President Obama offered up a confoundingly absurd defense of his administration's response to its early knowledge that the Russians were trying to hack the election. He claims that he personally warned Putin to "cut it out," and that he's now going to strike back--a month AFTER the election. Obama claims that, although he was convinced the reports were true, he didn't want the interference of a foreign government in our electoral process to "become a political football." God forbid! He felt that rather than retaliate immediately or make it clear to the American public what he believed was going on, he needed to stick to just stating the facts and not imputing any "motives" to the actions of the Russians. God forbid! Conservatives love to portray liberals as murky-thinking ineffectuals with no sense of how the real world works. It's usually an absurd stereotype, but every once in a while, like in today's presidential press conference, it comes to life.