How could someone who loves puppies this much be a bad guy?

Vladimir Putin once said, "Those who fight corruption should be clean themselves." Interesting words from an interesting fellow, but what the heck does that really mean?

I suppose it could mean that you should work hard to avoid corruption so that you can help identify and take down the corrupt. But it could also mean, "if you want to come after me, I'll imprison you for jay walking." Maybe something is lost in the translation. I'm sure it sounds nicer in Russian.

On December 31, 1999, Putin became the president of Russia. He liked it so much that he ran again in 2004 and was elected to a second term. When it came time to slide over and let someone else drive, Putin moved the steering wheel to the other side of the front seat and became prime minister. That was way too confusing for people, so he moved the steering wheel back in 2012 and became president for a third time.

I know what you’re thinking. That sounds a lot like FDR. Or maybe not. Maybe you’re thinking it sounds more like Joseph Stalin. Either way, pretty impressive company, no!

The whole ‘Putin is a dictator’ thing is a little bit unfair. By all accounts, he’s not a bad guy. He just has resting dictator face. To know the real Putin, is to know the outdoorsman. The guy who wanders around in the wilderness, half-clothed, posing for action shots. He’s a man of the people, and by people I mean the wealthy, aristocratic heads of Russian corporate monopolies.

Conservative estimates put his net worth around $40 billion, but there are reports circulating that he’s closer to $200 billion. By comparison, Bill Gates has around $84 billion. If he had Scrooge McDuck’s money bin, the volume of gold coins would be at or above the diving board level.

He’s a self-made man. He wasn’t given any money from his parents. He made his money the old-fashioned way: trading government favors for stakes in large corporations, then seizing private businesses that had grown too large, selling those business off to companies run by individuals loyal to him, thereby creating a system in which he gets a portion of nearly all of Russia’s state-controlled revenue. It’s the oldest story in the book!

This is all unconfirmed and very hush-hush, so I don’t want that to be a reason for you to distrust Mr. Putin. Let’s just say he’s super rich, no one seems to know how or why he has so much money and almost everyone is afraid to ask for fear of being jailed or murdered.

Okay, that last part was a little strong. Putin has had his enemies over the years, but so do most politicians. Sure, some of those enemies have been imprisoned and some have stopped breathing all together:

• Alexei Navalny convicted: The fates of Putin's enemies 
• New Normal in Russia: Putin Critics Punished with Harsh Prison Terms 
• More of Kremlin’s Opponents Are Ending Up Dead 
• Russian journalist critical of Vladimir Putin found dead on his birthday with gunshot wound to his head 
• The Curious Deaths of Kremlin Critics

But, those are just dozens of examples. There’s always more to the story. Don’t let the fact that Putin has clamped down on freedom of the press or the criminal justice system sully your opinion of him as a great leader. He's complex. Much like a fine cigar, you shouldn't let the fact that smoking it will eventually kill you get in the way of all the good times you're having!

A man like Putin is tough to figure out. What motivates this guy? What could a dominant world leader, with more money than anyone on the planet (allegedly), with a complete stranglehold on his own country’s government and media possibly want this Christmas? What do you get the guy who literally has everything?

Try not to laugh, but I think Putin just wants a friend. The poor guy is a mess. He’s spent the last decade and a half amassing an outrageous fortune, silencing anyone who would oppose him and struggling to keep the pesky global press from sticking its nose in Russia’s business. While Russian media has been effectively neutered, stories about Putin’s trouble with truth-telling have become common:

• World View: Putin Brags About How He Lied About Russia’s Invasion of Crimea
• It Is Not Easy to Counter Putin’s Barrage of Lies 
• Vladimir Putin’s empire of lies

Putin needs someone who understands his loneliness. He needs a person in an extremely powerful country to hang out with, to join a fantasy football league with, to gab about The Walking Dead with… and we all know that wasn’t going to be Hillary Clinton.

While it may seem like the biggest issue facing our country right now is the fact that Donald Trump is creating the most pro-Putin cabinet possible, the real problem is far worse than that. It’s not so much that Trump is pro-Putin. While that’s a big red flag, it was a big red flag Trump flew over his big orange head months before we elected him.

The problem is that more and more people don’t seem to care how bad Putin is. And they care even less about how bad he can get.

The evidence on the DNC hacking is clear. Even the most ridiculous of Trump surrogates are admitting that Russia’s, and Putin’s, involvement in trying to interfere in the election is obvious. The response now seems to be a collective, ‘so what?’

Well… so… Putin tried to undermine our political system… that’s what. And he succeeded. Would the outcome be different if the hacking never happened, probably not. But that is so far from the point that it’s bizarre even talking about it.

It’s like saying, “I went to the grocery store to buy some Lucky Charms, and the Loch Ness Monster was there, knocking shelves over and being a real jerk. I got the Lucky Charms, though, so… no bigs.” The normal response to that story would be, “Holy, crap! Who cares about the cereal! You saw freaking Nessy?”

We should have the same reaction about Russia trying to mess with our election. It doesn’t matter if they succeeded or failed. It only matters that they attempted it.

It's a little worrying that the conservative-right prefers to call anyone who talks about Putin's involvement in the hacking ‘cry-babies’ or ‘whiners’, rather than to speculate on Putin's actual role. How dare the libs question the will of the people by intimating that Russia could possibly have something to gain by having Trump in the White House?!?!

After all, the true villain has been vanquished, right? We’ve spent the last couple of years hearing how evil Hillary Clinton is and how any conservative, absolutely any conservative, would be better than her… and that apparently includes Putin:

• YouGov poll: Since 2014, Putin’s net favorability among Republican rises 56 points

In new @YouGovUS poll, Republican voters view Vladimir Putin more favorably than any Democrat leader in the poll. https://t.co/fhnpbHS04D pic.twitter.com/kQhbrSdoMi

— Steve Koczela (@skoczela) December 14, 2016

What we’re left with is the hope that Trump’s administration will not use Putin’s Russian government as a blueprint for a new America. It's the hope that his pick for secretary of state won’t use a long weekend at one Trump's golf resorts to discuss Russia's partnership with ExxonMobil, only to casually mention that Putin should stop giving weapons to mass murderers like Bashar al-Asaad via a late-night text after they've closed down the bar on the last night.

The hope is that priorities are based on what’s best for our country, not on what will move Trump closer to Putin's name on the top of the list of richest people in the world.

Turns out Trump was right about the Access Hollywood tapes

President-Elect Donald Trump took to social media today to find answers to some very serious questions:

Within minutes, Trump received over 118 thousand 'reactions' and nearly 10 thousand comments. While the response time for such a complex query is impressive, the results were less than stellar.

Had he done a simple Google search for "obama accused russia" he would have gotten the following article as results:

• Obama administration accuses Russian government of election-year hacking
• U.S. government officially accuses Russia of hacking campaign to interfere with elections
• It's Official: Obama Administration Accuses Russia Of Election Meddling
• U.S. Says Russia Directed Hacks to Influence Elections
• Obama administration publicly blames Russia for DNC hack

Quite clearly, we can see that the White House did in fact alert the nation and 'complain' about Russian hacking influencing the election on October 7, 2016 (well before election day)

While this blatant disregard for chronology and the obvious lack of current events knowledge may be a cause for concern or scorn from his critics, we as a nation should give Trump a little bit of leeway in this case. October 7, 2016 was a pretty busy day inside Trump Tower. A lot of things happening. Most notably this:

Here is my statement. pic.twitter.com/WAZiGoQqMQ

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2016

So you can understand Trump's confusion on the details of this issue. Everybody was talking about this whole Russian hacking thing for like 2 hours on October 7 and then no one talked about it again until mid December. We had Trump talking about grabbing women, Hurricane Matthew killing hundreds in Haiti, peace treaties in Syria were falling apart... Russia hacking political campaigns and releasing emails to Wikileaks was nowhere near the top of the list of interesting things happening that day.

Perhaps Trump was right all along. We should have just ignored the sexual assault allegations and focused on the issues. Maybe then, democrats wouldn't have gotten so complacent that they ignored the fact that a foreign government had interfered with our election. Well I guess we can give them some credit, they stopped ignoring it once Jill Steins recount bid fizzled out.

While it is clear that Trump is, at a minimum, willfully ignorant on the Russian hacking issue, I think it's pretty disingenuous for liberal-types, myself included, to complain about a 'stolen election' if at the end of the day, a clear choice was made by the Clinton campaign to focus on the Access Hollywood video and not on the fact that a very real effort to undermine our election process was happening right in plain sight. If this is the biggest issue today... it should have been the bigger issue then. 

Failed journalist creates blog, immediately apologizes

I'm so sorry. I am embarrassed and ashamed of what I am about to do. I'm starting a blog. A blog focused on the news of the day. How vague is that!?!?

Once upon a time I wanted to be a journalist. Then newspapers died and I realized that writing articles for fantasy football websites wasn't exactly the career I envisioned.

I am very curious about how we as a society consume information. It's very personalized and streamlined for maximum visibility. The more cat videos you click on the, the more cat videos appear for future viewing.

The downside of this give-em-what-they-want media is that we tend to only consume media content (videos, articles, tweets, etc) if we're confident that we're going to agree with the content. If we see information coming from a source that has proven to treat 'villains' like 'heros', then we ignore it. If it comes from a source we are sure will reinforce our notions of what is right and wrong, we take it as fact.

The problem is not that we have too many sources of information (news, opinions, etc.). The problem is that we can't tell the difference between biased and unbiased sources. We have a greater collective knowledge than at any other time in our history, but it's mostly made up of opinions and rhetoric designed to stimulate the audience rather than to inform it.

Articles are written to entice emotional reactions. Readers are more likely to write a comment if they're emotionally engaged. Articles are 'shared' when they create an emotional reaction strong enough for the reader to want to be personally attached to the content.

I don't know where I'm going with this first post I'm writing, let alone where I'm going with this entire blog. I just know I need an outlet and Facebook posts are too constrictive and they stress me out.