In what could be both a symbolic remembrance of a Cold War flashpoint and a tribute to Bill Clinton’s sexual fetishes with Monica Lewinsky, President Barack Obama has opened the Cuban cigar market to Americans. Viva the narcissistic presidency.

While celebrating trade with an time-locked commie state, Obama is assiduously constructing the case for conflict with current-day Russia – not over missiles in a nearby misbehaving client state but over the hacked WikiLeaks e-mails that continue to embarrass the Democrats and Hillary Clinton in particular. Vice President Joe Biden promised a “clandestine” counter-attack on Sunday’s Meet the Press.

For over 40 years – count them – the United States contained Soviet communism and, despite a few moments of brinkmanship like the Cuban Missile Crisis, managed to avoid a thermonuclear war.

Yet the Obama administration and its proginey, Hillary Clinton, is heating up the anti-Russian rhetoric to such sweltering degrees that you would think this was about life or death issues.

When Russia walked into the Crimea, Obama sputtered, hummed, proceeded to take his typical wait and see foreign policy stance before declining to draw a line in the Ukrainian prairie.

And Hillary Clinton is now warning Americans about the monumental risks that Russia poses to world security and how its nefarious leader Vladmir Putin poses a clear and present danger to Democratic e-mails.

And don’t trust that Donald Trump to monitor Putin because the Republican presidential nominee has said such encouraging things about him.

Well, he has nothing on Clinton. Imagine, if you can, this enchanting but somewhat surreal moment when Clinton was sharing some quiet goodwill with Putin while he was prime minister of Russia and waiting to return as president:

“I said, ‘You know, Mr. Prime Minister, we actually have some things in common. We both want to protect wildlife, and I know how committed you are to protecting the tiger.’ I mean, all of a sudden, he sat up straight and his eyes got big and he goes, ‘You care about the tiger? I said, ‘I care about the tiger, I care about the elephant, I care about the rhinoceros, I care about the whale. I mean, yeah, I think we have a duty. You know, it’s an obligation that we as human beings have to protect God’s creation.’”

Touching isn’t it? But it’s difficult to determine just whom this well-polished anecdote makes appear more human: Putin or Clinton.

At any rate, during her desultory tenure as secretary of state, Clinton apparently spent more time finding common ground with Putin than worrying about Russian excursions into neighboring states or sinister cyber threats.

But that shouldn’t surprise anyone, given the close relationship that Hillary, Bill Clinton and her current campaign manager, John Podesta, all had with Russian interests.

As Hillary Clinton’s role in the sale of Uranium One to the Russian government becomes better known and as her influence upon and benefit from that transaction is revealed, the question of why Uranium One executives donated millions to the Clinton Foundation becomes increasingly relevant – especially to the outcome of this presidential election.

Bill Clinton was certainly a beneficiary of Russian munificence as well. The former president and globe-trotting, six-figure after-dinner speaker received a $500,000 honorarium from Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment firm, on June 29, 2010, just as the Russians announced their intention of buying Uranium One – and with it, one-fifth of the U.S. uranium supply.

And John Podesta? He enjoyed a close relationship with Russian interests throughout the Obama years. Podesta’s e-mails reveal that he sat on the board of directors and owned 75,000 shares of the Russian-backed Joule Unlimited. He has transferred those shares to an anonymous holding company but that has raised more questions as to his access and control.

But “Russia is to blame” for all the e-mail hacks – that’s the well-rehearsed mantra of the Clinton campaign team anyway and as long as that distracts the media from the information in those e-mails, Clinton and Obama sound like they’re willing to go to war to prove their point.