All the Pravda [Obama-Medvedev affair]

CFP/  Daniel Greenfield

For a man so in love with the technology of image, the camera, the microphone and the teleprompter, the leader of the increasingly less free world has a natural tendency to put a little too much faith in it. This is the second time that an open microphone has let Obama down, the first time it recorded him stabbing an ally in the back, the second time it recorded him stabbing a few dozen more in the back.

Medvedev, whose bosom buddy just managed to cling to power with a stolen election and brutal suppression of protests, surely understands how O feels. Photo ops with tigers and sunken treasures, not to mention skiing, martial arts and even rap, did not keep the Big P in smooth with the Russian public when the economy headed south.

Vladimir Putin didn’t have any racial guilt to ladle on the voters that might get them to overlook the mansions, the corruption and the abuses of power. But the average American voter, like the Russian voter, is more interested in the meat and potatoes, not to mention the gasoline, than in mystical allusions to the power of history. If Putin at times seemed bent on passing himself off as a new czar and Obama as a new savior, the crown and halo were shattered by the economy.

Putin’s had tightened control over Russia to an extent that the Obamas and the Warrens could only fondly dream of in their fondest federalist fantasies. And it’s easier to steal elections, when you don’t have to kowtow to a bunch of provincial interests and take the complaints of bible and gun owners seriously. But much like Putin and Ahmadinejad, Obama enjoys dim prospects in a straight election. And unlike them, he doesn’t have a military force that will turn up a few million ballots and send the protesters straight to the hospital, if not to the morgue.

Obama likes being a democrat, it’s just the democracy part that he doesn’t much care for

Obama likes being a democrat, it’s just the democracy part that he doesn’t much care for. And while his diplomacy is generally underwhelming, a mutual dislike of elections proved to be a popular bonding topic with Medvedev, the human face of the regime. But if Medvedev really thought that Obama was serious about needing more space because of an election, he hasn’t been paying much attention to American politics.

This is a White House that doesn’t pass laws to curry favor with the general voting population. That’s what publicity stunts and race cards and wars against women are for. In 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where Al Sharpton is an honored guest and policy is outsourced to whoever comes earliest and tosses the foam ball the best, policy isn’t made to soothe the savage electoral beast, it’s done to pay off buddies, soothe furious Muslims and implement whatever idea that a committee of unhinged leftists, Clinton veterans and friends from Chicago think is the way to go. 

If Obama is jettisoning Eastern Europe, it’s because he thinks it doesn’t matter. The sage wisdom is that the future is in the Middle East and the Pacific Rim. Russia is full of pale men and so is Eastern Europe. A man who thinks that there’s a language known as “Austrian” can’t exactly be expected to tell them apart or to care. Not when there are more exciting places to be, like Beijing of Dubai.

When it comes to Russia, Obama can’t see the point. When the Berlin Wall fell, Obama was busy completing the final leg of his prolonged education and adolescence while minoring in racial careerism. If he was even busy paying attention to people with funny names like Yeltsin or Gorbachev, it was while smoking blunts and laughing at how funny the syllables of their names sounded in his mouth.   More >>