Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:45 pm
*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*
The term “lame duck,” as it applies to an outgoing president, originally referred to bankrupt investors in 18th Century England who were weighed down by crushing debt. In 2016, the term lame duck as it applies to President Barack Obama refers to a real leader with a real mission to fulfill his job as President up until his last official day in office; precisely what one expects of a true American public servant. It also refers to a real leader who is taking the right steps to blunt some of the promised damage from the incoming administration led by a woefully incompetent malcontent and his Russian puppet-master; a puppet master who just learned that “lame duck” President or not, Barack Obama is not weighed down by anything and does not sit idly by and allow a hostile foreign power to attack America or its democracy without retribution.
No-one in America should have been surprised that the Obama Administration imposed sanctions on Russian spies posing as diplomats. President Obama did say a little over a week ago:
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“There is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections … that we need to take action and we will. At a time and a place of our own choosing. Some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be.”
Unlike Donald Trump, when President Obama says he will do something, he follows through; particularly when America was attacked no matter if it was the incoming administration’s most ardent foreign supporters or not. And, it is noteworthy that President Obama is not remotely like most Republicans and Trump; he serves, supports and defends the United States of America and not Russia and certainly not Israel.
Although it is true that exposing and evicting thirty-some Russian spies may not cause the greatest amount of pain for Trump’s comrade Vladimir Putin, the Obama Administration sanctions certainly put dumb Donnie in a precarious position going forward. Yes, Trump did make a feeble attempt at blowing off the President’s retaliatory move, but all he did was demonstrate why an incredibly shallow and confused cretin should never be allowed near the reins of power, or apparently those complicated computers. Dunce Don said, “I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on.”
Obviously, President Obama and America’s intelligence community know exactly what is going on and addressed the issue of Russia attacking America like real leaders whose lives are not “complicated” by “the age of computer.” No doubt the intelligence community used “computers” to great effect to track down the Russian spies responsible for several cyberattacks on America to aid Trump.
However, it was President Obama’s intelligence, not a computer, that likely inspired him to set a cunning trap for Trump. A trap that leaves him with two equally detrimental choices in dealing with the effects of President Obama’s sanctions against Russia.
If Trump lifts the sanctions and welcomes the thirty-plus Russian spies back into America to continue plying their “craft” to aid Putin, he is telling Americans the intelligence community are liars, worthless and incompetent; something he has said in the past. He is also telling the Russians that everyone knows you attacked America to disrupt its democracy, but by dog because your attack helped elevate my bloated ego, and ability to enrich myself and my cohort, I approve, will lift the penalties and welcome your spies back on American soil; maybe even include a nice dinner in the Rose Garden as a humble show of my gratitude.
If he allows the sanctions to stay in place, he is admitting that he knows the intelligence community is correct and that Vladimir Putin did, in fact, direct his spy agency to attack America to help Donald J. Trump’s campaign for the presidency. Keeping the President’s penalties in play implicates himself and his staff in the treason and misprision of treason against America; something mounting evidence exposes as reality.
This column completely agrees with an idea proffered in a New York Times article hinting that President Obama’s levying sanctions against Trump’s buddy Putin were, at least in part, “intended to box Trump in.” It is a perfect trap to expose Trump and force him to publicly either acknowledge that Putin dispatched spies on his campaign’s behalf, or to openly disparage the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Agency (NSA). All federal agencies Trump does not want to irritate any more than he already has done.
Trump’s response will be particularly revealing after he has continued casting all manner of aspersion on the intelligence agencies and doubt that the Russians had anything to do with the hacking of the D.N.C. or other political institutions. At one point dumb Donald even said that “American intelligence agencies could not be trusted,” and then smugly hinted to his acolytes that the hacking could have been the work of a “400-pound guy” sitting in his bed.
President Obama had to take some kind of punitive action against Russia, and Trump’s comrade Putin, as commander in chief. Of course Putin, like Trump, is miffed that a so-called “lame duck” President threw out Russian spies and revealed a fair amount of data on their “operations,” but that is just too damn bad. No American president, besides dunce Don, who would allow a foreign government to attack America without a response.
Maybe when Trump is in the White House Russia can and will attack America with impunity; it is, after all, why they attacked America to insert their puppet in the White House. However, Barack Obama is still “the President” and besides punitive actions against Russia, he laid a perfect trap for Trump to reveal that on the surface as well as deep down he is a Putin puppet and has about as much respect and use for America’s intelligence community as Putin does.
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
