But when the Senate won't even allow for impeachment, no matter how deserved, we are not on the road to defeating partisanship. Just the opposite.

[Guest]

Russia wouldn't be a significant threat to the United States if not for GOP complicity in election interference. I don't remember Romney claiming that a Republican-Russian alliance is the United State's greatest geopolitical threat. If he did, I'd give him mad props.

As it stands, the contours of the dispute was Romney's foreign policy advisers were neo-conservatives who have have been obsessed with being cold war hawks since their rise in the 1960's and this colored their sense of the overall threat of Russian expansionism. Meanwhile, Obama thought that China was where the US should be directing its aims given the nature of authoritarianism in China and it's inevitable superior economic positioning to the US. What I think it is reasonable to say about that is that while the neo-con's Soviet obsession was from another time, Romney was right to be more concerned about Russian expansionism than Obama's dismissive comment allows. At the same time, China is where the US should be directing its interests as it is by far the biggest looming threat if not for the fact that our own Republican party and its willingness to overlook Russian attacks on our nation if they perceive it benefiting them is the bigger near-term threat to America as a functioning liberal democracy.

This seems spot on, in my opinion. If one further contextualizes the Obama administration's attempts to pivot to Asia as they called it, much of it hinged on trying to pull American interests out of the Middle East and into the Pacific. Trump has done much to undo one aspect of this pivot - the Iran nuclear deal - which required US and Russian cooperation. It could be argued that Obama completely mishandled the pull back which I think is a fair criticism. But it wouldn't be fair to argue that there is some form of tu quoque behind the Mueller investigation which seems to be the thrust of the Fox News focus on Obama in light of the Mueller Report.

[_EAllusion]

I feel like there are two major international stories that are receiving enough coverage that a news literate person is aware of them, but are very under covered relative to their importance. The general public seems unaware because of the chaos of the Trump administration and the tabloid nature of much of American's main sources of news. The first is Saudi Arabian steps towards nuclearization (with Trump admin assistance while up to their eyeballs in corruption no less). The second is China building a dystopian society that rivals what's been imagined in some of our darkest science-fiction. The latter of which includes an ongoing genocice/ethnocide of the Uyghur people.

Both of these things would've captured American cultural obsession in a different era. Now, it's not registering. Both of these stories have the potential to lead to very negative consequences decades down the road. It reminds me that while the Russia situation is bad now, in significant part because of the Republican president is a disloyal monster, there are potentially bigger problems waiting on the horizon.

It's not even a little difficult to imagine a Middle East a couple decades down the road mired in a nuclear arms race, with vast areas rendered quasi-unlivable due to climate change, and see that this is how global nuclear war is tripped. The fact that the US backs a tyrannical autocracy in Saudi Arabia is a ever present threat to us in the medium to long-term, and if that tyranny falls to revolution while it has nuclear weapons, the blow-back could be unthinkable.

China is using technology right now to build totalitarian tools way more imposing than anything that has come before. It's happening right now. Its spread is a threat to liberal democracy whereever it may be.

Transnational fascism/gangster states sponsored by Russia is bad. Very bad. But it isn't the only threat out there.

[_honorentheos]

It's difficult in any period to really contextualize events one is living through into a reasonable view of their significance in history. But were I to point to the Trump administration's actions that seem to put it in on the wrong side of American interests that even Congressional Republicans seem to recognize those would include:

- Aiding the expansion of the House of Saud's attempt to dominate the Middle East while turning a blind eye to the atrocities and suffering they are responsible for in the region.
- Turning over on our European and other allies including those in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.
- Aligning the executive branch of the United States with despots and dictators around the globe, from Putin to Kim to MbS to Duterte to Xi, which feeds a global narrative that is bound to bear terrible fruit.

We forget that 9/11 and the last two decades of military adventurism were rooted in otherwise overlooked events like the US having a presence in S.A. and siding largely with Israel when it came to the Palestinian question. Any of the above, or all of them combined, appear ripe for influencing the future in dark ways.

Economically, I'm not sure how the US will fair but we're certainly going down a path leading to a cliff in regards to the expansion of US debt. Our lack of concern regarding climate change (well, lack of action. I hear mocking comments from conservatives all the time about having only 12 years left so...) is a blinking but silenced alarm light we've thrown a blanket over and appear committed to attempt to ignore if not aid through focused efforts in deregulation.

All of the above seem far more likely to have potential influence on a future black swan event than Russia interfering in our elections. But at the same time, the fact Trump can't come out and publicly state that Putin lied to him and he will hold Russia accountable, putting that in it's proper place, turns it into an much more pressing and critical concern than it should be.