Eleventy

Taking a deep breath here. Trump and Putin. Thoughts? Why yes, I have a few:

• Did anyone think Trump was going to bash Putin from the podium yesterday? Really? How would that have worked?
• Putin doesn't have the strong hand here. He never will, really. The oligarchs who really run Russia will accept his strutting around so long as it is beneficial to them. The minute it isn't, he's gone. Trump certainly knows this.
• Last I checked, we weren't actually at war with Russia. Anyone who is shouting "treason" at this point is assuming facts not in evidence.
• Did the Russians meddle in the 2016 elections? Of course. I'd be more surprised if they hadn't. Governments always prefer to pick the person across the table. Obama never liked Netanyahu and sent his operatives to get involved in the Israeli election. The CIA, apparently back in fashion, had no trouble getting rid of Salvador Allende, and Jacobo Arbenz, and Mohammad Mossadegh. There were others. Hillary Clinton positively gloated about her role in getting rid of Gaddafi in Libya. Given how our government has conducted itself, it would be an upset if other countries weren't trying to put their thumb on the scale of our elections.
• Personally, I would have phrased things differently were I at the podium. I'm not, though. I'm sitting at my dining room table, tapping on a laptop. I am not privy to the information Trump has at his disposal. It's possible Trump is a Russian stooge, but it's not likely. There is no reason to be one if you are President of the United States.

Who's up for a little defenestration?

It's a tried and true method of dispatching your enemies:

A prominent regional journalist investigating crime, politics and the war in Syria has died following a fall from a window of his fourth-floor apartment in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city.

Maxim Borodin, 32, was found by neighbours on the ground outside his apartment on Friday. He died in hospital two days later, without ever regaining consciousness. 

Of course, the authorities aren't gonna admit to much:

Police say there were no signs of forced entry into his apartment, and the door was locked from the inside. But friends and colleagues have said they are suspicious of the circumstances surrounding his death.

Locked from the inside proves nothing, but don't worry about that. It hadn't gone well for Mr. Borodin in recent months:

Mr Borodin was well-known for delving into Yekaterinburg’s criminal underworld. He was among those who broke the story of unreported deaths in the Kremlin’s shadow armies fighting in Syria. He also published investigations into Russia’s religious right, and the violent protests around “Matilda”, a supposedly blasphemous film depicting a love affair between Tsar Nicholas II and a young ballerina. 

As one of only few investigative voices in the region, Mr Borodin often felt the brunt of official and criminal displeasure. Just two weeks ago, he was in intensive care with a major head injury. And in October, he was hit over the head with a metal pipe – that attack he linked to his work covering the Matilda protests. 

There are places where being a journalist is a dangerous job. It rarely is here, but it's worth remembering the price you pay for running afoul of those in charge in a place like Russia.

Wait, what?

Remember this?

Apparently, the 80s have answered the call:

 American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have “high confidence” that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence.

But intelligence officials have cautioned that they are uncertain whether the electronic break-in at the committee’s computer systems was intended as fairly routine cyberespionage — of the kind the United States also conducts around the world — or as part of an effort to manipulate the 2016 presidential election.

That gave the Donald a chance to do some trolling:

The actual quote, because this video cuts it off:

“Why do I have to get involved with Putin? I have nothing to do with Putin. I’ve never spoken to him. I don’t know anything about him other than he will respect me. He doesn’t respect our president. And if it is Russia—which it’s probably not, nobody knows who it is—but if it is Russia, it’s really bad for a different reason, because it shows how little respect they have for our country, when they would hack into a major party and get everything. But it would be interesting to see—I will tell you this—Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Are you not entertained?

So, do we need to worry about the Russians, or don't we? If you check the ol' social media feeds, chances are you'll see some people think Trump's statement is treason.

Point of order -- how would the Russians hack the 30,000 missing emails? Were they on the DNC website? That would be a story. They are not, of course. What Trump suspects, and his opponent fears, is that the Russians, or some other actor, already has the missing emails, which obviously weren't on the DNC's server but on the homebrew server that Hillary Clinton used. Those would be the emails about Chelsea's wedding and yoga classes, or so we were told. If that were true, Team Clinton could laugh Trump's taunting off as inconsequential. But I didn't hear anyone laughing yesterday.

Writing for the New York Sun, Seth Lipsky explains the problem well:

The Democratic National Committee emails that started this whole contretemps were made public via Wikileaks, with whom the pro-Democratic Party press has been collaborating for years.

How does that compute for the Democrats who blame Mr. Putin? What about Edward Snowden, who is being sheltered in Russia by the regime that the Democrats are now gleefully quoting Paul Ryan as calling a global menace? Maybe the Kremlin will enlist Mr. Snowden in finding the missing Hillary Clinton emails. The Times would probably love it. “Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed,” it editorialized in 2014. “Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service.”

Just so. Back to Lipsky:

The truth is that when the emails that are leaked in the age of the Internet are America’s wartime secrets, such as battlefield secrets in a time when our troops are engaged in combat with a savage foe, the left is all too eager to work with the leakers and characterize them as “whistleblowers.” But when the messages being leaked include internal email traffic of the Democrats themselves, wires that show them maneuvering against Senator Sanders in a ghastly way, the Democrats are suddenly up in arms. Mr. Trump seems to have figured out the petard on which the Democrats have hoisted themselves.

There's gonna be dirt aplenty over the next three months. If we don't already hate both candidates, we will for sure by the time November rolls around.

Oh, those Russians.