Less than what HRC and the US would have killed Snowden for, which I already mentioned before Snowden even appeared on their radar.

–Bob Dylan, “Tangled Up in Blue”

That’s a stray thought I had of Putin’s effort to undermine Hillary.

God only knows what Putin — along with the NSA, Chinese, Norks et al. — would have had to blackmail Hillary with.

I raised those same points yesterday.

parker: And I answered you at some point.

I don’t think Putin preferred Trump. I suspect Putin believed, as most analysts did, Hillary would win the presidency.

Putin’s goal was to damage Hillary as much as possible so she would be a weak president.

I also said I didn’t know for sure. All that being said, there has been a lot of discussion on both the right and the left over the past two years regarding Trump’s strange admiration for and defense of Putin. He seems manipulatable. Maybe Putin has something on him? I don’t know. Regarding affecting the election – the US IC certainly believes the Russians tried. Did it work? I don’t know. Trump won because of a handful of votes in some key swing states. My belief: he won fair and square because he tapped into a disregarded voting bloc that HRC completely ignored.

Back to Russia – I have friends in Ukraine who have been displaced from their homes because of Putin and I remember Trump’s weird act of not even realizing Russians were in Crimea. I remember Trump’s dance around whether NATO is still needed. His “that’s a nice country you have there, shame if anything happened to it” posturing with our NATO allies regarding article 5, which he later grudgingly agreed to support. There’s more to Putin than oil. I think he’s plenty happy with Trump.

I think Putin feels like he can control Trump. Case in point – Trump and his guys announcing Russian did nothing to affect out election after having a conversation with Putin a week ago. Convenient.

This is my thought-thru opinion, based on what I believe is reasonable evidence. That’s all it is. If you want to believe the worst about me I cant stop you, but if you think “Putin wanted Hillary over Trump” is so obvious that only the blind can’t see it, I think you’re wrong on that. .

A win-win? Really? HRC was Putin’s preferred candidate. Shut down fracking, check. Shut down off shore drilling, check. Reduce the military budget, check. No support for missile defense systems in eastern Europe, check. How can you not realize hrc was a soft target for Putin considering the ties between the Clinton Foundation and the Russian oligarchy?

Blindness because of ignorance is one thing, but you are not ignorant. So what am I to conclude. You fill in the blank ____.

How exactly have the Russians effected our election. Because hrc lost at the Elector College? Give me a fucking break. She lost because she ran a campaign based on the returns in CA, OR, WA, MA,? It doesn’t work that way. It is based on the flover states. Piss down our backs and tell us its just rain and once in a while we piss on you, and we don’t tell you its raining, we just tell you we pissed on your back.

I don’t know for sure if Putin favored Trump. I doubt that at the beginning Putin thought Trump would win (no one did). It might have been like Limbaugh’s idiotic “Operation Chaos” from 2008 – get people voting for HRC to try to mess up Obama and in generally weaken the D party. That didn’t work so well.

Heck, I think the Democrats favored Trump as well early on, until he became what he now is, their absolute worst nightmare.

This is just my opinion: Putin would have been good with Hillary – weakened by scandal and leaks and Trump’s own brand of political chaos – in the presidency, having “won” against Trump in a battle far harder than anyone expected. And while originally implausible, he would be good with Trump, a man that he has the ability to manipulate and – have you noticed this? – a man who has moved the Republican party into a far more favorable stance toward Russia than in a long, long time.

Putin is extremely shrewd. He maneuvered himself into a win-win situation.

The thing we shouldn’t have tolerated, regardless who won, has happened. The Russians effected our national election. Whether they had enough effect to actually sway it, I don’t think anyone knows. But despite Trump’s denials, and his internationally public slander of his own intelligence agencies, it seems pretty clear (especially to the aforementioned US Intel Community) that Russia meddled. Hence sanctions. We can’t have this.