US expels 35 Russian diplomats for alleged election intervention

Nice "contribution", mate

The Russians don't fear us, but with the right leadership, they will. Trump might be hemmed in by the decent people in his administration (like General 'Mad Dog' Mattis), or we might have to wait four years for the leadership we need. But Russia has sowed the wind and so shall it reap the whirlwind

Any big talk is pointless.

Russia has enough nukes to wipe the US off the map if it wants, so it doesn't need to "fear" the US any more than the US fears them.

Now if the US could cyber disable all their weapons systems it might be a game changer but even then lets be honest if the US could nuke Russia and not have any retaliation it would still make the US worse off, it would be a bigger global shock than the financial crisis and the US would be worse off economically so there isn't a win there either.

Yeah, thanks Russia. Also thanks for carpet bombing Aleppo, you are a moral force of profoundly great integrity. Russia is so good and America is so bad, innit. I support Putin and I'm not stupid at all, no.

I don't agree that it looks like that, at all.

We need to respond, very strongly. Russia needs to fear us, and they don't because President Obama's foreign policy has been shamefully weak. Foreign powers construe his "coolness" as weakness.

Russia has to pay, big time, for this. An attack on our election is an act that touches on our most sensitive and grave national interests. We should be **** them up in a big cyber attack; cripple their banking network, switch the power grid on and off in Moscow, make it clear who is the superpower and who is the laughable, pathetic shadow of its former self. They won't respond because they cannot maintain escalation dominance, and they can't afford to lose as much as we can afford to. Fundamentally, if a foreign power feels they are able to act in this way, then the whole point of the military and intelligence agencies (to protect us from being coerced and manipulated by foreign powers) has failed. We need to re-establish our dominance.

But that will be costly. And ultimately, President Obama is to blame. It is his weakness that the Russians have responded to. They must be made to pay, but President Obama must take the lion's share of the blame.

Or the democrats could have fielded a candidate and election campaign capable of defeating trump. A handful of rogue Russian diplomats does not win an election on their own.

It's unclear how the sufficiency of the Democratic candidate makes Russia's hacking and interference in an American election okay. But I suppose these days the hard left and the alt-right will say and do pretty much anything to justify their anti-Clinton hysteria and pro-Russian bootlicking.

I agree that in reality, Trump gains nothing politically from his Putin love-in (going forward at least; the hack was extremely helpful). He seems to genuinely believe in this, and there is no question that the alt-right loves Putin. Hence you have Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State and Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser, both could be considered friends of the Russian president.

We probably haven't seen a pro-Russian figure this high in the US government since the days of Alger Hiss

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Hiss

Trump, straight after the election, should have cut off Putin and said, "Although these actions may have benefited me, I do not support them. Russia will pay for its presumption as I did not seek or want their help". But of course he won't.

Questions are being asked about whether Trump isn't just ideologically pro-Russian but actually has been recruited as an agent by Russian intelligence. A former CIA counterintelligence officer believes so, and claims he has evidence

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-alleging-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump

But I am very spectical about Trump being "hired" by Russia- really? What does a self centred billionaire German care about Russia or whatever "pay" it can offer?

Pay is only one of the ways intelligence services recruit people. Others are ideology, or flattery, or manipulation, or blackmail.

We do know that Trump has been kept afloat by Russian money (commercial money, but Putin basically owns everything in Russia anyway in the way Kim Jong Un owns everything in North Korea. Legal ownership is irrelevant when you can seize whatever you want and businessmen are constantly fearful of government scrutiny). Trump is far less rich than he claims and his entire empire is built on debt, which means it's a constant game of musical chairs to find financing so you can cover interest payments as they come due (which they do frequently when your credit is bad, as you can only obtain short-term credit)

Trump is also part of the Alex Jones crowd who adore Putin for, in their eyes, "opposing the New World Order". Also, if Trump is flattered by the Russians and he's made to feel as though he's important to them, he'd likely be willing to provide them with information and work with them. And once he's done that, he's locked in; they can blackmail him at any time by threatening to release recordings of their meetings. Trump is an extremely stupid and gullible individual, it wouldn't be hard, at all, to manipulate him.