U.S. sanctions mark shift to deep chill with Russia - Reuters TV

My neighbor is Russian, his kids are first generation Americans. Perfectly nice guy with a nice family. We often talk American/Russian politics while he helps me work on my wife's Beetle. He's none too happy with Russian politics and politicians. If you look past their governments, the people of every country are pretty much the same, we all want the same things, friends and family, to be healthy and and provide a good life for the ones we love. It's not the people of each country we should be wary of, but their governments.

The Russians have meddled in just about every election we have had in the last 70 years or so (certainly since post WWII) and we have meddled in theirs. We both have used propaganda against each other (and allies) in order to shape world events to our favor. To act as though the 2016 election were some sort of "new and different" escalation is absurd.

Also, the previous administration knew about the Russian meddling and did next to nothing other than telling Putin to stop it. Of course, we meddled in Putin's last re-election so we have a little dirt on our hands as we told them not to meddle in ours.

Meddling these days is much easier with social media and so many people putting "news" out to the public.

The previous administration both privately and publicly told Putin to stop, they imposed sanctions and they kicked out over 2 dozen Russian "Diplomats". I admit, that I think they could have and should have done more. That all being said, this administration has said they trusted Putin even over our own intelligence community and mounting evidence, and these are the first sanctions in over a year they have imposed, and they are hardly enough of a message. Trump is the one who has done next to nothing.