Putin “sits as the absolute authority now in Russia and it is quite reminiscent of the kind of authority exercised in the past by Russian leaders, by the czars and their successor Communist leaders,” she said, according to CNN. She added that it was imperative for the U.S. to back a “unified Ukraine.”
On Monday night, the pro-Clinton group Correct the Record, which hadn’t weighed in on the Ukraine issue before, came to her defense."
“Secretary Clinton worked to successfully secure Russia’s cooperation toward anti-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan, and worked with Russia to secure critical, crippling sanctions against Iran. Not to mention, Secretary Clinton oversaw passage and enactment of the New START Treaty reducing nuclear weapons and making us all safer. This is another case of selective memory lapses by Republican opportunists,” communications director Adrienne Elrod said in a statement, after the group posted tweets to that effect."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If Hillary were to be inaugurated into the presidency in January 2017, Putin would be president of Russia until May 2018, and possibly six more years after that if he chose to run again and won. Wouldn't that be cute?
48 comments:
I see the protection racket media are ignoring history. Living history.
Was it a sheer coincidence that the 1930s saw unprecedented concentration of power nearly everywhere?
Was not FDR a sort of benevolent dictator?
It took a certain style of government to fight and oppose other governments -- or so it looks from a distance.
I remember taking a big hit once for suggesting that if we ever had to fight a theocracy tooth and nail, it would take a sort of theocracy of our own. But that's another story.
Maybe Hillary and Putin could get married, and in the old fashioned dynastic manner, make the U.S. of A. and Russia one big happy family.
Or, maybe Bill and Putin could get gay married!
Even better.
Maybe Hillary could marry Pussy Riot. Ya know, make it official.
Wow. Slow thread.
I can think of a many reasons why HRC should never be elected POTUS, the best one that I can think of is that she will seriously set back women in politics. She would do for the male/female gap in politics what Obama did for race relations.
The best political progress comes when examples are set by people unexpectedly, as for example when stereotypes are broken down. Barack Obama is a terrible first black President precisely because he is stereotypical -- a Chicago street fighter -- writ larger, an urban street fighter -- out of touch with suburban and rural voters of most any other color. A better choice would have been a Republican 1st Black President. Such a move would have foiled racists, rather than fueling them.
Likewise, a first female POTUS should most definitely not be a die hard feminist. Think more Maggie Thatcher. Moreover, HRC is not even really an example of woman who made it on her own, politically at least. Plus there's always the problem of Bill.
HRC's best chance would be to quietly denounce all her post Wellesley rhetoric -- including her intellectual love affair with Chicago-style Alinskyism. She should re-embody her inner Goldwater girl persona and push a libertarian conservative agenda. But the money will destroy her chances of doing that.
@chickenlittle
Crack is holding court over his Universal Theory of Racism Which Explains All Things over at TOP.
This absorbs all the energy in the known universe.
Leaving nothing left over for anything else.
I know ST. I just spoon fed him a bit of chirb.
chick:
"She should re-embody her inner Goldwater girl persona and push a libertarian conservative agenda. But the money will destroy her chances of doing that."
She probably already has that gamed out. She'll have to swing to the center if nominated. Say hello to Maggie, Jr.
Now will you pleeeease post the Crack chirbit here. I don't read Althouse anymore.
Here you go, deborah: Crack lectures on Kolob Nuts
She probably already has that gamed out. She'll have to swing to the center if nominated. Say hello to Maggie, Jr.
HRC could channel "tough on terrorism." I don't think she can do "tough on Putin." They're just not the same thing. She has way too much leftist baggage to pull off a "tough on Commies" routine.
Oh, me. You are unbelievably talented. Have you looked into narrating books?
@chickenlittle
Very inspired!
I don't think she has to do tough on Putin, rather promising to work on Russian relations. Point out the Cold War should be over, instead of us inciting revolution in the Ukraine.
If she can get the Dems, the women, and the moderate swing vote, that should be enough.
Have you looked into narrating books?
No, but I did audition for narrating one of Trooper York's western novels (link). The text is behind Troop's play wall.
I applied but never heard back. :(
...instead of us inciting revolution in the Ukraine.
Have you got a good link for that?
"Hillary on Putin..."
Now that's a threat that might actually scare Putin into submission.
LOL chick, well done. With Troop's writing talent, and your voices, you both need to keep going. Are there more installments of the story? Please cross-post them here if you make them.
"But the most crucial media omission is Moscow’s reasonable conviction that the struggle for Ukraine is yet another chapter in the West’s ongoing, US-led march toward post-Soviet Russia, which began in the 1990s with NATO’s eastward expansion and continued with US-funded NGO political activities inside Russia, a US-NATO military outpost in Georgia and missile-defense installations near Russia. Whether this longstanding Washington-Brussels policy is wise or reckless, it—not Putin’s December financial offer to save Ukraine’s collapsing economy—is deceitful. The EU’s “civilizational” proposal, for example, includes “security policy” provisions, almost never reported, that would apparently subordinate Ukraine to NATO.
Any doubts about the Obama administration’s real intentions in Ukraine should have been dispelled by the recently revealed taped conversation between a top State Department official, Victoria Nuland, and the US ambassador in Kiev. The media predictably focused on the source of the “leak” and on Nuland’s verbal “gaffe”—“Fuck the EU.” But the essential revelation was that high-level US officials were plotting to “midwife” a new, anti-Russian Ukrainian government by ousting or neutralizing its democratically elected president—that is, a coup."
http://www.thenation.com/article/178344/distorting-russia
also google: nuland fuck the EU
"Over the past few days the events in the Ukraine have seen a fantastic acceleration and many important events have simultaneously taken place. I will try to look at them one by one.
In Kiev, the leaders of the insurgency have taken full control of the Parliament and immediately passed laws revoking the official status of the Russian language.
The political leaders of the insurgency have gone to the Maidan to obtain the approval of the proposed members of the new government.
Just as [Asst. Sec. of State] Nuland [Mrs. Robert Kagan] had ordered, Iatseniuk has taken the post of Prime Minister
On the Maidan itself, deep differences are now opposing different parts of the crowd.
The neo-Nazi leader of the "Maidan security forces" and one of the founders of the Freedom Party, Andrei Parubii, becomes chief of the Security Council.
The leader of the neo-Nazi Right Sector. Dmitri Iarosh, has become Deputy chief of the Security Council.
The rest of the new government are mostly supporters of ex-President Yushchenko in other words: loyal US agents.
The new regime has disbanded the riot police thereby liquidating the last force capable of maintaining law and order in the regions controlled by the insurgents. Now is mob rule, pure and simple.
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=717986195212622043#allposts
"European and American steps that contributed to this unfortunate outcome, and quite remarkably, nobody in this administration even seems to have been thinking about what the consequences of their previous actions could be. That’s how we got to our current predicament."
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116837/dmitri-simes-interview-why-russia-isnt-taking-us-seriously
"Although largely forgotten and certainly not mentioned by the establishment media, Ukraine experienced similar demonstrations back in 2004. The so-called “Orange Revolution” was orchestrated by the same players who are busily at work now — the CIA, its modern day surrogates, including the National Endowment for Democracy, the State Department, various subversive NGOs, the IMF and NATO. After the authoritarian government of pro-Russian Leonid Kuchma was accused of election fraud in favor of his preferred candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, tens of thousands of Ukrainians filled the streets of Kiev in protest. The disputed election resulted in Viktor Yushchenko, a former banker favored by Wall Street and the elite, taking over the presidency.
The company that ran Yushchenko’s election campaign, PBN Hill+Knowlton Strategies, bills itself as an “international strategic communications consultancy” with offices in London, Moscow, Kiev, Riga, Almaty and Chisinau. The president of PBN, Myron Wasylyk, is also the Chairman of the Board of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine. “Wasylyk’s past is revealing in that he has worked for the US Departments of State and the Interior,” writes Andy Rowell for Spinwatch, “and the Republican National Committee. For the Republicans, Wasylyk worked on the election campaigns of former U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior.”
“Hill and Knowlton’s overseas offices were perfect ‘cover’ for the ever-expanding CIA,” former CIA official Robert T. Crowley told Johan Carlisle of Covert Action Quarterly in 1993. In addition, the firm was responsible for orchestrating the now largely forgotten Kuwaiti “Nurse Nayirah” scam instrumental in drumming up support for the first U.S. invasion of Iraq. Nayirah, it turned out, was the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the U.S. and her testimony before Congress about Iraqi soldiers removing babies from incubators and leaving them to die was a calculated lie."
http://www.infowars.com/senator-mccain-pimps-for-cia-spawned-color-revolution-in-ukraine/
I will try to look at them one by one.
In Kiev, the leaders of the insurgency have taken full control of the Parliament and immediately passed laws revoking the official status of the Russian language.
I'm sympathetic with Ukrainian becoming the official language of the Ukraine. But is this like saying that Spanish should become an official language of New Mexico? Or the Scottish outlawing the English dialect as an official language?
Of course it spells the shrinking of the unions which held them together. We may face such decisions one day. We cannot translate cultures as easily as words.
About "plotting to 'midwife'" the Ukrainian revolution -- in the complete transcript of that Nuland phone call, the UN makes an appearance as well. I guess the Secretary General takes seriously the notion of self-determination.
Chick, will you please translate this:
Merkel habe mitnichten ausdrücken wollen, Putin verhalte sich irrational. Sie habe Obama vielmehr gesagt, Putin habe eine andere Wahrnehmung der Lage auf der Krim.
Die Welt
Lydia, hail, hail, the gang's all here :)
Hi, deborah.
I just put Merkel's words through the Bing translator and got this:
"Merkel did not want to express, Putin is acting irrationally. She told Obama rather Putin have a different perception of the situation in the Crimea."
If that's close to a fair translation, it would seem she's trying to counter the earlier report of her phone call with Obama in which she was supposed to have said that she wasn't sure Putin was in touch with reality.
Thanks, Lydia. That's a pretty smooth translation, I didn't know they worked so well.
Merkel habe mitnichten ausdrücken wollen, Putin verhalte sich irrational. Sie habe Obama vielmehr gesagt, Putin habe eine andere Wahrnehmung der Lage auf der Krim. source
I worked off of Lydia's translation:
"Merkel did not want to express that Putin acted irrationally. Rather, she told Obama that Putin may have a different perception of the situation in the Crimea."
Lots of subjunctive mood in there.
But the question is, did she say he was in another world, really, and was quoted/leaked from an off-the-record convo with Obama? If I were her I would be absolutely pissed off.
Putin habe eine andere Wahrnehmung der Lage auf der Krim.
"habe" is normally the 1st person indicative present tense.
In that case it's third person subjunctive.
We do the same:
I have => I may have
Putin has => he may have
If I were her I would be absolutely pissed off.
You mean "if I were she" :)
Yes. She did not want to say what the press said she said. She feels misquoted.
Subjunctive mood?
@Deborah: Die Welt is of course hard core German media.
I'm not sure how they feel about Obama these days.
:(
"If I were rich now" is subjunctive. Fantasy mood, present tense, 1st person.
If in fact you were rich, you'd say "I am rich today" That is called the indicative mood.
Tnanks, got it :)
Don't be :(
Am I mansplaining?
@ST: Thanks!
Good piece in the Miami Herald about this -- Did Angela Merkel really say Putin was unhinged?:
"So if Merkel didn't portray Putin as unhinged, why would the unknown Obama aide tell the New York Times she did? Because in the world of propaganda, successfully portraying your adversary as being crazy, without any rational backing to his actions, makes it unnecessary to try to understand the complexities or sensitivities of the issues. If Putin is crazy, then that's enough. We needn't think any further about what he has to say. And if the New York Times says he's crazy, that's good enough for the dozens of reporters who've come along since, repeating the comment to their millions of viewers and readers as if it was a confirmed statement.
Good work.
But there's ample reason to suspect that Merkel's assessment was more in keeping with her government's portrayal of it -- he's got a different view -- than the unnamed aide's portrayal -- he's nuts. For one, Merkel reportedly has a very close relationship with Putin -- they chat back and forth in German, which Putin apparently learned for his KGB cover as an interpreter when he was stationed in East Germany. It seems unlikely she'd offer so dismissive an assessment of someone she's worked closely with. For another, Obama spent 90 minutes on the phone with Putin on Saturday. If Putin was unhinged, Obama wouldn't have needed Merkel to tell him so."
It may be in my blood.
Thanks, Lydia. If you go to The New Republic you'll find Julia Inoffe's rundown of Putin's one-hour press conference yesterday, stating that Merkel was right, 'he's lost his mind.' Stuff like this:
"Today's Putin was nervous, angry, cornered, and paranoid, periodically illuminated by flashes of his own righteousness. Here was an authoritarian dancing uncomfortably in his new dictator shoes, squirming in his throne."
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116852/merkel-was-right-putins-lost-his-mind-press-conference
I then went to watch the video and he was none of that. BTW, this was posted on the 4th, a day after Merkel's clarification.
@deborah: Of course the NYT wants to hate Putin (aside from trying to help Obama); Putin signed off on all that oppressive legislation.
Yet more complexities in the propaganda war:
"In the propaganda war raging over Ukraine’s revolution, Russia is playing up claims of neo-Nazi involvement in the protests that toppled Viktor Yanukovych, alleging the far right is on the rise in the former Soviet republic and was crucial in the Ukrainian president’s downfall."
but...
"Ukraine’s Jewish leaders also warn against exaggerating the role of neo-Nazis in the overthrow of Yanukovych and the turning away from Russia.
They worry that a flurry of recent attacks on synagogues and the scrawling of swastikas on them is not the work of Ukrainian far right groups, but vandalism carried out by Russian provocateurs, and purposely done to provide grist to the Russian propaganda mill and to discredit Ukraine."
Exactly, Lydia, and I read today that the shots thought to have been fired at the crowd by Pres. Yanukovych's forces were actually fired by rebel factions, as the bullets hit both protesters and riot police.
Players. Scorecard.
Good point, chick.
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