Backward and absolutist.
No wonder they are masters at the lowest "sport", wrestling.

The drug testing requirements are brutal!

I was going to a bad place!

I hold our elected officials responsible for what happened. We should have blocked them. From what I've read, we did keep them out of the most important aspects of our systems, so that's something I suppose.

Vlad Is doing exactly what Russian governments have always done.... That is to be expected.

It is the actions of the Trump Family, Administration members& various KGOP like P.Ryan & M.McC et al that should be the focus of disgust & hatred.
As their willingness to betray their sworn duties, as well as their constituents trust, in exchange for personal monetary gains is what is NOT EXPECTED!!

Do NOT try to put this fiasco completely off on Russia...

All the mutherfuKKKing KGOP had to do was say NO!!!!

It is not hard... we ask children to do that very thing every day... to peer pressure, to drugs, etc.
just say NO!!!


Trump is guilty AF ... just as are his KGOP buddies...
Hold them Accountable 1st & foremost!

All of America's enemies are equally culpable in my eyes. I know Russia has always done this and I sickened of it long ago. We may someday be able to steer fellow Americans straight someday. But Russia in it's current form is unacceptable.

It is US.

The people of this country, with the model for representative government that the rest of the world envies, gleefully sucking up hateful, divisive "conservative" bullshit to the point where we have blown it all up, of our choosing.

“The Russians can’t change us or significantly weaken us. They are a smaller country, they are a weaker country, their economy doesn’t produce anything that anybody wants to buy except oil and gas and arms. They don’t innovate.”

Gorbachev confirmed it later, but for many at the time it was Reagan who was evil, not the USSR.

The Russians can significantly weaken us. They can cause fractures and fissures in alliances. They can continue to spread disruption as they did in the '60s and '70s and '80s. Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Columbia. These take resources. They can create problems in Central Europe, they can see to it that Europe is dependent on Russian gas and oil and do what they've done to Poland, Ukraine.

They can't weaken us directly, on our home territory. That's a reductionist view of how American operates: We rely on the flow of natural resources, the flow of partly and finished resources. We rely on the flow of information that can be trusted, and on the flow of people to spread skills and abilities.

They might even have put a president in place, and then used the same set of facts to make the US essentially ineffectual and politically defeated for a presidential term. They're not pleased with this, but it takes understanding Russia to see why that's so. In short: They value order and stability more than freedom; they demand a seat at the table, but they don't want to be the top dog in chaos. They want vindication and revenge, but they're not going to cut off their own nose to spite their face. These are repeatedly seen in surveys, interviews, literature. They're crude, low-class American crude, but they're still not stupid. (In some ways, Americans are more stupid: We'd rather destroy our own village to keep our self-respect and hurt others.)

As far as a general put-down goes, what Obama said is great. But it's not entirely accurate, because they have always been a smaller and weaker country yet managed to do some things that hurt us. We've put in a lot of resources with little effect--who knows what we could have done with those resources (in fact, humorously, the collapse of the US due to overspending for military equipment was predicted in the '80s and the '00s ... oddly, we're still here, and the false prophets continue their prophesying of doom).

Kaspersky seems to have done a decent job. We licensed their rocket engines. We've used elements that they innovated in fusion reactors for our own research. They do innovate some things, but mostly they're spoilers. Which isn't to say that they're pugs nipping at our ankles.

My thoughts as well when he said it

Did I mention the profligate waste of soldiers in WW2? The clunky tech that killed dozens of brave cosmonauts? The shitty derivative copies of western weapons ? Ultra fast migs that run out of fuel in a blink? The sheer idiocy of wasting trillions on anti bomber defenses decades after ICBMS became a thing? And lets not forget that Stalin killed at least 5 times as many Russians as Hitler's armies did, effectively destroying all the creativity and brains of a generation leading to the downtrodden population we have seen for years?

We have had more fatalities.

The Soviet T-34 tank was the best tank in production in 1942 and was essential to the defeat of Germany.

your hate is going to eat you alive.

I made it clear that I was referring to the leadership not the population. There is nothing vile or disgusting about comparing something that is eating my country alive to a disease. I will not compliment them by likening them to a bear that is savaging us while the rep hyenas eagerly await the remains. Though that is an apt analogy too. You have an enemy that is seeking to destroy the future of you children. Mincing words is not necessary.

They are a global menace

but the Russian people have been through so much.

About ten years ago, I spent five weeks in Vilnius in an intensive Yiddish language program. Every Sunday there was a field trip, usually to a Holocaust memorial. At one of these memorials, there was a mammoth piece of Soviet sculpture. It's truly impressive, and I can't see anything like it being erected elsewhere (especially in the U.S.). Here is an image of it I found so you can get a feel for the size of it.



It IS bleak. But its bleakness suits the horror it is trying to depict. It IS overwhelming. But the size of it suits the magnitude of the loss of life. I just remember standing under it and not being able to speak or take my eyes off it.

It's an odd society.

Paranoid. Desperate. Mostly poor. Alcoholic (ground crews used to drain brake fluid from Aeroflot planes to get something to get a buzz.)

Cold. Desolate. Have bad engineering. Militaristic. Suspicious. Reckless. Secret.

And after the fall of the Soviets a bunch of oligarchs surfaced and maintain power by force. They only know force. They've lived it for a long time. The peasants exist to serve them.

We will become them if we are not careful.

But they've been through more hardship than most of us can even imagine. Centuries of the absolute monarchies of the Tsars, all the dead from wars against France, Japan and then Germany in WW1, the revolution that freed them temporarily but scared the rest of the world so much they were immediately attacked by the US and U.K. Then the growing tyranny of the communists, then the utterly unimaginable losses in WW2. Tens of millions dead, against a technologically superior enemy who slaughtered their civilians and soldiers without hesitation. That the Russian people managed to hold at Stalingrad and then win the war was an achievement beyond measure, and what did it get them? Half a century of continued oppression and eventual humiliating defeat against a much richer and more prosperous rival. Then supposed democracy, which amounted to nothing more than the theft of vast amounts of their wealth by capitalist gangsters.

Obviously they're no friends to America, but I can't judge their actions without some sympathy. They've never known real democracy and falling for a strongman leader who defends their interests is hardly a surprise. I just wish they'd had the chance to experience real democratic freedom, because they're a country of people who are genuinely wonderful at heart and have gifted the world many intellectual and artistic wonders.

But so typical of this place these days.

that UR peeps at work?

Putin.

Conservative bigots who want to keep other americans down who are the fucking problem.

they know hwat putin is doing and they allow it. they know what trump does and they allow it.

It's the people who gobble up right wing bullshit like hungry baby birds that burns my ass ...

Go after ideologies and doctrines, yes. Go at them hard, but don't lash out at an entire culture. It is the same with discussions about Islam.

GOP collusion with Russia was just one aspect of the malfeasance of our ruling party. While it may be the factor that brings down the Trump administration it is, in my opinion, not terribly important otherwise.

Voter suppression. Gerrymandering. Theocratic Authoritarian ideology. Racism. Homophobia. Irrational anti-intellectualism. Abject corruption. Misogyny. Militaristic nationalism.

We have a fascist government in power. Russia is not the major problem here.

The stupid around us is the issue.

loathe


/lōT͟H/


verb

verb: loathe; 3rd person present: loathes; past tense: loathed; past participle: loathed; gerund or present participle: loathing




feel intense dislike or disgust for.
"she loathed him on sight"


synonyms: hate, detest, abhor, execrate, have a strong aversion to, feel repugnance toward, not be able to bear/stand, be repelled by

ignorance that creates all of the world's problems. It's really a destructive and abhorrent sentiment. You should self-delete.

Second, imagine how YOU fare on a judgment like that. Your culture and government are pretty disgusting right about now. Some ignorant asshole somewhere else in the world would have a lot to hate you for as you pass your judgment.