U.S. intelligence officials now believe with “a high level of confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.
Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said.
Putin’s objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a “vendetta” against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to “split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn’t depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore,” the official said.
And this is one of the reasons why Republicans are no match for the president. He is in a class by himself. He has more wit in his little finger than the 52 Republican candidates put together, and nothing these jokers do or say will ever change that.
At a democratic fundraiser in New York City on Monday, the president spoke about some of the nonsense going on in the Republican Party and in the GOP debates. One of the things he mentioned was the recent cry baby episode by Republican presidential candidates, complaining that the CNBC moderators were too hard on them and too unfair in their questions.
The president nailed it by saying that these are the same people who complained that he is weak when it comes to Putin. They claim they will be stronger. But as the president points out, how are they going to be stronger when dealing with Putin when they couldn’t even handle questions from CNBC moderators?
“Every one of these candidates says, ‘Obama’s weak, Putin’s kicking sand in his face. When I talk to Putin, he’s going to straighten out,'” Obama said during a democratic fundraiser in New York City.
“And then it turns out, “Every one of these candidates says, ‘Obama’s weak, Putin’s kicking sand in his face. When I talk to Putin, he’s going to straighten out,'” Obama said during a democratic fundraiser in New York City.
“And then it turns out, they can’t handle a bunch of CNBC moderators,” he said. “If you can’t handle those guys, I don’t think the Chinese and the Russians are going to be too worried about you.”
And when I say “cock”, I’m not talking about a rooster.
She and her co-author spent most of that day trying to get police to take the incident seriously, but they — and some onlookers — were too busy laughing and taking pictures. They ended up lugging it into their apartment and are currently deciding what to do with it. (I can think of a few things. HEY-OOOO!)
Who’s the culprit, you ask? Probably some state-backed, pro-Putin youngsters, the magazine reports:
This is the kind of cockamamie (sorry) prank that reeks (sorry) of Nashi, the pro-Kremlin youth group founded after Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2005. It was the Kremlin’s way to engage the youth in politics by paying and brainwashing them to be their blunt instrument of revenge. These kids, often from poor families, have strange imaginations that center almost always on the scatalogical and the sexual. (They once used one prostitute named “Mumu” to lure various male opposition figures into bed in the same bugged apartment.) They manage to pull off these kinds of pranks by having the resources of the state at their disposal.
Senator John McCain is sometimes considered a Maverick for breaking away from following his party and, according to Sarah Palin, going rogue. Well he done gone and done it again! This time, McCain not only drifted off from his party, he drifted off from his nation.
At a time when the world is on pins and needles waiting to see what happens in Syria, and at a time when Vladimir Putin has finally decided to do the right thing and coach Syria into giving up their chemical weapons, John McCain has decided that this will be the perfect time to attack Putin. In beginning his piece in the Russian paper, McCain explained, “I am not anti-Russian. I am pro-Russian, more pro-Russian than the regime that misrules you today.”
President Putin claims his purpose is to restore Russia to greatness at home and among the nations of the world. But by what measure has he restored your greatness? He has given you an economy that is based almost entirely on a few natural resources that will rise and fall with those commodities. Its riches will not last. And, while they do, they will be mostly in the possession of the corrupt and powerful few. Capital is fleeing Russia, which – lacking rule of law and a broad-based economy – is considered too risky for investment and entrepreneurism. He has given you a political system that is sustained by corruption and repression and isn’t strong enough to tolerate dissent.
How has he strengthened Russia’s international stature? By allying Russia with some of the world’s most offensive and threatening tyrannies. By supporting a Syrian regime that is murdering tens of thousands of its own people to remain in power and by blocking the United Nations from even condemning its atrocities. By refusing to consider the massacre of innocents, the plight of millions of refugees, the growing prospect of a conflagration that engulfs other countries in its flames an appropriate subject for the world’s attention. He is not enhancing Russia’s global reputation. He is destroying it. He has made her a friend to tyrants and an enemy to the oppressed, and untrusted by nations that seek to build a safer, more peaceful and prosperous world.
President Putin doesn’t believe in these values because he doesn’t believe in you. He doesn’t believe that human nature at liberty can rise above its weaknesses and build just, peaceful, prosperous societies. Or, at least, he doesn’t believe Russians can. So he rules by using those weaknesses, by corruption, repression and violence. He rules for himself, not you.
Timing is everything. Any other time, I would agree with what McCain had to say. Putin has ruled Russia with a heavy hand. He is a ruler not at all interested in governing, so McCain is on point with much of what he had to say. But again, timing is everything.
Putin has taken a leading role in convincing Bashar Assad to take the necessary steps to end his chemical weapons program and in so doing, end the American threat of bombing Syria – a move that can further destabilize an already destabilized region and can signal the start of another world war.
John McCain on the other hand has taken the pro-war stance on Syria. McCain wants the fighting rebels to be armed by America, he wants President Obama to drop the bombs, no to drop nukes on Syria and end Assad’s reign. So imagine McCain’s frustration when Vladimir Putin and President Obama spear headed a peaceful resolution to Syria’s chemical weapons.
McCain clearly was not happy and he made his views known to the Obama administration and the American people in multiple television interviews. But the American people were tired of the wars and given the opportunity to get the same result through peace, they chose peace. McCain’s call for war was falling on deft ears. It is his contention that by not bombing Syria, Iran would walk away thinking they could go ahead with their nuclear ambitions. So McCain had to try something else. He had to do something he hadn’t done yet – attack Putin, one of the nucleus in a peaceful outcome where Syria’s weapons are concerned. And he hopes that with his attack, Putin backs away from the deal on Syria.
You think that’s a far fetched conclusion? Think again. We are talking about John McCain here, a pro war Republican senator who, when running for President in 2008 took to the podium in a town hall meeting and sang, Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran!
Timing is everything, and your timing now Senator speaks volume.
At a White House news conference on Friday, Obama insisted that he does not have bad personal relations with Putin. The two men had a testy meeting in June in Northern Ireland and from the photos of them at the time, it looked as if they would both rather have been somewhere else.
“I know the press likes to focus on body language, and he’s got that kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom. But the truth is that when we’re in conversations together, oftentimes it’s very productive,” Obama said.
Putin’s sending of a telegram wishing former President George W. Bush well after a heart procedure this week was viewed by some Kremlin watchers as a sign that Putin was sending an implicit message to Obama.
The White House says Obama pulled out of the Moscow summit not just because of the Russian decision to grant asylum to Snowden, who is wanted in the United States to face espionage charges.
U.S. differences with Russia have piled up recently over Moscow’s support for the Syrian government in that country’s civil war, as well as human rights concerns and other grievances.
There was no immediate response from Moscow to Obama’s description of the Russian president.
President Barack Obama formally canceled a much-discussed visit to Moscow next month for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing a lack of progress in bilateral relations since Putin regained the presidency a year ago.
Obama will still attend a G-20 summit in St. Petersburg in early September, but now will go to Sweden beforehand instead of stopping in Moscow to meet with Putin, the White House announced.
“Following a careful review begun in July, we have reached the conclusion that there is not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda with Russia to hold a U.S.-Russia Summit in early September,” a White House statement said.
It noted progress in relations with Russia during Obama’s first term, much of it when Dmitry Medvedev was president and Putin was prime minister. Putin regained the presidency in May 2012.
“Given our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society in the last 12 months, we have informed the Russian government that we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda,” the White House said.
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